Except for a lot of troubles in the first month, life in winter was stable afterward.

After Xuantian City helped a sick child last time, professional players from other city-states came to purchase.

They have almost adapted to winter life.

Now in the entire Jinjiang District, there were only two most famous city-states, one was Jidu City in the north, and the other was Xuantian City in the south.

However, judging from the dialogue in the chat channel, Xuantian City was better than Jidu City.

Lu Jiu has also gradually heard about Jidu City recently. That place was opposite to their life here. Xuantian City was more free, and professional residents lived in harmony with ordinary residents.

Jidu City was like a place where rules were supreme. It seems that there was an iron-fisted rule. The city lord forcefully purchases food from residents and gives a very low price.

The professional residents there also have to hand in a certain amount of meat, and even sell materials to the city lord’s shop first.

However, the selling prices there were not high. All the NPCs in the shops were high-level talents, and the equipment and props they made were of good quality. Compared with the neighboring city-states, Jidu City was the best choice for many residents.

At least the city lord did this, which did not cause any major conflicts in the city.

Too many city lords did not pay attention to the importance of NPCs at the beginning, and even regarded them as chores, and then realized what stupid things they had done.

However, the cost of hiring a high-level talent NPC was not something that everyone could afford.

Today was another NPC salary day. Lu Jiu felt like a money-giving boy, giving dozens of gold coins to NPCs every month. Even professional teams that go out to collect and mine need supplies.

The pharmacy manager was the last one to collect his salary, and by the way, she reported the revenue of the pharmacy this month. However, Lu Jiu didn’t care much about this matter, and Shen Jufeng took care of it.

Lu Jiu handed the right amount of gold coins to the store manager NPC, but the other party did not take the money and turned around and left like before but stared at her.

She felt uncomfortable being stared at: “What’s wrong?”

The store manager seemed a little entangled, opened her mouth, and spoke after a while, “I can return 1 gold coin, can it be exchanged for a tempering fruit?”

Lu Jiu was stunned and looked at the gold coin handed to her by the NPC: “Do you still need this, isn’t it used for food and potions?”

She was not afraid of embarrassment. When she heard the name of the tempering fruit, she knew it was non-toxic and ate one, but she didn’t feel anything special. The taste was similar to grapes.

It tasted very good.

The NPC seemed to have made up her mind, “I just think it’s a waste for you to eat it directly, and recently I have learned a new pill refining method, which can be refined into a Body Tempering Pill to improve all aspects of qualifications.”

After hearing this, Shen Jufeng ignored the things at hand and listened to what she said attentively.

“The effects of the Tempering Fruit are more than you think, and the batch you collected before is still low-level Tempering Fruit, which is the first batch of fruits produced by these trees. The more times these trees bear fruit, the more likely they are to produce medium-level or high-level Tempering Fruit.”

Lu Jiu was stunned. There are so many ways to produce a Tempering Fruit: “Then what the Body Tempering Pill improves is, for example, the total value of our physical attributes, just like when we kill wild monsters, we will be rewarded with an increase in the total value of attributes.”

The store manager NPC nodded: “Almost, but there are other benefits, such as people with skills can also improve their skill level through the Body Tempering Pill. Skills can be upgraded. Otherwise, it will be difficult for you to deal with high-level wild monsters that will appear in the future with the existing skill quality.”

Lu Jiu knew that what the NPC said was right. For example, the wild monsters they encountered now already had a base of tens of thousands of HP, and their attack damage was still in the hundreds.

Even if their attack value increased, the few seconds of control were not enough to deal much damage. They can’t imagine what it will be like when they encounter silver and gold-level wild monsters.

“Then you mean to say, you want to take the Tempering Pill to improve the quality of the medicine you make?” Lu Jiu asked.

“Yes, although I have a talent for advanced medicine refining, superb medicine refining skills need to be honed and improved. Talent does not mean that I will be a master of medicine refining. It’s just that if there is that opportunity, I also need to improve my physical fitness and mental strength to refine medicines with better properties.”

Lu Jiu doesn’t quite understand how she needs to refine medicine, but it seems that whether it is fighting outside or refining medicine, it requires excellent physical fitness and mental strength.

“I have been growing, but the speed is not fast enough, but when I saw the Tempering Fruit and the geographical environment of this area, I knew this was my chance.”

Lu Jiu can understand the growth that the NPC said, for example, the medicine sold in the store at the beginning, and the HP added were not high, but after the Tempering Fruit, the quality of the medicine has a qualitative leap.

This was not only the effect of the Tempering Fruit, but also the NPC in the pharmacy has indeed become stronger, but not as strong as their enhanced attack attributes.

Shen Jufeng was still thinking with his eyes downcast. Seeing that the NPC stopped talking, he knew that she would only say this.

Lu Jiu immediately made a decision: “Then I will pay you a thousand tempering fruits first, and I will give you half of the salary afterward. As for the body-tempering pill, you just need to refine it, and I will provide all the materials.”

The store manager NPC wanted the tempering fruit just to refine the body-tempering pill for herself. They would not take things from the store. Only the salary was considered their supplies.

After the store manager took the tempering fruit, she went back, leaving Lu Jiu and Shen Jufeng still digesting what she had just said.

Lu Jiu tilted her head and took out a tempering fruit: “I originally thought it was just a fruit with good effects, but I didn’t expect it to be so useful.”

What’s more terrifying is that giant trees can be seen everywhere. When this kind of fruit is produced in the future, anyone who can reach the top of the tree can pick it.

If this effect was known, then picking tempering fruits in the future would not be as easy as before.

“But this also solves my previous doubts. I originally thought that the current skill attributes were easy to deal with ordinary wild monsters, and the Brown Iron level was also okay, but it was hard to say for higher levels. It turned out that it could be upgraded.”

Today, this question has been solved. It was good to be able to upgrade.

“I have thought about it, but I wonder if there will be cards that increase the skill attribute values, but I just haven’t got them, or they will appear after the beast tide siege.”

When the game was updated, it was prompted that new forces would come again after each global beast tide siege.

Shen Jufeng also thought so: “It is undeniable that such cards may appear. The game world will not give us too many things at once.”

If everything was given at the beginning, it would destroy a certain balance.

It may be okay for pioneer players. The game world needs such people to be strong so that it is easier to rule the city-state. The prosperity of a city-state also requires the city lord to be powerful.

However, there was also prohibited equipment for the pioneer players. Lu Jiu has said before that the magic suits and ultra-high-level equipment that she synthesized before were all unusable.

Pioneer players like them have a high starting point, but not to the maximum level.