Yellow Skinned Taoist Master

Chapter 52: Light the Furnace!

"People come in three kinds of bad — a little bad, a middling bad, and a great bad."

"Pills come in three kinds as well — yin pills, yang pills, and yin-yang pills."

"The Heaven Toxin Pill is divided into the Heaven Pill and the Poison Pill. The Heaven Pill is wondrous and upright — not evil — and therefore belongs to the yang category. For that reason, the furnace must be lit at high noon, and the pill will be complete within a single day."

Inside the alchemy chamber, Chen Huangpi held open the Seven-Jeweled Esoteric Elixir Scripture and paced back and forth around the massive Nine Dragons Refining Heaven Furnace.

As he walked, he quietly murmured the steps of the refining process.

"The Hundred-Deaths-No-Rebirth Man belongs to yin. When the Heaven Pill is complete, feed it into the furnace and roast it with fierce fire — this completes the Poison Pill. The moment the furnace opens, yin reaches its peak and gives birth to yang;

yang reaches its peak and gives birth to yin. Together they become the Heaven Toxin Pill!"

"I know exactly how to make this pill!"

Chen Huangpi's eyes lit up as he turned toward the brass oil lamp at his side.

The brass oil lamp was pressing down hard on a squirming black lump of flesh — the Hundred-Deaths-No-Rebirth Man.

The black lump was screaming at the top of its lungs."Spare me, good sir, spare me!"

"I have an eight-hundred-year-old mother at home and a thirteen-year-old concubine — please, good sir, let me go, and I shall repay you generously in the fu—"

It didn't get to finish.

Chen Huangpi stepped up and landed a punch square on it, knocking it cold.

Then he said, "The alchemy manual warned that this Hundred-Deaths-No-Rebirth Man is exceptionally skilled at talking its way out of things. Now I see it's absolutely right."

"Indeed," the brass oil lamp agreed. "Even I don't have a thirteen-year-old concubine — what gives it the right?"

The brass oil lamp was seated cross-legged atop the barely-breathing Hundred-Deaths-No-Rebirth Man, and gave its head one more good punch just to be sure.

Then, feeling satisfied, it turned to Chen Huangpi. "You've never refined a pill before. And there's only one of these Hundred-Deaths-No-Rebirth Men — if you fail the refining, there's no second chance!"

"Relax. My master can make pills."

"Yes, Guanzhu can — but he never taught you."

Chen Huangpi smiled smugly. "Master never taught me, but that doesn't mean I never learned."

True, he had never personally refined a pill.

But every time Chen Huangpi was put into the furnace to be "refined" himself, he had quietly been memorizing his master's techniques and the sequence of each step.

He remembered one particular occasion.

His master had asked him why he paid such close attention.

Chen Huangpi had given three cold laughs and said only seven words: "I am not yet strong — strength brings opportunity."

Those seven words alone had earned him a thorough lesson in alchemy techniques that very day.

So he was confident — completely confident — that he could refine the Heaven Toxin Pill.

"Huang Er — watch closely!"

Chen Huangpi formed a hand seal with boundless confidence, channeling his essence and energy to his fingertips and driving it into the Nine Dragons Refining Heaven Furnace.

The next instant.

Nine dragon cries rang out.

The nine golden dragons coiled around the furnace simultaneously opened their eyes and began to slowly rotate.

The brass oil lamp stared in wide-eyed disbelief: "No way — Chen Huangpi, you actually know how to do this?"

"Less talking! Fire — go!"

Chen Huangpi bellowed, and the lid of the furnace rose silently into the air on its own.

The brass oil lamp hesitated no longer, opened its mouth, and breathed out a stream of true fire.

This had been arranged beforehand.

Because Chen Huangpi's cultivation path was different from both the ancient cultivators and the modern ones — he did not yet possess the true fire that Golden Core cultivators normally had.

"Ingredients — now!"

Chen Huangpi called out again.

The brass oil lamp scrambled to toss the pre-prepared medicinal herbs into the furnace.

