Chapter 3: Clear Stone root

Swimming through the crowd I made my way to the centre square and up the main road to pavilion. Seven stories tall the tower stood grand and imposing overlooking the main square, the sign outside it hung sharply with its letters striking and bold, written by a calligraphy expert. Outside were numerous guards all looking much more formidable than those who simply guarded the gate to the sect. If before I couldn’t bare to look them in the eye, now I couldn’t bear to look them higher than their boots.

Either way I plucked up my courage, showed my inner disciple badge and went inside.

Walking through the large wooden archway I arrived at what was a mountain of books and scrolls, all sectioned away in little cubbyholes. I sharply inhaled feeling appropriately wary about finding anything in such a large assortment. Thankfully I saw a group of outer sect disciples that seemed in charge of directing people or finding books.

Doing my best to put on a somewhat confident façade I walked to the nearest free disciple.

“Excuse me sect sister.” I called out to the young girl. Strictly speaking I should call her junior sister as I am higher up the sect hierarchy but I felt uncomfortable calling someone not only older than me, well older than my current body, and likely stronger than me in that way. From the way her eyes perked up, she must have noticed my subtle shift in her address.

“Greetings sect brother.” She spoke softly. “What are you looking for today.”

“I’m looking for ways to clear impurities in my meridians without wasting my allotted qi nourishing pills to do it.” Thankfully I didn’t need to look anything up as she already knew the answer to my query.

“Hmm, you could take an eight snake impurity removing pill. One of those will clear eight meridians in one go, it is a little expensive though, the equivalent of twelve qi nourishing pills.” Seeing my frown she quickly continued, “You could also eat clearstone herb roots, they’re pretty cheap…it’s just they’re hard to stomach.”

“Can I get a book about clearstone herbs please?” I asked, I was fine eating trash so long as it worked.

“Certainly wait just one moment.” She said before dashing off.

She returned a moment later, a thick book held in her hand. ‘A brief overview of low level mortal herbs common to the Andula region of the central continent, and their associated uses, especially in the pill refining branch of pharmaceutics’. A bit of a longwinded title but informative. Much like a library from my own world, I had to check out the book and was warned not to bring it back late or damaged to avoid incurring late fees.

Finding a nearby table and lamp I sat down and flipped through the pages until I found what I was looking for. It turns out clear stone herbs are so good at cleaning impurities that over a couple hundred years nearby rocks will become translucent and clear resembling crystals. This is where it’s name comes from. The top part of the herb apparently doesn’t have much use but the roots work wonders and are one of the main Ingredients to the pill mentioned earlier, eight snake impurity eating pill. Named after the eight snakelike meridians as well as the fact that another main ingredient is the venom of a specific snake. The book went on to talk about ideal growing conditions for farming, how to spot them in the wild, likely places to find them and more. The book was a treasure of information. Eventually I read through everything on the herb and decided it was time to go to the marketplace and try and get some.

Rows of jauntily placed street stalls, the open square was sprawling with the hustle and bustle of people. Different smells of herbs and spices, the metallic tang of still bloody beast meat, assortments of weapons dotted here and there, busy was an understatement. After a short wonder though I found a large stall selling a variety of herbs and spotted the distinctive shape and colour of the roots in question as depicted in the book.

Using my experience from my past life shopping abroad in marketplaces much like this I put on a confident expression and entered the battleground.

“Boss how much for the clear stone roots?”

“Eight gold a root.”

“Pfft, daylight robbery.”

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“Fine six gold.”

“I’ll tell you what, I’ll take six for two qi gathering pills.” I found out earlier a qi gathering pill can be traded for a standard 15 gold a piece.

“Five for two pills.”

“How about eight for three.”

“Hmm, alright deal.”

“Pleasure doing business with you.”

We swapped goods and I was quickly ushered out the way to make room for a new customer. Still, satisfied with my purchase I left and walked towards my room a small smile on my face. I spent some time cultivating for the day and went to sleep early satisfied with my day.

I managed to wake up early the next morning and with a couple hours to go until morning bell, I decided to try one of the roots and get started cultivating for the day.

I cleaned the root with fresh water from the well and prepared to dig in. It was about the size of my palm and slightly long and knobbly like ginger.

Taking a bite I instantly regretted it. It’d texture was gritty and tasted like a raw potato. Either way I gritted my teeth and choked it down, it was hardly the worst I’d eaten in the last couple years, it wasn’t even mouldy for goodness sake.

I scoffed the whole thing and sat still it lotus position waiting for its effects to begin. Soon I felt pins and needles build up along my second meridian and when I began cultivating found that the blockages started to peel off in clumps and I spat it all out in one gooey mess. Because the process was so comparatively gentle I felt up to eating a second and twenty minutes later I had my third meridian unblocked.

Since I had six more roots but only five meridians life to clear I decided to experiment with the extra. The disciple compound actually had a small servants quarter equipped with a kitchen. Currently there were no servants living with us, so I decided to commandeer the space for myself for a while.

Since the root tasted like raw potato then I decided to cook it like a potato. After lighting a fire, fetching some fresh water and putting it in a pan, I started by parboiling my fake-potato. Whilst that was happening I dug around the pantry for some other ingredients to add. Soon the roots were done boiling and a parry knife slid in easily. I then began cutting the roots into disks, grated some ginger and crushed and diced some garlic. That was when I found some sausages hanging. After checking they weren’t mouldy, I cut one off, opened it’s sleeve and retrieved the meat.

I put the garlic into a new frying pan alongside the sausage meet and kept stirring with a wooden spoon. I cooked until it was fragrant, added the ginger and some rosemary, gave it a last blast in some high heat and then plated up and sprinkled with salt.

After digging in I was pleasantly surprised with how it turned out, the clear stone roots were actually quite buttery when cooked, the garlic and ginger played well with the smokey sausage meat and the rosemary added a nice hint of herbs. I couldn’t help giggling when I thought about how this delicious meal was made with a famously barely edible plant. My thoughts were cut short however as I felt the medicinal properties working and began cultivating to clear out my next meridian.

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