Chapter 38, Another Year Passes

Translator: StarReader

 

Su Chen and Ah Chou had their meal of snake soup at the dilapidated City God Temple. Afterward, they engaged in a sparring match to test their martial arts skills. Before they knew it, evening had arrived, and they finally called it a day.

 

The two agreed to meet again in Gusu County City, so they parted ways after saying their goodbyes. Ah Chou, eager to get back to his carriage—which was worth several copper coins—hurried back to the city.

 

Su Chen made his way back to the Medicine King Estate, passing by a training ground on the estate grounds. The training field spanned dozens of acres and could accommodate hundreds at once.

 

Every evening, the training grounds at Medicine King Estate buzzed with activity. Hundreds of new disciples, juniors and seniors—whether observing or jumping into spars—gathered here. All martial group disciples trained to one day wield a sword in the martial world and achieve fame.

 

But until they reached the third-rate level within the Medicine King Group, junior disciples weren’t allowed to engage in real martial disputes. Most of these newcomers could only practice at the estate’s training grounds with seniors, getting their martial fix.

 

It was evening now, and a lively crowd of inner and outer disciples had gathered. A few inner disciples were sparring while others cheered them on.

 

Su Chen usually kept busy with cultivating or chores and rarely made it to the training grounds. But this time, after sparring with Ah Chou at City God Temple, he felt unsatisfied since Ah Chou was still uninitiated and lacked proper martial skills. His curiosity piqued, Su Chen decided to check out other new disciples’ abilities and see where he stood.

 

Of course, Su Chen was merely there to observe; he had no intention of stepping into a spar himself.

 

He was an Errand Hall disciple.

 

An Errand Hall disciple held no status within the Medicine King Group. If that errand disciple were to seek out others for sparring at the training grounds, it would likely elicit a round of mocking laughter from disciples of other halls, urging him to move along and vacate the area.

 

At the very least, one would need to be a Security Hall disciple, boasting third-rate practitioner martial arts cultivation, and having mastered at least one intermediate or advanced martial technique before daring to make a name for oneself in the arena.

 

Of course, if it were an Alchemy Hall or Swordsmanship Hall inner disciple who took the stage for sparring, the event would draw hundreds of disciples eager to watch and cheer them on.

 

“Great! Senior Brother Li’s move, Meteor Plucking from the Moon, is truly impressive!”

 

“Amazing! Senior Brother Wang’s Iron Sand Palm effortlessly blocked that attack.”

 

The outer disciple watching from the sidelines erupted into cheers and chants of encouragement at every turn.

 

Su Chen watched them for a while but was disappointed. He noticed that these two so-called inner disciple experts had clumsy, slow movements filled with obvious flaws, making their skills seem quite ordinary. He couldn’t help but feel puzzled as to why the outer disciples were cheering so loudly. But upon reflecting carefully, he realized it might be due to his own heightened eyesight and rapid improvement in understanding martial arts. He was no longer the same inexperienced person he used to be; most entry-level martial techniques now appeared full of flaws to him. The truly skilled fighters from the Medicine King Group, including both second-rate and first-rate experts, had all left for martial activities elsewhere and wouldn’t be seen on the training grounds of the estate. After watching for a bit longer, Su Chen lost interest and turned to leave.

 

Returning to Errand Hall, Su Chen resumed his peaceful and monotonous life. Every day, he worked diligently at Errand Hall, earning a bit of money.

 

The errand disciples at Errand Hall, without the constraints of a master, enjoyed relatively free time on weekdays.

 

As a junior executive, Su Chen had the freedom to choose his own errands, manage his schedule, and engage in cultivating as long as he completed a set amount of tasks each month.

 

He specifically selected tasks that could be finished quickly. For example, patrolling the mountains, guarding warehouses, delivering a batch of low herbs to pharmacies across the county, or running errands to deliver messages to neighboring counties—these were all typical assignments.

