A month passed in quiet intensity.
Han Yu's days were now a strict regimen of theory, herbal preparation, mental simulations, and controlled practice sessions under Li Mei's stern yet surprisingly structured guidance.
He had become something of a fixture in her personal pill hut, a shadow that moved from one herb rack to another, always holding a compendium in one hand and a measuring spoon or jade pestle in the other.
The first week, he had focused solely on the Compendium of 108 Common Healing Herbs.
The second week, he had absorbed the Compendium of Stabilizing and Neutralizing Agents—a more specialized book used to understand how to manage volatile or rare ingredients.
By the third week, he was diving into the Basic Theory of Multistep Pill Crafting, a book notoriously hard to grasp even for Inner Court disciples. And now, by the end of the month, Han Yu had done something few outer disciples could even dream of:
He had memorized all three.
