Chapter 122| Chapter 123| Chapter 124
Chapter 122: Injured
Lu Yunxi was initially quite satisfied with her new disciple, Qiu Yan.
But it didn’t take long for that satisfaction to vanish completely.
Qiu Yan’s knife skills were genuinely spectacular, but the moment it came time to actually cook the ingredients…
“Ah! Help!—”
A terrifying, violent crackling sound erupted from the iron wok, loud enough to make anyone flinch.
Standing over the stove, Qiu Yan’s face drained of color in pure terror. She frantically waved her spatula in the air, completely paralyzed with panic and having absolutely no idea what to do.
“Don’t be afraid! Quickly, dump the raw vegetables into the wok and start stir-frying!” Lu Yunxi instructed urgently. “The oil is popping like that because you poured it in while there were still drops of cold water left in the pan!”
Hearing the command, Qiu Yan hastily grabbed a massive woven basket of prepped vegetables and dumped the entire contents directly into the wok.
Sure enough, the violent splattering of hot oil immediately subsided.
Qiu Yan let out a massive breath of relief.
But once the newly minted chef officially began the actual cooking process, she descended into an absolute nightmare.
It was genuinely too difficult!
When Lu Yunxi demonstrated her techniques, her favorite instructions were “add the right amount,” “cook until it’s almost done,” and “go by feel.”
The problem was, what exactly defined the “right amount” of oil and salt? How was she supposed to visually differentiate between a wok that was fifty percent hot versus seventy percent hot? To Qiu Yan, everything felt “about right”… she simply couldn’t tell the difference!
A massive headache throbbed behind Qiu Yan’s temples. This is exponentially harder than running chemical trials in the corporate laboratories! No wonder high-end chefs are paid so much!
As Qiu Yan wiped the cold sweat from her brow, Lu Yunxi also realized they had hit a critical roadblock.
Back when she was training Shen San, aside from his initial lack of baseline experience, the entire process had gone incredibly smoothly. She barely even needed to verbalize her instructions. Outside of highlighting a few key structural points, she only had to execute a recipe once, and Shen San would immediately grasp thirty percent of the technique. He could then easily bridge the gap through independent practice when he returned to his own quarters.
But Qiu Yan was a completely different story.
While the girl was incredibly gifted when it came to martial arts and academic intellect, her culinary intuition was absolutely abysmal. She genuinely couldn’t differentiate between a durian and a pineapple by sight. She had no concept of which specific cuts of meat were mechanically suited for which dish. She couldn’t even visually distinguish between a slice of raw pork and a slice of cooked pork!
And failing to recognize whether meat was fully cooked or not was a massive, fatal flaw!
Whenever she manned the wok, she had absolutely no idea when the ingredients were finished. If Lu Yunxi instructed her to pull the food when it grew soft, she couldn’t gauge the texture. If she told her to pull it when the meat changed color, she still couldn’t tell the difference!
She…
Lu Yunxi felt a profound wave of depression settling over her.
Faced with this level of sheer culinary blindness, even a master-tier chef found herself entirely helpless. It wasn’t that she was failing to teach carefully; it was just…
While Lu Yunxi was agonizing over a solution, she caught Qiu Yan muttering under her breath.
“It’s been exactly five minutes. When Master cooked this dish earlier, she kept it in the wok for exactly five minutes. I need to plate it immediately.”
Without missing a beat, Qiu Yan snatched up a clean porcelain plate and aggressively shoveled every last scrap of food out of the pan.
Lu Yunxi: “…”
She stared down at the sad, half-raw pile of ingredients sitting on the plate, a dull, throbbing pain radiating from her forehead.
The fire was set significantly lower this time. When I demonstrated the recipe earlier, I was utilizing a high-heat stir-fry technique…
She let out a heavy sigh as her new apprentice proudly presented the plate, her eyes sparkling with eager anticipation as she waited for a critique.
Lu Yunxi felt incredibly helpless. She could accurately guess exactly what the dish tasted like without taking a single bite!
There was no alternative! It seemed that if she wanted Qiu Yan to master the culinary arts, they were going to have to rebuild her foundation from absolute scratch.
Deliberating for a moment, she forced herself to taste a piece of the undercooked vegetable. “I think I’ve figured out the best method to teach you,” she announced. “Come on, let’s go for a walk outside.”
Fortunately, the isolated valley beneath the waterfall was a highly abundant ecosystem, absolutely teeming with wild ingredients and medicinal herbs.
She decided to take her apprentice out into the field personally. They were going to harvest wild vegetables, turn the soil, and study the baseline structure of every raw ingredient. She refused to believe an immersive, hands-on agricultural bootcamp wouldn’t correct Qiu Yan’s terrible culinary habits!
