Chapter 26: Ripening Medicine

Just when Han Li thought this cloudy and rainy weather would continue in the near future, the sun finally hung in the sky again, and the sky cleared up.

It had been almost half a month since Han Li discovered the secret of the green liquid, and he had long been impatient. On the day the sky cleared up, he finally saw the wonder that happened four years ago again. Light spots, densely packed, surrounded the bottle, forming a large light group.

When Han Li saw this strange scene, the stone that had been hanging high in his heart finally fell down again. This basically confirmed that this small bottle wasn't a one-time consumable, but a wonder that could be used repeatedly.

After waiting for another seven days, a drop of green liquid finally appeared in this small bottle again. When Han Li saw the green liquid appearing in the bottle, although he already had 90% certainty in his heart, he was still extremely happy. This indicated that he would have a steady stream of rare medicinal materials in the future and would never have to worry about this again.

One must know that the preciousness of medicinal materials is mostly evaluated by their age. Only the longer the age of a medicinal herb, the greater its medicinal properties. Similarly, the older the medicinal materials, the harder they are to find, and they generally grow in deep mountains and old forests, on cliffs and precipices. Without taking some risks, one shouldn't even think about picking them.

Although some medicine shops and doctors now specialize in cultivating some medicinal herbs, most of them are common medicinal herbs that can be used after a short age. Most families wouldn't be stupid enough to plant things that take more than ten years or even decades to be used.

But there are also some big wealthy families who, in order to prevent emergencies, will ask people to specialize in planting some very rare medicinal herbs to save their lives in times of crisis. These medicinal materials generally don't have medicinal effects without a long age, because slightly ordinary things can be bought easily with the family wealth of these people, so why spend so much effort to specialize in cultivating them? Moreover, these families can pass down their family wealth for generations, so they don't care about the length of time spent cultivating these medicinal herbs. No one knows whether they will have a day to use them, so these medicinal herbs are generally top-grade products that take a hundred years to cultivate, or rare, one-in-ten-thousand isolated products. Ordinary people don't have the financial and material resources to do so.

Occasionally, some rare medicinal materials in the wild appear in the market, and most of them are acquired by these families, which has caused the price of rare medicinal herbs to rise steadily in the market, and often there is a situation where there is a market but no goods.

Han Li wasn't optimistic about the prospects of Doctor Mo's trip this time, estimating that he wouldn't have much harvest, but he didn't have to worry about this anymore. With this bottle, as many good medicinal materials as he wanted could be ripened in a short time.

Han Li, with a strange mood, conducted several experiments on ripening medicinal herbs in the next few dozen days.

Once, he sprinkled the diluted green liquid on many medicinal herbs, and the result was that he only got a large number of ordinary medicinal materials with only one or two years of ripening effect the next day, far inferior to the medicinal herbs obtained for the first time. From this experiment, Han Li vaguely realized some laws.

In the next experiment, Han Li simply omitted the step of dilution and dripped the green liquid directly on a ginseng. As a result, when he woke up the next day, he actually got a hundred-year-old ginseng, which was no different from a wild hundred-year-old ginseng. This experiment made Han Li overjoyed, not because he got a rare medicinal material, but because he had roughly grasped the method of using the green liquid.

Subsequently, Han Li did several storage experiments on the green liquid, putting the green liquid just taken from the bottle into various containers, such as porcelain bottles, jade bottles, gourds, silver bottles, etc., and found that no container could save the green liquid for more than a quarter of an hour. As long as the green liquid was taken out of the mysterious small bottle, it had to be used within a quarter of an hour, otherwise, it would slowly disappear without a trace. And the diluted liquid also had the same characteristics. Although it could be placed for a slightly longer time, after exceeding a certain time, only the other liquids that had penetrated into the container remained, and the composition of the green liquid still disappeared.

After doing several such experiments, Han Li completely lost confidence in saving the green liquid in other containers. It seemed that this mysterious liquid couldn't be stored in large quantities, so he had to do another test of superimposing medicinal properties.

Han Li dripped a drop of green liquid on a green Three-Crow Grass, turning it into a yellow Three-Crow Grass with hundred-year medicinal properties. A few days later, he dripped a drop of green liquid on it again, and its age actually strengthened by another hundred years.

Seeing that doing so was indeed effective, Han Li repeated the same practice non-stop for more than two months. Whenever new green liquid was produced from the small bottle, he dripped it on this Three-Crow Grass, and this Three-Crow Grass didn't disappoint, its leaves gradually changed from yellow to yellow-black, and from yellow-black to black. Finally, after its leaves became completely black and shiny, it became a rare thousand-year Three-Crow Grass in the world.

This test was very successful. It seemed that if he had patience, he could continue to improve the age of the Three-Crow Grass, but for Han Li, this was a completely unnecessary thing to do. He didn't need these medicinal materials with too long an age now. Medicinal herbs with several hundred years of components were enough for his own use.

After this series of long tests was completed, Han Li could finally rest and calculate carefully. At this time, quite some time had passed since Doctor Mo went down the mountain.

Now Han Li, holding that thousand-year Three-Crow Grass, was lying on the wooden bed in his room, in a daze.

His eyes were staring straight at the black medicinal herb, seemingly studying it, but as long as there was another person in the room, one could tell from his scattered eyes that his mind wasn't on this Three-Crow Grass at all, but was wandering outside the sky, not knowing what he was thinking about.

He now had no joy at all when he first got this Three-Crow Grass, but was thinking carefully about the benefits and dangers this small bottle brought him, making plans for his own retreat.

Han Li had seen many examples of "the crime of possessing a jade ring" from various books in Doctor Mo's room. The bottle in his hand could be called a priceless treasure. If outsiders knew he had such a treasure in his hand, he would absolutely not live until the next morning. He would be like many "people possessing jade rings" in the past, drowned by various greedy people who heard the news. Not to mention those far away, just to give a nearby example, if the several Sect Masters in the sect knew the secret of this bottle, they would absolutely not let him go and would try every means to kill him and seize the treasure, while he himself would end up with a miserable ending of "treasure seized and person destroyed."

"I absolutely cannot tell anyone about the bottle. I must also use this bottle carefully on the mountain. The movement of the bottle absorbing light spots is too big. If I am not careful, outsiders will discover the secret." Han Li made up his mind and decided to keep his mouth shut and not reveal a single word about it to outsiders.

"However, I am currently in a period of urgent need for medicinal materials to cultivate. It would be too much of a pity not to use this bottle. I still have to think of a way to have the best of both worlds." He thought of his cultivation that had made no progress and felt a bit dejected. Regardless, the progress of practicing the formulas couldn't be delayed. He wasn't practicing for Doctor Mo's urging, but had vaguely sensed that the changes in himself that were different from ordinary people in recent years were inseparable from the practice of this nameless formula.

===== CHAPTER 27 =====