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Passing through the long, dim corridor, Gao De's view suddenly opened up, and the light turned bright.
The fragrance of herbs drifted toward him, and before his eyes spread a vibrant sea of green, making it feel as though the rot clinging to his body had been swept away.
The herb cultivation area was not especially large, yet it was divided into several plots with different kinds of soil.
After all, herbs were, in essence, delicate "plants" that required careful tending.
Different herbs had different demands when it came to their growing environment, some of them extremely particular.
Leaving aside outside conditions such as temperature and water quality, the requirements herbs had for soil alone were already complex.
Most herbs could grow in loose, fertile, well-drained earth.
But some preferred humus-rich forest soil, as was typical for ginseng-like medicinal plants.
Others thrived in acidic or slightly acidic soil, while some liked to grow along sandy riverbanks.
Thus, one had to adjust to local conditions and select the appropriate soil based on the growth habits and characteristics of each herb.
The cultivation of medicinal herbs was a profound field of study.
It required not only the ability to identify the herbs and thoroughly understand their habits, but also the knowledge of how to create a suitable environment for them—ensuring survival, increasing yield, and strengthening their medicinal properties.
This work included, but was not limited to: preparing nutrient soil, thinning seedlings, fixing seedling placement, deep tilling combined with fertilization to improve soil texture, hoeing and weeding, fertilizing, watering, preventing disease and pests, and adjusting plant form…
The bulk of Gao De's morning work consisted of loosening soil, hilling, fertilizing, watering, and checking for pests and disease.
Under normal circumstances, once one became familiar with these tasks, they were little more than repetitive labor.
Because the herbs Seda grew were always the same few varieties, even though it was Gao De's first time personally carrying out the work, he completed the cultivation duties cleanly and without a single mistake by relying on the memories left behind by his predecessor.
After finishing that, only one final task remained for the morning.
Gao De quickened his pace and entered a small room.
Inside were many iron cages, each containing anywhere from five to ten small mice with gray-brown fur.
These were the little gray mice Seda specifically bred and raised for live potion experiments.
Though testing potions directly on humans yielded the most accurate results, even in this world human life was not so worthless that Seda could conduct unrestricted human experimentation whenever he pleased. Most of the time, animal testing was still the norm.
Little gray mice reproduced quickly, were cheap to raise, were relatively non-aggressive, and—under those conditions—shared a relatively high similarity with humans.
Not in appearance.
In genetics.
Thus, the little gray mice had naturally become the ideal live test subjects.
Gao De poured feed into each cage's food tray, refilled the water, and checked the condition of the mice inside.
He soon noticed that one mouse looked sickly, too listless even to compete for food.
Looking more closely, he saw that a patch of fur on its back had fallen away, almost like mange, revealing the red skin underneath.
"Looks like some kind of skin disease," Gao De judged with a nod.
"Then it'll be you."
He reached in and lifted the sick little mouse out of the cage.
Of course, Gao De was not planning to treat it.
First, because he didn't know how.
Second, because there was no need.
Since little gray mice were far less valuable than herbs, the apprentices did not care for them nearly as carefully as they did the medicinal plants. As a result, some mice inevitably fell ill from time to time.
And the fate of sick mice was always the same:
detect early, put down humanely—
so they would not infect the healthy ones.
Gao De did not hesitate.
Gripping the mouse by the head, he twisted sharply along the neck.
With a crisp snap, the mouse died before it could even struggle.
He tossed the dead mouse aside casually.
But his attention was already focused inward, on his own mind.
Deep within it, the elegant crescent-shaped gemstone was shining once again.
A change had taken place.
Inside the gem, two points of light and twelve dotted lines had appeared, forming two Big Dipper-shaped ladle diagrams.
Each set had seven nodes and six dotted lines, yet only the first node in each was currently glowing, while the remaining six were dark.
It was not difficult to infer that all seven nodes would need to light up before one set could be considered complete.
In the next instant, the familiar information interface appeared before Gao De's "eyes."
Origin:
0 Ring — [Human] (1/7), [Gray-Eyed Mouse] (1/7)
Spells:
0 Ring — [Mage Hand], [Mending]
Compared to before, the Origin section now had an additional entry:
[Gray-Eyed Mouse]
Which was the little gray mouse's proper name.
"So that's how it is…" Gao De murmured.
The moment he first saw this information interface, he had already concluded that Origin could not come only from humans. Just like the spell section, the Origin section could likely expand into multiple entries—he simply had only unlocked the human one at first.
When he had gone to the back hill to bury Yilan's corpse, Gao De had casually crushed a few unknown insects to test his theory.
Yet no new Origin entry had appeared.
That meant one of two things:
Either Origin was not gained through killing…
Or those insects were too weak to provide any Origin at all.
The latter seemed far more likely.
After all, before the human entry there was a rank classification:
0 Ring.
If Gao De wanted to obtain 0 Ring Origin, then he probably had to get it from 0 Ring creatures.
Yilan had been a mage apprentice, which according to the mage ranking system made him a 0 Ring mage—just the right level to provide Origin.
But guesses alone were not enough.
He needed to experiment.
And in the herb garden, besides the mage apprentices, there just happened to be another kind of 0 Ring creature.
The Gray-Eyed Mouse, known to ordinary people as the little gray mouse.
Though weak enough to be slaughtered at will, it truly did share the same rank as a mage apprentice: 0 Ring.
Because the Gray-Eyed Mouse carried an extremely faint trace of earth-vein creature bloodline.
That trace was far too thin to grant any supernatural ability or bestow the power of a true earth-vein being, but it was enough to lift them out of the category of ordinary animals and place them among 0 Ring lifeforms.
Even among creatures of the same ring, there were still differences.
His speculation had been proven correct.
The next step followed naturally.
Killing seven humans would be difficult.
