Selling Medicines
“I would like to ask you to keep what happened in here a secret. I don’t wish anyone to know about it, especially my relative who is waiting for me outside right now.” Everybody felt strange when they heard Zheng-Fu’s request, but they nodded to show that they agreed to do accordingly…
“Of course, I won’t tell anyone about it. You can rest assured now. But I would like to know what you are going to do with this pill…?”
“I have to say that the pill was an accident. I had such a limited time in the test, so I decided to put everything together in the mixing bowl and then used a different level of heat flame in each distillation step, sir.”
“Mix everything and use different levels of heat flame!?”
*What is his brain made of?* Kong-Chang looked at Zheng-Fu and asked the question in his mind…
The first Elder: “An accident. So, you don’t know the exact formula, do you?”
“It’s not that I don’t know the exact formula, sir. I believe that if I have extra time, I’ll be able to write the formula down.” Zheng-Fu tried to be casual about what he said to avoid telling the formula…
“And how much time do you need to write down this formula?” Ming-Wang rushed to ask to see when Zheng-Fu could give them the formula…
“I think it could take about a few days if I don’t have to do anything, sir…”
“A few days!?”
“Wait! This is not something to be joking about. A few days shouldn’t be possible, right? I think little Zheng-Fu is trying to be funny here. Are you?” Kong-Chang’s head spun when he heard Zheng-Fu’s answer then he turned to ask Zheng-Fu if he was joking. However, he did not see Zheng-Fu say anything back. He just found himself looking at an innocent regular kid…
Zheng-Fu had officially become an alchemist. Not just an alchemist, but an advanced alchemist. What was more was that he got to have his spatial ring, which was something he aimed to get when he arrived in the city. He did not even have to pay for it too…
“Well, in that case, I’ll walk you out!” Ming-Wang offered to walk Zheng-Fu out when everything was settled, but Zheng-Fu held his hand up and then said, “I appreciated your kindness, sir, but I think I should walk out the building without anyone chaperoning me. I don’t want my relatives to think that something is going on here,” Zheng-Fu said and smiled playfully to let everyone imagine things…
“Well…!”
“Alright! If that’s what you want. But don’t forget! You can come to see us here anytime you need us. And for this pill, I’ll have to take care of it myself”
“Yes, sir!”
After the conversation, Zheng-Fu headed out of the association right away. When he got to the exit of the building, he found the bodyguards that had been waiting for him. It was getting dark outside…
“Little master Zheng-Fu!” As soon as Zheng-Fu stepped out of the building, the bodyguards rushed to get him instantaneously…
“I’m so sorry to keep you waiting. Where’s Master Sue-Wu?”
“Elder Sue-Wu went ahead to wait for you at the tavern. He asked us to wait for you here, little master.”
“Ah!”
Zheng-Fu and the bodyguards started to walk back to the tavern.
Zheng-Fu was trying to find some kind of solid explanation to say to Sue-Wu about him being disappeared into the building for so long…
Clomp!
The group finally arrived at the tavern. As Zheng-Fu entered the tavern, he spotted Sue-Wu waiting for him at the table. Sue-Wu got up and rushed to Zheng-Fu…
“Where have you been? Are you hurt anywhere?” Sue-Wu asked Zheng-Fu because he was very worried for him…
“Aren’t you going to yell at me?” Zheng-Fu was surprised to see Sue-Wu ask him with the utmost care, not getting angry…
“Yell at you!? Why do I have to yell at you?”
“It’s because I’d disappeared for a long time.”
“Hahaha! You silly boy! I’m not going to yell at you because of that. But by the way, where did you go?”
“I was wondering why people stood in line at the association building. So, I went to check and found out that the association was open for applicants. I then joined the line just to kill time and I wanted to get into the building to look for you too, Master. But as I was in the line, there was this Elder who approached me and took me inside to see you and show me the association.”
“Take you to see me and show you the association!?” Sue-Wu exclaimed out of surprise because he saw that the person who took Zheng-Fu in was the Elder of the Association of the Alchemists. He never took anyone in for a tour, but why he did with Zheng-Fu…?
