Miss Witch, even if we're poor, we can't sell ourselves!

For the next few days, Mi Ye spent almost all of her time in Teacher Bie Chenye's cabin.

She left the Central Market, returned to Nightingale's Nest, packed a few changes of clothes, a charger, a laptop, and informed Flores of her whereabouts for the next few days.

Flores leaned against the bar and listened to her finish speaking. She only replied, "Just don't blow up someone else's teacher's house," and then turned around and took a paper bag full of cookies from the kitchen and stuffed it into her bag.

Korika, taking advantage of her inattention, slipped a small blue octopus, about the size of her palm, into the side pocket of her backpack. By the time Miya discovered it, it had already been in the back mountain for two days.

Don't be busy setting exam questions late into the night.

Meredith messaged her, saying that this year's written exam on flesh and blood magic was entirely in the hands of Teacher Bie, and the question-setting committee meetings were one after another. She, a socially awkward person, was locked in the meeting room arguing with a group of old men for several days. During each break, she would send Mi Ye a long string of crying cat emojis.

But when she heard that Miya wanted to live in a wooden house, she replied with unusually quick approval.

[Teacher Bie]:

You can stay anywhere in the house! You can read any books you want! Don't touch anything in the lab. There's food in the fridge. If you know how to use the stove, you can cook for yourself. If not, you can eat in the cafeteria. Just don't burn the kitchen down. You can stay as long as you want!

There are blankets in the wardrobe; it gets cold at night. I used magic to repel the mosquitoes from the back hill, so no need to worry! But we still need to close the screen windows because summer insects might fly in!

……

Miya looked at the long string of exclamation marks, smiled and replied "received," then put her phone in her pocket and officially began her life as a guest in the back mountains of the Moon Forest.

The daytime plan is to go into the mountains to collect materials.

Having learned from her first experience, she steadily expanded her exploration from the outer, lower-level areas outwards.

After crossing a gentle slope along the dirt path, we found several Bloodline Grasses of even better quality in a shady valley, and then found a Blood Fairy that was even larger than the previous three in a rock crevice above the valley.

Miye crouched on the rock and carefully touched the edge of the petal with her fingertips. The moment the petal melted into her fingertips, a warm current, more intense than ever before, surged up her arm and into her mind.

The Blood Fairy collection progress has jumped to the ninth flower, bringing us one step closer to upgrading the tentacles.

Miya clasped her hands together in front of the bird skeleton, stood silently for a moment, and then continued walking into the forest.

While collecting samples, she didn't forget to conduct experiments.

She arranged the herb samples she had collected from the forest on a row on the worktable in the cabin.

Take a small amount of each of the following: bitter thorn leaves, blunt vines, flame grass, and cold dew grass. Crush them and use the most basic flesh and blood magic perception method to track the flow of their life force after they enter the body.

She filled several pages of observation notes in Biechenye's experimental notebook. Although her handwriting was not as good as Meredith's printed style, the entries were clear. The properties of each herb, the method of administration, the amount of recovery, the changes in resistance, and the duration of side effects were all marked with control data.

It turns out that any herb with special properties will leave a corresponding permanent trace of resistance after she consumes it.

The bitter thorn leaves also increase poison resistance, the cold dew grass increases ice resistance, and she only took a small tip of the flame grass leaf, which was so spicy that she drank half a cup of cold water.

In the evening, she would sit on the stone steps in front of the cabin, chewing the last herb of the day, while staring blankly at the gradually darkening forest, feeling the life force within her rise slowly and steadily like the tide.

I use the evenings to review.

There was no TV or games in the cabin. After all, Bie Chenye's entertainment was probably chatting with Lingzhi and reading. So, after dinner, Miye would light the candles on the worktable, open her laptop, and start doing practice problems.

She has already finished studying the seventeen chapters of review materials compiled by Bie Chenye, and has started working on the past exam questions published on Meredith's website these past two days.

She skipped the part on mathematical reasoning because she didn't quite understand it, since flesh and blood magic wouldn't test that anyway. But she was getting better and better at the four subjects: history of magic, basics of magic circuits, structure of consciousness, and magical ethics.

Her extraordinary intelligence allowed her to memorize years and definitions almost without repetition; she could remember them after just two glances, like indentations carved into a stone slab, so clear that she could feel them with her eyes closed.

But what she really looked forward to was 8:30 every night.

8:30 is the time for Little Ghost to start her live stream, which is the small V she has been promoting.

Miya didn't know her real name, only that her ID was Little Ghost.

Little Ghost's live stream always features the same background: a hand-drawn little witch, a virtual crescent moon, several sofas, a guitar, a piano, and a girl's voice that is slightly hoarse but has excellent pitch.

When Miya first heard this voice, she felt as if someone had used melted moonlight to make a cup of warm milk, and she could taste several different kinds of sweetness in this cup of milk.