Lu Yunxi’s grueling field methodology proved highly effective. After nearly an entire month of relentless, hands-on drilling, she finally managed to bring Qiu Yan’s skills up to a functional baseline.
Of course, the definition of a “functional baseline” differed drastically from Shen San’s progression.
All things considered, Qiu Yan could now successfully execute a few basic, entry-level stir-fries—such as shredded pork with green peppers—and could finally, accurately discern whether the meat was thoroughly cooked or not.
Having laid the foundation, the rest of the curriculum simply required relentless, repetitive practice.
Leaving her apprentice at the cabin to grind her cooking proficiency, Lu Yunxi returned to the underground dungeon to resume her own combat trials.
Naturally, she didn’t tell Qiu Yan she was grinding a dungeon; she claimed she was simply going out to explore the scenic valley to gather fresh culinary inspiration.
After concluding her daily dungeon clear, Lu Yunxi wiped the sweat from her brow and began the trek back to the compound.
Through relentless, repetitive practice, she had successfully pushed the experience bars for all her active skills to their absolute maximum threshold. However, regardless of whether a skill was classified as advanced or master-tier, every single progression bar was currently hard-locked and refused to trigger a breakthrough.
Only her core attribute levels were still passively increasing.
She could only pray silently to whatever code governed the servers that her entire character progression wouldn’t permanently lock the moment she hit level ninety.
If she hit a permanent progression wall, would she be trapped inside this instanced valley forever? Would she literally have to spend the rest of her digital life down here?!
Carrying a heavy trace of underlying anxiety, she quickened her pace along her usual trail. But before she reached the base of the roaring waterfall, she caught the faint sound of movement.
She quickly smoothed out her robes and walked toward the noise.
To her surprise, the figure standing by the water’s edge was Qiu Yan.
Lu Yunxi was slightly perplexed. Why was Qiu Yan loitering out here instead of remaining at the cabin to grind her culinary routines?
Right at that moment, Qiu Yan bent down, pulling two large wooden buckets from her spatial inventory. She filled both to the brim with river water and turned to head back.
“Qiu Yan, why did you hike all the way out here to fetch water? Doesn’t the stream run directly behind our compound?”
“Ah, Master Yun… I read on the forums once that water sourced directly from the base of a waterfall is significantly sweeter, so I took a slight detour to gather it here.”
Lu Yunxi stared blankly at the roaring waterfall, tracing the heavy torrents of water as they crashed into the basin and immediately flowed outward, forming the very same clear, winding stream that ran past their backyard.
She was completely silent.
What kind of absolute nonsense is this? Wasn’t the stream behind their house literally fed by this exact same waterfall?!
“…As long as you’re happy with it.”
Lu Yunxi offered a dry, strained laugh, ultimately deciding not to crush her apprentice’s bizarre enthusiasm.
The two of them began walking back to the compound together.
However, in the very next second, Qiu Yan—likely distracted—accidentally kicked a heavily protruding stone embedded in the dirt path. Because her hands were completely occupied with the two sloshing buckets of water, her balance shattered. Terrified of spilling the water she had walked so far to collect, she didn’t even attempt to brace her fall, slamming heavily onto the ground with a loud thud.
Lu Yunxi was so startled by the sudden wipeout that her brain failed to react for a second.
One of them was kneeling awkwardly in the dirt, while the other simply stared blankly down at her.
It took a long moment for Lu Yunxi to finally snap back to reality.
“Qiu Yan, are you injured?” Seeing that the girl remained entirely immobilized on the ground, Lu Yunxi hurried forward with genuine concern to help her up.
Qiu Yan had endured exponentially worse injuries during her standard combat training. She waved a hand dismissively. “Don’t worry, it’s just a tumble. I’m perfectly fine.”
With Lu Yunxi supporting her weight, she slowly began to push herself upright.
However, before she could even lock her knees, her foot slipped again.
With a sickening, audible crack, her entire body went rigid, freezing completely in place.
Lu Yunxi: “…”
Oh, this is bad!
She immediately reached down to check Qiu Yan’s pulse and was thoroughly shocked by the system diagnostic.
Qiu Yan had actually suffered a catastrophic bone fracture!
Generally speaking, elderly NPCs might snap a bone from a violent sneeze or a minor fall, but for a high-level, young player avatar… triggering a fracture from a basic trip was an astronomically rare RNG event!
Lu Yunxi pinched the bridge of her nose. She immediately cast a high-tier health recovery spell over Qiu Yan to stabilize her vitals, then knelt down to inspect the swelling around the fracture point.
Moving a patient with catastrophic structural damage could easily trigger secondary trauma, so she had to perform an emergency field reset.