All kinds of thoughts emerged in Sue-Wu’s mind instantly, but they started to die down after a short while. He thought that it was great that Zheng-Fu had a chance to see the association because that was why he took the boy to the association after all. If Zheng-Fu liked the activities in the association, his dream for Zheng-Fu to want to learn alchemy would come true. He wished to have Zheng-Fu as his student. Sue-Wu then turned to Zheng-Fu…
“And what did you think about the association?”
“It was marvelous, Master. I saw many alchemists in there. I also saw a man who wore the same robe you do.” Zheng-Fu answered Sue-Wu with extreme delight…
“Yeah!”
“That’s normal. It’s the association for alchemists, so there must be some people who dress as I do.”
“You’re right, sir!”
Zheng-Fu nodded to agree with his alchemy Master. His innocent and naïve facial expression that he showed Sue-Wu made him very adorable…
“Well, let’s not talk about that further. You must be very hungry. Come! I’ve ordered some food for you in your room. Go have something to eat and have some rest. I’ll take you to the market tomorrow.”
To the market!?
“Would you really take me there, Master?” Zheng-Fu’s eyes sparkled the minute he heard the word market…
“Of course!”
“Yay, yay!”
The market!
The market!
“What an innocent kid! If he is really into alchemy, he would definitely become a leading alchemist one day.” Sue-Wu said out loud while he was looking at Zheng-Fu. He thought about how Zheng-Fu could become a great alchemist one day without realizing that Zheng-Fu had now become one. The boy was still young, but he was already an Advance Alchemist. He was at a more advanced level than Sue-Wu himself…
“Phew!”
“It’s good that he didn’t doubt me. I guess it’s not bad being a kid. Maybe I shouldn’t wish to grow older now. Tee-hee. So, now I have my own spatial ring. I also have a medicine mixing bowl and some herbal plants. Everything is in a spatial ring, alright. I have this money too. It was so worth it that I got in that line.”
After Zheng-Fu got back from the Association of the Alchemists, he started to check out the things that were kept in his spatial ring right away. He found a medicine mixing bowl. It looked different from the one he used in the test. He also found about 30 types of herbal plants that could be used to make first-ranked and second-ranked medicines.
Apart from those things, Zheng-Fu also saw about 20 medicine formulas papers in the spatial ring. The association put a thousand monster crystal coins in there for him too…
“A thousand monster crystal coins!”
In this Xianxia world, the currency that people use to buy things was a monster crystal coin. Everyone used it to buy what they wanted. They could use things to exchange for things too. Sometimes people used a spiritual stone to buy things, but it was not that popular…
When Zheng-Fu was in the clan’s estate, he never needed these means to buy things, so he never had any savings. The monster crystal coins he received today were the first that he ever got…
“So, if Master Sue-Wu takes me to the market tomorrow, I can sell these medicines there.” When Zheng-Fu decided that he could sell these second-rank medicines at the market, he threw all five of them into his spatial ring to prepare for tomorrow…
Zheng-Fu started to meditate to catch up with the cultivation of his Qi energy as the night fell. As he closed his eyes, he slipped into that empty dimension again. It was the exact dimension that he encountered the first glowing entity…
“This is like that dimension.”
Zheng-Fu found himself in that dimension that he was sent to the first time he came to this Xianxia world again, but he saw nothing there, except for a vast empty space that seemed to have no end. But all of a sudden, a bright light gradually appeared…
The light started to appear more vividly and it was clear to Zheng-Fu that he was seeing messages and images of medicine formulas. They came with a medicine mixing process too. Six medicine formulas appeared in the air. They were Nine-Physical-Force, Agile-Sol, Savage-Flame, Seven-Rainbow, Soul-Detaining, and Ten-Thousand-Poisons-Crushing.
