Around five in the afternoon, Du Xiu emerged from the mine.
The sky was a dull yellow, with clouds hanging low, and the fierce wind that had raged all day had finally come to a halt.
The world returned to tranquility.
The winter sunset fell, icicles hung from the barren trees.
At the entrance of the mine, guards were responsible for checking the number of Miwu Ores the mine slaves had collected.
Beside them were several burly, fierce-looking guards, ready to take away any mine slave who couldn't hand over the full quota of Miwu Ores for punishment.
As soon as Du Xiu appeared, a young man with a rosy complexion, dressed in a uniform, draped in a cloak bearing the emblem of the Ma Consortium, and wearing black gloves, waved at him. "Du Xiu, come here."
Du Xiu pointed to the basket on his back, indicating that he still needed to hand over the ores.
Before the young man could speak, a guard beside him, looking exasperated, said, "Young Sir, please stop causing trouble. Haven't I told you? Don't go down the mine. People die there every day, why won't you listen? And Captain Ma is calling you, so hurry up! Don't make it difficult for me, alright?"
In his heart, the guard cursed Du Xiu thoroughly.
The mine was located in a remote part of the Wilderness, surrounded by countless herbs, which were one of the income sources for these guards.
The head guard, Captain Ma, often went out to gather herbs and then had Du Xiu identify which were valuable and which were not.
Because of this, the guards treated Du Xiu quite well.
"Sorry, Brother Wang! Sorry for the trouble!" Du Xiu said apologetically to the guard.
"Also, starting tomorrow, you're not allowed to go down the mine anymore! You're too small and fragile, it's too dangerous!" the guard said sternly.
"Alright," Du Xiu replied casually, then put down the basket and jogged over to the young man in the cloak, showing respect.
"Captain Ma, judging by your complexion, you had a good haul this time!"
"Not bad, come with me!" Captain Ma chuckled, seemingly unwilling to say much in front of others, and turned to walk somewhere.
Inside the room.
The walls were adorned with various decorations, the most striking of which was a colorful painting covering the entire wall behind the chair.
The painting depicted the opulent interior of a palace.
A human dressed as a butler stabbed a gorgeously dressed, extraordinarily handsome deity from behind with a dagger.
The deity, who had been listening to the Insect Queen's report, turned to look at the human butler, his face filled with disbelief.
Opposite the deity, several Insect Queens, prostrate on the ground, raised their heads, stunned by the scene.
Beside the human stood a tall, fierce-looking Wolfkin guard, with a hint of excitement, also extending their claws towards the deity.
In the corners of the palace, on the walls, and in the void, countless grotesque, massive Feral Beasts, each with a different expression.
"The God-Slaying Painting."
This colorful painting was the most widely circulated God-Slaying Painting in the Empire.
Even though Du Xiu had seen this painting before, he couldn't help but be drawn to it.
Captain Ma sat down heavily on a chair covered with white bear fur, propping his legs on the edge of the table.
In the middle of the table was a pile of herbs of various shapes.
"Du Xiu, check the quality of these herbs. As usual, pick out the valuable ones, and discard the worthless or poisonous ones."
"Yes, Captain Ma."
Du Xiu tore his gaze away from the God-Slaying Painting, nodded in agreement, and began to pick up each herb to identify it, while jotting down its value with a pen.
This wasn't the first time Du Xiu had done this work.
The Miwu Mine, located in a remote part of the Wilderness, was rarely visited, and the bored Captain Ma often went out hunting and searching for herbs.
Once found, he had Du Xiu identify them, and the valuable herbs would be sold to the Hunters Guild by those transporting supplies.
Initially, Captain Ma didn't trust Du Xiu's herb identification.
The herbs Du Xiu deemed worthless were also taken elsewhere for verification.
After several instances proving Du Xiu's expertise, Captain Ma stopped doubting him.
In fact, Du Xiu never pocketed anything for himself; he only left behind herbs that were indeed of little use or poisonous.
The herbs he used for potion-making were obtained from the ordinary guards.
After all, those guards weren't as difficult to deal with as Captain Ma.
Captain Ma, when searching for herbs, at least brought back some that looked decent and were relatively rare, while the guards who sneaked out brought back all sorts of 'herbs,' almost like pulling weeds, purely taking a chance.
Half an hour later, Du Xiu had sorted the herbs into two piles.
"Captain Ma, the herb yield this time is quite good. This pile is worth about seven hundred and sixty gold coins, with a fluctuation of no more than thirty gold coins. This other pile of herbs is useless."
Du Xiu handed Captain Ma a piece of paper with the names and values of the herbs.
"Not bad! Dispose of these useless herbs," Captain Ma said, nodding frequently, clearly in a good mood.
In Fortress City, those generous women with some skills only cost half a gold coin for a night.
This pile of herbs was enough for countless wonderful nights.
Opposite Captain Ma, on the guest sofa, sat a slightly overweight man in his forties, fiddling with a lighter.
Seeing Du Xiu leave with the worthless herbs, he looked rather helpless and said, "Of all the mines I deliver supplies to, yours is the most troublesome. Coming all this way, exhausted, and not making a penny."
All the mines were located in the Wilderness, far from the city. Every ten days or so, someone would come to deliver supplies to the mine staff and collect ores.
Old Liu was one of the Ma Consortium's supply transport managers.
Like Captain Ma, other mine leaders, bored in the backcountry, often went out to search for herbs for him to sell.
These muscle-brained brutes had no idea of the herbs' value, and Old Liu almost cried while making a profit.
But only at the Miwu Mine did an apothecary appear, causing him endless headaches.
"Come on! I didn't even hold you accountable for all the times you ripped me off before, don't push it."
"By the way, what's the name of that little apothecary? Would you be willing to let him come with me?" Old Liu asked with interest.
"Go with you? Dream on."
"Don't look at me like that; it's not to take him away to rip you off for herb money, but to introduce him to the consortium's apothecary company. Introducing an apothecary would earn a lot of money from above, and we could split the reward fifty-fifty."
Apothecaries were rare and precious because they needed to master the knowledge of tens of thousands of different herbs in the Wilderness.
This was just the basic, entry-level threshold for an apothecary.
Beyond that, it involved the chemical reactions between herbs, based on tens of thousands of herbs.
Simpler ones involved mixing two herbs, while more complex ones involved mixing dozens or even hundreds of herbs.
These intricate and precise herbal chemical reactions deterred countless people.
Origin Cultivators were easy to find, but apothecaries were hard to come by.
Because of this, every faction was eager to recruit apothecaries.