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

After lying in bed bored for a long time, Miya finally couldn't stand it anymore.

After waking up, I drank half a pot of red date tea that Bie Chenye had brewed, and ate two pieces of leftover toast from the morning. I felt like I could run five kilometers down the mountain.

She threw back the covers to get out of bed, but before her feet even touched the ground, Bie Chenye poked his head out from the kitchen doorway, holding a clove of garlic that hadn't been peeled yet.

"Stay one more day."

"I'm all better now, really, look—"

Mi Ye raised her arm to show off her biceps, but Chen Ye had already put the garlic on the table, walked over, reached out and pressed her shoulder, gently pushing her back into the quilt.

She leaned closer to look at Mi Ye, her lips moved slightly, and then she shifted her gaze to the pot of cherry tomatoes on the windowsill that she had forced with her flesh and blood magic.

"...Stay with me a little longer."

Mi Ye looked at Bie Chenye's turned profile and slightly reddened ear tips, and swallowed back the "I'm really fine" that was on the tip of her tongue.

Bie Chenye had been living alone in the back mountain for a long time, talking to Lingzhi and Xiaofanqie. She finally had a student staying in the wooden house for a few days, and it was just getting a little lively. If she left now, she would have to eat alone again.

Miya pulled the blanket up to her chest and nodded.

"I want stir-fried mushrooms for dinner tonight, the ones you made last time."

Before Bie Chenye even turned his head, the corners of his mouth had already turned up in a smirk.

"The garlic is peeled, and there are mushrooms too. The matsutake mushrooms I picked in the back hill yesterday are bigger than the last ones."

As expected, stir-fried mushrooms were served for dinner.

Slice the matsutake mushrooms thinly, heat oil in a pan, sauté minced garlic until fragrant, then stir-fry until the edges are slightly browned. Add only salt and a little soy sauce. When the aroma wafted out of the kitchen, Miya's stomach growled louder than the frogs croaking in the back hills.

She sat on the bench wrapped in Bie Chenye's coat, with a bowl of steaming white rice and an outrageously large plate of stir-fried matsutake mushrooms with garlic in front of her. Bie Chenye sat opposite her, holding his bowl and watching her eat until her cheeks were bulging.

Miya ate two bowls of rice before putting down her chopsticks, letting out a satisfied burp, and then habitually took out her phone and opened MikuFans.

The entire homepage and recommendation page features her face from top to bottom.

A screenshot of a hamster squatting at the entrance of a tree hole and stuffing people inside has been turned into a hamster hoarding food emoji.

The scene of stepping on a sleepwalking fish and flying into the sky was broken down frame by frame and made into a GIF.

A close-up of tentacles unfolding dark red petals was photoshopped into a poster.

Her name appeared in six of the top ten trending topics.

Mi Ye couldn't help but smile, then clicked on a video titled "[Mi Ye's Skills Full Analysis]", which had already surpassed two million views.

On the screen appeared a young witch with a low ponytail and gold-rimmed glasses. She was a well-known content creator on MikuFans' knowledge and science popularization section, famous for her sharp eye for analyzing battle videos frame by frame and her outspoken style.

The video begins with the scene of Miya's tentacles being launched for the first time during her battle with Asase by the lake, played in slow motion frame by frame, with several key locations marked in red.

"Let's look at it frame by frame. In this frame, the surface of the tentacle changes from soft to hard. The surface completes the transformation from a petal structure to a smooth hard shell in less than 0.1 seconds."

"Pay attention here as well. When the blade makes contact with the surface of the tentacle, the tentacle does not take the hit head-on, but rather deflects it slightly to the side. It uses the smooth surface of the hard shell to change the katana's slashing trajectory. This is an advanced technique of deflecting force and counterattacking."

She switched to the scene of the battle against Xiaoye, with a red circle around the fine, suction-cup-like structures on the inside of the tentacles.

"Look here, everyone. After the tentacles wrap around the enemy, these suckers emit a dark red light. I have consulted all the publicly available documents and found no record of this light. However, I personally speculate that this is the reverse flow of life force. To be precise, the tentacles are absorbing the magic power in the enemy's body, neutralizing it, and then covering it with life force. This is why all the examinees who are touched by the tentacles will instantly become exhausted."

She then jumped to the final segment of the battle against Corona Borealis, zooming in to the extreme, and circled in red a nearly completely transparent soft mass on Corona Borealis's lower back.

"Pay attention here. Many viewers thought that Miya won by enduring the full power of the Thousand Stars, but that's not actually the case. She had already attached this little thing to Corona Borealis before the full power of the Thousand Stars was activated."

"This pinkish-white soft mass is an independent symbiotic summon. I speculate that its effect is to continuously absorb the enemy's life force and convert it into the host's life value. Before being pierced by the tentacles, Corona Borealis had actually been drained by the slime for quite some time, and its life value and magic power had dropped below the danger line. That attack by the tentacles was just the last straw that broke the camel's back. Miya defeated Corona Borealis not by brute force, but by tactics."

