novelraw Chapter 127: Could It Be That I Have Talent?
Chapter 127: Could It Be That I Have Talent?
What did it mean for joy to turn to sorrow?
It meant being in such a good mood that you stopped being careful, and never stopped to think about why a bear demon's mountain valley would have a perfectly intact beehive of that size left undisturbed.
Did the bear simply not like honey?
Li Qiuchen tucked one young miss under each arm and fled for a full twenty li before daring to stop and catch his breath, by which point the valley was well out of sight.
That had been terrifying.
The truly fearsome thing in that valley hadn't been the bear at all. It was the bees.
Not ordinary bees, either. They were Gold-Eating Bees.
The venomous stingers on their tails could pierce iron armor.
Hu Caiyi had been making a fuss about wanting wild honey, and Li Qiuchen hadn't thought anything of it at the time.
He had climbed up and cut off a section, and then the hive above him had erupted with a single thunderous drone, and that was when he realized something was very wrong.After that came the desperate flight.
At the start he had pulled out the bear skin and held it over their heads, hoping it would offer some protection.
It offered none whatsoever.
The real reason there was only one bear demon in that valley, with no clan having formed around it, was almost certainly this nest of Gold-Eating Bees. Even a bear with its thick hide couldn't withstand their attack. The consequence of being tempted by the honey was being stung to death.
Li Qiuchen himself had fared reasonably well, since his Withered Wood Technique gave him exceptional physical durability, and a few stings made little difference to him.
The two young misses had not been so fortunate.
They hadn't gotten away in time, and both ended up covered in welts.
Fortunately Li Qiuchen was there. Drawing on the Medicine Master's Blessing, he was able to neutralize the bee venom. Without that, both of them would have been finished on the spot.
"I want fried bee larvae! A whole big plate of them!"
Hu Caiyi pouted with tearful outrage.
If she hadn't been so greedy, none of this would have happened to them. Eating fried bee larvae was the only appropriate form of revenge.
The section of honeycomb Li Qiuchen had cut down weighed a full ten jin, packed densely with larvae.
Any other girl would likely have refused to even look at such a thing, let alone try eating it.
But deep-fried, the flavor was genuinely exquisite.
And the finest thing of all was the honey stored in the comb.
Dissolved in water, it had a distinct taste of passionfruit.
Unmistakably exceptional quality.
Honey of this caliber could absolutely be used in medicine, and Li Qiuchen happened to have a formula that called for exactly this kind of honey.
It was the Hundred-Fruit Immortal Brew from the Langui section.
That's right, not a proper pill at all.
According to the formula's records, this had been a medicinal wine exclusively supplied to the ancient royal court of the Yan kingdom. After consuming it, one would feel transcendently euphoric and become lost in an ecstasy from which one couldn't extricate oneself.
In brief, divine happy juice.
It did have some effect on advancing cultivation, modest but present, and very enjoyable.
The production cost was high, and drinking too much was habit-forming, but enjoyable.
Li Qiuchen happened to have all the required ingredients on hand, except for the alcohol.
The main ingredient of the Hundred-Fruit Immortal Brew was this wild mountain honey, combined with various wild fruits. He had transplanted plenty of fruit trees to his herb bed, and any fruit could be coaxed into ripeness at any time.
The supplementary medicinal ingredients weren't particularly rare either. After three rounds of decocting and brewing, the result was blended with good quality liquor.
Without the alcohol blend, it was just honey fruit juice.
You had to wonder what remarkable things ancient people had tasted, if something like this counted as a royal exclusive.
That night, back at his mountain stream dwelling, Li Qiuchen attempted to produce a rough, improvised version.
He had originally intended to brew it and then take another Spirit-Gathering Pill and begin cultivating.
But after the fire was out he scooped up a spoonful to check the flavor.
Sweet and slightly tart, with the supplementary herbs it had a flavor not unlike sour plum soup.
Had he put too much hawthorn in?
Uncertain. One more taste.
Why wasn't the honey sweeter? There was a faint green, unripe quality to it as well, and he couldn't tell what flower it had come from.
Still uncertain. One more taste.
When Hu Caiyi woke in the morning, she found Li Qiuchen sitting in front of an empty pot in a daze.
The air was filled with the mingled fragrance of honey and fruit.
Right, you! Eyes say you're cultivating, hands say you're sneaking good food without us!
And you ate the entire pot!
Hu Caiyi's indignation boiled over. She got up, ran to the pot, dipped a finger into the residue at the bottom, and put it in her mouth.
"..."
"What is this? Why is it so good?"
Li Qiuchen jolted out of his daze and came back to himself. He looked at the empty pot, and a wave of belated alarm washed through him.
How had he gotten so absorbed?
These were all completely ordinary ingredients. He hadn't even added the alcohol yet.
And more importantly...
Li Qiuchen raised his hand and made a loose fist.
His cultivation had genuinely grown.
That made no sense at all.
Was the Langui section's formula actually this powerful?
Li Qiuchen was not one to believe in unexplained phenomena. A mere honey fruit juice, even with a few medicinal herbs added, shouldn't have been capable of this.
Something he hadn't been aware of must have triggered some hidden mechanism the previous night.
So he made an identical pot of honey fruit juice in front of the two young misses.
This time he carefully selected every wild fruit and medicinal herb used, making certain nothing unusual had been mixed in.
Then Tang Xiaoxue and Hu Caiyi took turns spooning it up and couldn't stop themselves at all.
