NOVEL WEB Chapter 320: Enhanced Memory
A few days had passed since Han Yu had started seriously practicing alchemy under Li Mei's guidance. Their routine had become surprisingly structured: mornings were spent preparing herbs, discussing formulas, and understanding various properties of medicinal materials.
Afternoons were dedicated to practical refinements, with Li Mei overseeing his attempts and sometimes mocking his mistakes in that sharp, teasing tone of hers—though never harshly.
By now, Han Yu had grown quite familiar with the process of refining basic pills like the Minor Vitality Replenishing Pill. His actual success rate hadn't improved all that much—he was still struggling to control the fire talisman properly. The reaction time was just a touch too slow for the level of delicacy needed in refining pills that required precise temperature control.
Yet despite this flaw, he had made undeniable progress.
"Your flame control still needs work," Li Mei noted as she observed Han Yu's latest failed attempt, where the herbal paste had charred at the very edge of the cauldron, turning bitter instead of sweet. "But your understanding of herb synergy is honestly kind of amazing."
She plucked one of the burnt dregs from the cauldron and sniffed it before flicking it away with a wrinkle of her nose.
Han Yu wiped the sweat from his brow and leaned back, slightly out of breath but not frustrated.
"I'm getting used to how they work together," he said. "It's like… people at a party. Some get along. Some don't. Some need to be introduced slowly, or they'll clash."
Li Mei blinked, then gave a small laugh. "That's one way to put it."
She was impressed—not just by the creativity of his analogies, but the intuition behind them. The concept of herb compatibility was something that even many inner court disciples struggled to grasp early on. Yet Han Yu was picking up on it in less than a week.
It wasn't just rote learning either. He understood what he was talking about.
It surprised even Han Yu.
He remembered the old days—before the sect, before cultivation—when he'd spent hours memorizing tricks, sleight-of-hand routines, and card-counting patterns just to survive in the alleyways and backrooms of his hometown taverns and gambling dens.
His brain had always been sharp. But this… this was different.
Learning and absorbing the Compendium of 108 Common Healing Herbs wasn't just a parlor trick. That little tome, barely the size of his palm, held over a thousand pages of entries. Each one listed properties, spiritual affinities, elemental traits, cultivation uses, combinations to avoid, and stages of refinement.
And in just a few days, he had memorized fifty pages.
Fifty.
He hadn't meant to. It just… happened.
"I read it once before bed," he murmured to himself once, "then again in the morning. And now I can picture the whole diagram in my head…"
Li Mei had noticed it too. She didn't say it out loud, but she'd observed how he could recall obscure pairings, minor cautions, and even trace diagrams from memory without hesitation. He wasn't reading the compendium anymore—he was studying it, absorbing it like it was second nature.
It didn't make him a great alchemist yet. But it laid the foundation. One so solid that Li Mei had started to shift how she taught him. Less hand-holding, more pushing.
"Alright, let's do something different today," she said that morning, tossing him a new set of herbs. "These are for the Qi Circulation Recovery Pill. You've read the theory. Let's see if you can balance the ingredients before we even light the cauldron."
Han Yu raised a brow. "We're not refining it?"
"You're just doing the mix prep. No flames, no Qi. Just proportions, timing, and blending." She crossed her arms. "If you screw up even one ratio, I'll know."
Han Yu smirked, catching the pouch of herbs.
"Bring it on."
An hour later, Li Mei was staring at the small wooden board where Han Yu had laid out the herbs. Three stalks of Qi Velvet Vine, sliced into crescent moons; four leaves of Bitter Ironleaf, steamed lightly with his own Spirit Qi to soften their edge; and a dusting of powdered Sunroot layered on top in exact pinches.
"…Perfect," she muttered.
Han Yu gave her a winning grin. This chapter was uploaded by the team at M|VLEMPYR.
"I like puzzles," he said.
She looked at him curiously. "You're not a cultivator in the normal sense, are you?"
He blinked. "What do you mean?"
"You don't think like one. Most people would brute force their way through this. Memorize everything. Keep refining until they feel it. But you? You think it's a game. A trick. Like solving a locked box."
Han Yu shrugged. "You're not wrong."
He didn't offer more, and she didn't press. But in her mind, she was growing more convinced that there was something unusual about him—not just his knowledge or his intuition, but the way his mind worked. And she didn't yet know about his Soul Cultivation.
Han Yu knew better than to reveal that secret. Especially when it gave him such an edge.
In truth, his Soul Qi cultivation had already begun passively enhancing his cognitive abilities. He didn't need to chant mnemonic rhymes to remember herb combinations or scribble notes on how to balance bitter and warming herbs—he simply understood it.
Like reading emotions.
Like watching threads connect.
He wasn't yet an alchemist.
But the path was opening before him.
That night, back in his own courtyard, Han Yu opened the compendium again under the light of a lantern. He wasn't tired, not mentally. He felt sharp. Alive.
He turned to page 51 and began reading.
"Silverscale Bark: a mild tempering herb, neutral alignment, wood-aspect resonance… pairs poorly with fire-aspect amplifiers…"
The words clicked.
The diagrams made sense.
And something inside him stirred—not Soul Qi, not excitement, but… purpose.
'This is what I was supposed to do,' he thought. 'This is what I forgot in the chaos.'
Alchemy was no longer a moneymaking interest to accumulate a fortune. It was his foundation.
And Han Yu never forgot what mattered. Not anymore.