"In love with a treefolk?" Dean Zhu Lao solemnly asked, his eyes boring down on Yang Qing, whose panic and anxiety spiked a hundredfold beneath that stare.
"Y...yes," he ekly answered.
Just as he had prepared himself to be chewed out for his audacity, Dean Zhu Lao suddenly burst into boisterous laughter.
"Love-stricken," he said between spirited laughs that left him wheezing and in tears as he slapped his thighs. "I told him he was cursed," Dean Zhu Lao added, wiping the edges of his eyes as his laughter began to calm, though it was still animated.
"So he wasn’t in love with a treefolk?" Yang Qing hesitantly asked.
"Well..." said Dean Zhu Lao, pausing to catch his breath before continuing. "Well, given how passionately obsessed he was with all manner of plants, I guess it wouldn’t be a stretch for him to fall in love with a treefolk.
He used to sing to plants before he harvested them and recite poems when he planted them... can you believe that?" he said, breaking into another bout of laughter as he patted Yu Long’s back.
"Plants?" Yang Qing asked dubiously.
"Yes..." Dean Zhu Lao said as he cleared his throat, with a few short laughs still escaping. "Didn’t Ren Shu tell you? Song Quan is a purple grade herbologist whose interest in the subject went beyond just passion," Dean Zhu Lao said before breaking into a snicker.
"Purple grade?" Yang Qing murmured in amazent.
"Yes, a pretty accomplished one actually," Yu Long chid in from the side, before adding another bombshell, "He is a purple grade alchemist too..."
Words failed him as Yang Qing’s mouth widened along with his eyes. A Purple Grade herbologist and a Purple Grade alchemist. Song Quan had actually reached the pinnacle of two fields. Yes, the two fields were interrelated, but at their root, they were still two different fields. Yang Qing knew of accomplished herbologists whose understanding of alchemy wasn’t up to par with their mastery of herbology. Ma Yuan was a pri example; he could perfectly nurture countless top-rank Sky Grade spiritual plants with effortless precision, but he couldn’t brew a low-tier Orange Grade potion to save his life.
A herbologist may know how to nurture a spiritual plant, what it needed, and what it looked like when it was getting too much or too little of sothing. They knew everything related to its growth cycle, nurturing environnt, and conditions. But that didn’t automatically equate to knowing what reactions might occur when mixing certain herbs together. They might know how a plant would react to various elents and conditions while it was anchored in the earth, but once it was harvested, that entered another domain entirely: the domain of alchemists.
In the sa vein, alchemists knew how to work with the properties of an herb once it was harvested and mixed with other plants and materials. But that didn’t an they necessarily knew how to nurture those herbs or provide the right conditions for their growth. They could tell if an herb was of the right quality, but how to cultivate it to that standard was the domain of the herbologists.
Given how interconnected the two disciplines were, it wasn’t strange to find cultivators proficient in both, with so even maintaining the sa level of understanding across the two fields. But this was Yang Qing’s first ti hearing of soone who had reached the level of being both a Purple Grade herbologist and a Purple Grade alchemist.
Those he had co across were usually Blue Grade, and if anyone touched on Gold Grade, it was usually in just one of the two disciplines, with the other lagging behind. A case in point was Ren Shu, who was a Purple Grade healer and a Gold Grade herbologist. And this was Ren Shu. Given the gulf in their realms, Yang Qing couldn’t properly gauge Ren Shu’s talent, but from their interactions and the fact that Ren Shu was a Soul Formation expert, it was safe to assu he was a highly talented cultivator. And yet, even he couldn’t reach Purple Grade in both disciplines.
Mastering one discipline was like conquering an entire ocean of truths, principles, and mysteries tied to that domain. To reach Purple Grade, you had to master that entire ocean; any less, and you could forget about touching that legendary realm. If a single drop contained countless mysteries and truths to explore and refine into one’s understanding, how many drops would you have to comprehend to cover the entire ocean?
What Song Quan had achieved was as monuntal as creating multiple Purple Grade arts. To be a Purple Grade herbologist, one needed to raise a Saint Grade herb or spiritual plant from one that was, at most, Sky Grade. And to be considered a Purple Grade alchemist, one had to be capable of brewing a Purple Grade potion, whose worth was no less than that of a genuine Saint Grade natural dao treasure, which would make it even more precious than the Red Amber Scholar Jade Tree before them. After all, the tree was a quasi-Saint Grade treasure, while a Purple Grade alchemist’s creation had to possess abilities and properties matching a fully-fledged Saint Grade natural dao treasure.
"Purple Grade herbologist... Purple Grade alchemist..." Yang Qing muttered dazedly, finding the reality more inexplicable the more he said it. His eyes suddenly widened as a realization clicked into place.
"So when he went to the Green Fog Region..." he said, his eyes wide.
"It wasn’t just for exploration. He was there for the herbs, aiming for the rare kinds at the center," Dean Zhu Lao said, finishing Yang Qing’s thought. He sighed before adding, "He underestimated that place, though. He was lucky his skills in those two fields were profound enough to use as a bargaining chip for his life; otherwise, he would likely have died there."
"But the story said he made it out through his own strength?" Yang Qing said, frowning. The tale he knew was that Song Quan had reached the central region, where his body froze for days, overwheld by an instinctual fear of what lay at the heart of the Green Fog Region. He never saw what it was; he only felt a terror so profound that he couldn’t move, and it took every reserve of willpower he had to get his body to obey him. Once he did, he fled the area at his highest speed, created a map of the region, and closed himself off from the world after that.
"Stories never capture the whole truth," Dean Zhu Lao sagely said, "especially where he is involved," he added with a smile.
"Fables and truths, young Yang Qing," he softly added.
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