The First Order

The shop given to Ren Xiaosu by the Qing Consortium was called the Hall of Chinese Medicine. On the same day, Wang Fugui said he wanted to custom build a new signboard for the shop, but Ren Xiaosu rejected his suggestion. After all, a new, custom-made sign required money, so they should discuss it together before doing it.

At the back of this shop were five rooms; a kitchen, three bedrooms, and a toilet.

After arriving at this stronghold, Ren Xiaosu didn’t even know how to use the toilet when he saw one. The toilets in town were all pit latrines, while they could flush water directly into the sewers in the stronghold.

Everyone finally learned how to use the toilet after trying it for a long time.

There was a tap in the bathroom that nobody knew what it did at first. But the moment it was turned on, they could see clear water flowing out.

Ren Xiaosu and the others were very surprised. They had never seen anything so magical before!

It seemed the original owner of the shop used this tap as the source of their daily water consumption. Ren Xiaosu said, “It’s no wonder the stronghold’s residents are so clean. It’s because they don’t have to ration their water usage in the stronghold.”

In town, each person was allocated a fixed amount of water each day. No one could change that rule.

Originally, there were still some wells in town. But those were sealed up by the stronghold for the reasons of preventing water theft and wasting of water.

The three bedrooms were allocated as followed: Xiaoyu would have one room for herself, Wang Dalong and Wang Fugui would be in another room, while Chen Wudi, Yan Liuyuan, and Ren Xiaosu would take the remaining room. With this arrangement, everything was set.

Although it seemed crowded for six people to live in, it was comfortable enough for Ren Xiaosu and the others. What kind of place did they used to live in? This was incomparable to that!

The six of them carried small stools out into the backyard and sat down, with the first shareholder meeting being held in this simple a place.

Wang Fugui spoke first. “While we were tidying up the house, a few patients came to the shop and wanted to see the doctor, not knowing the shop changed owners. It seems the original shop’s business was excellent and had a rather good reputation as well. Why don’t we continue to operate the shop as is?”

“But which of us knows medicine?” Ren Xiaosu snapped. “I don’t, anyway. All I have is the black medicine.”

The refugees of Stronghold 113’s town had suffered so much. For the past few years, there had only been two doctors in town, and they didn’t even have any medical skills to speak of.

But Ren Xiaosu felt he was better than that quack doctor, Yu Tong. At least his black medicine was really able to treat wounds! Actually, he could learn some medical knowledge for real since he had something as wonderfully magical as the palace. There had to be a proper hospital and doctors here in the stronghold. So Ren Xiaosu could use the Skill Duplication Scrolls on an actual doctor this time. The previous situation would definitely not repeat itself again.

But Ren Xiaosu was also wondering about something. Was it really necessary for him to waste a precious Skill Duplication Scroll on medical skills? In fact, he felt deeply that his Skill Duplication Scrolls were not enough after getting acquainted with Yang Xiaojin and the others! Right now, he wanted nothing more than to gain another dozen or so Skill Duplication Scrolls so he could learn all of the useful skills from Yang Xiaojin in one go when he saw her again.

Besides, he had only wanted to learn medicine for the gratitude tokens. Later on, he realized the doctor-patient relationship had gotten too tense these days. He couldn’t get many gratitude tokens by treating and saving the lives of people. It was too slow a process!

So Ren Xiaosu would prioritize saving the Skill Duplication Scrolls instead of learning medical skills if he had them. He would only use them all at once if he met with another “skill bank” like Yang Xiaojin. At that time, he might even gain a lot of excellent skills, such as jumping rope, Nursery Rhymes Singing, marble throwing, and so on.

Even now, he was full of resentment whenever he was reminded about the jumping rope skill.

Ren Xiaosu said, “Let’s sell the antibiotics you have for cash first. Those items have an expiration date, right?”

“Mhm.” Wang Fugui nodded and said, “I think I have enough to sell for a while. Since it’s getting late, I’ll go and exchange the Qing Consortium’s currency for some of the Li Consortium’s currency tomorrow. We don’t actually need money in the short term.”

“Alright, you can continue plying your old grocery store trade if we really don’t have enough money to get by,” Ren Xiaosu said.

“But we’ll need to have an excellent, long-term product to sell in the store. There are so many types of traditional Chinese medicine here. Do you think you can concoct the black medicine from it?” Wang Fugui’s eyes were shimmering as he could totally foresee how well-received the black medicine would be in the stronghold.

Ren Xiaosu hesitated for a moment before saying, “Yeah, but we can’t sell the black medicine in large quantities. Just sell one dosage per week.”

“That’ll do.” Wang Fugui beamed and said, “A shop must have a unique product in its inventory. With something like this around, we won’t have to worry about not having any customers!”

Ren Xiaosu didn’t intend to exchange the black medicine for money. After all, he still had so much gold with him, so he preferred to unlock the intermediate form of the weapon over earning more money.

But since a single gratitude token could be exchanged for three small vials of black medicine, and one small vial could be further divided into five or six portions to sell, just one gratitude token would be enough to last Ren Xiaosu for several months. It was not a heavy price to pay at all.

Ren Xiaosu decided he would first walk around the stronghold tomorrow to see if he could sell the gold he had bit by bit.

All of a sudden, Yan Liuyuan asked, “Where’s Chen Wudi? Have y’all seen him?”

Wang Fugui was taken aback. “Right, where has Senior Apprentice Brother… ptui. Where has Chen Wudi gone?”

…

At this moment, Chen Wudi was having a curious look around the streets of the stronghold. He had been sent to a psychiatric hospital in his childhood, and the gloomy and oppressive environment in there made him yearn for the outside world. He had also lived in a prosperous world, but that was a memory of a long time ago.

Everything here gave him a familiar and strange feeling. The dazzling shops and commodities even made him forget about the important matter of going to the Western Paradise to obtain the Buddhist scriptures.

As Chen Wudi slowly made his way to the park they had passed by during the day, he heard singing drift out from it.

Chen Wudi walked into the park and saw aunties dancing in a neat square formation on a wide plaza. This scene was so familiar yet so strange to him that he felt as though he had been transported back in time, distracting him a little.

The aunties stared at Chen Wudi as he walked with dignity to the front of their square formation. Before they could realize what was going on, they saw the young man staring at them with piercing eyes and shouting, “Children, start dancing!”

When Chen Wudi returned to the shop that night, his face was all bruised and swollen. When Ren Xiaosu saw him, he was shocked. Chen Wudi was someone who could even emerge unscathed after getting hit by a bullet. Who could be so godly to beat him up to such a state?!

Could there be someone extremely powerful inside this stronghold?

But no matter how Ren Xiaosu questioned Chen Wudi, Chen Wudi wouldn’t tell him what had happened.