Chapter 100: Chapter 100

In the days that followed, Mu Ying gave up on the idea of returning to the human world. From what she’d seen and heard in Redberry Village, this world was much like the medieval era of Deep Blue Star. The nearest big city was far away, and there was little point in visiting the village again.

She also realized that, compared to small, isolated villages, big towns were actually better for witches to hide in—at least they wouldn’t be stared at just for being a new face.

So the rest of the holiday became a bit dull. The older girls got busy with their own affairs. Lillian and Windsor still stayed with her at night, but during the day they went out looking for a place to build their new home, making preparations for their future.

Only Mu Ying was left, bored at home, practicing the spells she’d copied down and reading the potion books her mother had left behind.

In the blink of an eye, the week-long holiday was over. On the night she returned to school, the headmistress summoned her and immediately delivered bad news.

“The other body in Redberry Village was indeed a witch. We’ve already recovered it.”

Melanie rubbed her brow. “Can you tell me in detail what happened in Redberry Village? Including your own thoughts.”

Mu Ying nodded and gave a thorough analysis from her perspective.

“You did very well. It’s rare to see a witch with such a deep understanding of human nature, especially one who hasn’t even graduated yet. Would you be willing to organize your tips for dealing with humans—your scam-prevention knowledge? I’d like to submit it to the Witch’s Association. The anthropology curriculum could use an update. If your material is adopted, you’ll receive a hefty reward—lots of gold coins and precious magical knowledge,” Melanie said, winking. She knew the little witch in front of her was good at making money and spent a lot of time in the library.

Mu Ying’s eyes lit up at the mention of money and magic—who wouldn’t want those?

Even without those rewards, having her ideas included in the curriculum would be a huge honor—and, more importantly, it would genuinely help other witches.

After her time at school, Mu Ying had truly fallen in love with this group of wonderful witches. She was more than happy to help.

In the end, Mu Ying and the headmistress agreed to hold a weekly Scam Prevention 101 class every Friday night, with Mu Ying as the instructor—paid, of course. Five gold coins per week wasn’t much, but it was only one class and not very long. The key thing was that her seniors and classmates would all benefit.

Leaving the headmistress’s office, Mu Ying saw Lucia waiting outside. “How did it go?”

“Great!” Mu Ying chattered excitedly about all the perks the headmistress had offered her.

Lucia nodded. “Not bad. This way, you’ll have a steady income, enough to last you for a while after you come of age. You won’t have to spend so much energy earning money. Do you know what my own senior told me she regrets most?”

“What?” Mu Ying asked.

“She regrets not spending more time in the library while she was at school. She didn’t learn enough, and after leaving school, it’s much harder and more costly to acquire knowledge. So now that you don’t have to worry about money, use your time well and learn as much as you can. Even if you don’t understand something now, just copy it into your Witch’s Book. The things you copy from the library are protected by confidentiality agreements and can’t be shared, but they’ll save your future self a lot of money,” Lucia said, showing off her own Witch’s Book, which was already half a finger thicker than Mu Ying’s.

Mu Ying nodded in awe. No wonder Lucia was known as the “VIP resident” of the library, always with a book in hand!

School really was their golden age for gaining knowledge. Once you had the skills, earning money would never be a problem.

She made up her mind—she was going to become the library’s next “VIP resident”!

Lucia wasn’t sure why her junior was suddenly so energetic, with such a strange look on her face, but it seemed her advice had gotten through, so she breathed a sigh of relief.

She didn’t have a direct junior, which meant she had to look out for all the younger girls. When it came to talent and specialization, she wasn’t as experienced as the direct seniors, so she focused on the bigger picture—life and learning.

Mu Ying was the most mature and steady of the three juniors, but recently she’d been obsessed with making money, spending a lot of time on hair-dye potions and herb cultivation.

Lucia felt this was a bit of putting the cart before the horse. Basic hair-dye potions were enough—developing more colors was only good for making money, with little practical value. Herb cultivation depended more on personal talent and research, and even after leaving school, one could slowly make progress without guidance. But almost no one could create new spells or potions out of thin air. It was far more important to build a solid foundation and make the most of the library to learn as much as possible."

