I found the shop as directed by Miss Yu. It was a simple wooden shop front without much in the way of decoration, missing even a sign. No wonder people struggled to find it.

  Walking inside, I heard a delicate bell ringing followed by shuffling footsteps from a back room. The shelves were old, but kept in pristine condition. A myriad of different potted herbs and living plants lined the shelves, producing a powerful aroma that soothed me the moment I took my first breath inside the room.

  An old lady came out from the room, wearing gloves covered in soil and staring at me with a disgruntled expression. She narrowed her eyes. “What are you looking for, brat?”

  Miss Yu hadn’t been wrong when she called her an old hag. This lady certainly had a stinky attitude, but if I had a stream of men looking for a brothel entering my shop all day I might be grumpy as well.

  “Madam Yu, I was told your shop deals in the finest quality herbs and herbal remedies. Was my assistant mistaken?” I replied, stepping forwards and dispelling the tension in the air with a soft smile and a raised eyebrow.

  I had to devote an exceptional quantity of concentration to discern the minor brightening of her face. It went from grumpy and wrinkled to slightly less grumpy and somehow even more wrinkled.

  While her expression hadn’t improved that much, her tone shifted a great deal. “At least you aren’t one of those lecherous layabouts,” she scoffed. “Your assistant gave you the right information. Most of the young men who come into my shop are looking for flowers of a more delicate variety. Trash, the lot of them!”

  Before she could explode into a rant and take up my dwindling time, I interrupted. “Actually… I was at the young miss Yu’s blossom parlour before this. We had quite an interesting conversation, she’s a fascinating woman. I mistook her… business for yours.”

  “What?! And you led me on, making me think you weren’t like the rest of those bastards. Honestly, young people these days are all wastrels. Get out of here if you aren’t going to be a pleasant customer. Scram!” she cried, waving her hands and pushing me towards the door.

  It seemed I had been misled by the young miss from before. She told me that the old woman would find the misunderstanding hilarious, but clearly that wasn’t the case.

  Honestly I should’ve trusted my gut. Beautiful women are all bad news. The good ones attract too much negative attention while the wicked ones… Well, I’d just experienced that firsthand.

  “Madam Yu, I believe there has been another misunderstanding here. I simply wish to buy some simple healing herbs and remedies. That is all. The young miss Yu and I had a simple conversation, nothing more,” I protested, not letting her force me out of the shop.

  If I couldn’t obtain anything on my second attempt I might as well give up now. Perhaps I should have simply sent Xiao Cui on an errand run instead—she seemed to be far better at dealing with people than I.

  I suspected my social skills had adapted to war over the years. Even though this world was far from peaceful, there were many cultural nuances that I had yet to grasp and this had led to plenty of misunderstandings.

  Not all could be blamed on me, but quite a few could. Improving one’s bedside manner and people skills was just as important as one’s cultivation and techniques.

  The granny seemed mollified by my response, though her face still looked like a puckered sphincter. “Hmph. Healing remedies, he says. What exactly are you looking to heal, young man?” she asked, wandering back behind the counter.

  A sagacious question that I had no answer for. I wasn’t looking to heal any specific malady, but simply gather various remedies to dissect and attempt to form my own.

  I could’ve lied, but I felt as though the granny would see right through me. Despite being a mortal, she had that ancient sage vibe. Her piercing gaze felt as though it uncovered all my secrets.

  “To be honest with you Madam Yu, there is no affliction I specifically need to treat. I simply wish to have some simple remedies on hand. Any general purpose herbs or salves will do,” I told her, putting on my nice young man smile in an attempt to win her over.

  She remained unmoved. In fact, she raised an eyebrow upon seeing my face. “Don’t do that, it’s a little creepy,” she berated me. I winced as she continued, “General purpose remedies eh, let me see what I have back here.”

  The granny disappeared into the back room once more and I heard the sounds of clinking jars and groaning wood as she rummaged through what had to be her storeroom.

  After what felt like forever but in reality was only a few moments she returned, carrying three small jars and a sprig of spiky, dark green herbs. She placed them all on the counter, then waved me over.

