Young master, why not become a corpse immortal?

Chapter 24 Herb Gatherer

The middle-aged man hanging on the cliff was wailing incessantly. He carried a bamboo basket on his back and wore a dirty hemp garment. One hand was hooked on the cliff, and the other hand was hooked on a tree protruding from the cliff.

As for his two feet.

It's obvious that it just flew through the air and is now hanging below.

Like a person drowning in mid-air.

Lin Jiang could tell at a glance that this was a herb gatherer.

There are two types of herb gatherers in the world. The most common type is the one who takes the conventional route. He doesn't earn much, nor does he spend much. The only skill he needs to master is recognizing medicinal herbs. Generally speaking, the young men in pharmacies do this kind of work.

Another method involves climbing cliffs, hanging from the rock face with one hand, to pick dangerous flowers and plants. Each flower is worth several taels of silver, a business that can last for half a year without any business, but once it does, it can feed you for half a year.

Those are highly skilled craftsmen; if they make even the slightest mistake, they could be doomed for life.

The person above is already very close to seeing each other in the next life.

He seemed to be exhausted. There was a lot of water vapor accumulated on the stone wall, making it too slippery to put his legs on it.

Even though he was only about 20 meters from the ground, those 20 meters were enough to kill him.

Little Ginseng peered into the herb gatherer's sleeve and exclaimed in surprise:
"Oh no! He's about to fall!"

"Yes. People need to be saved."

Lin Jiang placed the small ginseng in the driver's seat, rolled up his sleeves, and headed straight for the rock face.

Lin Jiang can't climb mountains.

Before he transmigrated, he didn't know how to climb mountains. When he was a child, he played with video game consoles and mobile phones. Occasionally, he would go out for a few laps, but he would just imitate the characters in the games and shout randomly. He had never climbed a mountain.

The original owner of this body couldn't climb mountains either. When he was a child, he was obsessed with identifying various medicinal herbs and couldn't play with other children his age. He couldn't even climb trees, let alone climb mountains.

So Lin Jiang simply took off his shoes.

He gripped the stone with his left hand and pulled hard, creating a large hole in it, just big enough to fit his palm.

He kicked the stone slab hard with his right foot, creating a dent, which allowed him to climb up step by step.

You really can't wear shoes this way, it'll wear them out too quickly.

And so, Lin Jiang climbed up step by step, and was several times faster than the average hiker.

In the blink of an eye, Lin Jiang was already beside the herb gatherer.

The fear on the herb gatherer's face turned into surprise in the blink of an eye.

Although he wasn't an expert at mountain climbing, he made a living from it, and he had the basic skills he had built up over the years.

This young man looks young, and his clothes are expensive; he must be a wealthy person.

How did he learn these despicable skills of risking his life to make money?
Lin Jiang simply lifted the man by the waist and slid him down the mountainside.

The speed at which it went down was fast and unconventional, which frightened the herb gatherer so much that his face turned pale. He desperately pulled himself into the bamboo basket behind him, afraid that he and the basket would fall down together.

Only after landing at the foot of the cliff did the herb gatherer collapse onto the ground, panting heavily, feeling as if his soul was about to leap out of his mouth.

Lin Jiang washed his feet in the stream, put his shoes back on, returned to the carriage, and hid the ginseng in his sleeve.

"Thank you for saving my life, young master! I don't know your name, but if I want to repay you in the future, I will have to address you by your name."

The herb gatherer finally caught his breath. He bowed deeply to Lin Jiang, his fingers clasped together.

"It's no trouble at all." Lin Jiang did it with the utmost ease. "As for the name..."

After thinking for a moment, Lin Jiang said, "Just call me Zhu Da."

The herb gatherer nodded repeatedly, memorizing the name.

Lin Jiang looked the herb gatherer up and down. The man was actually quite old, not in his thirties or forties, with graying temples, dark skin, and deep wrinkles that looked like they were carved by a knife.

Lin Jiang lowered his gaze again and saw the herb gatherer's waist.

There was a rope that broke.

The end of the rope broke.

