Chapter 169: Practice

Su You could see this as well. So after assigning Bu Guo her tasks for the next day, she had her help watch over the workbenches synthesizing materials. Whenever a workbench stopped running, Bu Guo would add more materials.

It was an extremely boring and time-consuming job, but it suited Bu Guo perfectly—and she didn’t mind it at all.

“Can I use all the materials in those boxes?”

“Yes, you can use them all. If you run out of wood, add more wood. Same with stone and fiber.”

With Bu Guo successfully sent off, Su You arranged the remaining stools one by one… The trading area was now set up.

After that, Su You first checked her backpack, then went to the warehouse and took out beast tendons, string, refined magic ore, and all the wood she’d previously chopped for making bows and arrows.

Besides those, she also had the wutong wood in her backpack.

Carrying all these materials, Su You headed straight for the workshop. What she was about to do was obvious—she was going to use the wutong wood and black-striped tiger tendons to make a bow.

The wutong wood was too high-grade for the workbench to process, so she’d have to wait for an NPC with intermediate or advanced carpentry skills to give the wood to, or make it herself.

Clearly, she chose the latter.

In fact, her previous gaming experience gave her a huge “cheat” in this data-driven world—she knew all the recipes and crafting methods for every item in the game “Sunset Continent.”

Unlike the recipe manuals Duoli had discovered, Su You didn’t just know the crafting steps—she could actually make these things herself, with both theoretical knowledge and hands-on experience.

After all, her old account had five maxed-out life skills; she’d crafted more items than she could count.

Back then, not to mention making a bow with wutong wood and black-striped tiger tendon—even using dragonbone and dragon tendon was no problem.

But things were different now. She had no skill levels at all—her account was a “blank slate.” Without any system assistance, she could only rely on her memory to slowly regain the feel for crafting.

That’s why she brought so many materials—she needed to practice.

First, Su You used string and ordinary wood to make a bunch of bows and arrows. Once she felt she’d gotten her touch back, she switched to the special bow wood and string… then swapped the string for beast tendon.

She didn’t have much beast tendon left. After giving one bow to Yun Li and another to Duoya, she only had eight tendons left from the original ten.

With each attempt, the number dwindled—from eight to seven… then six…

Who knows how much time passed before Su You finally managed to handcraft a perfect black-striped tiger tendon bow.

But that wasn’t enough. She needed to get even more skilled—after all, she only had one piece of wutong wood, and only one shot at this.

She still had five beast tendons left, so she could practice four more times—she needed to save one for the wutong wood bow.

…

After two more practice runs, it was nearly dusk. Su You’s stamina was running low, and her character was now moderately fatigued.

She didn’t keep practicing—after all, fatigue from overwork would affect the crafting process and results.

It was already dusk. She stepped outside for some fresh air. Watching the busy figures in the fields, she remembered the skill book in her backpack.

She walked over and saw crops everywhere.

Yousen greeted her. “My lord, are you here to check on the crops?”

He then shared some good news—corn, wheat, and rice had all ripened.

To be precise, the corn had actually ripened last night, but it was too late then, and there were other things going on, so Yousen hadn’t had a chance to mention it.

The crops had matured so quickly thanks to the growth fertilizer. The basic fertilizer reduced growth time by 10% per use, up to five times—a full 50% reduction.

But while the fertilizer was effective, it was used up quickly… And with this good news came a reminder that they were almost out.

Each field had four plots, each needing five packs of fertilizer—twenty packs per field. The ninety packs Su You had made earlier weren’t nearly enough.

So Yousen had to prioritize crops with longer growth cycles to maximize returns.

“You’ve done a great job.” Sure enough, having a professional made all the difference.

He managed ten fields all by himself, not only without help, but keeping them all in perfect order.

The harvest was a huge help… While having enough food was good, tomorrow was a special day—there was a good chance many people would visit the territory.

It wouldn’t do to serve only meat and berries, so the wheat and rice harvests would greatly enrich the menu, letting Meike put his skills to use.

As for the fertilizer shortage…

“Don’t worry about that. We’ll have plenty by tomorrow,” Su You said confidently.

After all, tomorrow the monster cage would be unlocked. With ninety ghostly skeletons, there’d be no shortage of bones for making fertilizer.

“Oh, here, take this and learn it.” Su You took out the intermediate planting skill book and handed it to Yousen, whose eyes filled with surprise and delight.

“My lord, is it really okay to just give this to me…?” Yousen knew Yue, since after joining the territory, Yue had moved into House 5 to live with him. So he was aware of how hard Yue had worked to earn contribution points for the magic inscription book.

But he himself hadn’t made any contributions, yet was being given an intermediate planting skill book for free… Was that really okay?

Of course, Yousen definitely wanted the skill book—who wouldn’t want to improve themselves, especially so easily?

“I know what you’re thinking, but this isn’t a free gift. From today on, I need you to start researching improved seeds. Once you succeed, the contribution you earn will pay for this skill book.”

Yue becoming a mage actually didn’t benefit the territory much—his talent was too low, and he was just an ordinary NPC with no special traits."

"Here’s a fluent, natural English translation of your text: