Chapter 100 – Do you want to be the Shaman?
Translated by Sunyancai
It was not only that day. Every day after that, Shao Xuan would find a new roll of Shaman Volumes lying on the stone desk in the corner when he came to the medicine house.
The content varied from the basic picking and processing of medicinal plants, to how to lure and capture the animal-based medicine; from how to process the animals, to how to deal with the plants.
All of that was recorded on the animal skin rolls of the Shaman Volumes. Every time when Shao Xuan read them, he could see a series of real scenes reflected in his eyes.
Because the pictures on the new Shaman Volumes were all connected with each other instead of being individual like before, so when you read them together, you could see real scenes emerging out. Sometimes, Shao Xuan would even feel as if he himself moving, he could more or less sense its texture, the feel, the strength, etc…
The Shaman Volumes were all very precious. Obviously, the Shaman already knew that Shao Xuan could understand the content, since he brought out all those new ones for Shao Xuan to read.
The Shaman…well, you cannot keep any secrets from him.
And, the more and more Shaman Volumes on the stone desk made Shao Xuan have a clear understanding of the Shaman’s attitude.
One day, when Shao Xuan was reading a roll of the Shaman Volumes by the corner, he heard someone running towards the medicine house while shouting, “Gui Ze! The Shaman asked for you! The hunting team has returned!”
There was a smaller house by the medicine house, which the Shaman used to keep the wounded to treat them. Every time when a hunting team returned, they would directly deliver the injured warriors to that smaller house. It was close to the medicine house, so it would save a lot of time to deliver the herbs. The Shaman could just get the herbs from the medicine house when he needed anything.
Gui Ze did not hesitate. She stopped what she had been doing and went to the Shaman directly. As for Shao Xuan…he was not allowed to go inside the treatment room. Anyone who had not been allowed could not enter, in case of disturbing the treatment.
Shao Xuan felt a little sorry. He wanted to see how the Shaman treated the wounded warriors. But all he could do was to sit in the medicine house and wait, since he was prevented from entering the treatment room.
Gui Ze ran back to the medicine house soon after she left, and she grabbed a few packs of herbs to go. After half a minute, there she was again.
“The bitter shagen, the seven forks, the palpus fruit, the heart piercing stem…”
Gui Ze took out some herbs from the stone pots and wooden boxes as she was murmuring the names of the herbs.
Seeing that she was in such a hurry, Shao Xuan guessed that perhaps there were more wounded warriors delivered to the treatment room this time than they expected. The mixed herbs were in a shortage, so Gui Ze had to make them on the spot, since the packs she made in advance were not enough.
Gui Ze did not need a scale to do the mixing. She could just grab a handful of the herbs, and there would be almost no difference in the dosages of several processed drugs. Shao Xuan had watched her do that for days.
Such skill could not be obtained within a short period. Perhaps, the Shaman had been training Gui Ze since her childhood.
All the residents in the tribe assumed that the herb packs were mixed by the Shaman himself. Now it seems that quite a lot of them must be made by Gui Ze.
“Need any help?” asked Shao Xuan.
Gui Ze wanted to refuse at first, but on second thought, she nodded. However, she did not ask Shao Xuan to directly process those herbs, Instead, she asked him to help her carry stuff.
“What’s going on? Lack of herb packs? Are there a lot of wounded warriors this time?” asked Shao Xuan.
“There are nine of them.” Answered Gui Ze.
Of course, only the badly wounded warriors would be sent back first. Nine severely injured warriors… Indeed, the number was unusual, but fortunately, no one was killed.
“There are not enough heart piercing stems. Help me get the box that contains the heart piercing stems.” Gui Ze said in a hurry.
“Alright.”
Shao Xuan had remembered where the different kinds of herbs were located. So, he did not need Gui Ze to tell him, but directly brought back a huge wooden box.
The heart piercing stem belonged to a type of plant from the grassland. It was only the width of a little finger, and had a thin outer layer. On its inside, there was a black thin thread. The layer couldn’t be used, and the inner thin black thread was toxic as well. When processing the heart piercing stem, one had to peel the outer layer and extract the inner thread as well.
Although in a hurry, Gui Ze was well coordinated with her moves.
However, she was still not fast enough.
The heart piercing stem was very hard to process, and it would take a lot of time to process one piece. Shao Xuan had seen her process it, she needed at least half an hour to process each stem. Because of that, Gui Ze had sweat on her forehead. She was still holding the knife tightly, but she sped up, and the work was not as perfect as normal. After all, she was in a hurry to save lives, so she’d rather use more materials in trade of saving the time to deliver the herbs to the Shaman.
