civilwarnovels Chapter 109 : Chapter 109
Chapter 109 : Chapter 109
Chapter 109: We Can Die for Yan-baby
Xing Yang immediately snapped to attention.
“Please give your orders, Wolf Guard!”
He had come running to Li Mu on his own to curry favor for two reasons. One was that he truly admired Li Mu and wanted a chance to get close to his idol. It would already have been enough if Li Mu simply remembered him.
He had never imagined that Li Mu would actually have an order for him.
That was even better.
If there was an order, then he would have to report back. After a few exchanges like that, he would naturally have more chances to interact with Wolf Guard Li.
“It is nothing much. I just want him to keep a close eye on that man called Song Chuhe.”
“Leave me your contact information so it will be easier for you to report to me later.”
As Li Mu spoke, he took out his phone.
“Yes, sir!”
Xing Yang was overjoyed. He hurriedly pulled out his own phone and added Li Mu.
When he saw that Li Mu had no further instructions, he crisply saluted once more and quickly left Blackwater High School.
Li Mu was somewhat interested in Song Chuhe.
For a student with neither background nor strength to pull off something like that was no simple matter.
If there were a chance to bring him over to his side, he might prove to be a useful asset.
That evening, Li Mu went home.
Before he even entered the house, he caught waves of a rich wine fragrance. It seemed his mother had opened her wine jars again.
The moment Li Mu stepped inside, Yang Suying said to him happily, “Come, come, my good son. Hurry and have a taste. My wine is finally ready to drink!”
Smiling helplessly, Li Mu let himself be pulled over to the wine vat by Yang Suying.
“Wow! That smells incredible!”
Li Mu praised it in an exaggerated tone.
“Of course it does. I put in dozens of herbs and spices!”
Yang Suying said proudly, hands on her hips.
Li Mu’s eye twitched.
Dozens of herbs?
Was she refining pills?
Even when he refined pills, he had never used more than ten ingredients.
Ordinary liquor on the market generally did not use herbs at all, because the taste of herbs was hard to control and required huge amounts of flavoring to suppress.
As for medicinal liquor, it usually only used a few herbs, but dozens of spices.
If someone could brew it in such a way that not a trace of medicinal smell remained and all that came through was the fragrance of wine, that was already considered exceptional.
But his mother’s brew used dozens of herbs and still smelled this wonderful. How had she managed that?
Had she somehow added some kind of “Fragrance That Fills the Streets” essence?
That sort of thing did not even exist in this world.
“Hurry and taste it. Weren’t you the one who kept saying you couldn’t wait?”
Yang Suying picked up a ladle, scooped out a portion, poured it into a cup, and handed it to Li Mu.
Li Mu took it. It was true that he had been talking about wanting to drink it every day.
But that had mostly been to make his mother happy.
Seeing her son looking forward to it all the time had only made Yang Suying more enthusiastic about brewing, so the moment it was ready, she naturally wanted him to taste it first.
Li Mu took a small sip, and his eyes immediately lit up.
Surprisingly enough.
In the past, Li Mu had never really been much of a drinker.
But after obtaining the Divine Ability Wine-Borrowed Might, he had consciously begun practicing his drinking. Whenever he ate with Spearman and Iron Ox, he would drink a little.
Other liquor tasted no different from the white liquor back on Earth.
Spicy, harsh, and numbing once it went down.
But this wine his mother had brewed— it entered the mouth fragrant, mellow, and soft, with no sharpness at all. It was like taking a sip of rich, sweet cotton candy, and it even carried a trace of sweetness.
Li Mu took another small sip.
A warm current slid from his throat down into his chest and organs.
Very soon, he felt his body growing slightly warm, his muscles tingling faintly, and yet his whole body was brimming with strength.
“Wait, Mom, why does your wine feel different after drinking it?”
Li Mu asked blankly, still holding the cup.
Yang Suying smiled.
“Of course it feels different. This is medicinal liquor. Naturally it has medicinal effects.”
“But it isn’t like pills. It flares up fast and strong, then disappears just as quickly. It only lasts for a short burst, like a wave of drunken vigor.”
“This jar is called ‘Thousandweight Wine.’ After you drink it, your strength rises for a short time!”
“The jars over there have other effects too. Some of them use more than a hundred herbs, but they are still fermenting, so they can’t be drunk yet.”
More than a hundred?!
Li Mu was stunned.
What kind of brewer was this?
With that many herbs interacting together, how had she managed to bring out medicinal effects?
Was this not outright alchemy?
“Mom, wait a second!”
Li Mu set down the cup and took out his own wine flask.
At the same time, he quietly opened the system.
Because he remembered that under Wine-Borrowed Might, there was an upgrade related to the effects of wine.
He found it very quickly.
[When drinking wine, different effects will be produced according to the force contained in the liquor.]
This enhancement required 100 Triumph Points.
And directly beneath it was another one.
[All allies within the Wine Might Domain may also enjoy this effect.]
That one required 300 Triumph Points.
A total of 400 points.
Li Mu immediately lit them both up in succession.
He had earned 127 points today from defeating Song Yan, which brought him to 1,402 points.
