Once the fighting was over, the villagers were faced with the need to set up a new, functional society on the remnants of what Mandakh had left behind.

Several important questions needed answers. What should they do with the enemy soldiers who had surrendered? How should they handle the green-robed farmers? What should their new government look like?

I could have helped them answer some of these questions, but this wasn’t my village, and I had no desire to interfere any more than I already had. The villagers were now powerful enough to stand up against all but the strongest of Returnees. They needed to be the ones to decide where they went from here, not me.

As a final gift, I left a breeding pair of demon oxen in a pen to the north of the village. By combining the blood of these beasts with the herbs of the green-robed farmers, the villagers would be able to continue growing their strength with medicinal baths. The way they used these resources, however, was up to them.

After dropping these animals off, I turned and walked away without even saying goodbye.

When Emperor Chan had sent me into this city, his goal had been to help me gain a deeper understanding of the crescent moon spade. I was supposed to have nothing to rely on other than my weapon, and I was supposed to remaster the basics of how to use it without qi.

I could see the value in this, but the more time I spent in this city, the more I found that I just didn’t have a strong enough attachment to the spade to warrant this kind of focused study. “Relying on my weapon” meant that I would need to seek out strong opponents for random duels, and this simply didn’t interest me.

Ignoring direct combat and switching my focus to training those villagers had felt more natural, but even then, the most valuable insights that I had gained in that village didn’t have anything to do with my weapon. They had come from studying the effects of herbal teas and medicinal baths.

So, what did this mean? Should I give up on this Return, head back to the Palace, and get to work on creating nine-patterned pills? Maybe, but that felt like it would be a waste of a valuable opportunity. I was a basic mortal in a sprawling city that was filled with nothing but mortals. Surely there was a way to make use of this, right? What advantages could this city offer me that weren’t available in the outside world?

As these questions ran through my mind, my thoughts, again, drifted back to the idea of herbal teas and medicinal baths.

In the outside world, such things might be refreshing, but they weren’t overly valued. Why waste perfectly good herbs on a medicinal bath when an alchemist could use them to create a pill that would be far more effective?

In the City of Selfless Courage, however, without qi, alchemists were nearly non-existent. Could I make use of this? Instead of using this Return to simplify my use of the crescent moon spade, could I use it to simplify what it meant to be an alchemist?

Thanks to Emperor Chan’s Cicada Pill, I still had another year before I would need to worry about the effects of stagnation. I might as well put it to good use.

After traveling east for several days, I stumbled upon a borough that was surrounded by several small farming villages.

Filled with crumbling buildings that were covered in the scars of countless battles, the Yellow Flower Borough was far less prosperous than the Palace Borough had been, but it had access to something the Palace Borough did not: wood qi. Because of this, Yellow Flower’s farmers were able to produce a wide variety of low-level herbs.

Thanks to Mandakh’s troops, I now had a pouch full of coins, so I rented a two-story shop in a remote corner of the borough and filled it with every type of herb available.

Like most of the buildings in town, this shop was an absolute wreck. Even putting aside the superficial damage to its façade, there was a crack in the building’s foundation, the walls were warped, and the roof was one stiff breeze away from collapse.

Therefore, the moment I moved in, I first turned all of my attention toward making the place more livable. With a sufficient amount of wood and earth qi, I might have been able to accomplish this task in only a few hours, but I instead chose to spend several days slowly repairing the place one stone at a time, allowing myself to become fully immersed in each step of the process.

When I was done, the building’s façade looked no different from when I had started, and while most of the cracks had disappeared from the interior walls, unless someone was extremely familiar with the place, they would have a hard time telling that anything had changed.

Structurally, however, the building had been completely remade. The crack in the foundation was still there, but it was now no more than a superficial blemish. The walls were still warped, and the ceiling still looked like it could fall down at any moment, but both had been reinforced with enough qi that even a powerful strike from a Peak Disciple wouldn’t be able to damage them.

Satisfied, I turned my attention to the building’s décor, turning the top floor into a spartan living area, with a bedroom, dining room, and kitchen. The furniture in these rooms was simple in design, and no one who broke in would think that any of it was out of place, but this was some of the most comfortable furniture I possessed.

For the ground floor, I sourced tables and chairs from local artisans to set up a small tearoom. Located in a rundown building at the edge of the borough, I didn’t expect my shop to see much business, but I wasn’t particularly bothered by this. If someone wanted to stop by for a pot of tea, they could, but if not, I was more than happy to spend my days in quiet solitude.

Stolen story; please report.

Once everything was in place, I retreated to a back room to begin my experiments.

The biggest problem with my idea of setting up a tearoom was my lack of recipes. I only knew how to brew a simple potion to make mortals fall asleep, and that wasn’t exactly something that many people would want to purchase. And, most of the people who would want to purchase such a tea weren’t exactly the people I was looking to cater to.

So, before my grand opening, I needed to come up with at least one new recipe. To do that, however, I needed help.

“System, I want a new analysis ability that will be able to give me detailed information on herbal teas and medicinal baths. I want it to include as much information as possible about a tea’s effects, side effects, and lingering toxicity. Give this ability the power to analyze teas and baths brewed from herbs of as high a Rank as possible while still only costing a single credit.”

Purchase confirmed. Cost 1 credit. 1,385 credits remaining.

