Struck by a thought, Lan Qingyou immediately took down the lantern hanging on the wall.
She tossed it onto the Small Screen for appraisal.
"Magic Carriage Lantern (E)"
"Remaining Duration: 2,466 minutes"
"Function: Illuminates the path ahead in the dark."
"Description: No way. No way. Surely no one actually carries this thing outside at night."
2,466 minutes — meaning less than two days remained.
Lan Qingyou was certain she wasn't the only one in this situation. The magic carriage lanterns in other shelters were probably in roughly the same state.
Everyone was simply so used to having them that no one had even noticed.
So when the seven-day protection period ended and the lanterns died, what would people use for light?
Answer: a campfire.
Since nobody needed to go outside at night, all they had to do was build a fire indoors for illumination.
But that required fuel.
Someone had previously calculated that it would take a non-magic-user seven full days of all-out effort just to gather enough materials for the shelter upgrade — and that wasn't even counting Monster Crystal Cores.
So once the magic carriage lanterns went dark, how much wood would each nightfall burn through?
Ten units? Twenty?
On the night Lan Qingyou had brewed her first potion, eight hours of fire had consumed well over a hundred units of wood.
She hadn't kept an exact count, but the consumption of at least five or six Gathering Skill casts' worth was unavoidable.
And of course, the most critical issue was that burning wood produced smoke. Without a furnace or chimney, the only options were to open the windows and doors.
Even just an hour or two of that every night would be miserable.
Especially with the doors and windows wide open.
Unless, of course, one simply chose not to burn anything — or fashioned makeshift torches.
Lan Qingyou fell silent. She wasn't feeling sorry for anyone else — she was evaluating whether a business opportunity existed here.
After all, the lantern recipe called for glowing mushrooms, which also had applications in alchemy.
Glowing mushrooms were documented in potioneering texts as an ingredient for Luminous Potion.
But the specific uses of Luminous Potion had not been detailed.
Now, looking at the lantern, could the fluid flowing inside it be Luminous Potion?
'Should I take one apart and find out?'
Lan Qingyou eyed the two lanterns on the table.
Since their durations overlapped, dismantling the one with less time left was perfectly fine. The only downside was having to carry a lantern up and down the stairs at night.
"Take it apart!"
With nothing to lose, Lan Qingyou resolutely cracked one open to test the waters.
She turned the magic carriage lantern over in her hands, examining it from every angle, until she finally found a thumb-sized opening at the top.
Prying it open with a toothpick, she tilted the lantern and let a stream of glowing liquid trickle out onto the Small Screen on the desk.
"Luminous Potion (E-)"
"Description: A potion on the verge of losing its luminescence. It has virtually no recycling value left."
'Perfect — my hunch was right after all.'
Lan Qingyou smiled. Another consumable.
She wasn't sure yet whether it would sell, but it didn't matter. Now that she understood how the magic carriage lantern worked, she could brew a batch once the "blackout" hit and turn a tidy profit.
Less lucrative than mana potions, of course.
'I'll deal with it when the time comes.'
With another yawn, Lan Qingyou picked up the new lantern and headed upstairs.
Reading for a while before bed had already become her nightly routine.
Early the next morning, Lan Qingyou came downstairs, grabbed a piece of bread and a carton of milk, and was mid-bite when a message from Li Huai arrived.
Li Huai: "Deal."
Just two words, accompanied by a trade request on the Small Screen. Lan Qingyou shook her head.
'You're something else. Is this the zen energy of a top-tier combat expert?'
Muttering to herself, Lan Qingyou retrieved the stone slabs and sent over the payment — forty mana potions.
Li Huai: "Got them."
Lan Qingyou: "You're online."
Li Huai: "Yeah."
Lan Qingyou: "Alright, I'd like to order some stone rods too. Twenty at 1 meter long and 3 cm in diameter, and a hundred at 30 cm long and 1 cm in diameter."
Li Huai: "Five mana potions will cover it."
Lan Qingyou: "Deal."
Ten minutes later, Lan Qingyou had the stone rods in hand.
These were meant to serve as stirring rods.
The tree branch she'd been using before was always slightly off for potion brewing. Being plant matter, leaving it submerged for too long risked leaching its own compounds into the brew and compromising the potion's quality.
So Lan Qingyou had been pulling the branch out after every few stirs, which was a real hassle.
Stone rods changed everything — no more worrying about that.
Eager to test her new equipment, Lan Qingyou immediately set about preparing the next batch.
Fetching water, rinsing, sorting herbs, laying them out to dry — all in one seamless flow.
With extra alchemy bases and containers at her disposal today, she wanted to brew a larger volume.
That meant significantly more herbs to prepare than yesterday, and it took her over an hour just to finish the prep work.
While preparing the herbs, she had also arranged a hundred stone slabs in the first-floor hall, each topped with a 1.25-liter enamel mug.
These mugs were also for brewing potions — but not mana potions.
They were for her secret weapon.
After mixing the mana-infused water, Lan Qingyou ladled it out into the various containers one scoop at a time.
Then the brewing began.
During the long simmer, whenever she had a free moment, Lan Qingyou would set down the stirring rod and process more herbs.
Since she'd already decided yesterday to stop wandering outside and instead commit wholeheartedly to her cottage industry — earning her keep through honest craft — it was only natural to push toward standardizing and streamlining her entire operation.
Sorting herbs while the potions simmered was part of that process of refinement.
After all, standing in front of the crucible for eight hours doing nothing was a colossal waste of time.
Waste was shameful.
Lan Qingyou didn't just sort herbs — she carried them outside to dry as well.
In one hour, she could process close to five kilograms of herbs.
By noon, she checked the desk and found that quite a few people had gathered herbs throughout the morning and traded them in.
Lan Qingyou had no complaints — she accepted everything wholesale.
Pulling the herbs out, she noticed they'd mostly been washed at least once. The rinsing wasn't perfect, but it still saved her a good amount of time.
In reality, with the Small Screen's appraisal function acting as quality control, she could simply set a minimum quality threshold for traded goods, and nobody would dare pass off substandard materials.
No wonder the World's Will had advised making full use of the Magic Desk.
Between quality monitoring, photography, appraisal, and teleportation functions, it really was remarkably convenient.
On top of all that, Lan Qingyou also received a blueprint for a 500-milliliter measuring cup.
It didn't ask for much — just a few dozen units of sand.
The cup looked similar to the wine dispenser, but with graduated markings, making it much easier for Lan Qingyou to monitor her dosages.
At four in the afternoon, the first batch of potions for the day was ready.
Once the sediment had settled, Lan Qingyou first used the Small Screen to appraise the potion brewed in the stainless steel soup pot.