Hearing Chi Xian’s words, Xu Baizhou thought back to Jia Wujie at the birthday banquet that day. Compared with their interactions over these past days, thinking carefully, the two really were different, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say they were two different people.
“At the banquet that day, did Your Excellency drink mushroom soup?” Xu Baizhou asked.
“Yep! Pretty abnormal, right?”
Xu Baizhou shivered. He actually felt that Jia Wujie was more abnormal when he hadn’t drunk mushroom soup.
The Jia Wujie at the banquet wore his emotions on his sleeve, his moods swinging wildly, at one moment clapping and laughing, the next flying into a rage, unhinged and terrifying. But the Jia Wujie afterward was clearly different. From these past few days of contact, Jia Wujie seemed very good at hiding his emotions, always smiling as he spoke words cold to the bone and did things cruel to the extreme. It was precisely this unreadability that made him even more frightening.
After spending the whole afternoon picking nethergrass, Cang Gui came back at dusk carrying another basket full of demonic plants. Thanks to Chi Xian’s tearful pleading, Cang Gui dropped the idea of making Xu Baizhou work through the night.
“He was just picking randomly!” Chi Xian said.
And despite Xu Baizhou’s strong protests, he was still assigned to live in the woodshed.
But at least this time his hands and feet weren’t tied. It was fairly comfortable, Xu Baizhou thought.
In less than ten days in this world, he had slept in a dungeon and in the Demon Venerable’s bed, yet Xu Baizhou still felt that lying now on a bundle of straw, gazing through the gap between two broken tiles on the woodshed roof at a tiny patch of night sky, was especially pleasant.
Only now did Xu Baizhou have time to properly think about himself, about his absurd, fantastical experiences of late.
Although Chi Xian had noticed from the start that Xu Baizhou was fishing for information, before he knew it, he had spilled everything.
From Chi Xian, Xu Baizhou learned that this was an Immortal-Demon World. It might be thousands upon thousands of years distant from the world he had lived in, or it might simply be an entirely different world altogether either way, for now he could only go on living here. But for some reason, ever since arriving here, his illness seemed to have healed. Despite the daily emotional ups and downs of late, he hadn’t felt any intense discomfort. Even being tormented by Jia Wujie every day, he felt far better than before.
Maybe heaven really had given him a chance to start over, Xu Baizhou thought. Or maybe this place was actually the world after death.
Chi Xian said this was the Demonic Realm, that beyond the Demonic Realm lay the Human Realm, and above the Human Realm stood the Immortal Sects.
Immortal Sects.
Xu Baizhou had read a few cultivation novels in the past. He resolved that he must escape the Demonic Realm alive, and if possible, he would pursue Cultivation.
Xu Baizhou rolled over and sighed.
Better to first think about how to survive in this Demonic Realm.
……
“I want to learn to brew demonic potions!”
Cang Gui stared at Xu Baizhou, who stood before him making solemn promises, momentarily unsure how to react.
“What?” Chi Xian poked his head out from the side and shouted, “You can’t even tell nethergrass from poison grass, who are you trying to kill?”
Faced with Chi Xian’s accusation, Xu Baizhou showed not a shred of self-reflection. “If you two big brothers teach me, I’ll just study hard, won’t I?”
When you’re doing something, you’re always clumsy at first, so what if you make a few mistakes? Xu Baizhou thought. Besides, whatever he made at the beginning certainly wouldn’t be fit for anyone to eat anyway. But then again, if his demonic potion actually poisoned Jia Wujie to death, wouldn’t that be even better?
The more Xu Baizhou thought about it, the more excited he became, convinced that he must study hard and strive to become a great medicinal cultivator as soon as possible!
Under Xu Baizhou’s relentless pestering, Chi Xian finally agreed to teach him how to brew demonic potions, while Cang Gui said he could do as he pleased, there was no way he was going to waste his time teaching Xu Baizhou anything.
Thanks to Chi Xian’s careful instruction, Xu Baizhou finally learned to tell nethergrass apart from other demonic plants. Looking at Chi Xian, who was sprawled to the side looking utterly dead inside, as if he’d exhausted every ounce of patience in his life, Xu Baizhou asked, “Is nethergrass really that hard to find? Even Cang Gui can only bring back three or five stalks after a whole day out?”
“Of course!” Chi Xian sprang up with a kip-up and said, “You think it’s some random weed growing all over the streets? For Cang Gui to bring back three or five stalks a day is already impressive! Among all the potion-makers in this area, we contribute the most in offerings every month that’s why the Sovereign likes us best!”
Chi Xian rolled his eyes at Xu Baizhou’s look of mild confusion. “You don’t know anything. Let me put it this way: the land in our Demonic Realm is barren and the climate harsh, it’s hardly suitable for plants to begin with, so nether grass is even rarer. Most of it grows in desolate, treacherous places where no one ever goes. And anything that can grow in Demonic Realm soil is mostly toxic some demonic plants are so poisonous that a single touch of the hand can kill you. Every year, low-ranking demons die horrible deaths here from mistakenly picking poisonous plants. So gathering herbs is not a job just anyone can do.”
