In the end, he was just a teenager from a hunter’s family, who had only just survived a brush with death to enter the Herb Gathering Hall and become a herb-gathering apprentice. As for this Herbalist Foster, his status was so exalted that even the attitude of the gate guards and the richly dressed youths toward Herbalist Foster made it clear—he could not possibly pose even the slightest threat to Herbalist Foster.

If he showed even a hint of resentment, it would be nothing but courting death, and there would be no way to seek justice for Big Ben.

When Henry Clark walked out of the small wooden hut, he felt as if he had been drenched from head to toe, his legs weak and unsteady. He felt no joy at all; he just wanted to find a place to sleep and recover the physical and mental energy he had spent over the past few hours.

A proud young girl in fine clothes led him to a courtyard to rest.

Meanwhile, the next child waiting to test the medicine was seized by the richly dressed youths, and, screaming in terror, was sent into the small wooden hut where Dr. Foster was to test the medicine.

Chapter 9: Fellow Apprentices

All the children who passed the test were sent to a small courtyard in the Herb Gathering Hall. The courtyard had more than ten large stone rooms, reserved for the herb-gathering apprentices to live in.

Henry Clark was taken to bathe, his tattered sackcloth discarded, and he changed into a new set of coarse apprentice clothes. Then he was assigned to one of the stone rooms in the southern courtyard. He collapsed onto the bed and slept the entire afternoon. It was only at dinner, awakened by the smell of food, that he finally woke up.

Only then did Henry Clark realize there were four other children in the stone room—two boys and two girls—who were eating rice and laughing together. They all wore coarse clothes and, like Henry Clark, had washed up, so it was impossible to tell their backgrounds.

On the table in the stone room sat a bucket of rice and several large plates of vegetables. There were five sets of bowls and chopsticks, one of which was still empty. Henry Clark knew that was his, so he immediately got up, rushed over, and grabbed a bowl to get some food. If he was late, all the food might be gone. After all, after spending ten or twenty days here, almost all the children had learned to scramble for food.

Henry Clark was no different; just the smell of food was enough to jolt him awake from his dreams.

A tall, sturdy boy with a tigerish face saw how anxious Henry Clark was and pointed at him, laughing loudly: “Haha, look how desperate this kid is. No need to rush, there’s plenty of food here. No more hard steamed buns or tasteless thin porridge—now we have brown rice and vegetables, and as much as we want. Who are we? We’re official apprentices of the Herb Gathering Hall now. We’re bound for success—how could we fight over a little food?”

“Yeah, careful you choke.”

A small, sharp-eyed boy chimed in. The two girls, holding their rice bowls, giggled as they watched Henry Clark, making him almost want to crawl into a hole from embarrassment.

Still, though Henry Clark was embarrassed, his hands didn’t slow down at all—he shoveled rice into his mouth as fast as he could. He hadn’t eaten all day and was starving; even if no one fought him for food, he wanted to fill his belly as quickly as possible.

The two boys were especially talkative, chatting non-stop.

Soon, Henry Clark learned their names from their conversation.

The tall, sturdy boy was called Charles Baker, twelve years old, the son of a local blacksmith in the county town. He had built up strong muscles from working at the forge with his father since childhood.

The clever boy was called Lucy Brooks, eleven years old, from a tenant farmer’s family near the county town. The two girls were Yvonne Reed, eleven, and Emily Harris, ten, both from the county town as well, their families working as tailors and weavers.

Henry Clark was surprised to find that all four of them were from ordinary families in or within ten miles of Zhuqi County town—none were from the countryside.

Only he had come from a remote, impoverished mountain village hundreds of miles away. Subconsciously, Henry Clark felt a sense of inferiority. Compared to his own poor, rural background, the other four, living in the county town, were already quite well-off.

In fact, the Herb Gathering Hall’s recruitment of apprentices in Zhuqi County only covered the area within a few dozen miles of the county town; they never went to the truly remote countryside. If Henry Clark hadn’t happened to overhear the news from an official at the post station shelter, he probably wouldn’t have come to the county town at all.

“Hey, blockhead, what’s your name? How old are you, where are you from?”

Charles Baker asked boisterously.

“Henry Clark, eleven, nearby, from around here~.”

Since they had all introduced themselves, Henry Clark couldn’t hide his name. But he didn’t want them to know he was from such a remote mountain village, for fear of being looked down on, so he answered vaguely. Ten miles is nearby, and so is hundreds of miles—after all, it’s all within Zhuqi County, so he wasn’t really lying.

Charles Baker didn’t press Henry Clark about where he was from, and laughed, “Henry Clark? Haha, what a strange name. What does ‘Qin’ mean? My name sounds much better—‘Yicheng,’ as in ‘success at the first try’! My old man’s a genius, giving me such a great name. Sure enough, I got into the Herb Gathering Hall on my first try!”