These were the six medicine formulas that Zheng-Fu had never heard of before. However, having heard of them or not, he would not wait for the bright-lighted messages to disappear. Zheng-Fu started to memorize everything thinking that these formulas must work, just like those fighting movements that he remembered in this dimension earlier…
Zheng-Fu thought that these medicine formulas must be real too. He did not know which rank they were in, but he could check them later on. It took a while for Zheng-Fu to take them all in. Once he finished memorizing them, everything in the dimension disappeared. The next thing he knew was he got sent back to his room at the tavern…
“That dimension again!”
Zheng-Fu all of a sudden remembered to check his Qi energy stones. When he opened his cloth bag, he found that five out of 12 of his lower-level Qi energy stones got their Qi energy drained flat out…
“Five stones were gone? So, it’s true that going into that dimension consumes Qi energy from these stones?” Zheng-Fu contemplated while looking at the five Qi energy stones that had no Qi energy left in them. Then he calculated that he was in that dimension for a few hours. He thought that there was still some more time for him to try some more things before the morning came…
“What if I try to get into that dimension again? Will it work this time?”
Zheng-Fu then started to meditate again, but it did not take him to that dimension as he expected. He tried many ways to get to that place. He tried something like concentrating intensely or staring at the lower-level Qi energy stone. However, whatever he tried did not take him back to that dimension again that night…
“Why didn’t it work? I did everything that I possibly could, but I got nowhere near that dimension.” As Zheng-Fu thought about his failed attempts, the sun started to appear on the horizon…
“It’s dawn already? Well! I guess I just have to try next time.” Zheng-Fu got out of his bed and got himself ready for the market with Master Sue-Wu. He had been waiting for this moment…
Clomp! Clomp! Clomp!
“Whoa! You got up very early there!” Sue-Wu said to Zheng-Fu…
“I normally get up early, Master. But it seems like you are earlier than me.”
“Hahaha! Great! Let’s get something to eat since it’s still early.”
“Yes, Master!”
After breakfast, Sue-Wu and five bodyguards led Zheng-Fu to the market as he promised to Zheng-Fu. The two sides of the street were filled with shops that sold things from food to tools…
“I know you’d like to take a stroll around the market by yourself, Zheng-Fu. So, I’ll have one of the bodyguards walk with you. Let’s meet up at that fountain when you’re done, alright?”
“Yes, Master!”
The bodyguard that chaperoned Zheng-Fu was a mercenary that Tian-Tang Clan hired to protect Sue-Wu. The mercenary was at the fifth level of the Foundation Building stage…
“Let’s go there,” Zheng-Fu said while urging the mercenary to go in the direction of one of the drugstores in the market…
“Yes, little master!”
Squeak!
Ding-Ding!
Zheng-Fu opened the drugstore’s door and saw a lot of drug shelves in there. They were stacked with medicines with labels on them to tell their names and prices. On the first shelf that he looked at he saw first-rank physical healing medicines priced at 50 monster crystal coins, first-rank wound healing medicines priced at 70 monster crystal coins, and first-rank three-shichen physical endurance medicine priced at 200 monster crystal coins…
These were the medicines that Zheng-Fu saw at the clan’s Medicine Tower. He never thought that they would be so costly. He knew that the cost of the ingredients that made these medicines was only one out of ten portions of the medicines’ selling prices…
Zheng-Fu walked around the store for a while until he noticed an adult at the store counter already staring at him. He did not say anything until Zheng-Fu looked at him. He said, “What are you looking for, little master?” It looked like the guy was about 40-50 years old. He did not seem to be enthusiastic to get an answer from Zheng-Fu because Zheng-Fu was just a little kid. He thought that the boy just came in to play. He needed to ask Zheng-Fu the question though because everyone who came into the store was deemed to be the store’s customer…
“I would like to know if you only sell drugs or buy drugs too.”
“What!?”
Zheng-Fu’s question got the store owner’s attention. Even though the store owner saw Zheng-Fu as an innocent kid, he still felt like he needed to answer the question, so he said, “My store sells and buys drugs too. Did you come to sell your drugs?” The owner of the drugstore asked while mocking Zheng-Fu with his laugh…
“Yes, sir. I would like to sell you my drugs. Here it is! I would like to know how much I’d get for this.”
Wait!?
“They are…!”