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In a way, this behavior made a bit of sense. I would be responsible for taking care of SuYin’s daily necessities, so I would likely spend more time running around the sect than she would. However, it was a bit strange that Young Master Wang was showing me around himself. I had expected him to hand me off to one of his servants so that he could escort SuYin around privately. This young master had ambitions, and this behavior was likely tied to them, but I didn’t sense any hostile intentions him, so I would let things play out naturally.

After completing a circuit of the inner sect, Young Master Wang then guided us back to SuYin’s house.

“Junior Sister, the herbalism skills you displayed in the Verdant Fields Sect are quite impressive, but I must warn you that you are still several steps below what is expected of an inner sect disciple of the Verdant Forest Sect.”

SuYin’s brow wrinkled a bit at this statement. “But…”

The young man held up a hand. “You will know what I mean soon. I only say this because there are two things you need to take note of. First, you are only a probationary member of the inner sect. You must master the proper skills to at least Rank 2 within one year. If you don’t, you will be demoted. As an inner sect member, you will have access to information and resources that will make this task possible, but that doesn’t mean it will be easy.”

SuYin nodded and glanced at me worriedly. I just smirked slightly and shook my head to try and dismiss her concerns. I didn’t know what knowledge she was missing, but I was confident SuYin wouldn’t have any problems mastering it in short order.

Seeing SuYin relax, Young Master Wang continued.

“This isn’t just a problem that affects you. Everyone will have gaps in their knowledge when they first join the sect. As such, one of the sect’s elders will be holding a series of lectures in the coming days on the basics of herbalism. This is to help fill in all those gaps and allow everyone a chance to learn what is needed. Typically, lessons from an elder would cost a significant number of contribution points, but this lecture series is free to all new inner and outer sect disciples.”

Young Master Wang glanced at me quickly and then turned his attention back to SuYin. “As a new inner sect Grandmaster, you were given ten thousand contribution points upon entering the sect. Su Fang is a servant disciple, so if you wish for him to join you, then you will need to pay for his admission. I would recommend that you do so. These lessons will be beneficial to him if he is to help you with your projects in the future.”

SuYin dipped her head slightly. “Thank you, Young Master Wang.”

He waved this away. “I told you. Just call me Senior Brother.”

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SuYin and I spent the next few days adjusting to our new environment and making basic preparations. Most of this time was spent on trying to understand the sect’s economy.

As an inner sect disciple, SuYin’s house came with a basic garden where she could grow a small number of low-level herbs, but this wasn’t a great spot for growing high-value crops. This garden, like the house next to it, was built on a wooden platform high up in the treetops. As such, its soil was only half a meter deep, and plants wouldn’t have access to energy or nutrients in the surrounding earth, so we would have to supply it all ourselves.

If we wanted to grow large numbers of high-Rank herbs, it would be better to lease a plot of land in the surrounding forest. This not only meant paying a steep upfront cost for the land itself, but SuYin would also then need to pay guards to protect it from wild beasts. Once she was able to consistently produce high-quality, high-Rank herbs, such costs would become a non-issue, but raising the initial funds necessary for such a project was going to be a bit of a challenge.

To make the situation worse, we also learned that the herbs she had grown in the Verdant Fields Sect were considered ‘substandard’ and could only be sold at a steep discount. While I knew that SuYin’s herbs couldn’t compare to those that I had used in the Nine Rivers Sect, I still considered them to be quality products with high levels of medicinal energy.

The only real problem with them was that they had unfortunately high levels of toxic energy in them, but this just meant the alchemist using them would need to do a bit of extra work. This wouldn’t affect the efficacy of the final pill at all.

However, while marking SuYin’s pill as substandard seemed a bit much to me, it did serve to show just how much she would need to improve if she wanted to remain an inner sect disciple once this first year was over. However, instead of letting this news upset us, we were both excited by what it meant for what the sect had to teach us about herbalism.

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On our fourth day in the sect, SuYin and I met up with Bao to attend our first lecture on the ‘basics of herbalism.’

When Young Master Wang first mentioned these classes, I had expected the elder to focus on teaching us how to use a variety of important techniques. My expectations couldn’t have been further from the truth.

The first lecture was titled ‘Herb Theory.’

SuYin, Bao, and I arrived early and took our seats in the large wooden amphitheater, and over the following twenty minutes, people continuously poured in to join us. In total, there were over a hundred people in attendance with cultivation bases ranging from Martial Disciple 1 to Peak Grandmaster.

Looking around at the number of people who had come, I had a hard time believing that they were all new recruits. Instead, it seemed more likely that older members of the sect had joined us.

Once it was time, an old woman walked onto the stage below us. A quick check showed that she was a Peak Martial Lord, and based on her appearance, I placed her at over 350 years old. After reaching the center of the stage, she allowed her gaze to roam around the amphitheater and studied everyone in attendance.

