The Elixir is for You, The Poison is for Me

#375 - Is this your pig?

Lu Jing circled around the outside of the valley, but he couldn't find any roads. He didn't even see a path. As far as his eyes could see, the ground was covered with moss and nettles, almost completely covering every stone in the valley.

If it weren't for the occasional falling leaves from above, this place would be as quiet as a world in a painting.

At first, Lu Jing thought the scenery here was good, but when he thought about living here alone for years, he felt it was too lonely and desolate.

Fortunately, after walking a short distance, Lu Jing gradually saw some footprints in the valley.

It's just that the size and shape obviously didn't belong to humans, but more like something left by an animal.

The front end was slightly pointed, divided into two halves. Besides that, there were also traces of grass being eaten nearby.

Lu Jing thought of the wild boar, A'Bao, that the young marquis had mentioned was with Han Shan Ke.

If there were no accidents, these hoof prints should have been left by it.

Lu Jing followed those hoof prints all the way down, and soon... he came to the edge of a mud pit.

Okay, it can be seen that A'Bao likes this mud pit very much. It comes here to roll around a few times whenever it has something to do, enjoying the happiness brought by the mud bath.

Lu Jing tapped his feet lightly and easily jumped over the mud pit, landing on a large rock.

At this moment, not only had it stood up from the ground, but it had also bared its fangs, pawing the ground with its hind hooves, looking like it was about to launch an attack.

...

The man was awakened by an annoying buzzing sound, and then felt something fall on his nose.

He opened his eyes and found that it was a tiger mosquito.

The tiger mosquito had just landed steadily on the tip of his nose, put away its wings, and then planned to pierce its proboscis into his skin for a feast.

But the next moment, the thing it used to eat with was suddenly pinched by two fingers.

The man retracted his fingers in front of his eyes, looked at the struggling tiger mosquito, and murmured, "Mosquitoes and flies sucking blood is the law of nature, so I don't blame you, but..."

He paused, and then continued, "It is also the law of nature for people to sleep. It's fine if you just suck blood, but why do you have to disturb my sweet dreams?"

After he finished speaking, he released his fingers. The freed tiger mosquito immediately flapped its wings, wanting to take off and fly high, but the next moment, it was caught between two palms.

The man shook his hand, then looked up at the sky through the gaps in the leaves, and found that it was already past noon.

So he lifted the straw mat on his body and jumped down from the camphor tree where he was living.

After landing, he stretched his waist and walked towards the vegetable garden on his right, wanting to dig up two lettuce heads from the vegetable field for breakfast, uh, or lunch.

As he walked, he kept calling A'Bao's name, but no pig responded.

"Where did you run off to again? I told you to keep a good eye on that snake-patterned wisteria for me. You start slacking off as soon as I look away."

The man complained unhappily, but there was nothing he could do, who told him that he couldn't beat that wild boar either.

But what he didn't expect was that he had misunderstood A'Bao this time. After walking a few steps, he actually saw A'Bao's sturdy figure again.

The latter was squatting under a small tree, looking up at the treetop.

The man followed its gaze and looked up, only to find that there was a person standing above.

The man couldn't help being shocked when he saw this, "How did you provoke it?!"

"I didn't provoke it," the person on the tree said.

The man shook his head, "Then you must have accidentally broken into its territory, oh, that mud pit... it values that place very much. Last time I wanted to borrow that place to plant some herbs, it wouldn't agree. This is troublesome, it holds grudges."

"That's because you didn't talk to it properly," Lu Jing said. As he spoke, he threw a bunch of red berries he had just picked from the tree down.

A'Bao under the tree immediately opened its mouth in cooperation when it saw this, eagerly catching the bunch of red berries and swallowing them down like a whole date.

Then it looked up again, continuing to look at Lu Jing expectantly.

It wasn't until Lu Jing threw down two more bunches of red berries, which were all swallowed into its stomach, that A'Bao closed its mouth with satisfaction.

Afterwards, Lu Jing also jumped down from the tree and patted A'Bao's belly.

The man was completely dumbfounded. After a moment, he said blankly, "This is... your pig?"

"Isn't this your pig?" Lu Jing was also confused.

"It doesn't really count... it was already living in this valley before I came," the man thought for a while and said, "We're actually considered neighbors. It always came to me to beg for food before, and it would also help me deliver things to and from the outside world, so we slowly became familiar."

"Is that so?"

"Speaking of which, I haven't seen anyone get so close to it before, especially its belly. I've never even patted it before," the man said, but then he thought of something again and said with great interest.

"By the way, what kind of fruit did you feed it just now? I've been in the valley for so long, and I've also studied those red fruits on this tree, but I found that they're poisonous, and it seems like they can't be used as medicine, so I left them alone. Besides, every year a lot of these fruits fall on the ground, and I don't seem to have seen A'Bao eat them."

"I don't know either," Lu Jing said, "I only learned a little beast taming technique from Senior Ye Qian, and I just happened to find that it was interested in these fruits, so I picked them for it."

"Could it be related to the maturity period?" The man frowned, revealing a thoughtful look.

Lu Jing didn't disturb him. After a full incense stick of time, the man finally came back to his senses and said, "You're laughing at me."

"No, Junior is very impressed by Senior's love and obsession with alchemy and pharmacology."

After Lu Jing finished speaking, he noticed that the man's gaze towards him was a little strange, but the latter didn't delve into this question, but just asked, "You are..."

"Lu Jing, a student of this year's academy."

"Oh, oh." Although the man was nodding, Lu Jing could feel that his mind wasn't on this. To put it bluntly, the question just now was just a formality. He didn't care at all who Lu Jing was or where he came from.

The man's mind was full of getting some lettuce from the vegetable garden to eat.

Lu Jing saw that he was absent-minded, so he didn't waste any more words and went straight to the point, "Senior, I have come here today to ask you for a favor."

"What favor?" The man was a little surprised, and then said, "Who told you that I could help you? I can't do anything. I don't know anything about martial arts, music, poetry, or essays. I can't even beat it in a fight."

As the man spoke, he pointed at A'Bao, "I wasn't telling the truth just now. We're not neighbors at all, but a bandit and a fat pig, and I'm the fat pig, being completely eaten up by this bandit."

"But you know how to make pills," Lu Jing said.

"Making pills... oh, that is something I have been doing," the man nodded, "But I only know how to make one kind of pill."