Chapter 17

After paying for his food and leaving a generous tip, Zairen left the restaurant and headed back home, still carrying the large sack of herbs and medicines on his back.

He exited the central square and made his way back to the wooden cabin, traveling along a large trail that cut through some woods.

Suddenly, two familiar voices reached his ears.

"I have to go. Let go of my arm!"

"No! Just one more hour! Another hour, and then you can go!"

"That's what you said one hour ago... Please leave me alone! I have things to do."

"NO! NO! IT'S NOT FAIR. You have to play with me, or else!"

Zairen instantly recognized whom the voices belonged to. He turned towards the direction of the argument, and saw a leech-like Finn latching himself onto Alivia's thin arm, refusing to let go.

Seeing this spectacle, Zairen furrowed his brows, clearly annoyed. Throughout the past couple days, Finn had stuck to Alivia like glue, insisting on following her wherever she went. The conversation he was having with her currently was not an uncommon one.

“Finn, let go of me! You’ve already followed me around for three hours!” Alivia attempted to run away, but was hindered by Finn’s deadlock on her arm.

“No! I’m following you no matter what!” Finn grabbed Alivia’s arm tighter and struggled to hang on.

"Finn, leave her alone." Zairen suddenly spoke out.

Hearing Zairen’s sudden interjection, Finn halted his action, his eyes flickering in surprise. He looked towards where Zairen was standing and scowled heavily. “It’s you again. How about you mind your own business!”

In the past week, Finn had learned that Zairen had been adopted into Alivia’s family and realized that it meant that Zairen was Alivia’s adopted brother. This fact made him teem with jealousy.

To add insult to injury, in the past week, often times when Finn was following Alivia around, Zairen would show up and tell Finn off before running off with Alivia. Finn would have no way to chase them.

“Alivia obviously doesn’t want to hang out with you right now. How about you let go of her arm?” Zairen replied.

“No! Alivia likes hanging out with me.”

“Even if that’s the case, she herself said that she needed to go right now. Are you going to go against her wishes?”

“Uh…” Finn was at a loss for words.

“Finn, seriously!” Alivia groaned. At that moment, she twisted her body and managed to wrench herself from Finn’s grubby grasp. “You’ve been following me around so much lately! Can you please just leave?”

Finn looked at Alivia, his face twisting in a pouting expression. “No! It’s not fair!”

Alivia frowned. “Well that’s too bad. I’ll be going now…”

She rushed over to Zairen, grabbed his arm, and immediately started to run down the dirt path.

Finn balled his hands into fists, and screamed: “If you leave, I’LL TELL MY DAD!!!”

Hearing this, Alivia stopped in her steps. She grit her teeth in frustration.

If Finn complained to his father, the village governor, about her actions, what could she do? Her poor family could not handle any trouble from someone with that much power. In the worst case scenario, the village governor could forcibly prohibit Grandpa Dinran from setting up his shop in the central square; then, what would Grandpa Dinran do?

Seeing Alivia stop running, Finn grinned in satisfaction. “That’s right. If you don’t play with me, I’ll tell my dad about all your malicious actions.” He rubbed his hands together as he chuckled evilly.

Alivia furrowed her eyebrows, unsure of what to do.

She absolutely didn’t want to play with Finn... but what could she do? She did not want to cause trouble for her grandfather.

Sighing, Alivia let out a soft mumble. “...alri-”

“She said she doesn’t want to play with you,” Zairen suddenly cut in.

He firmly grabbed Alivia’s hand, preventing her from walking over.

“You can be a brat and tell your dad if you want.”

Saying that, Zairen pulled Alivia with him and started trotting down the dirt path towards the cabin.

In response, Finn scowled, and then angrily screamed: "FINE! YOU'LL REGRET THIS!!!" He then ran off in the other direction.

Alivia looked panicked. “L-Little brother… but… his father…”

“Don’t worry about that.” Zairen smiled at his sister, and rubbed her head. “I’ll take care of it.”

Alivia stared into Zairen’s eyes. Despite her worries, when she saw her brother’s confident look, she immediately eased up.

