This place really was excellent—the air was fresh and the view was wide and open, lifting his spirits in spite of himself.
It was situated at a mountain pass in the Galigas mountain range, near Baron Dina's territory. The reason Adlei had built a cabin at this pass and stationed two mountain keepers was the lush red oak forest covering the mountainside. On the Galentea Continent, red oak was a prized timber—its naturally curved grain had long been favored by noble houses and wealthy families, and as a premium decorative material for palaces and villas, it was always in short supply.
When Adlei discovered that such a vast red oak forest existed on the mountains beside her territory, she was overjoyed. She immediately placed the entire mountainous area where the forest grew under the jurisdiction of the
Speaking of the red oak forest, its two associated products had to be mentioned as well. The first was the red berry—roughly half the size of a blueberry, thin-skinned, bursting with juice, sweet and fragrant, always hailed as a fine delicacy among fruits. Red berries grew only on a companion shrub found within red oak forests, and each year during the autumn months of August and September they reached maturity. They did not keep well after picking and were essentially sun-dried into fruit or used to brew fruit wine. Red berry wine commanded a steep price, for legend held that it could effectively treat and enhance certain masculine abilities, and it had always been warmly received among the nobility.
The second specialty of the red oak forest was the large red mushroom—a vivid crimson fungus, non-toxic, with a delicious flavor. After every heavy rain, these bright red mushrooms would sprout all across the forest floor. If not picked immediately, within three days they would wither and turn into reddish-brown dried mushrooms. In the famous mixed stew that was wildly popular across the Galentea Continent, tossing in a few dried large red mushrooms could effectively enhance the savoriness and cut the grease from the broth. Moreover, large red mushrooms were exquisite whether used in soups or cooked dishes.
For Adlei, owning this red oak forest was tantamount to giving the Dina family a small treasury. Before the forest found a worthy buyer and was felled, the two specialty products alone could bring her an additional twenty to thirty gold Forda per year—a veritable windfall. Stationing two mountain keepers to guard it was hardly excessive.
The hunter's cabin was built in a small hollow beside the mountain pass and the red oak forest. It was a three-story structure: the ground floor was constructed from mountain stone, while the upper two stories were built from whole logs. The third-floor attic even featured a small signal tower. The cabin could almost pass for a small fortress. When Adlei noticed Lorist's puzzlement, she explained that every winter, wolves roaming the mountains habitually descended to forage, so the cabin served a dual purpose—first, to guard against winter wolves or magic bear attacks, and second, to light a signal fire to alert the territory garrison should any of those magical beasts appear, prompting them to mobilize and exterminate the threat.
The ground floor contained five rooms—one large and four small. The large central room housed the main staircase leading to the second floor. The four rooms flanking it served as the stable, storehouse, utility room, and repair shop. The repair shop even contained a small forge, used for mending or crafting basic tools and weapons. The second floor had four rooms of roughly equal size—two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a rest room at the top of the stairs, or perhaps a dining room would be more apt. In its center sat a crude, heavy table hewn from a whole log, accompanied by four tree-stump stools. Two small squirrel pelts and a deer head hung on the wall as decoration.
Unlike the stone ground floor, all four rooms on the second floor had windows. However, the windows in the two bedrooms and the dining room were covered by thick wooden planks. Only the kitchen had four panes of green glass, though even those were shielded by a wooden shutter on the outside—a double-layered window system. Without opening the windows, the entire second floor was poorly lit, which explained the large patches of dark soot stains on the wooden walls—marks left by oil lamps and torches used for indoor illumination.
The leftmost bedroom on the second floor had a quarter of its space partitioned off to form the staircase leading up to the attic. The third-floor attic at the very top was also walled with whole logs, but it was the brightest spot in the entire cabin—one side featured two large windows, or rather window-doors, also of double-layered construction. The inner layer consisted of eight panes of green glass, while the outer layer had two thick wooden doors. Open all four window-doors, and you could step directly onto the small signal beacon tower on the roof.
