Learning To Live As A Cultivator

The ingredient was called Serene Milk salts and were cla.s.sified a potion, as were all balms, lotions, salts and non-pill elixirs in this realm. Serene Milk salts had no actual usage by themselves, but were a necessary ingredient in a few pills and other potions, though at this time Leon knew only of the Still Mind pill and Light Chi elixir, which he had learned what was added to the cultivation baths in the martial arts schools. Seeing as he and Sun were partly convinced that his three petal bath salts might actually be better for their cultivation, he had looked up the recipe in order to experiment, but hadn"t gotten any further as yet.

Making Serene Milk salts would take some time, being that it was a potion, however once made, Leon would only need a small fraction of it when making Still Mind Pills. So basically, it was a potion that required being made just once in a long while and had a lot of uses afterwards.

According to the recipe, he needed to first boil two half keg"s worth of water. Actually, he could have boiled the water with the relevant herbs within each pot of water, according to the recipe. But as he preferred to boil water for his own tea pot for at least ten minutes first as he was worried about what was lingering in it, he automatically did this.  And then when he was satisfied that the bubbling liquid was bug and germ free, he added the herbs, Ivory Milk daisies in his cauldron and False Nettle roots in a cooking pot. Others might do one after the other in their single cauldron, but Leon saw no reason to take even more time over this.

False Nettle was a strange herb that grew in amongst other nettles and took on the characteristics of their leaves while guarding what could be considered its real treasure; it"s bulbous main root. About the size of a suede, an offworlder like Leon could (and did) mistake it as a root vegetable, it even boiled down to become mushy like an over cooked potato after a good hour. But it tasted like pure salt. Leon did make a mental note of this; it might be useful in tiny quant.i.ties in his cooking rather than having to bring back buckets of spring water to produce spoonful of salt.

The cauldron of boiling daisies produced a beautiful milky white liquid, the flower heads having dissolved completely in the water. Both this and the mush were added to the keg and given a quick stir before the keg was sealed. He would need to stir it again in an hour and again an hour after that.

In the meantime he cleaned out his cauldron and cooking pot before thinking about making Cloudy Spiritual Pills, only his stomach began to rumble and his thoughts turned to lunch.  He fancied a something a little fresher than usual and headed for the lake with his fishing rod.

*****

His luck was good and he returned an hour later with a healthy sized fish for his lunch... and probably for his dinner as well. Placing the fish upon his chopping board, he went to wash his hands before unsealing the keg, stirring the mixture, which had begun forming odd hard clumps, before resealing it once more. Then he focused on the fish, filleting awkwardly to produce two decent portions, before placing the fish head and bones (which still had clumps of fishy meat upon them) to one side. He was not at the stage of a chef who could use these bits in their cooking, so they were reduced to trash.

With one portion of the fish, he decided to cut into pieces and coat in flour and seasoning before frying as a snack and the other was cooked whole and could be served with noodles, a flavoured oil he"d bought and edible green leaves. He drooled slightly in antic.i.p.ation, but placed the cooked fish to one side, ate the snack with some leftover bread from the Food Hall that he"d obtained the day before.

Then he looked at closely at the moth tails. Although he only actually needed the roots for Cloudy Spiritual Pills, the leaves were used in Burning Energy Pills and Burning Blood Pills as well. Fragrant beast tails changed colour in patches and produced an aroma that caused beasts to rage so they could spread and root where they fell. But this also effected the qualities of the Beast Calming pill; if there were too many red beast tails used, the pill might as well be renamed as a Beast Raging Pill.

But the Burning Energy Pills were given to humans and the moth tails were different in appearance and offered no aroma. The effects of the Burning Energy Pill were also very different to the Beast Calming pill. Feeling excited by the prospect that the red moth tail leaves could indeed produce different effects than the green moth tail leaves, Leon began to sort through them, only to find out that there was another thing separating the two mothtail variations apart.