 

Patrolling the mountains earned him the least copper coins, around ten at most per night. However, it was manageable since he only had to stay awake for two hours. During the day, he could save a significant amount of time for cultivating.

 

On the other hand, delivering goods or messages to neighboring counties could net him thirty to fifty copper coins per trip. These tasks typically took one or two days to complete.

 

During these journeys, Su Chen made good use of his time by practicing entry-level footwork and honing his martial arts skills, effectively utilizing every moment without wasting any time.

 

Such menial tasks were exactly what Su Chen enjoyed most.

 

When Su Chen went on a mission to an outlying county, traveling through remote mountains and wilds, his extraordinary perception often allowed him to spot wild medicinal herbs hidden in roadside ditches or grassy thickets.

 

He would casually dig them up and keep them for his own body tempering practices, saving him the trouble of cultivating herbs with blue water.

 

Over time, after a month of effort, Su Chen earned roughly seven or eight hundred copper coins.

 

Though not a huge sum, it was enough for his needs.

 

Most of his time, Su Chen immersed himself in refining his Lower Dantian and basic martial arts techniques, spending at least four hours daily on cultivating.

 

The intense cultivation took a heavy toll on his body, requiring ample nourishment and herbal tonics.

 

Every few days or so, Su Chen would inspect his veins, muscles, and bones, preparing a set of basic body tempering materials. He would hunt wild snakes and rabbits in the wilderness, boil them into a broth, and drink it to invigorate his vital flow and repair bone strain.

 

This ensured his body wouldn’t deteriorate from the toil of rigorous cultivating.

 

Because it was specifically tailored for his treatment, Su Chen’s herbal tonic was incredibly effective, allowing his cultivation to progress at an extraordinary pace. Thus, Su Chen secluded himself within the Errand Hall, tuning out the outside world as he dedicated himself solely to refining his cultivation and delving into the intricacies of medicine.

 

Each month, he would make the trip to the ruined temple at the east outskirts of town. Ah Chou frequently trained there, and whenever their paths crossed, they would share a snake stew together and spar to sharpen their combat skills. Both were making remarkable strides in their cultivation, with Su Chen guiding Ah Chou through rigorous training sessions.

 

Within a matter of months, Ah Chou had reached the third-rate realm. With Su Chen by his side to push him, Ah Chou’s combat abilities surged dramatically. In fact, he could now hold his own for a couple of moves against Su Chen’s formidable techniques—an achievement that was nothing short of impressive.

 

One day, Ah Chou was brimming with enthusiasm as he shared an exciting piece of news with Su Chen.

 

Young Master Wang brought three or four outer disciples to challenge him, using the pretext of a sparring match to bully him.

 

Ah Chou had been bullied for over a year. After reaching the third-rate realm, he could no longer bear it and decided to fight back.

 

He immediately engaged in a fierce battle with Young Master Wang and the others, and within just two or three punches, he laid the arrogant Young Master Wang completely flat on the ground.

 

Turns out, Young Master Wang was nothing but a bully who thrived on picking on weaker targets. His strength, which didn’t even reach third-rate, had long since paled in comparison to Ah Chou’s. With one punch landing on his face, Wang’s nose got knocked askew, and he lay on the ground, crawling for mercy.

 

The other outer disciples tried to gang up on him, but they still weren’t a match for Ah Chou. He gave them a sound thrashing, leaving them in a disheveled retreat.

 

This incident filled Ah Chou with great satisfaction, and he no longer had to endure the humiliation from Wang’s gang of outer disciples within the Heaven Falcon Group.

 

Upon hearing about this, Su Chen naturally felt overjoyed for Ah Chou. He formulated a body tempering regimen for Ah Chou, aiding him in quickly breaking through all with the hope that Ah Chou would no longer be bullied by his fellow disciple peers within the Heaven Falcon Group.

 

Time flew by. Summer faded into autumn, winter gave way to spring, and Su Chen found himself having been at the Errand Hall for more than a year. To be precise, he had been part of the Medicine King Group for two full years.

