บท 29: The Second-Ranked Healing Pill
Zheng-Fu followed Sue-Wu into the medicine chamber right after he heard the invitation. When he entered the chamber, he saw a lot of herbal plants lying orderly all over the place. His nose was hit by medicinal smells that pervaded the room. Just inhaling the air in there, Zheng-Fu could feel a slight change in his body. Some of his broken meridians started to be revived little by little…
Both Zheng-Fu and the Medicine Elder continued to walk further until they stopped in front of one of the chambers in the building. Walking in, Zheng-Fu could see that there was a medicine mixing bowl resting in the middle of the room, along with many types of herbs surrounding that bowl. Some pieces of paper were thrown away lying around the area…
Grab!
Zheng-Fu picked up one of those and read. He found out that it was one of the medicine formulas that Sue-Wu came up with, but he pretended not to understand what was in the paper. So, he asked…
“What is this paper, Elder Sue-Wu?”
“Oh! That was one of the medicine formulas that I created, but it wasn’t successful, so…” Sue-Wu said and felt sad about it when he answered Zheng-Fu the question. There were so many papers that were full of a lot of medicine formulas on them, but he could not achieve any of them. None of them could be created successfully…
After answering Zheng-Fu the question, Sue-Wu went back to his silence. He then walked up to the medicine mixing bowl to continue working on the new medicine according to the formula that he had in his hand. Zheng-Fu, on the other hand, quietly started to pick up the paper to read the medicine formulas, one by one. He kept on doing that while looking at Sue-Wu from time to time…
“If you are interested in medicine making…take this. It’s a book about fundamental herbal plants. In there, you’ll see the knowledge about all kinds of herbal plants that exist in this continent. You’ll learn about their healing qualities too. They were all about the herbal plants that we could find though.” The herbal plant book that Sue-Wu handed to Zheng-Fu was so huge as if it was made from ten books combined…
“A book of Fundamental Herbal Plants!?”
Grab!
Zheng-Fu took the book from Sue-Wu and rushed to open it and read it right away. There were more than 30,000 herbal plants recorded in that book. The book told the plants’ specific characteristics and imminent qualities. It also showed how to use each plant as a cure, but some of the plants were still left mysterious on how to use them…
Time flew very quickly. Zheng-Fu did not care about how long he spent there, reading the book. He immersed himself into the world of herbal plants knowledge so much that he forgot about the surroundings. Sue-Wu, at the same time, was taking a rest from spending time failing in making herbal medicine. He left the room by himself after noticing that Zheng-Fu was so into the herbal plant book…
Zheng-Fu’s knowledge and understanding of herbal plants started to improve. He knew some herbal plants from the previous world. Back then, he used to keep records about herbal plants and wrote down the ways to use them as medicines. He knew more ways to turn herbal plants into medicine than what he saw in the book that he just got. Zheng-Fu’s excellent mind helped him remember four out of ten portions of knowledge from just one read…
“I can’t believe that there are so many herbal plants that they have recorded. I can only sink in four out of ten portions of the knowledge here. There’re so many things in this world that I don’t know about, especially when it comes to rare herbal plants.” Zheng-Fu mumbled by himself. When he looked up, he found that Sue-Wu was not in the room. He was left alone with the medicine mixing bowl in the middle of the room and the herbal plants that the Medicine Elder was using to produce herbal medicines…
Clomp! Clomp! Clomp!
Zheng-Fu slowly walked towards the medicine mixing bowl and glanced at the herbal plants around the bowl. He felt the urge to try to make an herbal medicine just for once, but he would not dare to because he was afraid that he would be yelled at if he messed things up…
*Elder Sue-Wu is not here now. What should I do? Should I wait for him to come back and ask him if it’s alright if I want to try making an herbal medicine?*
Squeak!
“Did you just finish the book? How was it? Did you understand any of them?” All of a sudden, Sue-Wu walked back to the room. When he entered the room, he saw that Zheng-Fu finished reading the book, so he asked how much Zheng-Fu understood the content in the book…
“With all due respect, Elder Sue-Wu, this book is completely amazing. I never knew before that there would be so many herbal plants in this world. They all look different. It’s fascinating that an herbal plant can have both negative and positive effects within itself. Um, would it be alright if I…?”
“If you are interested in the book, you can take it home!” Sue-Wu knew what Zheng-Fu was going to ask, so he let him borrow the book home. He thought that he would give the book to Zheng-Fu anyway because he saw the way that the boy lost himself in the book earlier. It made him want to believe that Zheng-Fu might be interested in becoming an alchemist. If that were the case, it would be excellent for an alchemist like him…
“Take it home!?”
“Would you really let me borrow it home?” Zheng-Fu asked and looked at Sue-Wu with an innocent facial expression, making him look like a kid who was very curious about everything…
“Of course. I don’t need it anymore. I remember all the herbal plants in there. You can take it and finish it, but don’t lose it or damage it, alright?” Sue-Wu said and smiled at Zheng-Fu. He actually had not remembered everything in the book, but he knew enough for now. He only needed to know the herbal plants that were used to make lower-leveled medicines. It meant that he did not have to know a lot about herbal plants. He could remember all the plants that he needed to know, so it was alright for him to let Zheng-Fu take the book home…
“Thank you very much, Medicine Elder.” Zheng-Fu cupped his fists and bowed to pay respect to Sue-Wu with extreme gratitude before taking the herbal plants book with him and heading out of the Medicine Tower. Zheng-Fu’s respectful gesture towards Sue-Wu startled Sue-Wu in a good way. He never expected to see something like this from an 8-year-old kid…
“Is he really eight years old!?”