  “Come, lad. These jars are a basic healing tonic, refined from a few local herbs with basic medicinal properties. It’s nothing fancy like those expensive alchemists, but it will help with any cuts and bruises. Even minor infections and flu are treatable, but anything more and you should seek proper healing,” she explained while holding up one of the jars.

  “Now, these are a little trickier. Ten year vital spikeroot, harvested in the Jagged Sword Mountains by this old granny herself. I’m only willing to part with it because I’ve realised in my old age that I don’t have the skill to refine it without ruining such a potent herb. You can have it, but it’s not cheap.”

  I waved a hand. “Don’t worry about the price, I have a modest amount of coin. This is perfect, thank you Madam Yu.”

  “Braggart,” she scoffed as she carefully wrapped the spikeroot in silk and then placed it inside a wooden box.

  She handed me the jars as they were and I slipped it all inside my robes. I really needed a better way of storing and carrying my things—my robes were growing heavy with the amount of treasures and random items I was stuffing inside them.

  While I was out shopping for healing pills and herbs I would make sure to find somewhere selling a useful storage item. Perhaps I could finally get some use out of that half spirit stone in my coin pouch.

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  Zhao Dan had been too poor to afford a proper spatial storage treasure, having to use all the resources the sect allocated on maintaining and attempting to progress his cultivation. That hadn’t worked out so well for him, but I had no such obligations.

  “Twenty-six silver and five copper coins,” she declared, making my jaw drop.

  That was extraordinarily expensive considering these were supposed to be basic remedies. I’d only taken the herb as I suspected my physique would make excellent use of it, but how were commoners supposed to afford this kind of treatment!?

  “That’s absurd. How do people pay for these?” I argued.

  “You expect me to part with that valuable herb for less? That’s a ten year vital spikeroot that I spent weeks hunting through those blasted mountains for. I’m giving you a great deal here, ungrateful bastard!”

  “How much would the tonics be without the herb, then?” I asked, realising I may have been hasty in my assumptions.

  “They’re just five copper coins each. One silver and five copper for the three I gave you. I’m giving you the spikeroot for twenty-five silver. Those alchemists in the centre of the city would charge you triple that if you’re lucky.”

  I sighed. Even in this mystical world where immortal cultivators lorded from the sky, it seemed that economies of scale were still functioning on a wide scale. Human greed was truly inescapable.

  Opening the pouch of coins that little Cui had given me, I realised there was plenty of money in there. Enough to afford the herb three or four times over.

  She really had been busy while I was gone. As her master I felt a little embarrassed. Nonetheless I would make full use of her generosity and ensure to pay her back tenfold when my experiments paid off.

  After handing over twenty-seven silver coins, I waved the granny off when she tried to give me the change. “Keep it. You’ve been very helpful, Madam Yu. I shall be back unless I find a better herbalist elsewhere,” I quipped.

  She chuckled, taking my joke in stride. “Ha! You’d have to go to the next city to find a better herbalist than me. Bunch of amateur fools prancing about with their meagre knowledge as though they’re princes. Frogs in a well, the lot of them. You get on now, you’re scaring away customers.”

  Her cheery attitude surprised me. I’d half expected her to bite my head off when I made the joke but I wasn’t about to let one grumpy old woman suppress my personality. Humour made life worth living, especially one as violent as this.

  “Thanks, Madam Yu. See you later,” I chuckled as I exited the shop. I took a last deep inhale of the floral aroma as I walked through the door, soothing my nerves as I took out the list of shops.

  My own suspicions combined with Madam Yu’s quips led me to believe that the rest of my shop visits wouldn’t be as entertaining. Especially when it came to alchemists. She seemed to despise the lot of them.

  Then again, the healing pills I’d had at the city lord’s palace didn’t do much and I imagined they were the highest quality available in Three River City. That could also simply be my skewed perspective due to my Fivefold Medicine Forge Physique.

  If these healing pills existed back on Earth they would be considered a miracle medicine. Like paracetamol, penicillin, and codeine all in one. Cultivators certainly seemed to down them the way hypochondriacs did in my previous life.