Although rock climbing is an incredibly skilled craft, even seasoned practitioners with decades of experience are still afraid of falling off cliffs. Most of the time, they carry some means of survival. The skilled ones carry a leather whip; if they lose their footing, they simply flick the whip upwards to hook onto a tree branch and survive. The less skilled use a rope, known as a "lifeline"—as long as the rope doesn't break, even the Grim Reaper can't take them. This is why the herb gatherer found himself in such a perilous situation.

The fracture surface doesn't have many rough edges; it doesn't look like it was ground by a stone, but rather cut by a knife.

"Someone wants to harm you?"

Lin Jiang's question was direct, and the herb gatherer was momentarily at a loss for words. His thoughts raced in his throat before he finally let out a long sigh:
"It wasn't a person who wanted to harm me, it was a big worm."

"Can a worm cut rope?" Lin Jiang was very surprised.

How come all the tigers have become so smart after entering the martial arts world? They've stopped eating people and started cutting ropes instead.

"It's a long story."

The herb gatherer glanced at the cliff with lingering fear, and Lin Jiang followed suit.

The wind was strong on the mountain, and the leaves were tangled, leaving only half a rope hanging there.

There was no sign of the large insect.

Just as the herb gatherer was about to look away, he suddenly noticed that there were many gaps in the wall, as if someone had deliberately chipped them out.

It's not very obvious.

Were these gaps present before?

The herb gatherer didn't see how Lin Jiang got up there, so he naturally didn't know that Lin Jiang had made those gaps, and just assumed he was overthinking it.

……

The carriage crossed the riverbank, the water flowing on both sides.

This narrow river is experiencing both high and low tides; it's currently at low tide, just enough for horse-drawn carriages to pass.

The herb gatherer also sat in the carriage. If he were to walk back to town, it would probably take him three or four days, so he would still have to hitch a ride.

The herb gatherer called himself Li Ze. In addition to gathering herbs, he also knew some grinding techniques, making him a kind of half-doctor in Sanxing Town.

There is only one and a half doctors in Sanxing Town. One of them is a bit old and his hearing is not very good. Although he is quite skilled, it is too difficult to communicate with him. He has lost the ability to ask questions in the four diagnostic methods of observation, listening, questioning and palpation. Therefore, many illnesses still need to be treated by Li Ze.

Recently, however, a disease has struck Sanxing Town.

Li Ze's incurable illness.

“A few months ago, a plague came to this place. It thought our village was good and didn’t want to leave. But every day the plague stayed in the town, the people in the village got sick. As the days went by, the village was filled with the sound of coughing.” Li Ze sighed, “Every door was closed and every household was shut. The town was as quiet as if it were dead.”

Lin Jiang found the story familiar; he remembered that his grandfather had recently traveled to the south and sought treatment in Sanxing Town.

I heard that people who get that disease are like those who have caught a cold, with a persistent high fever, but the difference is that a large red mole will grow on the very center of their forehead, as if something is trying to crawl out from it.

The old man went there by car and returned a few days later, saying that the disease in Sanxing Town was very strange and that ordinary people would definitely not be able to cure it, but he was not an ordinary person, so he was cured.

"Has no one come to treat the illness?"

“Yes, there is a miracle doctor. He is very good. He not only cured our illnesses, but also left us a prescription,” Li Ze said.

Just then, Lin Shengfeng coughed twice inside the carriage.

Li Ze looked behind him: "What's in here?"

"My own father caught a cold."

"We absolutely cannot stay in Sanxing Town any longer. The disease in the town is truly bizarre; even strong young men can't withstand it."

Lin Jiang changed the subject: "You were cured and the prescription was left, so why is the town still like this?"

Upon hearing this, Li Ze's face showed bitterness:
"There's no medicine... otherwise I wouldn't have come all the way from town to look for it."

"Are the medicines in that prescription hard to find?"

"No, it's not hard to find." Li Ze shook his head: "Young master, do you remember the big worm I mentioned earlier?"

"That beast is a monster, guarding the path up the mountain."

(End of this chapter)