25: Chapter 25 Refining Pills in the Void

Early in the morning, five days later.

Just as the sky was beginning to brighten, Fatty Zhao was woken up by a series of knocks on the door.

It was his father.

Fatty Zhao rubbed his eyes and opened the door, only to see his father standing at the entrance with an odd expression on his face.

It wasn't anger, nor was it anxiety—it was an expression he had never seen on his father's face before.

His lips were trembling, his eyes were wide open, and he was clutching a rag so tightly that his knuckles had turned white.

"Follow me."

Before Fatty Zhao could even ask where they were going, his father had already turned and headed toward the main hall.

He walked quickly, almost running, the soles of his cloth shoes slapping loudly against the stone floor.

In the main hall, the offering table had already been moved aside. The floor tiles were open, revealing a pitch-black hole beneath.

A damp, earthy smell wafted up from the hole, mixed with the scent of aged wood.

Fatty Zhao's father had inherited this house from his grandfather twenty years ago, and he had never known that there was such a thing beneath the offering table.

"I came to clean the ancestral hall this morning," his father's voice was very low, as if he were afraid of being overheard, "I saw some dead cockroaches under the offering table and wanted to sweep them out. That's when I noticed pry marks in the gaps between the floor tiles."

He crouched down, his fingers tracing the gap at the edge of the floor tiles. "Look here. It's been pried open."

Fatty Zhao crouched beside his father and leaned in to peer into the hole.

It was pitch black, and he couldn't see anything; only a chilly breeze blew up from within, carrying the scent of soil and stone.

"What's down there?"

His father didn't answer. He picked up an oil lamp from the offering table, lit it, and was the first to walk down the stone steps. Fatty Zhao followed behind.

The stone steps were very narrow, and the walls on both sides almost brushed against his shoulders.

The walls were built of blue bricks, and water seeped from the cracks; they felt cold and damp to the touch.

The secret chamber was empty.

The light from the oil lamp shone across the room, illuminating a stone pedestal in the center, upon which sat only a white jade box.

Fatty Zhao's gaze drifted past the jade box and landed on the opposite wall.

He froze.

The light from the oil lamp shone from below, making the densely packed characters on the wall clearly visible.

From top to bottom, left to right, the entire wall was covered in carvings. The handwriting was neat, the arrangement orderly, and every stroke was carved deeply into the stone.

"This is..."

His father held the oil lamp closer.

The three characters for "Qingxuan Technique" were the first to catch his eye. His father squinted, his lips moving as he read word by word.

When he read the line, "Circulate Qi through the entire cycle, connecting the Ren and Du vessels to reach Xiantian Perfection," the hand holding the oil lamp began to tremble.

The flame in the lamp flickered, causing the characters on the wall to brighten and dim.

Fatty Zhao was reading the "Hunyuan Technique".

He couldn't understand most of the terminology regarding Meridians and Dantian.

Terms like Hand Shaoyang Sanjiao Meridian, Qi Sea, Dantian, or circulating the cycle—he recognized every character, but when put together, he didn't know what they were talking about.

But he understood the first sentence of the opening.

"The method of Cultivate: draw Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi into the body, transform it into Spiritual Power, and transcend the mundane."

He stared at this line of text, reading it once, then reading it again.

Transcend the mundane.

He remembered that day at the Drunken Immortal Pavilion, when he told them that his ancestors were once Immortal Masters.

The kind who could summon wind and rain and fly on a Flying Sword. They laughed at him. They laughed until they were slapping the table, laughing until tears came out.

His face turned bright red, and he wanted to argue, but he couldn't open his mouth.

Because he himself didn't know if his ancestors were really Immortal Masters.

He only knew that his grandfather had said so, and his grandfather's grandfather had also said so. Passed down generation after generation, only that one sentence remained.

Now, what was carved on the wall told him—

That sentence was true.

Fatty Zhao looked up, his lips trembling, his eyes already red without him realizing it.

It wasn't crying; it was something surging up from his chest, stuck in his throat.

Like a breath held for a very, very long time that had suddenly found an exit.

"Father." His voice was a bit hoarse, "Is this... left by our ancestors?"

His father did not answer.

His father's gaze shifted from the "Qingxuan Technique" to the "Thirteen Heaven-Breaking Swords," and then from the sword technique diagrams to the "Hunyuan Technique."

The light of the oil lamp flickered on his face, illuminating the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes clearly.

His hand was still shaking. But it wasn't the kind of shaking caused by fear.

He handed the oil lamp to Fatty Zhao, freed both hands, and read the characters on the wall from start to finish again.

Not a single character was missed. After finishing, he opened the white jade box.

Inside the box, purple-gold ginseng whiskers were neatly arranged.

The old breaks were dried and blackened, while the new breaks still carried a moist, purple-gold luster—they had only been cut a few days ago.

His father took a deep breath.

He inhaled deeply, his chest expanding, his shoulders lifting. Then he exhaled slowly.