Sometimes it's a sparkling sweetness, like popping candy exploding on the tip of your tongue.

Sometimes it's a lazy sweetness, like staying snuggled in bed on a rainy day and not wanting to get out of bed.

Sometimes there's a deeper kind of sweetness, like wrapping your secrets in cotton candy, which you might miss if you don't listen carefully.

Now every night at 8:30, Mi Ye will click into Xiao Youling's live stream room on time.

Every time she enters the live stream, a system notification pops up, and Little Ghost pauses between songs to pronounce her name in a particularly earnest and gentle tone.

Then Miye would send a "Good evening" message, and Little Ghost would reply with "Good evening, yeah." The conversation between the two usually consisted of only a few words, but Miye felt more at ease than any long conversation.

The two of them gradually started interacting more.

At first, it was just a greeting. Later, after Little Ghost finished singing a song, he would ask how the day went. Mi Ye commented that she went to the back mountain to pick herbs today. Little Ghost laughed and said, "Is picking herbs such a novel extracurricular activity at school? I want to try it too."

Later, one night, Miya mentioned in the comments that she was preparing for the Moon Forest exam. Little Ghost's tone suddenly became more lively. She asked her which chapter she was reviewing, and then listed several must-know knowledge points for her on her fingers.

Miya lay on the small bed in the wooden cabin, flipping through her notes and typing rapidly, asking, "How do you know so much? Are you also a candidate this year?"

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the screen, then the little ghost's voice changed to that soft, coquettish tone, saying it was a secret.

Mi Ye then asked her which school she attended and what grade she was in. The little ghost was silent at first, but then whispered that it was a secret, her tone even softer than usual, so soft that Mi Ye almost missed it.

Miya wasn't tactless. Having stayed in Nightingale's Nest for so long, she had learned to distinguish which topics were worth pursuing and which should be avoided when the other person smiled and remained silent.

So she didn't ask any further questions, but simply asked in the comments what song he would sing tomorrow night. Little Ghost's voice immediately returned to its usual cheerful tone, saying that he had been practicing a new song recently and could premiere it for her tomorrow.

From then on, Miya never asked any questions about age or school again.

She started sending small gifts every day. Although her savings were not small, she still needed to save money for medicine and emergencies. Each time, she would send a small bouquet of flowers from Loren, or occasionally send a virtual lantern when she was engrossed in listening to music.

Every time the little ghost receives a gift, she calls out her name, her tone gradually changing from initial surprise to familiarity.

She said thank you for the bouquet, and that the girl had given her a light again. She even joked about how rich she must be. Then she chuckled softly into the microphone. The sound traveled through the mountain wind and into the moonlight of the cabin, like a gentle breath whispering in Mi Ye's ear.

Miya seemed to understand Reminal's feelings somewhat.

I understand why she spent tens of thousands of Loren gifts on me over several days in a row. It's hard to describe the feeling. When you listen to someone's voice for a long time, you feel like that voice is a part of your life.

But the other person is someone you've never met before. The screen between you is more transparent and stronger than any magical barrier, and you can never go any further.

Even if you like the way she sings, like the way she pronounces her own name, like the moment she whispers goodnight to you before ending her broadcast late at night, you might suddenly wonder, what is she like in real life?

This thought entered Miya's mind one night and then wouldn't leave.

She thought that if she were to actually meet this little ghost one day, and were to discover the other person to be an old witch with a voice that was incredibly sweet but who was two cycles older than her, she would probably have her Dao heart shattered on the spot, just like Reminal did.

No, no, why did I suddenly think of meeting him?

What she clearly liked was the singing, and those soft "goodnights" that came through the screen.

But the other person is really cute.

The way she speaks is adorable, and she's even cuter when you listen to her sing with your eyes closed. The way she occasionally sings a wrong note and then sticks out her tongue and says "Let's do it again" is also cute.

This conflicting feeling made Mi Ye bury her face in the pillow and groan several times. Then she turned over, stared at the crescent moon outside the wooden house window that was almost identical to the one in the live stream background, and closed her eyes.

The moonlight was bright, seeping in through the gaps in the gauze window and falling on Bie Chenye's old blanket, which smelled of herbs.

As expected, no summer insects flew in, but a few eerie green lights shone from the bushes outside the window, like miniature lanterns.

Mi Ye placed her phone next to her pillow; the screen still displayed the sparse comments from Little Ghost's live stream.

She pulled the blanket up to her chin and closed her eyes.

Tomorrow I need to get up early to go to the back mountain to pick a few more Blood Fairy flowers and a few Blood Thread Grass plants.

Tomorrow night at 8:30, Little Ghost said she has a new song to sing to her.

Today, tomorrow.

Miya thought to herself.

She fell asleep peacefully to the sound of the little ghost's song, amidst the bitter scent of herbs and the silvery moonlight.