Chapter Fifty Three - I walk through the herb gardens

Leon returned back to the alchemists school with teacher Sagi leaving a sullen Jin Li behind. Beside him, Sun simply pouted and wished Leon a good riddance.. in his heart at least. He then dragged Jin Li away to train with him in the arena, reminding Jin Li why he had sought out the peaceful sanctuary of Leon's poor hut in the first place.

The griffin landed as abruptly as before, causing the remnants of Leon's breakfast to lurch about in his stomach. He was glad that the time the lecture took had allowed him to digest, otherwise he feared that there would have been an unfortunate accident occurring.

Leon helped Teacher Sagi take his things back to his own abode, which happened to be behind the Herb Hall. To get there, they needed to pass through the large walled gardens behind the hall. Leon (nor his body's original owner, Leo) had ever been into the gardens before, so he was not sure what to expect. At first glance, there was a small stone patio with several drying racks along the walls, each holding herbs in various states. Some of these were better used dry and some were being held in order to harvest their seeds.

The patioed area was contained with its own walls and there was a stone archway leading into the next garden.... which was not a garden at all, but a mass of fields. As it happened, this area was apparently a dimensional pocket, though not as large as Leon first thought. Teacher Sagi claimed that this sort of pocket was not too unusual. It was an artificial pocket, a space that originally was merely fifty metres by fifty metres, but had been stretched until it reached five hundred metres squared. However, the crystals that supplied the magic required for such a feat needed to be replaced every other month, something that was dealt with by the magic school in return for pills.

The scents of common and quickly growing herbs were first to hit his senses as he followed the Teacher along the path through the fields. He suspected that these were what were regularly harvested for the junior students and others such as himself, who needed these common ingredients regularly.

At the opposite side of these fields was another wall and archway, which lead into a garden filled with heady, rich scents. His eyes darted left and right as he recognised a few of these less common plants from pictures in Leo's diaries, but there were many more that he did not know of. The tall plant with knife like leaves he recognised as bladed thistle, which had large blue flowers when it bloomed. These flowers had no use in pills, but girls like to use them to top their bath water, claiming the oils they released were refreshing in scent. The plant itself was used in cloudy spiritual pills, which like their lesser version, the clear spiritual pill, helped aid cultivation. Those of secondary and tertiary stage favoured these. They naturally were not without draw backs. He also recognised the horned lantern flower. It's strange orange bloom looked like a dragon's head from Chinese mythology. He did not know what potions and pills it was for. Leo had died before he had written more details about the plant down.

Leon was then lead past a huge circular pond, which was filled and surrounded by even stranger looking herbs, in fact he recognised one or two as they grew near the water's edge of the lake. His eyes narrowed in thought as he considered how he might go about cultivation those within his own small garden. Perhaps he could purchase a small tub and create his own pond? It didn't think it would be too hard to try at least. In the back of his mind, he added this item to the list of things he wanted to buy in town the next time he was there. He would talk to Mino, arrange for another visit. He also needed to see the blacksmith's apprentice after all.

The path finally lead to a small, but neatly architectured house, which overlooked the precious herbs. Teacher Sagi turned around and thanked Leon for his assistance before sending him on his way, trusting that the boy would not steal any herbs from the gardens. His trust was not in vain. It never even occurred to Leon to steal herbs in the first place.