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The moment Gao De stepped out the door, a trace of barely concealed savagery rose in his eyes.
"In the face of absolute power, petty cleverness is useless. Even trying to maneuver around it is exhausting."
Recalling his encounter with Mage Seda just now, what lingered in his heart was not only an indescribable humiliation, but also the relief of having narrowly escaped death.
"I may have muddled through this time, but that was only because I got lucky."
Gao De did not know exactly what spell Seda had used—the one that had made it feel as though spikes were growing from his palm—but he could guess that if he had lied, Seda would definitely have sensed it.
Fortunately, Seda's question had been:
Do you truly feel that your body has undergone no changes?
And in truth, after waking up, Gao De really had not discovered any abnormalities in his body.
Most likely, whatever effects the potion carried had all been borne by the previous owner of this body.
So the old man's potion was probably aimed at the mind or spirit, Gao De concluded.
Otherwise, after inheriting this body, he should not have felt so completely normal on a physical level.
Seda was not a large man.
And yet the pressure he exerted on Gao De was greater than anything Gao De had experienced in either his past life or this one.
Still shaken, Gao De lifted a hand and touched the place on his neck where Seda had gripped him.
There was no wound there.
And yet, moments ago, that unbearable agony had been absolutely real.
Such was the mystery of spells.
Even when they were only cantrips.
The feeling of having one's life and death rest on another person's whim was unbearable.
Though Seda was, to Gao De, merely a stranger he had met only once, Gao De's hatred for him had already reached its peak.
He also knew very clearly that he was far too weak right now. There was no possibility of him defeating Seda head-on.
The man was powerful.
So Gao De would have to endure, to hide himself, and to wait for an opening.
The question was:
how much time did he have left?
Gao De did not know that, in truth, he had only one month remaining.
But he did know that Seda valued that unnamed potion immensely. Despite failing time and again over so many years, he had never given up on refining it. That level of obsession spoke for itself.
Now that Seda had discovered Gao De was still alive after testing the potion, he would undoubtedly believe that his formula was close to success.
Which meant that in the near future, Seda would certainly attempt another batch.
And when that time came, the person chosen to test the potion would, in all likelihood, be Gao De again.
After all, he was the first apprentice who had "survived."
"Gao De, you're finally back!"
The moment Gao De returned to his room, Aimi hurried over at once.
"What did Mage Seda want with you?"
Gao De told the truth.
"He asked how I felt after taking the potion."
"I knew it!" Aimi said excitedly. "Mage Seda's potion must finally have succeeded. We're about to have good days ahead!"
"Perhaps," Gao De said, not bothering to shatter Aimi's fantasy.
Then, after a brief pause, he added seemingly casually,
"Oh, right. I ran into Yilan just now."
"What? He came looking for trouble again?" Aimi's expression changed immediately, and he asked nervously.
"More or less. But it wasn't anything serious. At most he can make things difficult for me with words—he can't really do much else," Gao De said indifferently.
"That's not the point!" Aimi was much more concerned than Gao De himself. "Yilan's been with Mage Seda the longest. He can say a few things in front of the mage. I heard that the reason you were chosen to test the potion this time had something to do with him."
"Really? I've never even had any real grudge with him. Why would he go that far?" Gao De asked, putting on a look of disbelief.
"That's just the kind of person he is. He's petty and jealous of anyone more capable than himself. You've got talent, so of course he's unhappy. And you don't bother flattering him either. How could he not resent you?"
"And your skill in potion-mixing improves so quickly that he's probably afraid Mage Seda will start valuing you more and more—until you eventually replace him."
"You still can't afford to provoke him. For now, it's better to keep up appearances and humor him on the surface," Aimi advised tactfully.
Gao De's eyes narrowed slightly. After thinking for a moment, he said,
"I understand."
Aimi took that as proof Gao De had accepted his advice, and immediately relaxed.
"That's good."
"Yilan's job is to deliver goods for Mage Seda?" Gao De asked, as though the question had just occurred to him.
"Yeah. His work is the easiest. Usually he only has to go out once every four or five days, and he even gets to stroll around the city when he does it. Not like us—we work ourselves to death here in the herb garden every day." At this point Aimi sounded openly resentful.
"I see…" Gao De's gaze drifted as though he were turning something over in his mind.
After that, he casually steered the conversation through different topics and used them to gather more information from Aimi about the herb garden, gradually building a basic understanding of his current surroundings.
Then suddenly Aimi slapped his forehead.
"Ah! We need to hurry to eat. If we go too late, there'll probably be nothing left!"
He grabbed Gao De and pulled him toward the dining hall, not forgetting to claim some credit along the way.
"I only missed the meal window because I was waiting for you to come back."