Note: Potency and toxicity values of herbal teas and medicinal baths have not been standardized. Reported values will be based on projected maximums under ideal circumstances.

Wondering how this would affect my new ability, I threw together a pot of tea and analyzed it.

Sleeping Dragon Tea

Ingredients: Schisandra Berry, Lotus Embryo, Longan Aril.

Primary Effect: Drinking this tea will cause a person to instantly fall asleep. Effective on cultivators below Martial Disciple 7. Not effective on body cultivators.

Secondary Effect: Assists in replenishing a person’s physical stamina. Limited effectiveness on body cultivators.

Potency: 27%. Toxicity 1%.

From what I had seen in that village, I knew that if a medicinal bath were allowed to cool, its potency would plummet. So, after waiting about five minutes, I analyzed this tea again.

Potency: 26%.

Then, five minutes later, I checked again.

Potency: 23%.

After making a new batch of tea and using a small amount of ambient fire qi to keep it warm, I found that even if the tea didn’t cool, it would still begin to lose potency after 5 to 10 minutes. However, as long as it stayed hot, this would happen at a much slower rate.

Learning all this information was great, but since I had no plans to sell this Sleeping Dragon Tea, I poured everything out and got down to the real work of figuring out a new recipe.

As a teahouse, I would ideally cater to the needs of the local community. So, what did the people in the town need?

As most of the people in this borough were farmers who spent long hours in the fields, having something that could boost their energy reserves might be ideal. But, how much good would that actually do? After working all day, most people would want to relax. An energy drink might be good for when they first wake up, but how many people would want to visit a teahouse first thing in the morning?

Instead, I decided to work on a mild healing tea. Not something to heal major wounds. Just something simple that people could drink at the end of a long day to soothe aching muscles.

To start, I brewed up a batch of the herbs that were used in basic Rank 1 Healing Pills.

Unnamed Tea

Primary Effect: Heals minor wounds. Effective on cultivators below Martial Disciple Peak. Not effective on body cultivators.

Secondary Effect: Causes severe headaches and fatigue. Not effective on body cultivators.

Potency: 52%. Toxicity 79%.

While this was far from what I was looking for, I was happy to see that my new ability was functioning properly. With any luck, I would be able to use it to create a new tea recipe in short order.

After two days of failed brews, I concluded that using a standard Healing Pill as my starting point was a failed strategy. So, instead, I began mixing together random herbs that had healing and stamina properties to see what they would create.

By making a chart of the herbs I used and the teas they created, I was able to get a better sense of the effects that each herb produced after being brewed into a tea. The main difficulty was that the herbs reacted with each other in strange ways—enhancing, canceling out, or altering each other’s effects. But, after weeks of trial and error, I finally created a brew that I was proud of.

Muscle Reviving Tea

Primary Effect: Heals minor aches and pains. Effective on cultivators below Martial Disciple Peak. Not effective on body cultivators.

Secondary Effect: Calms nerves.

Potency: 27%. Toxicity 0%.

The low potency was unfortunate, but I couldn’t find any combinations of herbs with both high potency and zero toxicity. Also, while I had done my best to reduce the cost of this tea, it still required nearly 2 silver worth of herbs. This meant that it wasn’t something that the locals would be able to indulge in too frequently. However, since each pot held six cups' worth of tea, the price wouldn’t be too exorbitant if split amongst a group.

This tea wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough. So, I walked outside and attached a sign above my shop’s entrance to announce that it was open for business.

The Revival Teahouse.

Over the next 10 months, business at my teahouse was slow, but a few of the locals became loyal customers who stopped by at least once a week. Moving closer to one of the borough’s gates might have been able to help with this, but I was glad to have my downtime to continue my experiments.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that one of the problems with my early experiments was that I wasn’t using enough ingredients. With only three herbs, the number of possible combinations that would result in a non-toxic brew with the specific effects that I was looking for was just too limited. By using five, ten, or fifteen herbs, I could better control the tea’s exact effects.

Unfortunately, though, adding more herbs to the tea would dramatically increase its price. A tea with 99% potency might be much nicer than one with 27% potency, but in a small place like the Yellow Flower Borough, there weren’t many people who would be willing to pay for such a thing.

Of course, I wasn’t the slightest bit concerned about such minor details. Even if not a single person decided to buy my teas, I would still continue my experiments.

Though, it should be said, people did want them.

After developing my Muscle Reviving Tea to a suitable level, I began work on a new tea, and the moment it was released, word quickly spread.

Beauty Reviving Tea

Primary Effect: Tightens and whitens skin. Reduces visible effects of aging. Effective on cultivators below Martial Disciple Peak. Not effective on body cultivators.

Potency: 32%. Toxicity 0%.

Based on the Rank 0 Beauty Pill, this tea was an enormous success, and there were even a few people who were willing to shell out the gold that was needed for a more potent version of this brew.

The third tea I released, one for encouraging hair growth, wasn’t nearly so popular, but it had been easy enough to create, and there were still plenty of people eager to purchase it.

Through all of this practice, I gained a deeper understanding of how to mix herbs in a new way. I wasn’t sure how or if I would be able to apply this knowledge to alchemy, but I was more than ready to find out. So, two years after entering the City of Selfless Courage, I swallowed a Shadowed Soul Pill and silently slipped out of the Yellow Flower Borough before anyone knew I was gone.

It was time for me to return to the Place of the Herb Sovereign.