At the end of the video, she took off her glasses and sighed at the camera.

"Let's get to the conclusion. Miya's publicly known abilities include tentacle manipulation, magic suppression, life force absorption, symbiotic summoning, and a kind of tracking ability based on the scent of blood, as well as an outrageously high life force and defense. These are just the ones we can observe. If she has any unrevealed trump cards, I wouldn't be surprised at all."

"Some people in the comments section said she was just lucky. I'd like to officially reply here: it's not luck. There's no effective way to counter flesh magic driven by life force in the current mainstream magic system. Her victory was inevitable."

Mi Ye turned off the video, buried her face in the pillow, and her ear tips turned red instantly.

"I'm nowhere near as amazing as she makes me out to be..."

Bie Chenye came out of the kitchen carrying two cups of hot tea. When he saw her like this, the corners of his mouth curved slightly.

"See? Everyone's praising you. Don't be shy."

Miya lifted her face from the pillow, her hair a mess like a jellyfish.

She decided to change the subject, carefully reaching into the inner pocket of her backpack and taking out two sealed bags, placing them in front of Bie Chenye.

"Teacher, look, it was picked from the mirror image."

Bie Chenye looked down and observed the two plants.

The silvery-blue petals of the Moondrop Grass emitted a soft glow in the dim wooden cabin, while the deep red veins of the Scarlet Tears pulsated slowly, like two miniature hearts.

She reached out and gently touched the leaf of the Moondrop Grass with her fingertips, then looked up at Mi Ye, her lips curving into a smile she could no longer suppress.

"Do you know how many years Primula has been growing these two plants? Crimson Tears is at least three hundred years old, and Moondrop Grass is an original species that she went to great lengths to obtain from another continent. Every year at the teachers' conference, she would boast about what new collections she had in her private herb garden, and then turn around and give me the Best Space-Saving Award."

Teacher Bie Chenye also seemed to have gotten his revenge, and his voice sounded much more relaxed.

"You really know how to take things; they're all her precious treasures."

She turned and took out a palm-sized wooden box from the storage cabinet. The surface was engraved with fine runes, and the edges were smooth and shiny from being rubbed. It looked quite old.

"Sealed bags can only keep things fresh, not lock in their medicinal properties. Herbs of legendary quality and above need to be stored in special alchemical containers, otherwise their magical components will slowly dissipate."

She opened the wooden box, which was filled with a layer of dried, dark red petals that exuded an extremely strong aura of life.

She placed the Moondrop Grass and Scarlet Tears into two small bottles, sealed them, and handed them to Miya.

"This wooden box used to be a refining material box. From now on, when you find good items, don't use sealed bags anymore. Put them here. This is called a Spirit Locking Box. It's specially used to store legendary-grade and above herbs. You can't buy it outside. Don't ask me how I got it, or you'll be shocked."

Miye took the wooden box, thanked her teacher, and ran her fingers along the runes on the lid.

The box is made of warm, solid wood with a faint herbal scent; it must have taken many years to develop this luster.

She recalled the feeling of getting her first orange-tier equipment when playing games in her previous life.

Seeing her staring blankly at the box, Bie Chenye assumed she was still thinking about the medicinal herbs and continued speaking.

"The most basic principle of alchemy is that materials determine the upper limit, and techniques determine the lower limit. The Moondrop Grass and Crimson Tears you collected are legendary materials. If you give them to an ordinary alchemist to refine, they can probably only achieve 60% of the potency. But if you give them to a high-level alchemist, they can refine a legendary potion."

Bie Chenye stood up, placed the teacup on the table, and patted Mi Ye's head.

"Go back tomorrow, go to bed early tonight."

Mi Ye leaned forward slightly and nuzzled Bie Chen Ye in a slightly coquettish manner.

As evening fell, Mi Ye lay on a cushioned bench, covered with Bie Chenye's coat, the faint light from her phone screen reflecting on her face.

She opened Little Ghost's live stream, and the other person was singing a new song she had never heard before.

The lyrics are about a seed buried under the snow, which will sprout when spring comes.

There were very few comments, only three or four, mostly from familiar IDs saying goodnight.

Miya also typed a message and sent it out: "Today was great too, see you tomorrow!"

Then lock the screen and place the phone next to your pillow.

Bie Chenye was already asleep in the inner room, and the sound of her even breathing could be heard.

The croaking of frogs from the hills behind the window came in bursts, and occasionally a sliver of light would peek through the cracks in the wooden window frame from the summer insects.

Miya closed her eyes and went through the scenes of the past two days in her mind.

The little witch stuffed in the tree hollow, the sound of the wind as I flew into the sky on a sleepwalking fish, and the slightly cool touch of the moonstone in my palm.

She thought, "I'll go back to the tavern tomorrow, and school will probably officially start the day after tomorrow."

I'll sell some of the herbs I've collected, and that'll be enough to pay the compensation, then I can start my new life.

But before that, she wanted to have another meal of stir-fried mushrooms made by Bie Chenye.