“It’s still not right,” Chen Mu examined a walnut-sized brown pill.
It contained fish, white barley rice, nuts, fats, salt, honey, supplements for the body, and preservative medicines.
Chen Mu wanted to make a kind of high-calorie, nutritious, and storable dry food to prepare for the upcoming journey.
The inspiration came from the compressed biscuits of his previous life.
Unfortunately, despite multiple attempts, he still faced failure.
It was edible, but the taste was slightly off, the preservability was not very good, and the medicinal effects were minimal.
“At least it’s good for improving proficiency.”
Coming up with a new formula could boost his proficiency by fifty to sixty points, comparable to reading medical texts.
After being busy for over half a month, his Pharmaceutical Technique neared nine thousand, and he was on the verge of breaking through to the Third Rank.
“I’ll take a day off tomorrow,” Chen Mu said as he turned his head to look at a basket full of failures.
“I need to dispose of these things.”
…
At the market area below the eastern hill.
Chen Mu, wearing a bamboo hat and a face mask, donned Yang Zhi’s vest again.
He arrived at a familiar spot, set up his stall, and displayed the failed rice balls.
Then he just sat down on the ground and quietly waited for customers.
“Young Brother Yang, selling rice balls again? Two copper coins each, right? Pack ten for me,” a lean old man with a goatee approached him as soon as he sat down.
The man’s surname was Liu; everyone called him Old Liu, a traveling rural doctor.
He sold trauma medicines and Power Pills at the market and often went into the mountains to collect medicinal herbs, also buying from laborers.
Chen Mu set up his stall here mainly for his herbs.
“Hmm,” Chen Mu nodded with a muffled voice, maintaining a reticent demeanor.
The birthmark on his face added a touch of coolness to his persona.
Old Liu was well accustomed to this and didn’t mind as he handed Chen Mu a package wrapped in oil paper: “Take a look, is it the herb you were talking about?”
Chen Mu opened it and glanced briefly, his eyebrows raised slightly.
He put down the oil paper package, quickly wrapped ten rice balls, and paused his hands before adding two more.
He took out thirty copper coins and handed them over along with the rice balls.
Old Liu immediately nodded with satisfaction.
While he was looking, a ruckus suddenly erupted at one end of the street.
A few Government Officials were carrying a stretcher swiftly away.
The crowd gathered at the street corner, chattering and discussing.
“What happened?” Chen Mu gestured toward the departing stretcher and asked.
“Wild animal injuries,” Old Liu replied as if it was routine: “It was pretty gruesome though, I heard it gutted everything, like the heart, liver, spleen, lungs, all plucked out by the beast.”
“When people clear land in deep mountain areas, encountering ferocious animals is normal. Luckily we have Qingfeng Observatory. Otherwise, encountering evil spirits would be the real misfortune.”
Chen Mu could only nod in agreement.
Qingfeng Observatory indeed had methods.
In the wilderness, with thousands of laborers gathered, several months had passed without a single incident of evil spirits.
The two chatted sporadically.
Chen Mu’s gaze scanned the street’s activities from the corner of his eye.
With thousands opening the mountain, game animals, medicinal herbs, minerals, various natural resources were being continuously discovered.
While there were no rare finds here, there were plenty of common items, convenient for him to find ingredients for his recipes.
“Do you have wild boar today?” Chen Mu asked suddenly after surveying for a while.
“Not anymore, Old Zhang sold out early this morning,” Liu, a slick old hand, was well-informed: “Are you interested?”
“Hmm,” Chen Mu nodded.
“The Zhang brothers trapped a wild boar den using leftovers soaked in Knockout Drug. There will definitely be more tomorrow.”
“Where do they live?” Chen Mu inquired.
“Going to their place? Makes sense, a butcher would certainly keep some for himself,” Old Liu realized and then shook his head: “But you’ll probably have to pay more.”
Chen Mu calmly shook his head: “It’s alright.”
He needed to conduct a test, and for that, the expense was necessary.
“Walk eastwards, their home is at the far eastern end of the shanty area.”
“That place is close to the small Bailang River, convenient for slaughtering and cleaning the animals.”
“Just ask around there and you’ll find out,” Old Liu instructed.
Chen Mu nodded in thanks and then quietly continued to sell his rice balls.
The rice balls were full of ingredients, savory and filling, and those who had purchased them knew they were good quality.
With many regular customers, it didn’t take long before they were all sold out.
Chen Mu nodded to Old Liu as a goodbye, packed up his stall into a bamboo basket, and headed east with it on his back.
…
In the eastern part of the settlement area.
Following the directions of passersby, Chen Mu found the home of the butcher, Old Zhang.