 

From a skinny twelve-year-old fisherman’s boy, Su Chen had grown into a fourteen-year-old disciple of the Medicine King Group, taller and with a much stronger build. In this short span of over a year, he had trained relentlessly, pushing his cultivation from the early stage of the Lower Dantian all the way to the late stage, amassing abundant vitality and blood. The next step would be breaking through into the Middle Dantian, where True Qi lies.

 

Su Chen was unmatched among those who had joined the Medicine King Group at the same time as him.

 

Even among his peers who were inner disciples, few had reached his level of cultivation—only a handful, like Wang Fugui and Wei Han, could match him.

 

Not only had his cultivation improved significantly, but his medicine skills had also advanced.

 

As for the new disciples in the Medicine King Group, whether they were inner disciples or even young pharmacists in the Alchemy Hall, they were still stuck memorizing various herbs and their effects, lacking a deep understanding of their properties.

 

Su Chen, however, had long been experimenting with herbs firsthand, concocting body-tempering formulas, and experiencing the effects of different remedies.

 

With his extraordinary inner sight, Su Chen could clearly see the contrasting effects of each herb before and after use—stimulating vital flow, soothing meridians, dispersing blood clots, reducing bone wear, and healing injuries.

 

As a result, Su Chen’s proficiency in medicine improved every day.

 

In just one year, his understanding of most herbs’ properties had already matched, and even surpassed, that of pharmacists in the Alchemy Hall who had decades of experience.

 

Su Chen was highly satisfied with both his cultivation and medicine skills.

 

There was only one regret in his life: his martial arts were still at the entry level.

 

He could earn seven or eight hundred copper coins a month at the Errand Hall, which added up to about eight taels of silver annually—a decent sum by any measure.

 

Yet, as a lowly laborer, he had to pay for his own meals at the Mess Hall, spending over a hundred copper coins each month on this alone.

 

Moreover, Su Chen entrusted Butcher Zhang with sending some money to his parents in Zhou Village every month, which ate into four or five taels of silver yearly.

 

He used the blue water-grown herbs and some wild-picked tempering herbs to make medicinal broths and baths for himself, leaving him smelling faintly of herbs.

 

To avoid arousing suspicion about the origins of his medicinal baths, he also purchased the cheapest, least potent herbs available from the Alchemy Hall, even though they cost two or three hundred copper coins each month—a significant expense.

 

After working for a year at the Errand Hall and spending most of his earnings, he was left with less than a silver tael. The Medicine King Estate’s library housed martial arts manuals, where a basic manual cost one silver tael to purchase. Intermediate-level ones were even more expensive, costing upwards of ten taels of silver. Advanced martial techniques could fetch hundreds or even thousands of silver taels, prices that were staggering.

 

Su Chen, while able to grow high-grade herbs using the blue water, dared not sell them at outside pharmacies. Instead, he used them for his own body tempering.

 

Originally, Su Chen had hoped to work a few more months at the Errand Hall and then purchase another basic martial arts manual.

 

However, his progress was swift; he could already see that his Lower Dantian had reached perfection, placing him on the brink of reaching the second-rate realm where he could train True Qi. This realization caused him to abandon his previous plan.

 

Contemplating his current state, Su Chen noted that his Lower Dantian energy was full, and within a month, he might achieve a breakthrough into the Middle Dantian realm.

 

He was better off saving up some silver to buy an intermediate martial arts manual on cultivating True Qi, instead of wasting over a thousand copper coins on lower-level manuals.

 

These days, Su Chen had been trying to comprehend True Qi, and his Middle Dantian was beginning to show signs of perceiving it.

 

Overall, since entering the Errand Hall more than a year ago, Su Chen was satisfied with his progress.

 

Besides cultivation and medicine, Su Chen’s experience in the martial world had grown significantly.

 

With frequent tasks taking him across the thirteen counties of the Wu Region, Su Chen’s familiarity with the region’s martial scene had increased.

 

He was no longer that naive and inexperienced new disciple, clueless about the martial world.