The flames inside roared and surged.

Yet the herbs, rather than burning to ash, were instead refined down into droplets of liquid.

The nine dragon heads opened their jaws wide.

The medicinal liquid gathered into spheres inside each mouth.

Chen Huangpi surveyed the sight with quiet satisfaction. "The only truly extraordinary ingredient in the Heaven Toxin Pill is the Hundred-Deaths-No-Rebirth Man. All the other herbs — I've been collecting those during my mountain patrols over the years. Let's finish processing the herbs first, then we move on to everything else."

"Add some mercury."

"A bit more."

"Why is there so little lead left?"

Chen Huangpi slapped his forehead and remembered: "Right — I used too much the last time I prepared medicine for Master. No matter, I'll go get some more."

Aside from the step where the Hundred-Deaths-No-Rebirth Man was added, the earlier stages only needed to be followed in the proper sequence, and the timing didn't have to be quite so precise.

……

Meanwhile.

In the guest quarters.

Song Qiuyue and the other cultivators had gathered together.

One of them stood at the door, monitoring the movements outside.

"Miss, that old Daoist priest really does seem to have vanished."

Since being brought to the guest quarters by Chen Huangpi, none of them had dared venture outside — or even separate from one another.

Propriety between men and women aside.

Song Qiuyue had stopped caring about that.

The incense power feeding the deities was draining away for no apparent reason.

The ones still in the best shape retained barely half of what they'd had at their peak.

The worst off had less than a tenth remaining.

"The shamaness is coming this way with the remnants. They're all caked in mud, and every one of them is carrying a green onion over their shoulder."

At that, Song Qiuyue's expression brightened at once. She gestured for the cultivator to step aside and pulled the door open herself.

"Granny — a moment, please."

Song Qiuyue called out from behind the door, stopping Granny Tang.

"What is it, honored guest?" Granny Tang said.

"This morning you spoke up on my behalf," Song Qiuyue said. "I'm grateful from the bottom of my heart, and I wish to repay you."

The words were genuine enough — but what Song Qiuyue was actually thinking was that this blind old woman was one of the Hundred Thousand Mountains' remnants, simple and unpolished in her ways. She had even spoken up for her that morning. Surely she had little worldly experience. A few kind words ought to be enough to coax some useful information out of her.

But Granny Tang was no ordinary woman.

She might only have Golden Core cultivation — but in her younger years she had ventured out beyond the Hundred Thousand Mountains.

And her mind was as sharp as ever. She saw through Song Qiuyue's intentions at a glance.

Granny Tang replied with cool indifference: "The honored guest flatters me. This old woman has one foot in the grave — she can't accept such a reward."

"I am of the Song family of Qinghe!"

Song Qiuyue said earnestly, "Granny, we are both trapped here in this temple. All the more reason to work together, to help one another."

"And how exactly would we be helping one another?"

Granny Tang's curiosity was piqued.

Song Qiuyue chose her words carefully: "That Chen Huangpi seems genuinely kind-hearted — but the old Daoist priest is deeply sinister. He appears to be able to drain the incense power from deities — yet I've noticed that the mountain god you venerate is actually growing stronger. How is that possible?"

The two groups were lodged right next to each other.

Song Qiuyue could naturally sense the difference in the deity enshrined on the other side of the wall.

Its incense supply wasn't nearly as robust as the deities she had brought along.

But it was growing, steadily.

The only limiting factor seemed to be that there were so few remnants to provide offerings, which kept it capped at a certain ceiling no matter how much it grew.

Granny Tang heard this and suddenly laughed.

"A Nascent Soul Monarch is asking a half-blind old woman of Golden Core cultivation to explain such mysteries? Isn't that making things difficult for me?"

And with that, she turned and walked away.

They had made an agreement with Chen Huangpi, and though they had no way to repay it right now, they refused to sit idle. Working off the debt was the least they could do — they had no interest whatsoever in wasting words with Song Qiuyue.