By this point, Qiu Yan had already blacked out from the sheer intensity of the pain, her face as pale as a sheet of parchment, heavy beads of cold sweat dripping from her forehead.
Lu Yunxi carefully palpated the bone structure, applied a sudden, precise burst of force to snap the fracture back into alignment with a sharp click, and immediately began applying heavy bandages and splints.
Staring down at Qiu Yan’s unconscious form, she felt a wave of profound, helpless sympathy.
My new apprentice must have an absolutely abysmal luck stat to suffer such catastrophic damage from a simple trip!
Qiu Yan hadn’t just fractured her wrist—she had simultaneously broken her foot and cracked her lumbar spine!
By the time Lu Yunxi finished applying the necessary medical wraps, Qiu Yan looked exactly like a fully mummified corpse.
After securely stabilizing her body, Lu Yunxi quickly fabricated a makeshift stretcher and enlisted the help of the old alchemist to carefully carry Qiu Yan back to the cabin.
After thanking the old man for his assistance and seeing him out, Lu Yunxi collapsed into a chair, utterly exhausted. Only then did she realize she was starving.
She scanned the room and quickly spotted a few covered dishes sitting on the main table. The food looked surprisingly well-prepared.
Far too drained to fire up the stove herself, she walked into the kitchen, scooped out a bowl of cold leftover rice, and prepared to eat it with the pre-cooked dishes.
However, the exact moment she reached out to take her first bite, a violent, high-pitched alarm began shrieking inside her head.
Lu Yunxi’s eyes narrowed to lethal slits.
She immediately dropped her chopsticks, her gaze sweeping the perimeter as she pulled her high-tier longbow from her spatial inventory.
Whenever her life was in legitimate, mortal danger, her advanced perception stats always triggered this exact internal alarm.
She knocked an arrow, ready to fire at the slightest provocation.
Yet, after methodically clearing every corner of the cabin and the surrounding courtyard multiple times, she failed to uncover a single hostile entity.
Highly suspicious, Lu Yunxi slowly lowered her bow and returned to her seat to resume her meal.
But the very next second, the violent alarm shrieked through her mind again.
She vaulted out of her chair.
After repeating this bizarre, paranoid sequence several times, Lu Yunxi finally pinpointed the exact trigger.
Whenever she attempted to eat the food on the table, her perception stats screamed that her life was in imminent danger… No way.
She lowered her gaze to the plates of stir-fried vegetables and tentatively cast a high-tier Appraisal spell over the food.
[Catastrophic Bad Luck]: Consuming this specific dish of stir-fried vegetables will inflict a severe, high-tier curse of absolute misfortune upon the consumer. You will suffer catastrophic bone fractures while executing basic walking animations, you will choke violently when drinking water… Duration: Six Hours.
Chapter 123: Magical Effect
Lu Yunxi stared at the unfortunate plate of vegetables on the table, then shifted her appraisal to the meat dishes and the soup sitting next to it.
[Hiccups]: Consuming this dish triggers a random chance of hiccups over the next three hours, with each bout lasting for a full ten minutes.
[Dizziness]: This dish induces a state of lightheadedness. We guarantee you will experience our most attentive and comprehensive dizziness service.
Lu Yunxi: “…”
Are you kidding me?!
The dishes she prepared herself either restored health, replenished mana, or at the very least, granted a temporary boost to agility. Never in her life had she encountered culinary creations with such… devastatingly malicious side effects!
While the effects of the latter two dishes were only probabilistic and might not trigger, the curse of absolute misfortune on that first plate of vegetables had clearly taken effect with a vengeance.
Thinking back to how Qiu Yan had simply gone out to fetch some water and returned looking like she had survived a war zone, Lu Yunxi felt a profound wave of pity for her.
But just as she was shaking her head over her apprentice’s rotten luck, a sudden, violent crash echoed through the compound.
Lu Yunxi jolted and immediately sprinted into Qiu Yan’s adjoining bedroom.
“Who’s there?!” she barked, her eyes cutting through the dimness with lethal coldness.
When she threw the door open, however, Qiu Yan was still completely unconscious. A massive, gaping hole had punched through the roof directly above the bed, and a heavy cascade of clay tiles had rained down, burying the poor girl beneath the debris.
Even trapped in her deep slumber, a low, pained groan escaped Qiu Yan’s lips.
Lu Yunxi wasn’t entirely sure how the game’s sensory mechanics handled unconscious players, but she deduced that while Qiu Yan couldn’t physically move, her avatar was likely registering every single point of pain.
Just how agonizing must this be?
