For the following ten-plus days, twenty children were tested each day, and several hundred children had already been taken into the small wooden hut for the drug trials.

Only a meager few children passed the trials; having one or two pass out of ten was considered good. Those who failed either died or were poisoned and expelled from the estate. Only the successful children were kept in the Herb Gathering Hall.

The remaining thirty or forty children who had not yet been tested were still kept in the small courtyard.

These children were given a bowl of thin congee and a few steamed buns every evening. Ye Qin was among them; he had successfully dodged the trials for more than ten days, dragging it out until now without undergoing the testing. Now, eating the congee and buns, he barely registered the taste; every day was spent scheming how to delay the time and devise a way to pass the trial.

The remaining children were almost all incredibly sharp, their ability to evade notice no less than Ye Qin's.

One day, Ye Qin was betrayed by a commoner child from the county town who shoved him to the ground. As a result, he was grabbed by the scruff of the neck by a young man in fine silks, lifted onto a high platform, forced to press his handprint onto a life-and-death contract before Steward Zhang, and then tossed into a small wooden hut.

The hut was not large. It contained only a table, two stools, and a middle-aged man dressed in a green robe. On the table sat a wooden tray, holding precisely one hundred different medicinal herbs. Also on the table was a large incense burner filled with spent ash.

The middle-aged man sat on a stool, looking at him with an icy gaze.

“Kid, you should know the rules of the trial, so I won't waste words. Pick one herb and eat it. After finishing one, wait for the time it takes for one stick of incense to burn, then eat the second, continuing until you’ve eaten nine or more. If you’re poisoned after fewer than nine, don't hope that this apothecary will intervene to save you; you will be directly expelled. If you survive nine or more without being poisoned, you are a member of the Herb Gathering Hall.”

Ye Qin instantly recognized the man in the green robe as Apothecary Wang, whom he had previously seen at the main gate of the Herb Gathering Hall, and he was greatly startled. To think that this was the person personally supervising the trials filled him with resentment and a degree of fear. He carefully eased himself onto the stool, keeping his backside firmly planted, and looked down at the herbs on the table.

His mind was a complete mess.

There were one hundred herbs here. Fifty were poisonous, accounting for a full half. Thirty were ordinary, non-toxic herbs, and twenty were detoxifying herbs.

Picking any single herb meant a fifty percent chance of it being poisonous.

Unless he could recognize which herbs were toxic and which were not.

But how could he possibly identify these strange and bizarre herbs?

A single misstep and eating a toxic herb meant instant death and having his corpse dumped in the wilderness, or at best, being poisoned and driven out of the estate. He certainly wouldn't have the money to seek treatment at the county town's medical halls or pharmacies.

A sense of desolation and sorrow inevitably welled up in Ye Qin's heart.

Da Niu hadn't even managed to enter the Herb Gathering Hall before being summarily dismissed by Apothecary Wang due to a leg injury, ending up lost in the county town with an unknown fate.

Now Ye Qin had entered the Herb Gathering Hall, but he faced a life-or-death threshold, not far from death himself.

In his grief and anger, Ye Qin gradually forgot his fear, instead calming down and staring intently at the herbs in the wooden tray.

Ye Qin was not entirely ignorant of medicinal herbs.

He was born into a family of ordinary country hunters. At the age of **, he had followed his father into the mountains to hunt, serving as an assistant. Over three years, he had ventured into the deep mountain forests at least twenty times, staying in the mountains for periods ranging from ten days to even one or two months each time. In the wilderness, when hungry, they dug up wild vegetables to eat. If they accidentally suffered a minor cut or scrape, they would also apply herbs that could staunch the bleeding.

His father had intended for him to become a hunter as well, learning a trade to support himself, so he had taught Ye Qin how to identify certain herbs. If it hadn't been for the severe drought this year leading to a scarcity of game, he might still be back in the countryside as a young hunter.

Ye Qin widened his eyes, examining the hundreds of herbs in the tray, trying to distinguish them carefully. A few herbs his father had taught him to identify were identical to some here, but the time elapsed had caused him to forget some of them.

Ye Qin racked his brain, recalling the herbs he had tasted in the past, and discovered that several were actually detoxifying herbs he had consumed before. He selected those three herbs he had eaten before and placed them on his side of the tray, closest to himself.

Apothecary Wang took a stick of incense, inserted it into the burner on the table, lit it, and watched Ye Qin’s actions coldly, not hurrying him.

After picking out the herbs he recognized, Ye Qin found himself utterly unfamiliar with almost all the remaining ones. After hesitating briefly, he began classifying the rest of the herbs. He didn't recognize the majority of these herbs but knew some basic common sense.

The brightly colored herbs found deep in the old forest, herbs that were vividly hued, herbs with a pungent, stimulating smell, or those with a foul stench—these categories were highly likely to be poisonous. Also, the most lethal things in the deep woods were mushrooms; they caused the fastest death, and he would absolutely not eat any he didn't recognize.

Ye Qin carefully pushed the twenty or thirty herbs from the tray that had vibrant colors, foul odors, or strong smells, including a few mushrooms, to a place far away from himself, prioritizing safety regardless of whether they were toxic or not.

He couldn't guarantee that the remaining sixty or seventy herbs were entirely non-toxic. In the old forest, some herbs were fatally poisonous even if they lacked odor or color. He desperately tried to recall the herbs he had seen, picking out the ordinary, non-toxic ones he had some vague memory of.

Apothecary Wang showed a flicker of surprise.

In these past ten-plus days, he had supervised the testing of no fewer than thirty or forty children. Many children simply grabbed an herb with their eyes closed and shoved it into their mouths, leaving their fate entirely to chance. A small number recognized some herbs and only dared to eat what they knew, refusing to touch what they hadn't seen.

It was rare to see a child select herbs as meticulously and seriously as this one, even categorizing them into toxic, detoxifying, and ordinary non-toxic types. Although he had misclassified a large portion of them—likely because he didn't recognize the herbs, not because his classification method was wrong—this demonstrated that his intellect was above average, far surpassing that of common children.

Apothecary Wang was secretly satisfied.

The Herb Gathering Hall’s "drug trial" superficially tested the recognition of herbs, but what it truly tested was courage, intellect, and composure. It tested the bravery displayed when facing life and death, and whether one was foolish or clever. In the critical moment of poisoning from a toxic herb or being pushed to the edge of survival, one’s mind must remain calm and clear.

As an herb gatherer, one often had to venture alone into extremely dangerous, desolate places to collect precious medicinal herbs. In those places of near-certain death, there was no one to help them. While identifying herbs was important, intellect and composure were even more crucial. If one lacked calmness, even if they could identify herbs, being thrown into a panic in a desperate situation meant certain death.

For the children undergoing the trial, if they possessed any one of these qualities—courage, intellect, or composure—they would actually be specially accepted, even if they hadn't eaten the required ten herbs.

As for those who blindly stuffed herbs into their mouths, those who treated their lives with contempt, those relying on fluke and luck to pass, and those who would psychologically collapse upon accidentally consuming a poison—all were immediately eliminated. Such children, even if they entered the Herb Gathering Hall, would eventually die.

After a quarter of an hour, Ye Qin selected three detoxifying herbs and four ordinary herbs from the hundred available. He was highly confident that eating these seven would not poison him.

However, he was still short two herbs to meet the minimum requirement of nine.

Sweat began to bead on Ye Qin’s forehead.

If even one of these last two herbs contained potent poison, it would be enough to cost him his life.

“The time for one stick of incense is almost up; eat one herb immediately!”

Apothecary Wang’s cold voice suddenly broke the silence, and he pointed toward the incense burner.

Ye Qin looked up at the burner in surprise. It turned out the incense was used for timing; without realizing it, the stick of incense in the burner was nearly finished and about to extinguish.

