"Investigation" was a grand word for what amounted to crawling inside and starting to dig.
At least she had a hoe now.
A small gardening hoe, sure, but still better than bare hands.
And paired with the Gathering Skill, it was even better.
The Gathering Skill was a godsend.
The collapsed section was mostly covered in vines, and clearing rubble was one thing — the vines were the real headache.
But when a single cast of Gathering Skill blasted a hole through them, even the toughest vines couldn't slow Lan Qingyou's excavation.
That said, her digging speed was actually quite slow.
With only three casts per hour, she had to stop and rest after each round, waiting for her mana to regenerate before continuing.
Of course, she didn't waste the downtime. Out came the notebook.
It was only a palm-sized journal, after all — wouldn't take long to read cover to cover.
But there's always something new to glean from a second reading.
A master alchemist's notes couldn't possibly be absorbed in a single pass.
Since she'd decided to give alchemy a try, she was going to give it everything she had. Youth waits for no one.
Crash!
After who knew how long, a wooden plank gave way and Lan Qingyou finally uncovered a staircase leading downward beneath the collapsed area.
She floated down eagerly — and a wave of musty air hit her face.
To be expected from a space that hadn't seen daylight in ages. The mildew smell was only natural.
Focused solely on plundering whatever she could find, Lan Qingyou didn't give the smell a second thought. Her bright, keen eyes swept the underground room from wall to wall.
The basement was roughly two hundred square meters, pierced through by three or four massive tree roots.
Those roots had all but destroyed the place. Much of the basement's equipment lay in ruins.
Vines, moss, nameless wildflowers and weeds, and glowing mushrooms covered the floor, walls, and ceiling alike.
That's right — it was the glow of those mushrooms that let Lan Qingyou see the basement at all.
"There has to be something down here."
Lan Qingyou pep-talked herself and began her search.
Wrecked as the basement was, it didn't pose much of a problem for her.
By the pale blue luminescence of the mushrooms, the first thing she spotted was a pouch hanging from a tree root.
About half a palm in size, its material looked like some kind of linen.
Lan Qingyou floated over, plucked it free, and turned it over in her hands. Nothing remarkable at first glance.
But anything that had survived intact in a place like this had to be worth something. She pocketed it.
Next, in a corner of the room, she discovered a pot-bellied crucible — about thirty centimeters tall with a diameter of roughly thirty centimeters — along with a mortar and pestle for grinding herbs.
All three items were coated in rust, but on the crucible she noticed a distinct color difference between the bottom and the upper portion, almost like a waterline.
Rusty as they were, to Lan Qingyou they were priceless finds.
At the very least, she could take them home, give them a scrub, and finally have something to cook instant noodles in.
Then, among a pile of what had presumably been a bookshelf — now nothing but rotted wood — she found a dagger.
Its blade was translucent, like crystal of some kind. Judging by its uneven surface, it hadn't been polished — more likely chipped and knapped into shape.
Lan Qingyou had seen videos of obsidian dagger-making back on Blue Star. It gave off roughly the same feel.
She picked it up and gave it a couple of test swings. Not bad — it was light, and it felt natural in her hand.
Then she used the dagger to poke around the pile of rotten wood, looking for anything else worthwhile.
One slightly harder prod — and a chunk of decayed wood went flying across the room, smashing against the wall.
Lan Qingyou's jaw dropped.
She knew roughly how strong she was, and she absolutely couldn't pull off something like that.
'Did this dagger amplify my strength?'
'Or is it actually some legendary dagger with +999 Strength?'
'Well, regardless — a dagger this beautiful is definitely coming home with me.'
Hah—
Lan Qingyou breathed on the blade's surface, then reverently wiped it clean with her sleeve, brushing off the wood shavings. Satisfied, she tucked it into the elastic waistband of her hospital pants.
Then she whipped out the gardening hoe, ready to dig, dig, dig through the pile of rotten timber.
But as she looked down, she noticed a book lying right where that plank had been flung from.
Lan Qingyou pounced on it and snatched it up.
"Basic Herbology."
She was thrilled — and puzzled at the same time.
Every other book nearby had been corroded by time until only vague outlines remained. Yet this one was perfectly intact. She could even smell the ink...
How could she not find that strange?
But it didn't matter. She had nothing but free time, and this was a book she actually wanted to read. No way she was leaving it behind.
An elated Lan Qingyou continued her search.
But after two more laps, three piles of rotten wood, and four little dirt mounds, she gave up.
Today's haul had already exceeded her expectations by a wide margin. At this point, what more could she ask for? People shouldn't be too greedy, and Lan Qingyou liked to think she wasn't the greedy type.
She loaded the linen pouch, the book, the dagger, and the mortar into the chest, then stuffed the chest inside the crucible. She plucked a few glowing mushrooms off the wall, tossed them into the crucible, pulled some vines loose, tied the crucible to her back, and prepared to leave.
She'd never seen these mushrooms before, and they weren't in the alchemy notes either. She'd appraise them on the small screen once she got home.
What if they turned out to be useful?
But as Lan Qingyou floated upward, she realized the crucible was heavier than expected. Her small frame was struggling to fly with it strapped to her back.
With no other choice, she switched to carrying it beneath her instead.
Getting out of the basement, however, was a bit of a hassle.
She'd dug her way in, after all, and the opening was narrow. Luckily the crucible wasn't that large, and after some brute-force tugging and pulling, she finally dragged it out through the passage she'd excavated.
"It's dark outside."
Standing in the intact section of the ruined cabin, Lan Qingyou gazed at the pitch-black night sky.
She'd left the Shelter in the afternoon, spent a while filling nearly an entire chest with herbs, then come here and dug for several more hours. No wonder it was dark.
"No problem. This girl can fly!"
Lan Qingyou muttered the words like a pep talk, then poked her head out timidly and surveyed the surroundings. Seeing no sign of wolf packs or anything else, she carefully wriggled out from behind the vines.
After yanking the crucible free, she pushed off the ground and launched herself toward the treetops.
Because the sky — that was her domain.
And indeed it was.
Moving between the trees with the crucible dangling from her grip, Lan Qingyou encountered no obstacles whatsoever.
She made it home with ease.
What she didn't know, however, was that someone had witnessed her flying through the treetops. That someone had already posted about it on the Regional Channel — and it was causing quite a stir.