After coming back from the Medicine Tower, Zheng-Fu went straight back home in order to continue to study the Book of Fundamental Herbal Plants. He also snatched one of Sue-Wu’s old papers that contained a medicinal formula with him because he thought that he could definitely do something productive with it…
A month had gone…
It was the time that Zheng-Fu had to go pick up the six lower-leveled Qi energy stones from the clan. When he received those stones, he would own altogether 12 Qi energy stones. He had not used any Qi energy stone at all for the past month because he would like to really focus on making herbal medicines…
Zheng-Fu did not go out at all. He spent all of his time either in his room or at the Medicine Tower. He went there to ask for some advice about herbal plants and the medicine-making process from Sue-Wu. Sue-Wu himself did not mind at all to give Zheng-Fu advice. He even tried to tell the boy everything that he knew about herbal medicine. Even though he was merely a lower-leveled alchemist, he had been around in the field for a long time. He had been making herbal medicines countless times, even though they were merely lower-leveled medicines…
In the medicine-making chamber at the Medicine Tower…
“I would like to know what would happen if we put this herbal plant into this lower-leveled medicine, Master,” Zheng-Fu called Sue-Wu Master because Sue-Wu had been teaching him the science of herbal medicine making all these times. Now he had gained one more Master…!
Since Zheng-Fu had been practicing making herbal medicine for more than a month now, he started to see the mechanism of making herbal medicines. That was why he asked his Master about replacing one herbal plant with another in one of the medicine formulas. He showed two formula papers to his Master, one was the original medicinal formula. The other one was the formula that he recently came up with…
What!?
“This is…” Sue-Wu looked at the first paper and then said, “This is the formula for a general herbal medicine for wound healing.” Then he looked at Zheng-Fu with wonder. Zheng-Fu, on the other hand, nodded to his Master and smiled. Then he showed his Master the other formula paper. Sue-Wu took that paper and read the content in the paper. After he read it, his facial expression changed and then he said…
“This is... Don’t tell me that…!”
“That’s right, Master. From reading the Book of Fundamental Herbal Plants that you gave me for about a month, I realized that the “Hound Tongue” has better quality than the “Fuzzy Grass”. So, I think if we replaced the Fuzzy Grass with the Hound Tongue, the effect of this lower-leveled herbal medicine must be more efficient.”
“But the Hound Tongue has a mild toxic effect. I don’t think replacing the Fuzzy Grass with it would be good.”
“But what if we put this one in? Please look at what I wrote in the formula, Master.”
Sue-Wu still could not catch up with Zheng-Fu but looked at the new formula that Zheng-Fu wrote anyway. After he saw the methods and the ratio of the ingredients clearly, his face turned pale instantaneously because he could not believe what he saw. This was all because the formula that Zheng-Fu modified was perfect and eliminated the negative effects of the Hound Tongue. From calculating this modified version of the formula, Sue-Wu believed that the chance to succeed in this formula was up to eighty out of one hundred percent…
“Great! I’ll give it a try. Go fetch those herbal plants for me, kid!”
“Yes, sir!”
Zheng-Fu rushed to grab all the ingredients instantly. Ever since he started to learn the science of herbal medicine making, he lost himself tremendously in the medicine-making chamber. So, the good thing from that was he knew where everything was in there. It was like he had been there for so many years…
*It’s unbelievable that he could come up with this new formula. It has been only a month since he started studying medicine. And the medicine formula that I’m holding now should be…*
“The ingredients are ready, Master!”
Zheng-Fu ran back to his Master excitedly with all the needed ingredients. This was the first formula that he came up with. He did not know if it was going to work, but he gave it a seven out of ten percent that it would…
Zoom!
Whoosh!
Sue-Wu gradually put each ingredient into the medicine mixing bowl, one by one. All the while, he kept stirring the mixture with his Qi energy to create heat to warm up the mixture to get everything incorporated well…
Whoosh!
A long while after being in the process of incorporation and distillation of the mixture, a bright red light was emitted from the mixing bowl. Then there was an herbal pill emerging slowly from the bottom of the bowl. Sue-Wu had to crinkle his eyebrows as soon as he saw the pill. It was strange for him because the pill came with a bright red light. In his long year of experience in the medical world, any kinds of lower-leveled herbal medicines did not come with any light at all. However, what appeared in front of him came with a light and energy exhibiting all around it…
“We did it, Master! We did it!”
“Yeah!”
Sue-Wu reached to grab the pill and started to inspect it immediately. When he got a chance to look closer at the pill, he got even more startled because what he was holding was not a first-ranked healing pill, but it was better. The result prompted Sue-Wu to shout out of awe…
“The second-ranked healing pill!”
Zheng-Fu was startled tremendously when he heard Sue-Wu shout out so loudly…
“The second-ranked healing pill!?”
“You’re the genius, my student! Your medicine formula is superb! Do you have any idea how much this pill costs?”
…?...
Zheng-Fu looked at the pill before making a puzzled facial expression while scratching his head at the same time because he did not know at all about the price of the pill…
“I forgot that you probably did not know the price of this pill. Let me tell you that the first-ranked healing pill does not cost a lot because its job is only to stop the bleeding or heal regular wounds. But this pill is different. From what I heard, only the mid-leveled alchemists could produce something like this. So that is why its price is tremendously high. It could be as high as hundreds or thousands of monster crystal coins.”
Sue-Wu explained to Zheng-Fu while feeling excited at the same time. He could not stop his ear-to-ear smile in front of Zheng-Fu. This was the first time that he could produce a second-ranked healing pill by himself. He even had the medicine formula in his hand. What was more was that this formula could be achieved just by using something easy to find…
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