"Time in the trial world passed in a flash. When I woke up again in the familiar treehouse, it was perfectly timed—just in the morning.

The wolf pack downstairs had already gone out. Roundy was lying on the ground, looking utterly listless, while the wolf pups clambered all over it as if scaling a mountain, working hard at it.

Mu Ying waved her wand, and the kitchenware and ingredients instantly got busy in an orderly fashion, while the flying broom swept around the house.

While waiting for breakfast to be served, Mu Ying casually picked up a wolf pup and set it on her lap to pet its fur.

That set off a hornet’s nest. The wolf pups, young as they were, had already learned to compete for affection, all launching an assault on Mu Ying’s lap.

Mu Ying looked helplessly at the pups stepping on their siblings’ heads, clinging to her legs and scrambling to climb up. With a sigh, she could only pick them up one by one, petting each in turn.

As soon as a pup landed on her lap, it would obediently expose its belly, squinting its eyes and begging for rubs.

At first, Mu Ying quite enjoyed being surrounded by all that fluff, but gradually, she started to feel something was off.

Wasn’t this supposed to be her happy petting time? Why did it feel more and more like she’d turned into a massage machine?

Ignoring the few pups who’d already had their turn but were trying to sneak back into the massage queue, Mu Ying said, “Alright, alright, that’s enough. Go play on your own!”

After breakfast, Mu Ying teleported to her own plantation.

She planned to only grow carefully selected plants in her plantation from now on. As for things like afforestation, she’d just scatter seeds over a large area.

Currently, aside from the vegetables and fruit trees that satisfied her appetite and the roundy’s emergency food supply of iron bamboo, the most important things in her plantation were the cultivation of binding vines and the spot where that segment of tree root with faint vitality was buried.

The tree root still lay quietly in the soil. No matter how many druid tricks she tried, it wouldn’t sprout. If not for the lingering natural power within it, Mu Ying would have thought it was dead.

Since druid spells didn’t work much on the root, Mu Ying tried using green witch magic to alter it, just like she did with the binding vines, supplementing it with water from the Spring of Restoration.

This method worked surprisingly well. In just a few days, a small sprout emerged, though its growth remained slow.

As for the binding vines beside it, cultivating them was much smoother—today, they were just about ready.

[You have cultivated a new type of plant: “Binding Vine.” This plant is stable, non-heritable, has high planting requirements, and certain value. You gain 300 profession experience.]

Seeing the fully grown binding vine, Mu Ying finally understood why Grandpa Shaum was so passionate about plant cultivation.

Just one binding vine had rewarded her with 300 experience—far more than her daily, diligent farming. Her upgrade progress instantly shot past 50%. Leveling up to 5 didn’t seem so far off anymore.

Unfortunately, cultivating new plants wasn’t easy. The binding vine wasn’t exactly ideal either—it had many limitations and couldn’t grow without magic. On Deep Blue Star, she was probably the only one with magic.

In other words, only she could grow it. That wasn’t exactly a good thing for a plant. There was still plenty of room for improvement.

Still, compared to spending ages researching improvements in the real world, the trial world’s accelerated time made it much more suitable.

The environment there was safe and stable, and time flowed faster.

After tending to these two plants, Mu Ying didn’t go out to plant trees as usual. Instead, she returned to the treehouse.

She lifted the lid of the water jar in the corner. It was stuffed full of coins, the lid already pushed up a bit.

She’d bought this jar specifically to store money.

After saving up for so long, it was finally time for the joy of counting her cash.

“35 gold, 58 silver, 42 copper!”

That was enough to build several more sub-camps.

But with the current population of her territory, there were only about 2,500 people, most of whom were myconids living in the underground Glowshroom Forest. They didn’t need to rent houses.

“Glowshroom Forest” was what everyone now called the myconid instance.

Of the remaining thousand or so people, Mu Ying was the only lone wolf. The rest shared treehouses in teams. Since treehouses could be expanded upward, housing a dozen people was no problem. Of the hundred treehouses built long ago, a few were still unoccupied.

The sub-camp used as a plantation also pretty much met the residents’ farming needs, so there was no need to open new sub-camps for now.