The cabin's water supply was piped in from a mountain stream higher up through several large bamboo poles with their internal joints knocked out, spanning roughly sixteen to seventeen meters. Using the natural elevation drop of the stream, these bamboo poles were buried in the ground and connected to a water tank in the second-floor kitchen. The tank had an overflow spout fitted at the top, and once the water reached three-quarters of the tank's height, the excess drained through bamboo pipes into a small pool in the cabin yard—the same pool used for washing and watering horses.
"This place isn't bad. We'll stay here," Lorist said from the third-floor rooftop platform, looking well satisfied as he addressed
"But Your Highness, this place is far too bare—it's missing a great many things. Why don't I make a trip down to the castle and bring back some tableware, candles, and bedding?" Redi suggested.
"Those things are simple enough. For the next couple of days, head up into the mountains and see what you can find—deer hides, wolf pelts, anything like that—and we'll make them ourselves. Besides, didn't Adlei say those two Sword Saints posing as apothecaries will be coming back in a few days? We'll spend the next day or two wandering the nearby woods, digging up plenty of herbs to give them, and send them packing all the sooner," Lorist said.
"Very well, Your Highness," Redi nodded.
What Lorist hadn't expected was that three days later, the couple of Sword Saints posing as apothecaries actually came up the mountain to the cabin in person, accompanied by Adlei. Fortunately, over the past two days Lorist and Redi had gathered a large quantity of herbs, all piled up in the yard. The herbs had yet to be washed, dried, or given even the most basic processing. Also drying in the yard was a wolf hide riddled with holes.
"Mm, these herbs are quite good. I'll take them all." The male apothecary called Jack barely glanced at the herbs piled in the yard before claiming every last one, and he used the excuse to slip inside the cabin for a thorough look around. As for the female apothecary, she kept Lorist cornered in the yard, peppering him with questions while making a show of being very interested in that wolf hide.
"Ma'am, this wolf fell into one of our traps and was killed by the spikes buried underneath, which is why it's riddled with holes. Otherwise, a fine hide like this would be worth at least three or four large silver coins, but now it's not worth a copper. All I can do is patch it up for my own use." Lorist put on an excellent impression of a greedy, shabby farmer—though the truth was, the holes in the hide had been deliberately poked by Redi with tree branches on his orders. After all, a good wolf hide would either be claimed by the lord at a low price or sold to a general store; no mountain keeper would be willing to keep one for himself.
"Mm, what a shame about the wolf hide. By the way, where's your companion?" the female apothecary asked.
"There he is over there. He went to patrol the mangrove forest just now, and I had to stay behind to feed the horses and make lunch." Lorist pointed over the female apothecary's shoulder.
The female apothecary turned to look and saw Redi walking towards them along the path from the mangrove forest. He had a hunting bow slung across his back and was carrying three pheasants and two hares.
Aristoli immediately erupted: "Well, well, Clement! You used patrolling as an excuse to sneak off hunting again, and this time I've caught you red-handed! Don't expect to see a single coin of wages this month. Remember, everything in the mangrove forest belongs to our Dinar family. Hand those over—I'm confiscating them!"
Redi walked over, looking dejected. "But I didn't catch these in the mangrove forest! I was hunting in the back hills, which don't belong to our family's territory!"
Aristoli grew even angrier. "I pay you to watch over this mangrove forest, not to go hunting in the back hills! No more wages, and that's final. Besides, how can you prove you didn't catch these in the mangrove forest? Or that they didn't run out of our forest?"
That... how could one possibly prove that? Redi had no choice but to hand the game over to Aristoli. She even picked through it, tossing one pheasant and one hare back on the ground with a look of disdain. "So scrawny. You two can keep these for soup."
The female apothecary watched with wide-eyed amazement as Aristoli triumphantly hung the legitimately pilfered game on the saddle of her mount. Her eyes filled with respect—so *this* was how a proper lord acted! At that moment, the male apothecary called Jack emerged from the hunting lodge, giving a slight shake of his head, clearly having found nothing.
Since they had discovered nothing here, the couple posing as apothecaries prepared to leave. But before they could go, they still had to settle the payment for the pile of medicinal herbs in the yard. Aristoli proved remarkably shrewd in the bargaining, and soon the hundred or two hundred jin of fresh herbs were sold for the price of fifteen large silver coins per Gold Forde.