He had no choice but to pick up an ordinary herb he had identified and stuff it into his mouth, a sliver of fear gripping his heart, praying he hadn't made a mistake about the poison.

Seeing Ye Qin consume an herb, Apothecary Wang immediately took a second stick of incense and lit it in the burner.

Smoke coiled in the air, and every time an incense stick burned out, Ye Qin was forced to eat another herb.

Time ticked away.

In a blink, five sticks of incense had burned out in the burner, and Ye Qin had consumed four ordinary herbs and one detoxifying herb. He still held two detoxifying herbs in his hand. But his anxiety intensified because he still hadn't managed to select any non-toxic herbs from the large remaining pile that he felt confident eating.

Ye Qin panicked.

What to do?

At that moment, Ye Qin suddenly froze, staring at the two detoxifying herbs in his hand!

He remembered something. He recalled Steward Zhang once saying that if one ate between fifty and seventy herbs, they could directly apprentice under a Deputy Hall Master.

But Steward Zhang had clearly also said there were fifty toxic herbs here, which would cause poisoning. So how could one possibly eat up to seventy herbs?

A sudden realization struck Ye Qin: Perhaps the toxic herbs could also be eaten? The twenty detoxifying herbs here could neutralize the poisons from twenty toxic herbs, adding up to seventy herbs in total!? Yes, it must be this way. Otherwise, no one could eat seventy herbs and survive.

He shifted his gaze to the pile of toxic herbs he had pushed far away.

Ye Qin recognized the two detoxifying herbs in his hand, and naturally, he recognized the corresponding toxic herbs. Toxic herbs and their antidotes are inherently a pair; one must recognize the poison before one can correctly administer the antidote.

Otherwise, what good was merely knowing the antidote?

Ye Qin immediately reached out and retrieved the two toxic herbs. These two were actually common wild poisons, not fiercely toxic. Occasionally, livestock would eat them and become poisoned and ill. Humans eating them would also be poisoned.

Apothecary Wang was slightly moved, looking at Ye Qin with deep meaning.

Exactly nine herbs, no more, no less.

Using a detoxifying herb to counteract a toxic herb was permitted.

Eating one more to reach ten would meet the minimum threshold for entering the Herb Gathering Hall as a novice apprentice.

For this final herb, whether it was poisonous or not no longer mattered; the Herb Gathering Hall would provide treatment.

Afterward, for every additional herb consumed, one's standing in the Herb Gathering Hall would improve slightly.

In this trial, Ye Qin ended up consuming eleven herbs in total. He was poisoned on the eleventh one, but since he hadn't found the corresponding antidote among the detoxifying herbs, Apothecary Wang stopped the trial and personally treated him.

Apothecary Wang’s cold voice stated, “Well done. From this moment on, you are a registered novice apprentice of the Herb Gathering Hall, and also my disciple, Apothecary Wang. Once all the children’s trials are concluded tomorrow, you and the other successful ones will undergo training with me.”

“Yes!”

Ye Qin carefully masked the resentment he felt toward Apothecary Wang and obediently nodded, exiting the small wooden hut.

After all, he was just a young man of a little over ten, born to a hunter, who had just passed the gate of death to enter the Herb Gathering Hall as a novice apprentice. Apothecary Wang held a lofty position; the deference shown by the gate guards and the young men in fine silks was enough to show that Ye Qin posed not the slightest threat to him.

To reveal even a hint of resentment would be courting death; there was no way to demand justice for Da Niu.

As he walked out of the small wooden hut, Ye Qin felt as if his entire body had been drenched in water, his legs weak and unsteady. He felt no joy at this moment, only the desire to find a place to sleep immediately and recover the physical and mental energy he had expended over these few hours.

A proud young woman in silks led him to a courtyard to rest.

The next child awaiting trial was seized by the young men in fine silks and, amidst terrified screams, was sent into Apothecary Wang's small wooden hut for the testing.