Casting a look of deep sorrow at the mummy-wrapped figure on the bed, she methodically cleared the shattered tiles off the blankets before vaulting up to repair the structural breach in the roof.
But the moment her boots touched the rafters, the structural integrity of the surrounding roof failed completely, causing another massive cluster of tiles to cave inward.
Lu Yunxi: “!!”
Reacting instantly, she dropped back down into the room, scooped up Qiu Yan—mattress and all—and hauled her out into the main living hall before heading back up to tackle the roof.
Unfortunately, this was only the grand opening of the disaster.
It seemed the curse of absolute misfortune was nowhere near finished with its target.
The exact second Lu Yunxi patched the ceiling in the bedroom, the structural joints in the main hall gave way, and a fresh volley of tiles came crashing down!
Left with no alternative, Lu Yunxi hoisted Qiu Yan once more and moved her entirely outside into the open courtyard. Surely the sky couldn’t collapse and rain tiles on her out here, right?!
Yet, right as she was hammering the final shingles over the main hall, the afternoon sky abruptly turned pitch-black.
Before she could even process the sudden weather shift, a torrential downpour unleashed from the heavens. Within seconds, Qiu Yan, lying completely defenseless in the yard, was thoroughly drenched like a drowned rat.
Lu Yunxi: “???”
Unbelievable!
The hidden variables of Qiu Yan’s failed stir-fry were terrifyingly potent. She was genuinely, profoundly impressed by the sheer toxicity of her apprentice’s cooking.
Working at lightning speed, she finished the roof repairs, leaped down from the rafters, and prepared to carry the soaked girl back inside.
But before her hands could even clear the wet blankets, a venomous snake materialized out of the tall grass, slithering rapidly toward the defenseless Qiu Yan.
“Stop right there!”
Lu Yunxi’s breath caught in her throat. In a fluid blur, she drew her longbow and loosed an arrow.
Even with her master-tier reflexes, she was a fraction of a second too late.
The arrow pinned the snake firmly to the dirt. The creature hissed violently, thrashing its body in a desperate bid to tear itself free from the shaft. But looking down, a glaring puncture mark had already appeared on Qiu Yan’s exposed wrist, and a slow, dark stream of poisoned blood was oozing from the wound.
Lu Yunxi rushed to her side, her heart aching at the sight of the fresh injury.
She quickly shoved an antidote pill into her apprentice’s inventory interface to neutralize the venom, then lifted her back over the threshold of the house.
For the next several hours, Lu Yunxi ran back and forth in a frantic, exhausting loop. She moved Qiu Yan from room to room, sometimes violently swatting away swarms of aggressive wild wasps, and other times applying fresh bandages to the girl’s ever-accumulating minor injuries.
Even her high-tier spiritual shields proved entirely useless. The moment she deployed a protective barrier around the bed, a succession of master-level venomous creatures would crawl out from the floorboards and violently shatter the ward.
…
By the time the six-hour misfortune timer finally expired, Lu Yunxi was completely spent, bone-tired and running on fumes.
Mercifully, Qiu Yan’s eyelids finally fluttered open.
“Qiu Yan, you have sustained an astronomical amount of structural damage. Do not move, just rest,” Lu Yunxi commanded, her face entirely numb from exhaustion. “And whatever you do, remember never to consume your own cooking again. That dish is a literal curse…”
Leaving those parting words, she quietly shuffled back to her own room to collapse.
Qiu Yan blinked at the ceiling, thoroughly dazed. What on earth did Master mean by that? Why the sudden warning… Wait! Why am I wrapped in heavy linen from head to toe?! Why can’t I move a single muscle?!
Because the regional herbs harvested within the valley were of relatively low quality—lacking even basic green-tier attributes—it took a full three months of continuous medical treatment for Qiu Yan’s shattered bones and fractures to fully mend.
One sunny afternoon, Lu Yunxi sat out in the neighborly courtyard, quietly sipping a fresh brew prepared by the old alchemist. Suddenly, her perception stat tingled, prompting her to cast an analytical Appraisal spell over the teacup.
“Grandfather, you actually triggered the breakthrough?!” she gasped, her eyes widening in pure shock.
The liquid inside the porcelain cup was pulsing with a brilliant, unmistakable golden quality!
She had honestly assumed the old man had been hard-capped at the master threshold for far too many decades to ever force a progression shift. In fact, she had been secretly planning to grind her own skills, use her Grandmaster portal to escort the old man out first, and then return later to rescue Qiu Yan. Who could have predicted that at this exact moment, he would pull off a miraculous breakthrough on his own?
Standing nearby, Qiu Yan looked on with a wave of intense envy, her mind drifting to her own disastrous cooking metrics.
Nevertheless, both master and apprentice quickly offered the elder their warmest congratulations.
