Beast Taming: My System is Bugged-Chapter 124 - 123: Why Are There No Herbs Left?
Wang Zidong left dejectedly with his Red Fang Dog.
Before leaving, he shot Gu Ming a vicious glare and said, "I’ll be back. Don’t let me catch you alone."
Gu Ming ignored him, toying with another medicine bottle in his hand. It was the spoils he’d snatched from Wang Zidong’s bag.
Lu You didn’t look at the medicine bottle in Gu Ming’s hand.
She was squatting down, carefully applying a medicinal paste to Cyan Treasure.
Cyan Treasure enjoyed the girl’s touch, a look of contentment on its face as its little snake tail swayed from side to side.
Nearby, Mouse Treasure was lying on the ground, using its plump body to feel the vibrations of the earth.
Sensing the earth with just its paws could only detect a small patch of ground.
But by lying down and using more of its body’s surface area, it could sense more vibrational information, thereby expanding its perceptive range.
This was a clever trick of the Earth Shifting Technique it had just discovered.
It discovered that as its Earth Shifting Technique grew more proficient, it didn’t seem to need to constantly move locations.
By using the power of the Earth Shifting Technique to sense movements in the ground, it could just warn everyone if someone approached. The vibrations from the ground didn’t lie.
Luckily, none of the students in this batch had a Flying Pet, or else this move would have been countered.
By defeating two high-scoring contestants in a row, Gu Ming had made a name for himself in the monthly exam.
Just then, Gu Ming held out one of the medicine bottles to Lu You.
Lu You froze for a moment when she saw this.
Gu Ming’s voice followed. "This is for you."
Lu You was completely stunned. She never imagined Gu Ming would give one of the medicine bottles to her—after all, it was worth 100 points.
"I... I..."
Lu You was so pleasantly surprised she started to stutter, unable to form a complete sentence. She repeatedly waved her hands at Gu Ming in refusal.
But Gu Ming simply stuffed the medicine bottle into her arms.
Lu You wanted to refuse, but being too shy and introverted, she could only watch as Gu Ming turned with Cyan Treasure and set off to find more herbs.
She followed him, trying to speak up several times, but her voice grew softer and softer until she had no choice but to reluctantly accept the gift.
She wanted to ask her Sunflower Seed-eating Hamster for help, but Mouse Treasure felt that since they were cooperating, it was only right to give a friend something.
Lu You felt helpless. ’I have a traitor in the family,’ she sighed to herself.
Afterward, Gu Ming went down the mountain to hand in the medicine bottle to a teacher for points, then went back up and joined forces with Mouse Treasure to frantically search for medicinal herbs on the back mountain.
Gu Ming didn’t actively seek out other Beastmasters holding medicine bottles, and Lu You didn’t ask why.
Collecting herbs and finding the hidden Cultivation Element questions were part of her exam objectives as well.
Seeing Gu Ming tuck every herb he collected into his bag, she followed his example, picking a few and putting them in her small bag to save for later.
’If I don’t use them, I can just turn them in to the school. Can’t go wrong either way.’
However, she was surprised when, after a little while, Gu Ming opened his bag and fed the herbs to Cyan Treasure.
Lu You watched him do this a few times and noticed the herbs weren’t the ones they had just picked. ’They must be some he brought himself,’ she thought, so she didn’t say anything.
She was busy keeping a close eye on their surroundings and didn’t pay attention to any changes in what Gu Ming was feeding Cyan Treasure.
The Sunflower Seed-eating Hamster, however, did notice that the herbs Gu Ming took out were slightly different in shape from the ones he’d put in, though their scent was similar.
It wondered to itself, ’Just how many Spirit Medicines did Gu Ming stuff in his bag beforehand? It seems like an endless supply.’
When Gu Ming saw Mouse Treasure looking over, he picked up an herb that clearly radiated Earth Attribute Power and offered it to the hamster. "Here, you get some too."
The Sunflower Seed-eating Hamster was overjoyed. It could feel the incredibly rich Earth Spiritual Qi coming from the herb in Gu Ming’s hand.
It sniffed the herb, decided it must be delicious, and with its stomach GROWLING, swallowed it in one gulp without a second thought.
"If you sense any enemies, you warn us, got it?" Gu Ming patted Mouse Treasure’s head.
The Sunflower Seed-eating Hamster nodded vigorously.
’With Mouse Treasure’s help, avoiding other people will be even easier now.’
[Cyan Treasure has consumed Cyan Magic Grass. Mana +1]
[Cyan Treasure has consumed a Bone-Strengthening Mushroom. Endurance +1]
[Cyan Treasure...] 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶
Compared to earning points...
