The reason Lan Qingyou called the Fire Elemental Essence a treasure was because she already had a plan forming in her mind.
During the seven-day Mana Turbulence, Lan Qingyou had barely left the shelter.
Since then, she'd been mulling over the idea of carving out a small herb garden inside her shelter grounds to cultivate rarer or harder-to-obtain herbs.
Something like Flame Bellflower, for instance.
That way, even if Li Huai kicked the bucket someday, she wouldn't be left with a broken supply chain.
What was this called? Decoupling from dependency.
You couldn't stake your entire resource pipeline on a single person.
Even with just one Fire Elemental Essence, it might not be enough for large-scale planting, but growing eight or ten specimens should be perfectly feasible.
After stashing the Fire Elemental Essence in the storeroom, Lan Qingyou filtered the two batches of +30 mana potions she'd brewed that day, poured them into the wooden bucket to nourish the potion bags and dagger, and then headed upstairs to the second-floor bedroom with Steel Wire Ball.
She picked up the "Mineralogy" textbook and continued reading, with a copy of "Basic Herbology" sitting beside her.
After receiving this second copy yesterday, she'd compared it against her existing one.
The content was identical — right down to the font.
It made Lan Qingyou wonder whether these books had been mass-printed by some Blue Star printing factory. How else could they be so uniformly formatted, still carrying the scent of fresh ink?
In truth, this wasn't the first time the suspicion had crossed her mind.
Given that Kalim's World Will and Blue Star's World Will had negotiated with each other, communication had clearly existed between the two.
So it wasn't impossible.
Over the next several days, Lan Qingyou continued her steady, regimented lifestyle.
Five cauldrons of potions each day, followed by a quick bombing run outside to keep her throwing arm in shape — just in case something unexpected came up and she needed to spring into action.
Then one day.
With her potion bags slung over her shoulder, Lan Qingyou wrapped up the day's "bombing session" and headed back toward her shelter.
But just as she was approaching, she spotted three suspicious-looking characters standing at the base of her tree, pointing and gesturing at it.
'Don't tell me they're here to rob me?'
'Wasn't the rule that no one could enter a shelter without the owner's permission?'
Curiosity piqued, Lan Qingyou silently descended to a tree branch directly above the trio's heads.
"You sure there's really a shelter up there?"
"Brother Dao, I'm dead serious. I saw someone fly up there with my own eyes yesterday. And look over there — see that big wooden balcony? I guarantee that's a Level 3 shelter."
"Idiot! You just said the person flew up. How exactly are we supposed to get up there?"
"We climb those vines. I've already checked — based on my calculations, those vines can reach that broken branch section. Then we use grappling hooks to latch onto the balcony railing, and we're in."
"Good. Skinny, stay sharp. The moment that woman comes back, hit her immediately. Take her out and the shelter is ours."
"Got it."
Perched on the branch above, Lan Qingyou listened to their conversation and got the general picture of what they were planning.
While it was true that an activated shelter couldn't be entered without the owner's invitation—
If you killed the shelter's owner, the shelter became yours for the taking.
That included all the supplies stored inside the Magic Desk.
People had been talking about this in the channels for days. A few had even nearly fallen victim to it.
This had driven some survivors to band together, pooling resources into a single shelter for maximum protection.
Level 3 shelters like Lan Qingyou's were still uncommon, so naturally they attracted covetous eyes.
Of course.
The majority of people were still going about their lives solo.
Lan Qingyou leaned forward for a better look. These three had come prepared — the tall, skinny one was even holding a wooden crossbow.
Clearly designed to deal with someone who could "fly."
But as Lan Qingyou studied them more closely, a flicker of recognition crossed her face.
Well!
What a coincidence.
Two of the three were people she actually knew.
Weren't these the same two thieves who'd barged into the room she'd been left to die in?
She still remembered the one with the scar spitting at her in disgust.
'Heaven offers you a road and you refuse to walk it; hell has no gate, yet here you come knocking.'
With that thought, Lan Qingyou pulled out an Explosion Potion.
It was about time for some live combat practice to build up her battle experience anyway.
She extended her hand, then released the test tube pinched between her thumb and index finger.
Boom!
"Aaagh—"
"My leg! My leg's broken!"
"Wha— what happened—"
A deafening explosion was followed by agonized screaming.
'Not bad for firepower, huh.'
Hearing the cries, Lan Qingyou peeked down and quietly noted the results.
A single Explosion Potion had left two severely wounded and one lightly injured. What more could she ask for?
It made sense, really.
Most people right now had around 10 points in stamina at best, which translated to roughly 100 HP. A single potion instantly shaved off 30 HP, plus an additional 10 HP from the burn-over-time — that was practically half their life bar gone.
Compared to the legendarily bomb-resistant Slimes, humans really couldn't take a hit.
Not that the Slimes had more HP — it was their regeneration that was absurd. Blow half their body apart and they'd patch themselves back together in two seconds flat.
That was probably the advantage of home-field advantage. In a swamp, there was never any shortage of mud to work with.
So Lan Qingyou followed up with a Flame Potion.
She wasn't naive enough to see her opponents injured and think, "Advantage is mine!" before charging in with a dagger for a melee showdown.
Staying up here and picking them off from above was perfectly fine.
The wailing below continued as Lan Qingyou sat leisurely on the branch, waiting.
The rising heat from the Flame Potion's conflagration licked at the branch beneath her, and the hot air made her skin prickle with warmth.
She waited until the screams faded from loud to soft and finally fell silent, until the burning heat dissipated, and only then did she peek down again.
What greeted her were three charred bodies.
Looking at them, Lan Qingyou's expression was neither happy nor sad.
She'd seen corpses before. The first time had been somewhat hellish, but she'd seen them nonetheless...
And the second time was during those few days she'd been dumped in the slum.
During those days, practically every time she closed her eyes she'd have nightmares — dreaming of her own body slowly rotting away on a filthy bed in a dark, grimy room.
Lan Qingyou glanced at the crossbow the tall skinny man had been holding — now blasted several meters away by the explosion — and drifted over to pick it up.
At room temperature, bodies would start showing signs of decay in two or three days. For these three, the best outcome would probably be getting gnawed on by monsters tonight.
With that thought, Lan Qingyou didn't spare the filthy remains another glance and flew toward her shelter.
Though she'd spent the entire day making potions, there was no rest for her yet.
Tonight, she was going to attempt crafting the bullets Shang Chuan had ordered.