“This is wonderful! The moment you cross the spatial boundary, you will be recognized as a legendary Grandmaster of the Tea Ceremony,” Lu Yunxi cheered. In the outside world, an elite crafter of that caliber would never have to worry about resources or employment parameters ever again.
“Congratulations, Grandpa! Your lifelong wish has finally been granted!” Qiu Yan chimed in.
The old man let out a hearty, booming laugh, his eyes crinkling. “Late last night, a sudden spark of enlightenment hit my cognitive channels. To be quite honest, the breakthrough caught me completely by surprise.”
With a benevolent smile, he refilled their cups, gesturing for them to enjoy the vintage.
Lu Yunxi glanced down at her active status log, tracking the system notification:
[System Modifier]: Comprehension variables boosted by 10%. Spatial requirements for skill breakthroughs drastically reduced. Duration: One Hour.
An intense, sudden ambition flared within her chest.
Qiu Yan took a slow sip of the tea, her own eyes igniting with a sharp light as she scanned the identical prompt floating before her vision.
“The reason I summoned the two of you over today is strictly due to this breakthrough,” the old man explained, his eyes twinkling with warmth as he watched them drink. “As you know, my Grandmaster authority only permits me to escort a single passenger out of this valley. I believe it is time for the two of you to deliberate and decide which one will accompany me across the boundary.”
The exact fraction of a second the words left his lips, the cheerful atmosphere vanished, and both master and apprentice froze in a tense, heavy silence.
Lu Yunxi thought: Qiu Yan definitely doesn’t want to be left behind, but she’s also in the middle of learning the culinary arts from me… Abandoning my own apprentice to escape early would be a massive breach of my principles.
Qiu Yan thought: Am I going to be abandoned down here all by myself? If Master leaves, I’ll have to rely strictly on my own terrible culinary RNG to survive… Good heavens, if only this game featured Interstellar-level mechanics.
Back in the real world, an explorer setting out into the wilderness carried specialized space hubs, automated nutrient synthesizers, and self-deploying tactical tents. Surviving solo was child’s play. But in this primitive, historically coded valley, being left alone felt like a literal prison sentence.
Pulling their thoughts back to the present, both women subconsciously clenched their fists, their nerves taut.
The old man caught the sudden tension and offered a meaningful, understanding smile. “I know an architectural decision like this requires deep deliberation. There is no need to rush. I still require a few days to systematically pack my research notes and belongings. Once the two of you arrive at a consensus, bring your luggage to my porch in three days’ time.”
The pair voiced their polite goodbyes and turned to leave the courtyard. But as they walked down the dirt path heading home, they couldn’t resist casting a series of tense, sideways glances at each other.
Finally, their gazes collided.
“Haha… Qiu Yan, since Grandpa has unlocked his Grandmaster tier, why don’t we immediately run a few trials of our own?” Lu Yunxi suggested, her voice laced with a frantic, anxious energy as she pointed at the remaining timer on her system panel.
With a ten percent comprehension modifier active, what if they could force a dramatic progression breakthrough before the hour expired? If they pulled it off, the elder’s restrictive passenger limit would instantly become a non-issue.
The three of them would be able to walk out of the valley together.
Qiu Yan nodded aggressively, her eyes locked onto the ticking countdown of her buff icon.
The master and apprentice broke into a dead sprint, racing back to the compound. One dove headfirst into the kitchen, while the other slammed her bedroom door shut and immediately fired up her pharmaceutical cauldron.
Both women suppressed their underlying panic, channeling every ounce of their focus into their respective trades.
Inside the kitchen, after aggressively churning out a massive mountain of failed, toxicity-laden dishes, Qiu Yan’s interface finally flashed with a brilliant, unprecedented notification. She had successfully engineered a dish with a high-tier, positive attribute modification!
[Auspicious Good Luck]: Consuming this dish grants the user an immense, high-tier blessing of pure fortuity. Duration: One Hour.
Staring at the prompt, a wave of intense emotion hit her so hard she was on the verge of literal tears.
She wanted to laugh out loud! She wanted to scream at the ceiling! She wanted to—
Qiu Yan immediately clapped both hands over her mouth, violently suppressing the urge to go completely feral. She was terrified that a sudden, loud outburst would shatter Lu Yunxi’s focus in the neighboring room, ruining her alchemical synthesis. Unable to vent the explosive rush of adrenaline, she began pacing frantically around her bedroom floors.
Eventually losing all internal control, she threw her door open and bolted out into the open courtyard to sprint off the energy.
Lu Yunxi had just finalized the extraction process for a fresh bottle of high-tier pills when the heavy echo of the front door slamming reached her ears. Peeking out the window, she watched in utter bewilderment as her second disciple tore across the yard like an unchained Siberian Husky on the loose.
