Surviving in the chaos of war begins in the wilderness.

Chapter 20 A Series of Surprises

When Zhou Ye happily returned to his little home, it was two days later. Having become familiar with the roads, the journey had been shortened by a whole day.

However, this road is indeed quite difficult to travel. No wonder we rarely encounter anyone, and no one enters the mountains from here.

Putting down the carrying pole, Zhou Ye was too lazy to tidy up. After steaming a pot of rice, he caught a rooster pheasant, killed a bamboo snake, and added plenty of dried potato slices and dried lettuce slices to make a large pot of stew...

After eating and drinking his fill, Zhou Ye sipped a bowl of wild tea he had just bought while processing the information he had received from Manager Ding.

This haul was indeed substantial. Besides replenishing a large amount of supplies, they even had an extra 7 taels of silver?

Furthermore, the town is located near the county seat, and it only takes about an hour to get there.

The timing was just unfortunate this time. The town's market day is usually on the 8th of each month, when there are many farmers and merchants coming and going, unlike this time when it was so quiet. And the next market day should be in eight days?

At this moment, Zhou Ye couldn't help but start thinking.

The original plan will not change. Only after this winter, when my martial arts skills have reached a higher level and I have a better ability to protect myself, will I consider leaving the mountains to settle down.

However, settling down elsewhere requires money. Therefore, this kind of trade needs to continue several more times.

Especially things that aren't very valuable in the mountains and forests, can be sold for money just by putting them out there? Isn't that like picking up money for free?

Of course, there might be too many uncontrollable factors in the county seat. Although the selling price in the town will definitely be lower, safety should be the priority. I'll stick to trading in the town and stick with what I know!

After figuring this out, Zhou Ye tidied up his things. He first looked at the map and found that it was indeed quite simple.

However, looking at the map, the path I took out of the mountains was relatively straight, without much detours. It also showed the distribution of nearby towns and roads, and marked several potentially dangerous areas in the forest. So… at least it was somewhat useful!

After putting the map away, Zhou Ye began to peruse the illustrated guide again.

Because Zhou Ye's spirit energy was very high, although he couldn't quite say he had a photographic memory, it was close enough. Therefore, after reading the illustrations and descriptions of those wild animals and herbs, he felt a large amount of knowledge flooding into his mind.

Therefore, after observing for a while, Zhou Ye felt a little regretful. He seemed to have found quite a few kinds of herbs in the areas he had frequented before. If he had known this, he should have collected them; they could have been sold for money.

However, at this moment, Zhou Ye also felt a little fortunate. It seemed he had made the right purchase of this illustrated guide...wait?

Suddenly, Zhou Ye was surprised to find that his interface was active, and the experience points for the beginner poison skill were rapidly increasing: +1, +2...

This filled Zhou Ye with mixed feelings of surprise and delight.

In his previous training, the experience points for beginner-level poison skills increased extremely slowly. After collecting so much snake venom, he only gained 2 points? He couldn't even get to the beginner level, which almost made Zhou Ye lose confidence, and he had temporarily given up.

However, in such a short reading time, the experience points increased by a full 4 points? Furthermore, Zhou Ye sensed that the cultivation of poison techniques, or rather, the cultivation of martial arts techniques, was not affected by the time limit for martial arts training. In other words, it wasn't limited by those two hours. As long as he continued to read, understand, and absorb that… knowledge about poison, the experience points for basic poison techniques would continue to increase?

Perhaps it's true that every medicine has some degree of toxicity, and medicine and toxicology are inseparable. A good doctor is generally also a skilled practitioner of toxicology.

This illustrated guide also briefly introduces some basic medicinal properties of herbs. While the main purpose is herb collection, there are also many contraindications to their use. And if you apply these contraindications to other situations, isn't that tantamount to using poison?

Who would have thought that something unintentional would turn out so well!

Zhou Ye was invigorated. He immediately began reading carefully, pondering until late at night, and successfully mastered the basics of Poison Technique (Mortal): Beginner (11/50) overnight. His natural attribute points also predictably increased by +1.

……

After some consideration, Zhou Ye decided to allocate points to health this time – Health (90/90).

We need to start addressing our weaknesses now. I'm still too fragile. Even a slightly serious injury or illness could be life-threatening.

Since we've already added points to Constitution, let's add some points to Health!

However, despite this unexpected gain, I still can't stop working like crazy.

The next morning, during his morning exercise, Zhou Ye stood on a large rock by the river, holding the fishing net in his hand, and threw it out with all his might...

If the fishing season started in the autumn, it has now entered its peak season.

Even with nets cast from the shore, you can still catch a full net of fish. Among them are salmon, eels, trout, and many shrimp and crabs mixed in. One net can almost fill an entire wicker basket.

In just four or five nets, four wicker baskets were filled. Zhou Ye carried the four baskets of fish home, and then couldn't wait to return to the riverbank.

However, when the fishing net was cast again, the panel gave another surprise—Basic Casting (Unskilled): Beginner (0/10)

Good heavens! I never expected that catching just a few fish would trigger such a rare and basic martial arts skill?

But then I thought about it again, and it made sense. Take throwing with a fishing net or a lasso, for example—couldn't that be used in combat? Tell me! Isn't that a martial art?

Although I was still very happy, this kind of unorthodox martial arts technique was actually not very useful, and it was impossible to continue farming points anyway.

After finishing my morning exercise, there were more than twenty baskets of fish in the yard of my little home.

After a busy morning, all the fish were salted. The swim bladders were extracted and boiled to make a jar of fish glue. As for the selected shrimp and crabs? Zhou Ye kept a large bowl of each, intending to cook them today. The extra shrimp were dried into shrimp jerky. The extra crabs were used to make several jars of drunken crab using the jar of white wine…

I was planning to use the fishing net materials I bought to weave a few fish traps. But I found I'd caught way too many fish, so I'll have to put that aside for now!

Next came the training of basic slashing, which successfully increased by 8 experience points. He discovered Basic Slashing (Underachievable): Mastery (487/500)? Zhou Ye thought for a moment, then simply took a cage containing a bamboo snake and trained Basic Slashing to—Basic Slashing (Underachievable): Perfection (0/1000) in one go.

I felt that I had mastered many of the subtleties of basic slashing techniques, and I realized that my strength had greatly increased. I should be able to deal with 5 or 6 ordinary people at the same time now.

By evening, a bamboo arrow had been whittled, and feathers had been glued to the tip using fish glue. Beside Zhou Ye, more than a dozen bamboo arrows had already been made…