It was now dinnertime.
In Mage Seda's herb garden, meals were served three times a day—morning, noon, and evening.
If one ignored the matter of potion testing, then for most of these apprentices—who had all once been street beggars—this place was practically heaven.
Because for the vast majority of commoners, eating two meals a day was already standard.
Led by Aimi, Gao De arrived at the apprentices' dining hall.
Calling it a "dining hall" was generous. It was only slightly larger than their bedroom. Three square wooden tables stood within, each with a candle lamp holding three candles placed on top, plus a fireplace by the wall, and that was enough to qualify it as one.
By the time Gao De and Aimi arrived, they were late. Only two or three apprentices remained inside.
Aimi nervously glanced at the large plate set beside the fireplace. When he saw that there were still two black loaves of bread left, he finally let out a sigh of relief.
Beside the large plate sat a clay stew pot.
Gao De, who had eaten nothing since waking except for a sip of water, was now beginning to feel hungry as well, so he followed Aimi over.
A stack of tableware sat beside the plate. Gao De picked up a small dish, placed one of the long loaves onto it, then took a bowl and looked into the stew pot.
Inside was pea soup, made from a type of pea that was a local specialty.
After ladling himself a full bowl, Gao De and Aimi chose an empty table and sat down.
Black rye bread and pea soup.
That was the daily food of the apprentices.
As for meat—
that was out of the question.
And although it was called bread, it was worlds apart from what Gao De would have considered bread in his previous life.
These rye loaves had no yeast added to them, making them extremely hard after baking. Their taste was obviously terrible, and chewing them required real effort.
Of course, they did have one advantage.
They were cheap.
A 4-pound loaf—about 1.8 kilograms—cost only 6 copper coins.
Gao De did the rough conversion in his head: that came out to around 3.5 copper coins per kilogram.
The cheapest meat, by contrast, cost 7 copper coins per pound, or about 450 grams.
The cost-performance ratio of rye bread was obvious.
Aimi took a table knife and sliced the long loaf into pieces, arranging them on his plate. Then he spooned pea soup over the slices one ladle at a time before stuffing them into his mouth.
This, apparently, was the proper way to eat rye bread—drink the soup while letting it soften the bread slightly. Otherwise, if you tried to eat it dry, you'd choke.
Of course, simply soaking the bread directly in the soup was also a very common method.
Gao De copied Aimi, using the table knife to cut the loaf into several slices, then soaking them in pea soup before putting them into his mouth.
The next moment, he could not help frowning.
Even though he had braced himself mentally, the food was even harder to swallow than he had imagined.
The pea soup had no seasoning whatsoever. The bread softened a little after soaking, but if he had to describe the taste, it was only slightly better than wood shavings.
For Gao De, food like this was horrifying.
But to the other apprentices, having bread to eat at all was already quite good.
Still, Gao De had no room to complain. Hunger gnawed at his stomach, and he could only force the rye bread down with a furrowed brow.
As a result, he gained yet another reason he had to resist Seda.
Because if he was doomed to eat food like this every day—
then how was that any different from being dead?
After dinner came the apprentices' cultivation time.
Life in the herb garden followed a strict routine.
During the day, everyone busied themselves with their assigned work.
At night, they were given a fixed three to four hours for cultivation.
After returning to the room, Aimi immediately seized the time and quickly entered a cultivation state.
Gao De, meanwhile, first reviewed in his mind the fundamentals of a mage's cultivation.
For a mage, the two most important foundational attributes were:
mana and spiritual power.
Mana was the energy consumed when casting spells—the so-called "blue bar," the cornerstone of all a mage's power.
Spiritual power, on the other hand, was tied to controlling spells and learning them. It determined a person's casting technique, the stability of consecutive spellcasting, the possible variations of a spell, and even the speed at which one could learn new spells.
Both mana and spiritual power could only be increased through dull, repetitive cultivation day after day.
There was absolutely no shortcut.
"Begin guidance. First, enter a state of inner stillness…"
The training method for mana was called Guidance.
The training method for spiritual power was called Meditation.
The two were separate and could not be cultivated at the same time. Generally, one always practiced Guidance first, and Meditation after.
Because the process of practicing Guidance itself required spiritual power.
And once spiritual power was depleted by more than forty percent, continuing Guidance would produce half the result for twice the effort.
This was not difficult for Gao De to understand.
It was just like studying: the first few hours were naturally the most effective, but once the mind grew fatigued, efficiency dropped sharply.
Practicing Meditation after Guidance not only quickly restored consumed spiritual power, but also improved its growth.
By Gao De's own understanding, it was like physical training—repeating the cycle of:
consume energy — recover energy
Through that process, one could stimulate better growth.