When she spoke, her voice was light and soft, but a formation carried her words directly to everyone’s ears.

“Before we begin, I must give you all a warning. The information in these lectures has been gathered by our sect over the course of hundreds of years, and it has been tested and verified many times over. However, there are always deeper secrets in this world. While what you learn here will be both accurate and useful, there is always the possibility of new information coming to light that completely overturns our preconceptions about how the world works.”

I subconsciously nodded at this. As I had learned from the System, the cost of learning everything about Rank 1 herbalism that would be expected from someone on this continent was far different from the cost of learning the totality of everything there was to know about Rank 1 herbalism.

“Let us begin by discussing cultivation. As everyone is no doubt aware, cultivators draw in energy known as ‘qi’ to empower themselves and perform feats beyond the limits of mere mortals. Hopefully, most of you are also aware that this is not the only type of energy in this world. In fact, there are a multitude of different types, but aside from qi, the most abundant is the energy used by demon beasts. Most refer to this simply as ‘demonic energy.’”

This made me sit up a bit straighter. In Emperor Li’s books on Rank 1 to 3 alchemy, he had written about many experiments he had done on demonic energy, but all of them had been failures. He was no closer to understanding how to use it than I was. He had only found more dead ends than I had.

“There are many competing hypotheses about the differences between qi and demonic energy, and former sect members have donated dozens of tomes on this subject written by famed scholars from across the Central Continent. However, none of these books have any clear answers. They are all supposition and guesswork. Therefore, I cannot tell you exactly what demonic energy is or why it is different from qi. What I can tell you is how herbalists can make use of this energy to grow better plants.”

The elder took a simple blue peony out of a storage bag and held it up for everyone to see.

“There are three parts to a medicinal herb. The physical shell, the medicinal energy, and the toxic energy. While alchemists only care about an herb’s medicinal energy, as herbalists, we must focus on all three. What is the physical shell? What is toxic energy? What is medicinal energy?”

She paused to give us time to think, but no one had an answer to these questions.

“Again, all I can say is that we do not truly know. However, we do have some clues to help us. There are no pills to help demon beasts cultivate, but they can eat raw herbs to enhance their cultivation bases. Alchemists can create a powerful pill, called an Energy Expulsion Pill, which is said to be able to remove all the energy from a person’s body, but it has no effect on toxic energies absorbed from pills. Finally, herbs contain ‘medicinal energy,’ but medicinal energy is extremely scarce in the natural environment. The idea that herbs pull all their medicinal energy from their surroundings is simply not possible. What does it tell us?”

My knowledge of demonic beasts was extremely limited, but I did remember being told that there weren’t any pills that could increase a beast’s cultivation base. I didn’t focus on this fact too much at the time, but hearing it now, I could see where the elder was headed.

Herbs could help beasts advance, but not pills. Assuming that this was true and that it wasn’t just that alchemists hadn’t designed the right pill yet, then this meant that medicinal energy couldn’t help beasts advance. If not even Low-Purity pills could help them advance, then they couldn’t make use of toxic energies either. All that was left was the herb’s physical shell.

“In the Verdant Forest Sect, we refer to demonic energy by the term which has gained popularity on the Central Continent in recent years, ‘wu.’ In a sense, qi is energy, and wu is substance. Demonic beasts use wu to enhance their physical bodies while cultivators use qi to enhance their energy bodies. By consuming demon beasts, you can absorb a portion of their wu to enhance your own physical body, but this effect is ultimately limited.”

A faintly sad look appeared on the elder’s face.

“Finding a way to properly absorb wu is the dream of countless cultivators on the Central Continent, but to date, all that we have learned is how to use it to enhance herbs. By properly infusing soil with wu, we can ensure that an herb’s physical shell grows healthier, stronger, and faster.”

The elder held up the peony again and used her overwhelming wood affinity to rip out its energy without first destroying the physical shell. She then presented us with the wilting flower, a ball of toxic energy, and a ball of medicinal energy.

“An herb uses wu to grow and shape its physical form. It then pulls qi from the environment and converts it into medicinal energy. The herb’s ‘toxins’ are a byproduct of this process. They are a combination of wu and qi that was not properly integrated into the growing plant. This can sometimes be caused by excessive levels of energy from improper elements, but it can also be caused by an imbalance of qi and wu. To grow a blue peony, for instance, the soil needs five parts wood wu to one part of each of the other four basic elements. Qi then needs to be applied in similar proportions at a rate of two parts qi to one part wu. If this balance is off, then the excess energy will coalesce into toxins.”

I glanced at SuYin as I now understood what she would need to learn if she wanted to remain in the inner sect. Not only would she need to memorize the correct proportions of qi and wu needed for growing each type of herb, but she would also need to learn how to properly control the levels of all these different energies. Her blessing would help with the first part, but only practice would help her with the second.