Song Qiuyue called out in a hurry: "Granny! Granny!"

The next instant.

Every single onion being carried by the remnants suddenly started shouting.

"You shameless wretch! Even I didn't cry out when I was about to be killed, and here you go shrieking like that — and in such an ugly voice at that! I swear I'd love to tear that mouth of yours apart!"

"Heh heh — let me tell you something. Several people died in that very room you're staying in just a few days ago."

"Ha ha ha — scared now, are you?"

The onion men burst into raucous laughter.

Song Qiuyue's face went pale, then rigid with fury, murderous intent surging through her.

But far from being frightened, the onion men only grew more provocative.

"That woman's not bad looking, in a rough sort of way. Maybe we can get Chen Huangpi to throw us all in the same pot together — at least then we'd die having had a little fun!"

BANG.

Song Qiuyue slammed the door shut with a resounding crash.

Then she swept a hand through the air, cutting off every sound from outside.

Even so.

She could easily imagine those onion men out there, laughing their insufferable heads off.

"Despicable!"

"All of them — despicable!"

Murderous light flared in Song Qiuyue's eyes. That Granny Tang clearly knew something — and was deliberately withholding it.

She was practically inviting her own death.

And those onion men deserved it even more.

How dare they humiliate her like that!

……

The Hundred Thousand Mountains teemed with evil spirits.

Just how many, no one could say.

Because the Hundred Thousand Mountains were truly immense — vast enough that several nearby nations combined would not match their expanse.

Some said that the evil spirits lurking within the Hundred Thousand Mountains might outnumber the entire population of a country.

A bit of an exaggeration, perhaps.

But no one was willing to find out whether it was true or false.

What everyone agreed on was that the remnants scattered through the Hundred Thousand Mountains were certainly outnumbered by any single city's population.

There might only be a few tens of thousands of them in total.

Tens of thousands sounds like a lot — but spread across the Hundred Thousand Mountains, you could walk several hundred kilometers without encountering a single soul.

Today, however, was different.

For the first time, a great many people had entered the Hundred Thousand Mountains.

Several thousand in total, marching in a long, sweeping line.

Every person's feet hovered just above the ground — forty deities were channeling their divine power to carry them forward.

They had set out the day before.

To be precise, they had departed at the moment Song Qiuyue arrived at the Pure Immortal Temple and decided to make it a staging ground for the migrants.

One of the cultivators said lazily, "They say the Hundred Thousand Mountains are terrifying — but we've walked all this way and haven't seen so much as half an evil spirit. I have to say, I'm a little disappointed."

"Shut your mouth!"

An older cultivator snapped coldly: "It's daytime now — that's the only reason we can swagger through like this. Come nightfall, you might not even figure out how you died."

The younger cultivator felt a chill run through him. "I know it's daytime — that's exactly why I dared say anything. Come night, I'll stitch my lips shut."

"You'd better."

The older cultivator frowned. "By my count, we should reach the temple first thing tomorrow morning. But for some reason, I can't shake an uneasy feeling."

"Any particular reason?"

"None I can name."

The older cultivator shook his head and sighed. "Perhaps it's Miss Qiuyue pushing us so hard — I may just be feeling the strain."

Every quarter-hour they received another urgent message from Song Qiuyue.

During the day, sending messages through the Hundred Thousand Mountains wasn't difficult.

Even from Xu Province city, Song Tiangang's loyal steward had sent word — another fifty deities were following behind.

Those fifty had no migrants to escort, so they wouldn't be far behind.

The older cultivator couldn't quite understand it. Even to shelter migrants, a hundred deities was more than enough — fifty would probably do. And yet here they were, one hundred and fifty in total. Just how terrifying could the Hundred Thousand Mountains be at night to warrant this kind of force?

Just then.

The older cultivator noticed a white mist beginning to rise on all sides, and frowned. "Fog at this hour — what a nuisance."

He turned to one of the others: "You — go disperse that mist."