Xu Baizhou nodded at this. He roughly understood: nethergrass was like wild ginseng, already extremely rare, growing deep in the mountains, and to protect itself, it looked similar to those toxic demonic plants, making it genuinely difficult to harvest. Moreover, because it was so rare and expensive, any nethergrass that was easy to pick had long since been gathered by others or eaten by wild beasts. So the nethergrass Cang Gui carried back every day was all picked from sheer cliffs and precipices, truly arduous work.
“Then why don’t you go help him?” Xu Baizhou asked.
“Me? Well…” Chi Xian hemmed and hawed for a long while before muttering, “I’m not as strong as he is…” Then, as if suddenly remembering something, he straightened his chest and declared, “Besides, I have my own work to do! That guy Cang Gui is just like you, can’t tell nethergrass from poison grass. He’d be lost without me! And the subsequent work of grinding, processing, and brewing is very complicated too, hmph hmph.” By this point, Chi Xian’s voice was full of confidence. He glanced at Xu Baizhou and continued, “As for all that, don’t even dream of finishing your apprenticeship without ten or eight years!”
“Fine, fine, fine. Then I’ll be counting on you, Brother Chi Xian, to teach this little brother well,” Xu Baizhou said.
“Tch, that depends on your own aptitude!” Chi Xian said disdainfully.
After all, the incident of Xu Baizhou mistaking poison grass for nethergrass was still fresh in memory, so no matter how Xu Baizhou pleaded, Chi Xian refused to teach him the subsequent brewing process for demonic potions, and only let him continue doing basic tasks like organizing demonic plants and pounding herbs.
“Work hard, kid, and don’t slack off. If you can’t even do these tasks well, don’t even think about learning the important processes!” Chi Xian said, looking at the demonic plants that Xu Baizhou had “ruined” beyond recognition.
It wasn’t that Xu Baizhou wasn’t trying, the grinding work was simply harder than it looked.
The Demon Race were tall and large, and the tools they used were a size bigger than those of the human race. The pestle used for grinding medicine felt heavy in Xu Baizhou’s hand just to hold. After half a shichen of work, his arms were already aching. If this continued, he probably wouldn’t be able to lift his arms at all by tomorrow.
Chi Xian seemed to notice Xu Baizhou’s difficulty. Looking at him, clearly struggling, he said, “Can’t pound it anymore, huh? If you can’t, take a rest.”
Just as Xu Baizhou was about to set down the heavy pestle and relax his arms, Chi Xian added, “But if you put it down now, that pestle will only grow heavier and heavier in your hands, until one day you can’t even pick it up at all.”
Xu Baizhou’s hands paused. He looked at Chi Xian, not quite understanding what he meant.
Seeing Xu Baizhou look at him, Chi Xian continued, “I started learning medicine-making from an old master when I was seven. At the very beginning, the old master only let me work as a medicine pounder. And I pounded for twenty years.”
Twenty years? Xu Baizhou marveled inwardly.
“At first I was impatient too. I also wanted to learn those impressive-looking things. But there was no way around it, in our village, only that one old master knew how to make medicine, and if I didn’t take the pounder’s job, plenty of people would fight to take it. Because everyone knew that in this world, only by learning a skill to rely on could you survive.”
Chi Xian sighed. Hugging the mortar in his arms, he seemed to drift into memories of the past. “But I was only seven then. I got tired too. There were times I wanted to slack off. But every time I slacked off and rested, when I picked up that pestle again, it felt a bit heavier than before. On the contrary, when I kept working without stopping, I found the pestle growing lighter and lighter in my hands, and my work became easier and easier. So, in order to finish my work quickly and get home earlier, I had no choice but to give up resting and just keep going. Until the pestle seemed to have no weight at all in my hands. Only then did I understand, there was no spell on that pestle to control its weight. I had simply become stronger.”
Chi Xian looked at Xu Baizhou. “I worked as a medicine pounder for twenty years like that. During that time, countless people came to take the old master as their teacher. In the end, I was the only one left in that courtyard. One day, the old master fell ill. He called me to his bedside and passed on to me everything he had learned about medicine-making in his lifetime.”
Xu Baizhou looked at Chi Xian. For the first time, he realized that this lowly demon before him, who seemed so comical and ridiculous, was just an ordinary person in this world, struggling desperately to survive.
Evening soon arrived. Cang Gui carried back another full basket of demonic plants. It was Xu Baizhou’s first day learning medicine-making, and he was somewhat excited, declaring that he would stay up all night sorting through the demonic plants. Chi Xian tried to talk him out of it, but to no avail, so he let him be.
But the next morning, when Chi Xian and Cang Gui got up, they saw that two round stone slabs had appeared in the courtyard, along with a Demonic Beast with a fat bird tied to its head.
The fat bird was hanging from the top of a long pole, the other end of which was lashed to the beast’s head. A rope was also tied around the beast’s body, and the other end of the rope was connected to the two stone slabs, one above and one below.
At that moment, the beast kept chasing the fat bird flapping its wings ahead of it, but since it was bound by the rope to the heavy objects, it could only run in circles around the stone slabs. The slabs were set spinning by the fierce beast, forming a stone mill that ground up the demonic plants placed upon them.
Meanwhile, Xu Baizhou was lying on a rocking chair, sleeping comfortably.
“Ancestors, how on earth did you lure this thing here!” Chi Xian exclaimed, staring at the Demonic Beast.