The two held hands as they continued down the path, passing tens of trees around them.

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The Laiken family residence, Zairen’s room.

"... blue ocean grass... purple grass... Mijin flower..." Zairen mumbled to himself.

He was sitting on the floor with his legs spread. In front of him lied a heap of different herbs and medicines, and he was assorting them into different piles.

Rapidly, he categorized them, placing different grasses and flowers in some areas of the floor, and different roots and mushrooms in other areas.

Eventually, after a few minutes of sorting, Zairen stopped categorizing and took out a notebook from his pocket. He whipped out a pen and immediately started writing a comprehensive list.

"... seven burning heaven flowers... three Ginsen roots..." Zairen mumbled as he wrote.

On the list, he marked the quantity and effectiveness of each different herb and medicine he had bought.

Minutes later, after he had finished writing, Zairen let out a breath.

After thinking for a moment, he grabbed a large pile of purple grass, some yellow flowers, and five large, dark blue tree leaves. He separated them into five piles, with equal amounts of each ingredient in each one.

After sorting out the ingredients, Zairen took out a large ceramic bowl he had gotten from the kitchen. He placed one of the piles he had just created into the ceramic bowl, and then firmly pat all the ingredients down.

After he had finished doing that, he took a deep breath. He thought cautiously: 'I haven't done this in a while. I hope I have enough spirit energy…’

Zairen placed his hands directly onto the pile of herbs in the ceramic bowl. Then, he slowly extended his spirit energy, carefully pushing a milky white force into the pile. Using extraordinarily precise control, Zairen used his spirit energy to heat up and dehydrate the many herbs, while also implementing his spirit energy into them.

Over time, the various ingredients in the ceramic bowl started to decompose into energy-filled powder.

Once every material had been converted to powder, Zairen swirled all of the bowl’s contents around until all the powders had been mixed thoroughly.

Finally, when the materials in the bowl had become one, finely mixed powder, Zairen lifted his hands. He wiped some sweat from his forehead and thought to himself: 'My spirit energy has greatly increased in the last week. Before, this amount of exertion would have spent at least one fifth of my spirit energy, but now, it only took one twentieth.'

The reason why Zairen's spirit energy had increased so dramatically was because of his Silent Shadow art. While he trained the art, he simultaneously increased his spirit energy! Therefore, the amount of spiritual energy he had had greatly increased.

However, he couldn’t expect such an exponential growth to continue. It was only because his original supply of spirit energy had been so small that he could multiply it in such a short amount of time like this.

After thinking for a while, Zairen again placed his hands on the pile of fine powder in the bowl. He exerted his spirit energy again, but this time in a different way.

Suddenly, the powder in the bowl began to swirl around madly in a circle. The swirling became more and more rapid as time passed, until finally, the finely mixed powders began to emit a fresh, medicinal scent.

For a few minutes, despite still accelerating, the swirling circle in the bowl slowly decreased in diameter until it became a pill-sized circle. A few minutes after that, the powder finally condensed into a green medium-sized pill.

Done refining, Zairen retracted his hands and carefully observed the finished product.

The green pill was small enough to be swallowed without much trouble. Inside of it, intense amounts of compressed spirit energy could be sensed.

The tips of Zairen's mouth curved up in satisfaction. This type of pill was called the Spirit Building Pill, and its effect was to increase spirit energy growth. With this pill, Zairen could temporarily train his spirit energy two times faster than before!

Zairen made four more Spirit Building Pills before running out of spirit energy. After he was done, he smiled, stored the pills into a ceramic container, and with a whip of his wrist, sent it into the grey ring’s interdimensional space.

Although it had taken him a while to open the interdimensional space the first time, he now knew the exact aspects of the layer of spirit energy he had to send into it in order to use the ring, so it now only took a moment.

Although he had only made one type of pill so far, that would quickly change. Not only did he want to make many different antidotes for different poisons just in case he needed to use them, but he also wanted to create pills that could restore his spirit energy and stamina quicker. With his current supply, given enough time, he would be able to make decent quality pills in all those categories.