A row of literal question marks materialized over Lu Yunxi’s head. She stared at the retreating figure with an inexplicable, profoundly complex expression.
What on earth is wrong with Qiu Yan? Is she secretly training some highly unconventional, hidden movement skill?
Noticing that the one-hour comprehension modifier was rapidly winding down to its final minutes, she didn’t waste any more cognitive power trying to parse her student’s bizarre behavior. She immediately cleared her mind and threw herself back into her pharmaceutical calculations.
In the adjacent cabin, the old alchemist stroked his white beard with a benevolent smile. Watching the young woman frantically sprinting laps across the valley paths, he shook his head with a soft, nostalgic sigh. “Ah… to be young and full of life!”
A few days later.
Lu Yunxi and Qiu Yan stood at the base of the valley’s exit matrix, officially seeing the old man off. They had meticulously packed a massive crate of custom travel rations and dried provisions to sustain him on his journey.
“By the way,” the elder noted, gesturing back toward his property right before he stepped into the portal. “I left a substantial cache of my specialized, master-tier tea bags inside the kitchen cabinets. Feel free to brew them whenever you require a respite.”
The two women voiced their immense gratitude, bowing respectfully as the old man vanished into the light. At the time, they hadn’t put much thought into the parting gift, completely oblivious to the fact that those ordinary-looking tea bags carried a mechanical effect that would completely alter their progression speed…
Chapter 124: Tea Bags
Lu Yunxi and Qiu Yan stared down at the mountain of tea bags the old alchemist had left behind, slipping into deep thought.
There were so many tea bags that they filled several massive storage crates. Even if they brewed a fresh pot every single day, it would easily take them a year or two to drink through the entire supply.
Recalling the incredible attribute bonus from the tea the old man had shared with them before, the two women couldn’t help but chuckle.
Lu Yunxi secretly began running the math. If a single cup of tea could boost her comprehension by ten percent, and if the system allowed the modifiers to stack, then chugging ten cups of tea simultaneously would grant her a staggering one hundred percent comprehension bonus! If that worked, she could completely bypass the brutal grind of hunting monsters in the cavern and easily break through to the Grandmaster tier.
Amused by the thought, they swept the tea bags into their spatial bags, returned to their newly built home, and sat down to divide the haul.
However, it was during the distribution that Lu Yunxi immediately ran into a mechanical issue.
Unlike the specialized brew the old man had manually prepared for them earlier, the properties of these bulk tea bags were completely randomized!
She cast a high-tier Appraisal spell over a dozen different tea bags, probing them one by one, but every single item description returned the exact same generic read:
[Mysterious Tea Bag]: Infused with completely randomized environmental effects. Please consume with absolute caution.
If a master lifestyle crafter like herself couldn’t bypass the hidden data, a standard player like Qiu Yan stood zero chance of unmasking the variable. Most active players lacked advanced identification sub-professions entirely, meaning they were structurally blind to hidden item details and could only discover a consumable’s true effect after drinking it and checking their active system buffs.
Unaware of the gamble, Qiu Yan happily boiled a fresh kettle on the spot, brewing a fragrant pot and pouring her master a cup.
Lu Yunxi casually tossed an Appraisal spell over the porcelain cup.
[Deep Slumber]: This brew induces a potent sedative effect. Upon consumption, regardless of the severity of the user’s underlying insomnia variables, the avatar will instantly enter a deep, restorative sleep for a strict six-hour duration.
She was completely speechless.
Wasn’t tea mechanically designed to keep people awake? Was this the true chaotic power of randomized system coding? To have a cup of tea function as a heavy-duty sleeping pill?
While her head was lowered as she analyzed the text, Qiu Yan had already thrown back a massive cup of the liquid.
“Wow, this is delicious.”
Hearing her satisfied sigh, Lu Yunxi snapped out of her thoughts.
“Qiu Yan, do you feel at all drowsy…” She froze mid-sentence. Before she could even ask her apprentice how the variable was affecting her, she watched the girl’s eyelids flutter helplessly. Clamping her eyes shut, her body toppled sideways, hitting the floorboards with a heavy thud.
Lu Yunxi winced at the sheer sound of the impact, feeling a sympathetic ache. But Qiu Yan was already dead to the world, sleeping so deeply she was snoring softly.
Resigned, Lu Yunxi scooped up the limp girl, carried her back into her bedroom, and tucked her snugly under the blankets.
Following that initial trial, bizarre and unpredictable status modifiers began popping up on their system panels every single day.
