These children each had a bowl of thin porridge and a few steamed buns every evening. Henry Clark was among them; he had managed to hide for more than ten days, delaying until now without taking the medicine trial. Now, when he ate porridge and buns, he could no longer taste anything at all. Every day, he racked his brains, thinking about how to buy more time and come up with a way to get through the medicine trial.

Among the remaining children, almost all were very clever, and their ability to dodge was no less than Henry Clark's.

On this day, Henry Clark was set up by a civilian child from the county town, who pushed him to the ground. As a result, a richly dressed young man caught him like a chick, carried him up to the high platform, pressed his hand down to sign the life-and-death contract in front of Chief Steward Zhang, and then threw him into a small wooden hut.

The small wooden hut was not large, containing only a table, two benches, and a middle-aged man in a blue robe. On the table was a wooden tray, with exactly one hundred different herbs arranged on it—not more, not less. There was also a large incense burner on the table, filled with the ashes of many burned-out incense sticks.

The middle-aged man sat on the bench, looking at him coldly.

"Boy, you should already know the rules for the medicine trial, so I won't say much. Pick one and eat it. After eating one, wait the time it takes for one stick of incense to burn, then eat the second one, and keep going until you've eaten more than nine. If you get poisoned after fewer than nine, don't expect this apothecary to save you—you'll be kicked out of the manor immediately. If you eat more than nine and aren't poisoned, you'll become a member of the Herb Gathering Hall."

Henry Clark immediately recognized this man in blue as Herbalist Foster, whom he had seen before at the entrance of the Herb Gathering Hall, and couldn't help but be shocked. He hadn't expected this person to personally supervise the medicine trial. His heart filled with resentment and a bit of fear, he carefully perched on the edge of the bench, lowering his head to look at the herbs on the table.

His mind was in complete chaos.

Among these one hundred herbs, fifty were poisonous, taking up exactly half. There were thirty ordinary non-poisonous herbs, and twenty detoxifying herbs.

Randomly picking one, there was a fifty percent chance it would be poisonous.

Unless he could recognize which herbs were poisonous and which were not.

But these strange and unusual herbs—how could he recognize them?

If he accidentally ate a poisonous herb, at worst he would die instantly and his body would be thrown into the wild. At best, he would be poisoned and kicked out of the manor, and he would have no money to seek treatment at a clinic or pharmacy in the county town.

A sense of desolation and sorrow inevitably welled up in Henry Clark's heart.

Daniu hadn't even made it into the Herb Gathering Hall; because of his leg injury, he had been thrown out by Herbalist Foster and ended up wandering the county town, his fate unknown.

Now he had entered the Herb Gathering Hall, but was facing a life-or-death trial, not far from death himself.

In his grief and anger, Henry Clark gradually forgot his fear and instead calmed down, staring at the herbs in the wooden tray.

When it came to herbs, Henry Clark was not completely ignorant.

He was born the son of an ordinary country hunter. When he was only eight or nine, he had followed his father into the mountains to hunt, acting as a helper. Over three years, he had entered the deep forests at least a dozen or twenty times, each time staying in the mountains for more than ten days, sometimes even a month or two. In the mountains, when hungry, he would dig up wild vegetables to eat. If he got a scratch or cut, he would find some herbs to stop the bleeding and apply them.

His father had hoped that he would also become a hunter in the future and learn a trade to make a living, so he had taught him to recognize some herbs. If not for this year's drought and the scarcity of game in the mountains, he would probably still be in the countryside, working as a little hunter.

Henry Clark widened his eyes and carefully examined the hundred or so herbs in the tray. There were a few that were the same as the ones his father had taught him to recognize, but since it had been a long time, he had forgotten some of them.

Henry Clark racked his brains, recalling the herbs he had tasted in the past, and found that a few of them were actually detoxifying herbs he had eaten before. He picked out those three detoxifying herbs he had tried himself and placed them closer to himself.

Herbalist Foster took an incense stick, inserted it into the incense burner on the table, lit it, and then watched Henry Clark's actions coldly, not urging him.

After picking out the herbs he had eaten before, Henry Clark found that he didn't recognize almost any of the rest. After hesitating for a moment, he began to sort the remaining herbs. He didn't know most of these herbs, but he did know a bit of common sense.

Those colorful herbs in the old forest, the very bright ones, the ones with a fishy or pungent smell, the ones with a foul odor—these were very likely to be poisonous. Also, the most poisonous things in the deep forest were mushrooms, which killed the fastest; if he didn't recognize them, he would never eat them.

Henry Clark carefully pushed the two or three dozen herbs in the tray that were brightly colored, foul-smelling, or fishy, including a few mushrooms, away from himself, just to be safe, regardless of whether they were poisonous or not.

Of the sixty or seventy herbs left, he still couldn't guarantee that none were poisonous. After all, in the old forest, some herbs were highly toxic even if they had no smell or color. He desperately tried to recall the herbs he had seen before and picked out the ordinary non-poisonous ones he had some impression of.

Herbalist Foster was a bit surprised.

In the past ten days, he had already supervised the medicine trial of no fewer than thirty or forty children. Many of them just closed their eyes, grabbed one, and stuffed it into their mouths, leaving their fate to chance. A few recognized some herbs and only picked the ones they had seen before, not touching the unfamiliar ones.