First floor of the Tree Hollow Shelter.
Lan Qingyou was floating along with the Magic Carriage Lantern in one hand and a bamboo basket in the other. Inside the basket: a large meat bun and a bottle of Chafan tea.
This was the standard drill after studying until hunger kicked in.
Same logic as scrolling your phone at midnight and then raiding the fridge.
But after grabbing her food, Lan Qingyou suddenly realized the hassle.
Not the eating itself — it was the up-and-down commute for every snack run. She wondered if the Magic Desk could be moved upstairs.
[Movable.]
The moment that thought crossed her mind, the desk lifted one centimeter off the floor and hovered in place. A holographic dialogue box popped up on its surface.
"Oh, that's pretty convenient."
She was about to haul it upstairs — but stopped at the doorway. The Magic Desk had a teleportation function. Sometimes she'd need it for receiving large items. Moving it to the second floor would make that even more inconvenient.
'That won't do.'
Lan Qingyou paused, looked around, and decided to find a more practical spot for it down here instead.
Right next to the Alchemy Workshop seemed ideal.
After all, alchemy required all sorts of items delivered through the desk.
Once that was sorted, Lan Qingyou floated back up to the second floor with the lantern — taking the terrace route as usual, since she found that more convenient.
With a full stomach, Lan Qingyou picked up "Basic Potioneering" from beside the mattress and began reading.
She'd spent most of the late-night hours getting through Symbology and Drawing already, absorbing plenty of new knowledge.
Now it was time to formally tackle her greatest interest: Potioneering.
Half an hour later, Lan Qingyou slipped a leaf between the pages as a bookmark, closed the book, and shut her eyes.
Half an hour wasn't much, when read carefully.
But it was more than enough for Lan Qingyou to realize her mistakes.
Basic Potioneering — as the name implied, a foundational textbook for brewing magical potions. It contained numerous recipes and, naturally, a thorough list of precautions for the brewing process.
Unfortunately:
Lan Qingyou, the novice alchemist whom the small screen had told to go back to the drawing board, had managed to step in virtually every pitfall there was.
The reason behind yesterday's abysmal potion quality could be broken down into six points.
First, she hadn't constructed an alchemy array. Without the array's mana circulation system, she'd had poor control over the heat.
Second, she hadn't used her own mana to properly stir and fuse the herbs with the base water inside the crucible.
Third, her base water was raw stream water. While it did contain mana, it wasn't the treated mana water that alchemy required.
Fourth, the finished potion hadn't been filtered. Too many impurities meant the potion was far from pure.
Fifth, the herbs and tools she'd used hadn't been processed — she hadn't even given them a basic wash, which degraded the overall quality.
And of course:
If those first five were common newbie mistakes, the sixth was the kind of blunder only a self-taught, mid-career-switching alchemist like her would make.
Typically, the most basic brewing ratio for alchemy potions was ten-to-one.
Meaning: her crucible, which held twenty thousand milliliters of water plus materials, should have yielded two thousand milliliters of finished potion at the standard ratio.
Hers had produced roughly ten thousand milliliters. A two-to-one ratio.
No wonder the crucible's rust pattern had been so cleanly divided between the bottom and the top — like a waterline.
That was from years of brewing at the proper ten-to-one ratio.
Remembering how she'd been so afraid of boiling the pot dry that she'd risked a nighttime trip to haul another bucket of water up — she cringed.
Embarrassing, yes. But no real harm done.
She was a self-taught beginner. This genuinely wasn't her fault.
What was she going to do about it anyway?
The potions were sold, the materials spent. Was she going to issue refunds? She didn't have that kind of time.
'Then might as well cover up the mistakes before anyone finds out.'
Sell off the remaining potions fast, then brew a proper new batch.
They were usable, after all. No reason to dump them.
What's done is done. Time for bed.
Lan Qingyou pulled the air-conditioning quilt over herself and drifted off.
'No more reading tonight. Tomorrow: get up early, gather herbs, try drawing an alchemy array, then brew a new batch.'
'Oh, and I need to make mana water, too.'
That stuff required using her own mana to neutralize the mana in the stream water. A whole project in itself.
'Busy. Never expected that I could be this busy.'
'And it feels great.'
"Aagh! My eyes!!!"
When Lan Qingyou opened her eyes the next morning, a beam of sunlight slammed directly into them.
Staring straight into the sun took courage — and she was rewarded with a full-power Solar Flare.
Her still-groggy brain went from zero to fully awake in an instant.
'I need curtains. If there aren't any for sale, a piece of cloth will do. At the very least, a sheer curtain. Otherwise, waking up to this every day — is this even a life worth living?'
She gazed at the second-floor bedroom, now flooded with blinding sunlight, and made a mental note.
Downstairs. Breakfast. Check chat logs. Head out.
Nothing had happened last night.
Aside from her own Shelter upgrade, the supposed ghost hadn't appeared at all.
Must have been someone seeing things.
Zhao Doulai, the one who'd broken the news, had gotten absolutely flamed. The gist: everyone was already on edge, and he'd gone and made it worse for no reason.
Some of the more hot-tempered folks had even sent outright death threats.
But this was good news for Lan Qingyou — it meant her plan to go chest-hunting at night could proceed without worry.
By the time the sun was directly overhead — roughly noon, she guessed — Lan Qingyou floated home carrying a Supply Box.
One morning's work had netted her roughly two hundred kilograms of herbs.
Beyond the herbs for Mana Potions, she'd also gathered ingredients for other types of potions.
She didn't go out in the afternoon. Instead, she buckled down on Symbology and Drawing.
Potioneering could wait.
Her top priority right now was drawing an alchemy array.
Without one, everything else was pointless.
"Sun represents 'gold.' Moon represents 'silver.' Triangle represents 'fire.' Inverted triangle represents 'water.' Hourglass represents 'time'..."
"No, no — according to the foundational theory of Four Elements and Four Properties, the four properties — dry, wet, cold, hot — combine in pairs. Dry plus hot equals fire. Wet plus cold equals water. I can't forget that."
On the afternoon of the fourth day, after studying nonstop, Lan Qingyou entered her Alchemy Workshop and stood before the iron base, ready to draw her very first alchemy array.
Drawing an alchemy array on a base required the alchemist's own mana.
You simply channeled mana to your fingertip and traced directly onto any material's surface.
It sounded simple enough. In practice — not even close.
Bang!
As Lan Qingyou's finger traced the final symbol, a plume of black smoke erupted from the base. The alchemy array was instantly destroyed.