For instance, one tea bag granted a localized aura that acted as a total mosquito repellent. Another inflicted a ‘Satiated’ buff that kept their hunger bars completely locked at one hundred percent for three days without eating a single bite of food. There was even a tea bag that permanently altered their character scent variable, causing them to constantly radiate a pleasant aroma of roasted tea leaves… All things considered, the properties of the old alchemist’s collection were wildly diverse, containing absolutely everything under the sun.
The master and apprentice were certainly broadening their horizons.
Early one morning, Qiu Yan woke up on schedule. She completed her morning routine, brewed a standard pot of tea as a baseline habit, and walked into the kitchen to prepare breakfast.
After months of intensive tutoring, she had become remarkably adept at managing the morning menu. She had meticulously practiced every single traditional recipe her master passed down to her, successfully mastering everything from fresh soy milk and crispy fried dough sticks to savory rice porridge, hand-pulled noodles, steamed buns, crystal dumplings, and delicate wonton soups.
It was safe to say that breakfast items had officially become her absolute strongest culinary specialty.
Once the morning spread was fully prepared, Qiu Yan ran a quick taste test to verify the flavor met the benchmark. Satisfied, she began carrying the dishes out to the dining table one by one, bringing the freshly brewed pot of tea along with her.
She poured herself a cup first, drinking it down slowly as she waited patiently for her master to appear.
Lately, Lu Yunxi had fallen into a comfortable pattern of exiting her quarters at exactly 8:30 in the morning. The system clock currently read 8:28—exactly two minutes left on the dot.
Though Qiu Yan appeared to be casually sipping her tea, her gaze kept instinctively drifting toward the closed bedroom door across the hall.
Why hasn’t Master opened the door yet?
She rubbed her stomach, forcing down a sudden wave of hunger. Shifting her focus away from the steaming breakfast dishes, she poured herself a few more cups of tea to pass the time.
However—
She wasn’t sure if it was because her hunger bar was dropping, but she suddenly felt an intense, localized heat igniting deep within her core. The temperature rapidly surged outward, and fine beads of sweat began oozing across her forehead.
Wiping her face, she poured a cup of cooled tea to counter the flush, picking up a palm-leaf fan to aggressively circulate the air around her seat.
But the internal heat was far too volatile. Her manual efforts did absolutely nothing to mitigate the surge. The waves of intense heat crashed through her body like a violent tide.
Just as the suffocating fever pushed her to the brink of severe dizziness, completely blurring her awareness of her surroundings, a sharp click echoed through the hall.
The heavy wooden door swung open.
Lu Yunxi walked out, rubbing her blurry eyes with a sleepy, relaxed yawn.
As she stepped through the covered walkway where the morning sun cut through the eaves, the rich layers of her black elder robes perfectly framed her graceful silhouette, making her fair, delicate skin look entirely flawless and luminous. Her exquisite features carried a trace of lazy, morning grogginess. As she approached the table, a faint, elegant fragrance drifted over her perimeter.
Unfortunately, neither of the women present was in the right headspace to appreciate the aesthetic.
Before Lu Yunxi could even cross the yard to reach her chair, Qiu Yan lunged forward, violently grasping her wrist.
“What on earth is wrong with you?!” Lu Yunxi gasped, thoroughly startled. The exact fraction of a second their skin collided, she felt as though she had laid her hand against a roaring furnace.
“Master, I…” Qiu Yan’s eyes were completely glassy and vacant. She mumbled a few incoherent syllables as if desperately trying to formulate an explanation, but her vision cut out entirely, and her body collapsed heavily toward the ground.
Reacting with master-tier reflexes, Lu Yunxi caught her right before she hit the floor, immediately casting a high-level health restoration spell over her body.
Though the fever was still ravaging her system, the burst of spiritual energy forced Qiu Yan’s eyes to snap back open.
Lu Yunxi’s gaze rapidly swept the dining table, zeroing in on the freshly brewed pot of tea. She threw an Appraisal spell over the porcelain.
[Malarial Delirium]: This brew inflicts an extreme state of alternating high fever and violent chills. The debuff can only be cleared by administering a gold-tier purification antidote, or by enduring the full duration of the curse for six consecutive server days.
Reading through the system read, Lu Yunxi fell entirely silent.
No wonder Qiu Yan had suddenly—Wait! What is she doing to her clothes?!
Realizing that if left to her own devices, the delirious girl was going to aggressively rip off her remaining light under-robes to escape the heat, Lu Yunxi quickly reached out, pinning her arms down with firm authority.
“Snap out of it!”
Qiu Yan’s skin was flushed a deep, burning crimson. Her eyes swam with absolute delirium. Suddenly, tapping into the unhinged strength of a runaway horse, she violently broke free from her master’s grip and bolted straight out the front door.