A wooden house with a fence made of forearm-thick logs circled around it.
An area on the east side of the courtyard was separated off for a pigpen, the ground muddied with filth and the air reeking.
A few black-skinned wild pigs were grunting and rooting about in the pen.
On the west side, there was a stone platform, surrounded by three tall and thin men who were eating pig ears, peanuts, and drinking wine.
“Zhang Lao Liu?” Chen Mu, pretending to be Yang Zhi, said coldly with indifference.
“Who are you?” the three men put down their wine cups, stood up, and looked at Chen Mu with unfriendly faces.
“Are the pigs for sale?” Chen Mu asked calmly.
The expressions of the three men immediately softened.
“We’ve sold out for today; we only have these ears left, not even enough for the three of us. Come back tomorrow.”
“I want a live pig,” Chen Mu gestured towards the pigpen.
The three men looked surprised but didn’t ask further, “Go ahead and pick one.”
After pondering for a moment, Chen Mu said, “That biggest one.”
“That one weighs over 300 pounds; it’ll be ten taels of silver,” Zhang Lao Liu said.
“Okay,” Chen Mu agreed briskly.
He then strode to the pigpen to inspect.
The wild pigs, instead of being afraid of strangers, glared at Chen Mu furiously, and if they could jump out, they might even take a swipe at him.
Zhang Lao Liu was taken aback by Chen Mu’s rapid agreement, immediately regretting it in his heart.
I quoted too low a price!
After thinking it over, he felt too embarrassed to raise the price.
If he’d butchered and sold the pig, he’d make just seven or eight taels at most.
Now, sparing the effort, he was earning two more taels. Thinking this way, he felt much better.
Zhang Lao Liu shook off his regret and was about to call his brothers over to help tie up the pig with a rope.
Bang!
Chen Mu punched the boar on its forehead.
The previously howling wild pig rolled over and fell to the ground with a thud.
Then, reaching out, he grabbed one of the wild pig’s front legs and lifted the 300-pound animal out of the pigpen like it was a little chick.
He casually threw it into a large bamboo basket behind him.
Tossing ten taels of silver to Zhang Lao Liu, he departed without a word.
The eyes of Zhang Lao Liu and the other two bulged out from their sockets.
Fuck! Such strength?!
…
On the west side of Little Dong Mountain.
Chen Mu deliberately kept his distance from the eastern site of the ceremonial building and chose a pit not too close yet not too far from the Qingfeng Observatory.
He took out the large wild pig and then dug out a broken wooden basin from the bottom of the basket.
The Sleeve Sword Technique flashed, and he made a bloody hole in the pig’s neck.
The wild pig, hurt by the cut, woke up and tried to struggle.
Hiss!
Chen Mu waved his hand calmly.
The Sleeve Sword glided along the back of the pig’s neck and into the spine, piercing the hard bone as if it were tofu, severing the spinal cord in an instant.
Just like that, he held onto the pig’s hind legs, lifted it with one hand, and let it bleed.
Once the wooden basin was filled, Chen Mu put down the pig and retreated ten meters with the bamboo basket.
With leather gloves on his hands, he carefully took out a wooden box from under the basket and extracted a bright red leather pouch from inside.
This was a strange object he had gotten from a round-faced Taoist.
Chen Mu suspected it was a magic artifact.
The paper effigy was eerie, and he dared not try it lightly.
As for blood binding to claim ownership, forget it; he didn’t consider himself to have the luck of a protagonist.
After pondering for a month and testing with different methods, he confirmed that the pouch could absorb blood.
This time, Chen Mu planned to feed it well in one go to see what would happen.
From a distance of ten meters, he threw the pouch into the basin of pig blood.
Gurgle gurgle…
The pouch sank to the bottom, bubbling up.
The level of blood dropped at a visible rate, and in a short while, it was completely gone. Even the crevices in the wooden basin were left without a trace of blood.
Chen Mu approached to examine it, picked up a stick, and poked at the leather pouch.
The pouch had no reaction, and the foreboding paper effigy didn’t leap out.
However, the mouth of the pouch was pried open by his poking.
Yet, he dared not reach in with his hand.
Finding another stick, he clamped the pouch like chopsticks and turned it upside down to pour it out.
Whoosh…
A huge pile of items fell out of the tiny pouch, quickly filling half of the half-meter diameter wooden basin.
Chen Mu: “…”
Treasures!
Before he could react, the black cord on the pouch contracted, and the mouth closed tightly again.
Chen Mu, holding the pouch with the stick, put it back into the wooden box he had used earlier.
He tossed the wooden basin and the wild pig back into the bamboo basket and quickly left with the basket on his back.