The original effect of Wine-Borrowed Might was:
[Wine-Borrowed Might: Take one drink. Wine vapor spreads out, creating a pressure domain within five meters of your body. Enemies within the domain suffer shaken courage and slowed movement, while your own courage grows greatly and your allies gain a 5% increase in movement speed. Duration: 15 minutes.]
On top of that, if different wines now produced different effects, that would amount to a temporary enhancement lasting fifteen minutes.
And once he unlocked the shared-effect enhancement for allies within the Wine Might Domain, it became an area-wide group enhancement...
Li Mu immediately took a mouthful of ordinary liquor from his flask.
Then he activated Wine-Borrowed Might.
At once, the effect provided by that liquor appeared.
[Wine Grade: Mortal Grade; Effect Provided: Reduces pain by 10%, increases all speed by 1%.]
“Ah?”
Li Mu cursed inwardly. What kind of industrially blended liquor was this?
He had even bought a fairly decent bottle. There should not have been much lower to go than this.
If he went any cheaper, the liquor would probably start giving negative effects.
Then Li Mu picked up the half cup of wine his mother had brewed and drank it in one swallow.
[Wine Grade: Special Grade; Effect Provided: Strength +50%, damage reduction +15%, all speed +20%.]
Li Mu’s eyes shone brilliantly.
Good heavens!!
Homemade brews really did not skimp on the ingredients!!
Li Mu nearly wanted to shout, Long live the alchemist!
Although these effects were not truly supreme.
This was the High-Martial World. Once cultivation rose, True Qi was still the fundamental thing that determined overall strength, so raw physical force was not the most important factor.
But Li Mu was different.
With Mountain-Bearing Art, his strength far exceeded the bounds of ordinary understanding.
He already possessed the strength of eight tigers and nine oxen. A fifty percent increase meant four tigers’ worth of strength added out of nowhere.
And it was a percentage increase at that, which made its future potential impossible to estimate.
And this was only a Special-Grade wine.
What if, in the future, his mother brewed an Immortal-Grade wine?
His own base strength would only keep rising.
At that point, after a single mouthful of wine— he did not even dare imagine how terrifying the result would be.
“Well?”
Yang Suying watched her son compare her wine to ordinary liquor, her face full of anticipation.
If her son said it was not as good as ordinary liquor, her confidence would probably shatter on the spot.
“It’s excellent!”
Li Mu raised a thumb.
Then he said with utmost seriousness, “Mom, you are a genius at brewing!”
“Using low-grade herbs is practically an insult to your talent!”
“From now on, you must use only top-quality herbs when you brew.”
“The better, the better!”
“Do not worry about money. Your son does not lack money now. I fully support your great alchemical cause!!”
Yang Suying was so delighted that her heart practically bloomed with joy.
She grinned from ear to ear.
“Oh, you silly boy, why are you making it sound so grand? My... eh? My what cause?”
Li Mu straightened himself, then corrected her with great passion, “Your great brewing cause!!”
...
Late at night.
In the room of a shut-in boy somewhere in the South District.
The small room was piled with clutter, and its walls were plastered with posters.
Every single poster was a beautiful photograph of Song Yan taken from one angle or another.
One picture in particular, a rare shot of Song Yan smiling, had been enlarged until the pixels were beginning to blur and pasted above the bed.
In front of the computer sat a flat-headed male student with a face full of acne scars.
He was clutching a nightshirt printed with Song Yan’s image and crying until his face was streaked with tears.
On the computer screen was the video of Li Mu using Heavenly Might to brutalize Song Yan.
It had come from a forum called 《Protecting the Best Yan-baby》.
At this moment, the public chat area of the forum was moving nonstop, with frenzied comments flashing by like a barrage of bullets.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it!!! Why won’t that bastard Li Mu just die?!”
“How dare he treat Yan-baby like that! I’ll f@#%ing kill that son of a—@#%￥…!@#”
“I heard Yan-baby suffered serious internal injuries and was taken straight into the ICU!”
“Shut your mouth!! Yan-baby will be fine!”
“My heart hurts so much it’s killing me!!!”
“Yan-baby is so flawless and perfect. If it were me, even touching her once would be more than I could ever hope for! What gives him the right to treat Yan-baby like that?”
“I really want to kill him! Kill him!!”
The acne-scarred boy sobbed as he bit savagely into the clothing in his hands.
Like all the others here, his hatred for Li Mu had reached its peak.
But all they could do was shout online. Not one of them dared go looking for Li Mu in person.
So they could only gather together and rage uselessly.
But at that very moment, a premium member account, using bold red special text, posted two lines.
“Are we really going to let Li Mu off just like this? No! We should gather together and go pressure him!”
“The law cannot punish the crowd! If we can force him to injure someone in front of the media cameras, then we can avenge Yan-baby!!”
After those words appeared, they remained pinned at the top of the chat for a while.
The entire chat area went silent.
Then, very quickly, it exploded completely.
“Brilliant! Great idea! We should unite and do something for Yan-baby!”
“Well said! The law cannot punish the crowd!”
“Time and place! I’m going!!”
“I can get hurt for Yan-baby!”
“So can I! I’ll deliberately provoke Li Mu when the time comes. I’m definitely getting him thrown in prison!”
“I can die for Yan-baby! I’ll make Li Mu rot behind bars!”