Aristoli happily pocketed the gold and silver coins paid by the female apothecary. Then she pulled two small silver coins from her own purse and tossed them to Lorist and Redi. "There. Good work. This is your reward—enough for you to buy five mugs of ale at the town tavern..."
Lorist gave a bitter smile and picked up one of the small silver coins, rubbing it between his fingers. This time, he truly understood how the nobles of a territory exploited their subjects. In fact, Aristoli offering two small silver coins as a bonus was considered quite generous. In the eyes of the territorial nobility, everything produced within their domain belonged to them. Just like these herbs—they were all the property of the Dinar family. The labor Lorist and Redi had invested in gathering them amounted to only two or three days' work. And the labor of the common folk was the cheapest commodity in the eyes of the territorial nobility.
Aristoli and the fake apothecary couple had all ridden horseback up the mountain, so the fresh herbs still needed to be transported back to their town. Aristoli was quite generous about this, stating she would send separate messengers to deliver the herbs to the Horseshoe Tavern in Grandplateau River Town.
"Can't those two just deliver them?" The female apothecary pointed at Lorist and Redi.
"No. If I send them, they'll be off gallivanting for two or three days before coming back. Now that they've got money, they'll go gambling for sure—and they won't return until every last coin is spent. I'm not giving them yet another excuse to run off." Aristoli refused flatly.
The fake apothecary couple were struck speechless, thinking to themselves that two small silver coins hardly counted as "money." But they didn't really care who delivered the herbs. Their original plan had been to send these two mountain guards to deliver the goods and quietly bribe them into acting as informants—reporting back whenever they spotted guests or anything unusual at Castle Dinar. Now that Aristoli had nixed the idea of sending them, and on second thought these two lived on the mountain and wouldn't know much about the castle's affairs anyway, they decided to let it go.
Only when the figures below had shrunk to tiny black dots did Redi finally let out a long breath. "Your Highness, I'm truly grateful that Lady Aristoli isn't the matriarch of our Norton Family..."
Lorist laughed. "Didn't you notice what a brilliant performance Aristoli put on? We've finally sent those two Sword Saints disguised as apothecaries packing—they won't suspect us anymore. Starting tomorrow, I need to begin treating my injuries. Do you remember the herbs I listed for you? Tomorrow, go into the mountains and see if you can find them. Also, make me a wooden bath tub. I'll need herbal soaks to heal the damage inside my body."
Lorist planned to use the Sea of Elixir Qi Art, with Redi's help, to restore the damage to his meridians and dantian. Compared to the Metal Water Art, the Sea of Elixir Qi Art was far more balanced and gentle—especially since it had originally been adapted from Daoist longevity techniques, making it particularly effective for recovery. The first two stages were easy to pick up, which would make things simpler for Lorist. The meridians and dantian inside his body had been nearly destroyed by the combat force embedded in the Storm Sword Saint's sword that had pierced his chest. Only the slow, careful work of the Sea of Elixir Qi Art could mend such damage. Once he reached the third stage, he could switch back to the Metal Water Art and recover his former strength.
And so Lorist and Redi settled into the hunting lodge on the mountain and began their convalescence. Summer gave way to autumn, and time passed swiftly. Occasionally, Aristoli would bring her maid Sunilulu and her precious son Triech up the mountain—using the excuse of supervising servants harvesting red mushrooms after a heavy rain—to spend half a day with Lorist at the hunting lodge. Little chubby Triech didn't recognize that the bearded man was his father, but he knew this man was kind to him—making him toys, playing with him, and cooking all sorts of delicious food. So he grew quite attached to Lorist.
The days slipped by one by one. By October, Lorist had already progressed to the third stage of the Sea of Elixir Qi Art and recovered to the strength of a Gold-rank swordsman. Even against a Sword Saint, he could now put up a fight. Lorist figured that by year's end he could resume training in the Metal Water Art, and within another half year he would recover to the rank of Sword Saint—and return to the Northland in grand style.
That day, Lorist was on the rooftop sorting through some herbs Redi had gathered—the cleaned medicinal plants needed to dry in the open air. That was when he saw Aristoli riding a horse up the mountain in a rush. She reached the yard, looked up, and called out to him: "Lorist, I've got news from the Northland—the Norton Family is in trouble!"
...