Chapter 125: Brewing Medicine Like Soup

Liu Heming was very happy to have Sasha’s support in his medicine-making endeavor. People often said that when husband and wife worked together, they could achieve great things. Even though they were a fake couple now, they were still a couple.

He had a rough plan in his mind, focusing on the effects of these Sweet Potato Vines: stopping bleeding, detoxifying, and helping bone injuries heal.

There were many poisonous plants and animals in nature, and you could easily get hurt, so the detoxifying effect was very important. The same went for stopping bleeding and healing bone injuries; they could all be widely used.

Under the Appraisal Skill, it was clearly explained that detoxifying required taking it internally, while stopping bleeding and healing bone injuries required applying it externally. So his choices were very simple. There were only two ways to make medicine: one was extraction, and the other was making it into powder or ointment.

He did not know much about Traditional Chinese Medicine, nor did he know what the effective components in the Sweet Potato Vines were, but he thought extraction was just a process of concentration. Even if the extracted medicine wasn’t extremely powerful, the leftover residue could be used to make ointment.

The idea was proposed by Liu Heming, and the specific steps were developed with Sasha’s help. After all, she was a real doctor, and she even had a license.

Watching the family of three setting up the equipment they had bought, Robin felt very pleased. This looked more like a real family. Look how happily Alex was smiling.

The equipment that Liu Heming and Sasha put together was actually very simple. Since they didn’t know what the effective components in the Sweet Potato Vines were, Liu Heming had a creative idea: he decided to boil the Sweet Potato Vines like Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Then they would filter and extract the medicinal liquid, removing the impurities and water from it. The remaining pure medicinal liquid would likely have special effects. Making it into ointment was even simpler; they could just crush the leftover residue.

Liu Heming had also carefully processed these Sweet Potato Vines. He removed the rotten leaves and washed them thoroughly with clean water many times. There wasn’t much left. He had fed a lot to the livestock before, and Janet and Alfred had taken some away. After cutting them up, only two bowls of usable vines remained.

“Dexter, are you going to cook with this water?” Sasha asked, frowning as she saw Liu Heming bring over some light green water.

“Yeah, I noticed that the Bear Cub and Charming Girl really like to drink this water, and the pigs, chickens, ducks, and geese love the food mixed with it. I thought it might be very pure groundwater,” Liu Heming said seriously, even though he was making it up.

Sasha shook her head helplessly. She decided not to interfere anymore. Liu Heming could do whatever he wanted. After all, this was just a small experiment, something to pass the time.

If they were in China, Liu Heming and the others would have had an easier time. Traditional Chinese Medicine was more widely used there, with machines for boiling medicine and collecting ointment. But buying such equipment here was troublesome, so they had to make do with what they had.

They put the cut vines and leaves into a large stainless steel bucket to boil. Then the family of three, along with the two Bear Cubs, sat nearby, watching eagerly.

Under normal circumstances, this would be considered medicine-making and should be done under sterile conditions. But there were too many unusual situations with Liu Heming’s methods. Even the strict Sasha chose to turn a blind eye, and Liu Heming, who knew nothing about it, didn’t care at all.

The heating was slow. Alex was getting sleepy from watching, but eventually, bubbles began to rise and roll in the large bucket.

Liu Heming picked up a large spoon and stirred it. He treated it like making soup, worried that the Sweet Potato Vines at the bottom might burn. A smell of vegetable leaves gradually drifted out, not very pleasant. It was much stronger than when he had made the small mixed dish with Sweet Potato Vines before, probably because there were a lot of Sweet Potato leaves in it.

The Little Bears sniffed with their noses, then wiggled their bottoms and moved further away. Their sense of smell was even better than Liu Heming’s, and this smell was not pleasant. They had thought it was food being made, but even if it were done, they wouldn’t eat it.

“Are you sure this will actually work?” Sasha asked Liu Heming curiously.

“Uh… it should be fine, probably,” Liu Heming said, feeling a bit unsure.

He had actually asked the System about how to make medicine, but it just wouldn’t tell him, saying he had to figure it out on his own. Liu Heming even suspected that maybe because the Database was damaged, the System didn’t know how to do it either.

Luckily, this was just a way to make use of what would otherwise be waste. If it worked, great; if not, it wasn’t a big loss. They were originally going to feed it to the pigs or throw it away anyway.

The bubbles in the pot rolled more and more vigorously, and steam rose above the pot. The slightly foul smell became even stronger. The Bear Kids had long run off to play elsewhere, and even Alex had lost much of her interest in watching.

Holding his breath, Liu Heming went over to the bucket and stirred it again. This time, he noticed something different: the vines inside seemed to have shrunk a lot, becoming smaller, and the liquid in the pot had turned even greener.

Following the principle of boiling medicine—turning three bowls of water into one—the large bucket boiled for almost an hour. By now, the smell wasn’t just strong; while Traditional Chinese Medicine usually had a medicinal fragrance, his concoction smelled incredibly foul.

He managed to turn off the heat and filter it, enduring the smell the whole time. He thought that next time, he would either come up with something better or wear a gas mask. The smell was truly awful. He even wondered if anyone would dare to drink it, even if it really turned into medicine.

He poured the filtered green liquid into the extraction equipment. This part was simple: just press a button, and the machine would do the rest.

After waiting for more than ten minutes, a drop of even greener liquid finally dripped from the medicine outlet. As the drop fell, Liu Heming perked up his nose because he caught a whiff of a sweet fragrance, like the taste he had when eating Finger Sweet Potato.

Sasha also became interested and ran over to watch the bottle with him. She found it amazing that something that had smelled so foul just moments ago now had a fragrant scent.

Liu Heming had prepared many bottles because he thought they would collect a lot of medicinal liquid. But he had overestimated it. From all that medicinal juice, they extracted less than 500 milliliters of liquid.

Just as he finished extracting the medicinal liquid, Liu Heming froze. A line of green text appeared before his eyes: “Development of medicinal liquid successful. Functions: detoxification, stopping bleeding. Store in a cool place. Reward: one use of Appraisal Skill, increase Mental Power by 1 point. Please name this medicine.”

This was beyond Liu Heming’s expectations. He never thought that his random experiment would actually succeed. Not only did it succeed, but he also received a reward.