Chapter 56: Reflection Rock (1/2)

Chapter 56: Reflection Rock

After leaving the lake behind, Team Bright officially began their hunting expedition in the Thousand Ashes Gorge.

There were many natural resources within the gorge, including rare medicinal herbs.

Harvesting these herbs and hunting Vicious Beasts were the two main reasons people even came to the Thousand Ashes Gorge.

The former required lots of searching, while the latter required a lot of killing; searching required luck, while killing required strength.

Because of this, the strong teams from the Institute usually did things very differently than the weaker teams.

The weaker teams that didn’t possess enough strength generally focused on searching for medicinal herbs.

After all, in terms of luck, everyone here was equal.

The stronger teams, on the other hand, didn’t see much value in searching for these herbs. Sometimes, even if a valuable herb was directly in front of them, they would overlook it because they weren’t paying enough attention or they didn’t recognize it.

The same could not be said for Vicious Beasts, which they would kill on sight and harvest the rewards.

Although Team Bright’s name was chosen quite optimistically, they were very clear about where they fell on this spectrum.

They were a weak team!

Even though Su Chen had killed a Giant Adamantine Ape, that could not change everyone’s deep-rooted impression of a team without a bloodline, including themselves.

Thus, searching for medicinal herbs was Team Bright’s main goal.

They traversed the entire Thousand Ashes Pavilion, avoiding areas where strong Vicious Beasts prowled as well as they could. They focused on areas that were ignored by most people, not allowing themselves to miss a single medicinal herb of value.

Because of this, Team Bright obtained much more from medicinal herbs than from spoils from battle in terms of value.

This benefitted Su Chen the most – many of the medicinal herbs that the team found were directly bought by Su Chen.

Not only this, but he also bought medicinal herbs from other teams. It was much cheaper to buy here than in the city’s marketplace.

The same sprig of Hundred Spirits Herb that could be sold to a shop for about five Origin Stones and bought for ten were being sold by people here for four Origin Stones, since they wouldn’t need to make the trip to Long Coiling City to sell them anymore.

While buying medicinal herbs in bulk, Su Chen also sold his medicines.

Battles were always being fought in this kind of place. Every day, students and Vicious Beasts would clash.

Some students had already used up all of their injury treatment medicines. Their only option was to return unless their supply was replenished, in which case they could continue for another period of time.

By the same logic, medicines that would go for 100 Origin Stones per vial in the city could be sold here for even 120 Origin Stones.

u Chen began to accumulate quite a large sum as he constantly made these sorts of transactions. The members of Team Bright were extremely jealous, and many of them had thoughts of becoming alchemists too.

However, upon hearing the amount of money that Su Chen had spent in the past four years on medicinal ingredients, they gave up on that idea.

Six hundred thousand Origin Stones!

The Immortal Temple gave him 150,000 Origin Stones worth of ingredients every year for four years in a row before Su Chen was able to reach his current level of talent. This sum didn’t include how much Su Chen had contributed himself.

In fact, one of the reasons why Su Chen had been willing to come to the Falling Eagle Mountain was because he had run out of money.

Research was an incredibly costly venture. Whether it was Su Chen’s alchemy studies or his research in other areas, he had to make a lot of monetary investments.

The Immortal Temple’s support only made up a portion of what was necessary, making it necessary for him to supplement anything that he was missing. Thus, he suddenly had fallen into a massive deficit of money.

Some may have felt this strange. Didn’t Su Chen know how to concoct medicines? He obviously could have made money just by concocting medicines and selling them.

That was true.

However, just like cultivating an Origin Skill, concocting medicines that he had already mastered didn’t help his skill as an alchemist improve at all.

If he wanted to increase his skill as an alchemist faster, he needed to constantly concoct medicines that he hadn’t mastered yet.

Of course, if he hadn’t mastered a specific medicine, his failure rate in concocting that medicine was much higher than usual.

If there was a medicine that he had completely mastered and could successfully concoct every single time, then continuing to make that medicine would not raise his strength at all.

In fact, this principle wasn’t just limited to concocting medicine. Almost everything operated under this principle.

Constantly repeating something that you have already mastered only leaves you in the same place.

Su Chen’s current skill as an alchemist was enough for him to be considered in the upper extremities of a Qualified Alchemist.

He had only accomplished this in four years because he would begin concocting and analyzing a new kind of medicine immediately upon mastering a certain medicine.

This made it so that both his speed of improvement and resource expenditure were enormous.

But back to the main story.

Team Bright stayed in the Thousand Ashes Gorge for ten days.

Within these ten days, Su Chen sold a massive amount of medicine, and he also obtained many medicinal ingredients.

Just like before, after a long day of careful searching, Team Bright returned to the Reflection Rock.