Killing seven little gray mice, however, was effortless.
Gao De moved immediately.
He pulled another healthy gray-eyed mouse from a cage.
The mouse kicked frantically in his hand, letting out shrill squeaks, but it was all futile—like a powerless young girl being dragged away, unable to resist.
Gao De studied the mouse carefully for several dozen seconds.
After confirming that the panel showed no new changes, he silently stretched out his other hand toward it.
By now the mouse, seemingly accustomed to being held, had stopped struggling.
Then—
Snap.
The mouse died instantly.
The next moment, another point of light within the gem lit up.
Origin:
0 Ring — [Human] (1/7), [Gray-Eyed Mouse] (2/7)
"As expected. Death is a necessary condition," Gao De muttered inwardly.
"What I still don't know is whether the death must be caused by my own hand."
That was something he could verify later.
For now, the priority was to obtain his first complete Origin.
He set down the dead mouse and swept his gaze over the other mice in the cages, still unaware of what was about to happen to them…
Little gray mice were not worth much, and casualties were common. Even if seven died in one day, no one would care in the slightest.
And Gao De was eager to learn what Origin actually did.
So he promptly sacrificed five more mice to the experiment.
Very soon—
Origin:
0 Ring — [Human] (1/7), [Gray-Eyed Mouse] (7/7)
At that moment, the crescent gem still floated motionless at the center of Gao De's Spell Starsea.
But inside it, seven glowing points now shone brightly, while the six dotted lines had become solid lines of light.
The points and lines formed a complete, indivisible model, like the Big Dipper, slowly rotating with strange beauty.
"Come on, let me see what you can really do," Gao De said inwardly.
At the same time, he shifted his attention to the two cantrips listed in the spell section.
Each still had a small flashing yellow plus sign behind it.
After a brief hesitation, Gao De decided to test it on Mending.
Mending (Transmutation, 0 Ring)
This spell repairs a single break or tear in an object you touch, such as a broken chain link, a key snapped in half, a torn cloak, or a leaking wineskin.
As long as the damage is no larger than 1 foot in any dimension, you can repair it perfectly without leaving a trace.
The spell can physically repair a magical item or a construct, but it does not restore the magic on such objects.
Once again, Gao De used his will to press the yellow plus sign behind Mending.
Upgrade.
The change came instantly.
Inside the gem, the completed Big Dipper that represented the Gray-Eyed Mouse Origin stopped rotating and suddenly began to flow like liquid light.
It slipped out of the crescent gem and moved toward the spell model representing Mending.
The so-called spell model was the basis of a mage's spellcasting.
It was formed from starlike particles within the Spell Starsea, resembling a constellation made of stars in a vast universe.
The difference was that in ordinary books, the lines between stars in constellations were drawn by human beings for convenience.
But in spell models, those lines were real.
Following the guidance of a spell formula, a mage used spiritual power to pull starlike particles together in the Spell Starsea, using spiritual force as a frame to anchor them in place and construct a spell model.
Once the spell model was successfully formed, it meant the mage had initially mastered that spell and could henceforth cast it through the model.
Every spell model had a different structure—drastically different, in fact.
The number of particles, their spacing, and their direction all had nearly unforgiving requirements. Even the slightest deviation would ruin it.
Thus, learning a spell was an extremely difficult and time-consuming matter.
Under normal circumstances, a mage would fail hundreds or even thousands of times before successfully constructing a single spell model.
And now, the target of the Big Dipper was precisely this thing—the very core of a mage's power.
The Big Dipper moved quickly.
In the blink of an eye, it collided with the Mending spell model.
There was no world-shaking explosion.
Instead, light flashed softly.
Then the seven glowing points merged into the spell model like fledgling swallows returning to their nest.
"This is…"
Gao De stared in stunned silence.
The Mending spell model, which had already been complete, now seemed to blossom into a second spring after absorbing the lights.
It began growing new branches.
At certain nodes it extended outward, forming new lines and new star-particles.
The whole process was stable and natural.
Some nodes extended by only one line and one new particle.
Others grew far more.
Yet throughout the entire transformation, the original foundation of the spell model remained intact.
Though only seven points of light had entered it, the final number of newly generated particles was not seven at all—
It had grown by thirteen new star-particles before finally stopping.
The Big Dipper vanished.
The Mending spell model returned to stillness, no longer changing.
As Gao De stared at the transformed model—now utterly different from the theoretical Mending model he knew—new information surfaced in his mind by instinct.
That information told him this new spell model was still the 0 Ring Transmutation spell Mending.
Its function had not changed in essence. It still repaired minor physical damage to an object.
But compared to the original spell, it now had something extra.
Under the new spell model, when used on a magical item, Mending could now also restore the magic originally contained within that item.
At first glance, this might seem like only a small change.
But Gao De was not so short-sighted.
He understood very clearly—
this was a qualitative leap.
If he had to use a term from his pre-transmigration world, it would be:
skill enhancement.
And not merely a simple increase in numbers, either.
This was a higher-level mechanical upgrade.
The crude information panel also changed.
Origin:
0 Ring — [Human] (1/7), [Gray-Eyed Mouse] (Used)
Spells:
0 Ring — [Mage Hand], [Mending+]
The 0 Ring spell Mending had, under the influence of Origin, become Mending+.
Accordingly, the yellow plus sign behind its name had disappeared.
Mending+ (Transmutation, 0 Ring)
This spell repairs a single break or tear in an object you touch, such as a broken chain link, a key snapped in half, a torn cloak, or a leaking wineskin.
As long as the damage is no larger than 1 foot in any dimension, you can repair it perfectly without leaving a trace.
The spell can physically repair a magical item or a construct, but it does not restore the magic on such objects.
Additional Effect: While repairing a magical item, you can also restore the magic contained within it.