Chapter 41 – Brew-tiful Potions are Fun

🙞❤︎🙜

What? I don’t remember writing anything but a polite courtesy in that letter.

“I’m so happy,” he said again.

“I only wrote that I wanted to see you again,” I said.

“Yes!” Prince Baiyu smiled down at me. “I’m so glad you’ve accepted my suit.”

His suit? As in, his courtship of me?

“Er…” I didn’t know what to say.

“You’ve made me the happiest person in the world,” he said.

He swept me up in his arms and buried his face in my neck. I was really glad that I’d taken the time to shower because I would’ve hated to be hugged while I was sweaty. I tentatively hugged him back. His arm muscles were really firm, and I felt a little breathless and lightheaded when he squeezed me a little.

“I’ve liked you ever since the first time I saw you,” he whispered into my ear, making me shiver as his warm breath tickled my skin.

“When was that?”

“In the cave.”

I tried to pull away. “You didn’t even see me then because you couldn’t open your eyes.”

“No, I was able to open my eyes just as you were leaving.”

“So you only saw my back?”

“Even your back view is lovely.”

“You’re too much!” I said.

“I’m so happy.”

“That’s nice,” I said when he finally let me go. “What is this about?”

“This!” He waved the letter at me.

“What about it?” I asked.

He bent down and leaned closer to me, searching my face for something.

“I have the proof right here,” he said as he waved a piece of paper at me again. “You can’t deny it.”

Suddenly, I noticed we had an audience. The staff and my apprentices were all gawking at us from the entrance to the inner courtyard.

“Let’s go to the main hall,” I said as I grabbed Prince Baiyu’s hand and dragged him there.

Thankfully, Fengying came to my rescue by serving me tea. The casual, everyday ritual served to ground me, and even Prince Baiyu calmed down a bit. He patiently waited as I munched on some dried fruit and drank a cup of tea.

“The days have been hot, haven’t they?” I said. “Have you noticed that the house is cool? I’ve been using climate control on it.”

“Yes, yes, very clever.” He kept staring at my face.

I gave up pretending that nothing had happened. “I don’t remember accepting your suit in that letter.”

“You wrote that you wanted to see me,” he said. “That means that I’m welcome in your house, and that you accept my courtship.”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve invited you inside the house before,” I said.

“Yes, you invited me after I already arrived,” he said. “You also gave me permission after I asked if I could visit. You never told me before that you wanted me to visit.”

Ah, so that was the difference. I suppose he had been the one who kept on pursuing me while I simply waited for him to call on me. “I see.”

“I have written proof. You can’t run away this time,” he said.

It was hard to look into his eyes because they were almost incandescent with happiness. “I have a farm. There’s no way I would ever run away from it.”

“And you said you don’t want to.” Prince Baiyu took my hand and kissed it again. “You said so.”

“I don’t know why you like me so much anyway,” I said.

“Maybe you should look in the mirror more,” he said. “You’re so beautiful and talented and responsible, and I really like you.”

“Ah…” I’m pretty sure that my face was red as a tomato.

How had I suddenly acquired a boyfriend who was a handsome, sweet-talking prince?!

***

After the excitement of yesterday’s visit from Prince Baiyu, I decided to take it easy the next day. I did my share of watering and weeding the crops, then retreated to my chambers to work on my herblaw.

The early levels of the skill only featured useless potions. Players were expected to wait until they had a higher level before they could produce the really good stuff. In the future, I will be able to brew a lot of potions with exciting effects such as boosting magic, crafting, strength, speed, critical hits, and so forth.

Right now though, all I could make was the Blight Magic and Dewy Glow potions.

[Player Name: Violet

Farming Skills:

Farming Level 12, Fishing Level 8, Woodcutting Level 12, Cooking Level 1, Herblaw Level 3, Foraging Level 3, Hunting Level 1, Mining Level 1]

In short, it was simply time for me to grind until I reached level 10, at which point I could make an Antipoison potion.

Not that the Antipoison potion was much use since there weren’t any venomous monsters here. However, it would be good to have a supply of them in case I ran into spiders or snakes or something like that since there was no emergency hospital room here in the middle of the forest.

[Antipoison Potion:

A potion that nullifies any poison in the drinker’s system and provides a temporary immunity to all poisons for one minute.

It’s a bright green color and smells faintly of mint.]

For now, I will continue to make Blight Magic potions for Prince Baiyu. I turned on the [Privacy] option in my rooms and put two piles of herblaw ingredients and spell stones on my worktable. Fortunately, I had plenty of [Kingfisher Moss] and [Sorrow Bloom] in my inventory.

[Kingfisher Moss:

A rare and magical ingredient that can be used to make potions. Named for the brightly plumed kingfisher bird because of its iridescent blue-green color, this moss grows in areas near waterfalls. It has a strong, earthy smell and a slightly fuzzy texture.]

[Sorrow Bloom:

A beautiful flower that only grows in dark, swampy places or in cemeteries. It’s black with red streaks running through it and has an intoxicating smell.]

Again and again, I cast the Create Potion spell. I never grew bored of the sight of the potion ingredients flying into the vial of water that was suspended inside a glowing ball of pink light between my hands. The way the moss and flower turned into a potion was a really fascinating sight.

Magic was just too exciting!

With my newfound sensitivity for the energy in the crop fields, I tried to sense what type of magic was inside the spell stones.

[Spell Stone:

A beautiful, hand-crafted spell stone that has been infused with powerful magic specifically for use in spell-casting. Made of natural, clear crystal, it has been polished to a shine. It is thumb-sized and smooth to the touch.]

Every time I cast a spell, one of the crystals glowed white for a while before its light dimmed and it turned black. I tried to sense the magic in it, but the clear and black crystals felt exactly the same to me. As far as I could tell, they were both just rocks.

However, I did find out that when I closed my eyes, I could still cast the spell, and some sixth sense told me when a potion was brewed and the spell was finished.

I tried many ways of sensing magic by placing the spell stones in my hands, on my forehead, on my navel, and so forth, while I was casting Create Potion, but nothing seemed to work.

I gave up after a while and just focused on creating as many potions as fast as I could.

Fengying knocked on my door at noon, and I took a break to eat lunch.

After the midday meal, I spent the entire afternoon making potions until I leveled up. I was really having fun, so I impulsively decided to keep on working on my herblaw as much as I could.

Herblaw was my life now.

Chapter 41.5

An excerpt from the journal of Shuye Skullcrusher, Guardian of the Ancient Hill Forest:

There is no such thing as a Horned Rabbit.

At least, there was never such a thing. I consulted the elders who have lived in the forest since their childhood, and none of them had ever seen or heard of them. I even hired scholars to comb through their books to see if there was any mention of that spirit animal. They came up with nothing.

If I hadn't seen it with my own two eyes, I would never have believed there was a Horned Rabbits' Valley.

But...

The Horned Rabbits were one thing. It was disturbing to think that they had been here all this time without anyone knowing, yet the forest is vast, and a few dozen rabbits aren't a big deal. I do have a bloodline inheritance that lets me sense nearby living beings, but it's not infallible. Perhaps the rabbits, being prey animals, possess a natural stealth skill.

So it's possible that the Horned Rabbits, being small in number, simply avoided being detected until now.

But the lake…

There's absolutely no way that all of us could have missed something that large.