Normally, the heart piercing stem was used to treat the severe inner wounds that exhausted the warriors’ self-healing ability, which meant that these kinds of wounds were extremely dangerous. They required immediate treatment after the warriors were sent to the treatment room. So, all the drugs and herbs needed to be prepared in no time. One more minute’s delay meant more danger than before.
Seeing that there were a few stems in the wooded box, Shao Xuan took one himself. He pinched on the stem gently, and he pinched along the spirals from bottom to top.
“You shouldn’t touch…” Gui Ze was about to stop Shao Xuan when she realized what Shao Xuan was doing by her side, for he was a novice at this after all. However, she looked over at him, and then decided to swallow what she wanted to say after seeing the scene.
She saw Shao Xuan quickly finish the pinching. He held the half-arm-length heart piercing stem with one hand, and a small stone knife in his other hand.
The knife was especially made by Shao Xuan from a fine stone core. The stone core was sent by the Shaman earlier this year, when Shao Xuan had made a major contribution to the tribe. It was not a big one, for the finer the stone core was, the harder it would be to obtain it. After crafting some small stoneware, Shao Xuan kept the rest of the stone core. On his first day in the medicine house when he saw Gui Ze use a small stone knife to peel a herb, he made himself a similar one with the remaining stone core.
The fine stone core was not easy to craft, so it took him a few days to finish the work. Unexpectedly, it was in use on the first day that Shao Xuan carried it with him.
The small stone knife moved up and down a few times, and then got pulled back. Like peeling a banana, Shao Xuan peeled the heart piercing stem’s layer from one end to another. It went very smoothly!
It was nothing like earlier when Gui Ze tried hard to peel the heart piercing stem.
Gui Ze just stared at him, totally forgot what she should be doing. She kept her eyes wide open, staring at Shao Xuan’s every move.
When Shao Xuan peeled the layer near the other end, he should just cut the small part near the end, together with the layer, if he did it as Gui Ze’s demonstration. As for the inner thread, normally Gui Ze would slit the stem into two parts from bottom to top, and then carefully excavate the thread out.
However, Shao Xuan did no such thing. When he got near the other end, he squeezed on the end while twisting it softly. After a gentle pull, a black thin thread got pulled out, together with the peeled layer.
Gui Ze was stunned, “……”
She now did not have any facial expression on her face.
It was not like she hadn’t tried the same thing. But exactly because she had tried it before, did she realise how hard it was to just pull out the black inner thread. However, just in front of her own eyes, a novice apprentice did it perfectly, as if he had practiced it a thousand times. All the moves were as fluent as ever, without even one single hesitation!
In fact, Shao Xuan did not know as well why he could process that so flawlessly on his first time.
It felt like…an instinct. It was not Shao Xuan’s own instinct, but the instinct he got after reading the Shaman Volumes. It was transferred from the Shaman Volumes to himself, like a consciousness of instinct. When he was processing the stem, it was like someone whispered in his ears about what to do next, and how he should do it.
The whole set of actions were almost complete copies of the scene that he read on the animal skin roll, about how to process the heart piercing stem.
With Shao Xuan added to the workflow, the herb packs were quickly finished. Gui Ze grabbed the herb packs and ran out, leaving Shao Xuan and that turtle in the medicine house looking at each other.
[I bet that turtle totally is thinking about biting Shao Xuan.]
After about two hours, the Shaman came. He looked quite tired. Gui Ze stayed behind to look after the wounded warriors, and did not come back with the Shaman.
When the Shaman entered, Shao Xuan was feeding the turtle with the wastes.
“How’re things over there?” asked Shao Xuan as he passed a cup of water to the Shaman.
The Shaman sat on a wooden chair and sipped on the water. Momentarily, he answered, “It’s good.”
That meant that the wounded ones were in no critical situation now. Shao Xuan continued feeding the turtle with the wastes.
The Shaman stared at Shao Xuan for some time. Earlier, Gui Ze had told him about how Shao Xuan perfectly processed the heart piercing stems. He was not surprised at all. Glancing on the animal skin rolls on the stone desks and the stone table, he pleasantly but sternly called Shao Xuan, “Ah-Xuan.”
“Yes?”
“Do you want to be the Shaman?”
“No, I don’t.”
The Shaman’s heart immediately shattered in pieces at his firm “No”…