  The next store down the list was an alchemist’s. The name was as complex and overbearing as the rest—Master Wei’s Perfect Pills.

  I scoffed, imagining that the pills I would find there would most likely be far from perfect. However, that wasn’t really a problem. I was dealing in quantity, not quality. As long as I had a large enough sample size figuring out a superior recipe wouldn’t be too difficult.

  Hopefully.

  ****

  As I feared, my visits to plenty of the alchemy pavilions and herbalist shops were not pleasant experiences. For vastly different reasons.

  In some, they realised my cultivation level and bent over backwards to serve me. That treatment made me uncomfortable, but it was a reminder of the difference in status between mortals and cultivators.

  While I was only a crawling child compared to those lofty Core Forging masters and Nascent Soul sages, I was already a heavenly existence compared to the average mortal. I would still be youthful while their grandchildren grew old, unless someone ended up assassinating me along the way.

  It wouldn’t be the first time that had happened, after all. I had to stay vigilant when I’d already made enemies.

  Others were starkly different. In a few of the grottier shops they didn’t sense my cultivation which I’d hoped would lead to a more positive shopping experience, but my tattered robes led to prejudicial treatment of a far worse variety.

  The experience was tiring, but after my struggles I did end up with quite the collection of healing pills, herbs, tonics, and other assorted remedies. Some of them had unusual scents and unappealing appearances, making me nervous to consume them.

  I hoped that the combination of my Fivefold Medicine Forge Physique and sturdy cultivator’s body would allow me to weather the experience like an ancient tree standing tall in a fearsome storm.

  There were still a few shops left on Xiao Cui’s list, but I felt as though more medicines would have diminishing returns at this point and decided to head back. The sun was setting, painting the sky in vivid hues of gold and violet and I let the final rays of light wash over me as I made my way back to the clinic.

  I reckoned I should save the best for last, once I’d advanced my lacking comprehension of the basic healing medicines available. Wasting the ten year vital spikeroot because I didn’t understand its mysteries would be a shame.

  Reaching into my shiny new spatial storage bag, which had 5 cubic metres of space, I picked out a pill at random from the assortment I had in there. It was a useful find, though it had cost me the half spirit stone.

  I’d received a few gold coins and some silver as change, which meant I ended up with more coins than I’d started the day with even though I was poorer overall. Inspecting the pill, I grimaced at the purplish-green surface that resembled poison.

  However, I’d devoured my fair share of poisons in this world already and they tended to benefit me. I tossed the pill in my mouth and it began to dissolve.

  The taste was a pleasant surprise, notes of cinnamon and lavender teasing my taste buds as I swallowed the pill. It started to disintegrate, the medicinal energy attempting to spread out into my body. However, my physique refused to let that happen.

  Before the waves of energy could travel beyond the confines of my stomach, I felt the same swirling sensation that had occurred when I swallowed Huo Ze Qiang’s firestorm technique. The energies of the healing pill were trapped within and names began appearing in my mind.

  First, the name of the pill—Average quality, Mortal grade Healing Pill. Simple enough. The grades went from Mortal as the worst grade of treasures, then Martial, King, and Emperor.

  Most Qi Gathering cultivators would have a few Martial grade treasures and perhaps some King grade if they were wealthy, talented, or lucky enough to chance upon one. Wang Ren’s glaive was an example of a King grade treasure, given to him by his master.

  Within the grades I knew there were differing qualities, with Poor being the worst followed by Average and Resonant being the best. That meant this healing pill was—to put it bluntly—shit.

  Nonetheless, as the names of various herbs and catalysts entered my mind, most of which I didn’t recognise but gained some meagre information about, I was satisfied. One of these pills didn’t help much, but the combined insights from all that I had collected would definitely allow me to start working on my own recipe.

  I opened the door of the clinic, the queue of women seeking little Cui’s secret remedy for their husbands gone home for the evening. I took out another pill and prepared myself to consume it, when I realised I’d made a terrible mistake.

  How was I supposed to develop my own recipe when I had no idea how to perform alchemy!?