"This matter," he turned, looking at Fatty Zhao, his voice even lower than before, "Not a word is to be spoken to anyone."

Fatty Zhao nodded vigorously.

His father closed the jade box and placed it back on the stone pedestal.

Then he picked up the rag from the offering table and wiped everything in the secret chamber—the stone pedestal, the walls, the stone steps, and the edges of the floor tiles.

He wiped it carefully, not missing a single spot.

Fatty Zhao stood by, holding the oil lamp, watching the characters on the wall brighten and dim in the firelight.

He suddenly remembered the laughter at the Drunken Immortal Pavilion.

The fair-skinned, slightly bearded youth had laughed until he slapped the table. The short youth had laughed until he wiped away tears. The other two had laughed until they were doubled over.

He suddenly felt that those laughs didn't matter at all.

The flame of the oil lamp jumped.

On the wall, the stone dust from the last line of characters had not yet completely fallen away.

...

Jiang Yan found an inconspicuous inn in the north of Yuzhou City.

The innkeeper was a thin, dry man in his fifties, whose eyes moved faster than the beads of an abacus.

Seeing Jiang Yan walk in, he leaned half his body out from behind the counter, his gaze pausing for a moment on the animal-skin-wrapped sword at his waist before quickly looking away.

"Are you staying the night, guest?"

"The room at the very end upstairs."

The innkeeper flipped through his ledger and quoted a price.

Jiang Yan counted out some silver fragments and placed them on the counter. The innkeeper picked them up, weighed them, bit them, and then fished out a bunch of keys from under the counter, selecting one to hand over.

"Hot water will be delivered to your door at the Hour of the Rooster; after that, there won't be any. If you want to eat, come downstairs; we don't deliver to rooms."

Jiang Yan took the key and went upstairs. The stairs were made of wood and creaked when stepped on.

The room at the very end faced the end of the corridor, and its window opened to the inn's backyard, where one could see the bare branches of a crooked jujube tree poking into the gray sky.

He bolted the door, took out everything he had in his robes one by one, and laid them out on the square table.

A semi-Spirit Medicine Lingzhi. Raw Xuan Iron ore. The Three-Eyed Fire Wolf skin was folded neatly, its fire-red fur emitting a very faint light in the dim room.

The pale red Fire Jade, with that mass of crimson slowly rotating within the stone's heart.

Finally, the white jade box; he opened it, and the Purple-Gold Ginseng lay quietly on the dark red velvet.

The five items were lined up in a row.

Jiang Yan sat cross-legged on the bed, his gaze slowly sweeping over these Materials.

Three-Eyed Fire Wolf skin, the fur of a First-Rank Intermediate Yao Beast.

There wasn't enough area to refine it into a Dharma Robe, but it was more than enough to be made into Talisman skin.

Talisman paper made from the skin of a First-Rank Intermediate Yao Beast could easily bear First-Rank Low or Intermediate grade Fire-attribute Talismans.

Once drawn into Talismans, they could serve as a supplementary means alongside the Flying Sword and gold needles at critical moments.

Fire Jade, First-Rank Medium Grade.

Embedding it into the Flying Sword carried too much risk—the Flying Sword had already been inscribed with four Restrictions; adding an embedding would require readjusting the entire circuit, and with his current cultivation, a slight carelessness would ruin it.

But it was perfect for setting up a Formation. A First-Rank Medium Grade Fire Jade was sufficient to serve as the core of the "Li Fire Killing Array."

The Li Fire Killing Array used the Fire Jade as the core, supplemented by nine jade stones of the quality from the Zhou Family as the anchor points. Once activated, it could form a flame barrier within a radius of three zhang, trapping and burning enemies simultaneously.

In his past life, he was a Third-Rank Formation Master; setting up a First-Rank Formation was effortless for him.

Purple-Gold Ginseng, First-Rank Low Grade Spirit Medicine.

This was something that could directly increase his Cultivate speed at the moment.

The Purple-Gold Ginseng could be used as the main ingredient for the peiyuan pill, supplemented with poria, astragalus, and angelica aged over fifty years to harmonize the medicinal properties.

If he could refine a batch of peiyuan pills, even if only three or four pills were formed, it would be enough to push his cultivation to the Late Stage of Qi Refining Stage 1 or even Perfection.

The problem was, he didn't have a Pill Furnace.

An ordinary iron Pill Furnace couldn't withstand the temperature of Spirit Fire; he could only perform Void Realm Alchemy.

Void Realm Alchemy had extremely high requirements for Divine Sense and Spiritual Power—using Divine Sense as the furnace and Spiritual Power as the fire, the medicinal ingredients would be suspended between his palms to complete the Fusion of medicinal properties.

His current Divine Sense covered one and a half zhang, barely enough, but the risk was not small.

If he was slightly careless and the medicinal properties went out of control, the Purple-Gold Ginseng would be ruined.

He only had one Purple-Gold Ginseng.

Jiang Yan put everything back into his robes, closed his eyes, sat cross-legged, and began to regulate his breathing.