Lu Yunxi: “???”
She immediately deployed her movement skills to give chase, tracking her apprentice as she tore across the valley paths, sprinted to the base of the roaring waterfall, and hurled herself into the freezing basin with a massive splash.
Watching the girl gradually regain a fraction of her consciousness under the icy downpour of the torrent, Lu Yunxi let out a slow, relieved breath, deciding it was best to simply leave her anchoring the pool to manage the fever.
However, the exact moment Lu Yunxi finished consuming her solo breakfast back at the compound, a pale, shivering figure came bursting through the entrance, kicking up a sudden, freezing gust of wind as she flew past.
Lu Yunxi: “???”
Following the disturbance, she marched across the hall and knocked on Qiu Yan’s bedroom door before stepping inside. The sight that greeted her bedroom caused her jaw to drop in absolute shock.
Qiu Yan’s bed had undergone a drastic structural transformation. Originally, the mattress had been outfitted with two thin, lightweight quilts. Now, it was buried beneath a staggering mountain of heavy winter bedding.
The poor girl had shoved two thick comforters beneath her body, while a massive stack of nearly ten heavy quilts was piled directly on top of her!
“Have you completely lost your mind?!” Lu Yunxi shrieked, her eyes practically popping out of her head.
No matter how low the ambient temperature dropped, burying oneself beneath ten layers of bedding would create an unbearable greenhouse effect, wouldn’t it? No! That wasn’t even the primary issue! The traditional quilts in this historical world were packed with heavy raw cotton; covering oneself with two layers was already structurally restrictive, let alone stacking ten!
Lu Yunxi’s eyelid twitched. She stepped toward the frame, fully intending to pull back the heavy layers to let her breathe, but catching a closer look, her apprentice was violently shivering and chattering beneath the mountain of fabric.
Frowning, she quickly pulled the blankets back over her shoulders.
She had initially assumed the ‘alternating fever and chills’ variable meant the symptoms would trigger simultaneously. Who could have predicted the system coded them to cycle sequentially? In other words, over the next six server days, Qiu Yan was doomed to rotate endlessly between a scorching furnace state and a freezing arctic state…
Staring down at the miserable bundle on the bed, Lu Yunxi couldn’t help but feel a profound wave of sympathy.
Fortunately, while the freezing cycle was intensely painful, the drop in temperature allowed Qiu Yan to maintain her cognitive clarity.
She stared out from beneath the edge of the quilts, looking as though she wanted to weep but lacked the hydration variables to produce tears. “Master… whatever you do… do not touch that pot of tea. The random coding glitched… drinking it makes you feel like you’ve contracted a fatal case of pneumonia…”
The brief warning seemed to drain the absolute last of her stamina reserves, her voice trailing off into a raspy whisper.
Lu Yunxi nodded firmly. “I understand the situation. Save your energy and stop talking.”
She stood watch by the bedside for a few quiet moments before a sudden, brilliant realization struck her. “Qiu Yan, focus on resting. When you contract a severe illness variable, the fastest way to clear the timer is to log off and let your avatar sleep it off. I’ll leave you to rest. If you require food when you return, just ping me.”
Hurry up and log off the server! If she simply stayed offline in the real world for a few days before logging back in, the six-day server countdown would safely expire in her absence, and the debuff would vanish completely!
Qiu Yan hugged her knees tightly beneath the heavy pile, curling into a tight, shivering ball as another wave of phantom arctic cold sliced through her limbs.
“Okay…” she replied, her teeth violently chattering against each other.
Seeing how deeply uncomfortable her student was, Lu Yunxi quickly exited the bedroom and closed the door.
It wasn’t until she heard the distinct, digital chime of a system log-off and the adjoining room fell into an absolute, dead silence that she finally breathed a sigh of relief.
It appeared Qiu Yan had successfully severed her connection to the server.
Lu Yunxi pulled her gaze away from the bedroom doors. As her eyes landed back onto the offending teapot sitting on the dining table, she pinched the bridge of her nose, a massive headache throbbing behind her temples. Under normal circumstances, whenever they experimented with the old alchemist’s stash, the random variables consistently returned beneficial buffs. This was the absolute first time they had triggered a catastrophic, negative status effect—and it had proven to be an incredibly brutal one at that.
I need to be exponentially more cautious moving forward!
Meticulously packing the remaining liquid into a sealed vial, she swept the teapot and every single unverified tea bag straight into the deepest, locked compartments of her spatial inventory.
From this day forward, she would personally identify the exact chemical properties of every single brew before a single drop touched their lips.
Leaving the kitchen behind, she prepared to handle the rest of her daily chores alone.