...rapidly increasing Cyan Treasure’s Attributes was far more satisfying.
And so, they stayed busy until the afternoon.
Cyan Treasure’s Elephant-Swallowing Demon Technique operated at full power, allowing it to eat to its heart’s content, consuming more and more.
By the afternoon, many of the students still working on the Cultivation Element exam questions had begun to suffer.
A lot of the substitute herbs were suddenly nowhere to be found.
’I definitely saw some when I came up the mountain this morning.’
But by the afternoon, they had all been picked clean.
"Who was it?! Who picked all the herbs clean?!"
Su Lingyu from Class One shouted in the mountains, her face flushed with anger. Her Pet Beast’s ears drooped beside her, anxious for its master.
’There’s green everywhere, but most of it is just ordinary plants with no Spiritual Qi or medicinal properties. How is anyone supposed to concoct medicine with this?’
This left the students both shocked and furious.
The situation wasn’t so bad at first. The first signs appeared around noon, but by two in the afternoon, it had gotten much worse.
As a result, Gu Ming heard a chorus of desperate sighs as he passed by.
They were running around the forest like headless chickens, searching for herbs with wide eyes, only to grow more and more disappointed.
This brought a strange expression to Gu Ming’s face, while a frightened Lu You hid behind him, afraid that everyone would blame her.
"Maybe... we should go down the mountain," Lu You said, her voice trembling with fear.
Other people didn’t know where the herbs had gone.
But she did.
She hadn’t realized before just how obsessed Gu Ming was with hoarding herbs—he had picked clean more than half of the back mountain.
’Actually, just picking them wouldn’t have been a big deal. The school would eventually collect whatever wasn’t used.’
But the crucial thing was... Gu Ming had fed a lot of those herbs to Cyan Treasure and Mouse Treasure along the way.
Earlier, she hadn’t thought anything of it, assuming they were herbs Gu Ming had bought beforehand and kept in his medicine bag.
But as they kept picking, she had realized the truth: those were the very herbs the two of them had gathered together.
The two Pet Beasts had eaten most of them, and she guessed there weren’t many herbs left in his bag.
Lu You was too nervous to notice if the herbs had changed in any way; all she knew was that this was bad.
"Don’t panic. We’re just reasonably fleecing the school. Your paper hasn’t been published yet, so you have no extra income. We should take what we can get," Gu Ming comforted her.
Lu You took a deep breath. ’I’ll send the draft to Teacher Zhang tonight. If it’s approved, I’ll just publish it.’
’If we keep fleecing them like this, I’m worried the school will come after me. What if I don’t have the money to pay them back?’
A short while later, Gu Ming went down the mountain with the Pet Beasts to tally their scores.
Lu You finally breathed a sigh of relief. The "fleecing" was finally over.
The two of them parted ways there, each returning to their own class.
Back in her classroom, Lu You heard many of her classmates lamenting their poor results on this month’s exam.
They had found that many of the herbal substitutes were hard to find.
In the Cultivation Element field, the students who gathered herbs the fastest had a greater advantage.
The students who couldn’t find the standard textbook ingredients later on had to re-concoct 80 or even 90 percent of their recipes, replacing them with ingredients that had similar medicinal properties.
The key was that after concocting the medicine, they still had to have their own Pet Beast test a small dose to see if it was suitable.
Because of this, the medicine concoction and testing process was very long for the students who started later.
By noon and into the afternoon, everyone was basically just searching for herbs, and the usable ones were becoming scarcer. This left nearly half of the Cultivation Element students looking utterly crestfallen.
Hearing these discussions, Lu You lowered her head even further.
She walked up to her homeroom teacher, who smiled and tallied her score on the spot.
Lu You had already tallied her score once that morning. The herbs she was turning in now were the ones she’d gathered from morning until afternoon, which included the answers to the hidden Cultivation Element questions on the back mountain.
The teacher announced in surprise, "Everyone, Lu You has achieved an excellent score of 340 points in today’s comprehensive exam! Let’s congratulate her!"
As soon as the announcement was made, the entire regular class erupted in an uproar, all of them turning in unison to stare at Lu You.
It was the first time Lu You had ever been the center of attention. Having so many people looking at her made her even more shy and flustered.
The homeroom teacher said with a smile, "Everyone should learn from Lu You. This is a very good sign.
"Not only is she first in our class, but with this score, she’s probably heading for the top twenty in the entire grade. In the next few days, she might be promoted directly to Class One or Class Two."
"Wow!"
Even those who hadn’t been paying attention looked over in surprise.
They looked at Lu You, their eyes filled with envy.
’How come we never get that lucky?’