After finishing it, both of them sat slack-jawed on the ground with flushed faces and vacant expressions, slumped where they sat and giggling foolishly to themselves, sunk entirely in their own imaginary worlds.
Li Qiuchen was thoroughly taken aback.
Something was wrong with the wild honey?
That shouldn't be it. Eating honey straight had no such effect.
So how were these ingredients producing this result when combined?
Had he somehow awakened some hidden ability as a supreme chef?
No, no, no, something had to be wrong here.
But Li Qiuchen couldn't work out where the problem was.
When the two young misses came back to their senses they only felt parched, and demanded that Li Qiuchen brew another pot. He refused outright.
What they were calling thirst was actually their cultivation having grown slightly, but with no formal cultivation in place, the spiritual energy that had gathered inside them had nowhere to go. Given their unusual constitutions, an ordinary person in that condition would already be running a fever of forty degrees.
The plain fruit juice had already produced effects this strong. If alcohol were added on top of that, Li Qiuchen didn't dare imagine the outcome.
Where exactly was the problem?
This question stayed with him all the way home.
Back in Yun County, once the two young misses were settled, Li Qiuchen went to a pharmacy and purchased a box of hawthorn digestive pills.
Yes, the ordinary stomach-settling kind.
He intended to run an experiment and eliminate variables.
First, commercially produced pills. Then pills made from pharmacy-purchased ingredients. Finally, pills made using hawthorn he had personally coaxed into growth himself.
He took them in sequence after three consecutive meals.
No difference whatsoever between them.
That didn't add up.
Ruling himself out as the variable, did the problem lie with the formula?
Li Qiuchen knew enough about medicinal properties by now to look at the Hundred-Fruit Immortal Brew formula from every angle without seeing where the issue was.
He could believe that scrambled eggs might somehow taste like crab. What he couldn't understand was how crab would hatch out of an egg.
After several days of fruitless deliberation, he gave up and went to seek Senior Brother Yang's help.
Senior Brother Yang was an experienced pill refiner. His reputation might have taken a catastrophic hit, but his professional skills were intact.
He had been keeping out of sight these days, shut away in his small room absorbed in cultivation and pill refining.
When he saw Li Qiuchen arrive at his door with gifts, Senior Brother Yang was genuinely moved.
This junior brother was truly a person of generous spirit, still willing to come and visit after everything that had happened.
Li Qiuchen had no particular resentment toward Senior Brother Yang.
The psychological shadow was one thing, but what he researched followed the same approach as his own great-great-uncle had used, which the teachers would have called ancient-method cultivation.
In ancient times, cultivators cultivating spiritual roots had been entirely normal practice. On that point, Senior Brother Yang hadn't deceived anyone.
The real problem was the Medicine Master follower's method of extracting spiritual roots from others.
That was unambiguously the demonic path.
Setting that aside and judging purely by scholarship, Senior Brother Yang genuinely could be called a learned man.
Most people, even with access to the Hongwen Hall, would never read and copy out the volume of cultivation methods he had, let alone supplement and repair them on their own.
After Li Qiuchen explained his question, Senior Brother Yang was quiet for a moment, then said quietly, "This isn't a problem with you personally. Don't worry about it. In recent years, the efficacy of pills on the market has been increasing to varying degrees, but this has nothing to do with the quality of the ingredients themselves. It's mainly the influence of the Star Chart. You haven't started studying the Calendar in the Five Classics yet, have you?"
"That's right."
"The Calendar contains knowledge about the Star Chart. To put it simply... you know how people used to say that when the Emperor Star was unsettled the emperor was about to die, and when the Breaker Star moved it meant war was coming? Do you follow that?"
"I do."
"Based on tens of thousands of years of recorded observations by ancient astronomers, changes in the Star Chart of the universe produce corresponding effects on our world. The great cold waves that come every two or three thousand years, for instance, are related to changes in the Star Chart."
"The increases in pill efficacy you've noticed, along with the sudden improvement in natural conditions and the significant rise in average life expectancy, these signs and omens are also recorded in historical texts, and they correspond to the return of the Heaven of Longevity."
Senior Brother Yang's expression grew serious. "It is said that after the Heaven of Longevity merged with the great way, it traveled throughout all the heavens and realms of the universe. Wherever its footsteps passed, the countless living beings beneath received its grace and blessing. The appearance of these signs now may mean that the footsteps of the Heaven of Longevity are drawing closer to this world."
"In other words, not only will the effects of pill refining continue to improve, but more and more people will receive the Medicine Master's Blessing. If you have an interest in the path of pill refining, junior brother, you could dedicate yourself to studying it. You will certainly achieve great things in time."
That explained it.
Li Qiuchen felt everything fall into place.
It wasn't his own doing, and it wasn't the formula's doing. The rules of heaven itself had shifted.
The new version had buffed the Heaven of Longevity.
With that said, the exceptional efficacy of the Spirit-Gathering Pills also made sense now.
Elder Jiang hadn't given him the wrong medicine. The medicinal properties of the pills themselves had changed.
"Then may I ask, senior brother, if I want to study the path of pill refining, where should I begin?"
"I have an introductory text right here... though personally I'd suggest you focus on your regular lessons first, build a solid foundation before exploring these extra interests. What the teachers teach is the true foundation for entering the path of cultivation."
Li Qiuchen was surprised. "Senior brother, that's not what you used to say!"
Senior Brother Yang said seriously, "I wasn't the chief before."
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