Yellow Skinned Taoist Master

Chapter 63: The Liver Temple, the Branch, and Simmered Low and Slow

"Huang Er — wake up! Something's happened!"

The brass oil lamp was shaken awake and said groggily: "Did the Demon Tree get away?"

"It went into the Kidney Temple. The problem is me."

"What could possibly have happened to you?"

"My two kidneys are gone."

"What?"

The brass oil lamp's eyes shot open. All thoughts of chatting vanished — it immediately fixed its gaze on Chen Huangpi's body and stared intently.

And sure enough.

Both kidneys had vanished without a trace. In their place stood an ancient, unassuming temple in the shape of two kidneys.

"Where are your kidneys?""They were there just a moment ago. Now — I have no idea where they went."

Chen Huangpi's face had gone pale.

He remembered it clearly. When he summoned the Kidney Temple, both kidneys were still inside him. When the Demon Tree was pulled into the Kidney Temple, the kidneys were still there. But the moment the Kidney Temple returned to his body — both kidneys were gone.

The brass oil lamp said uncertainly: "Maybe — because your Five Viscera Spirit Refining Art has fully forged the Kidney Temple and drawn a deity inside — the actual kidneys are no longer needed. So they simply… dissolved?"

"My essence energy is gone too," Chen Huangpi said.

"Essence energy comes from the kidneys. No kidneys, no essence energy. That makes sense."

Even as it said it, the brass oil lamp was half-convincing itself.

But seeing Chen Huangpi's pitiful state, it was genuinely pained.

So it consoled him: "Don't worry — think of it from the bright side. Yes, you've lost your essence energy and both kidneys, but the Kidney Temple is complete now, and the kidneys were useless anyway. Just think of them as having been eaten by a dog."

"What did you just say?!"

Chen Huangpi's voice was disbelieving — he wanted to strangle the brass oil lamp.

'Just think of them as having been eaten by a dog.' Even if they had literally been eaten by a dog, he would have ripped the dog's kidneys out and attached them to himself. He was absolutely not doing without.

And without kidneys, his essence energy was gone.

He knew two techniques, and only two.

One was the Grand Duke Demon Slaying — a sword qi technique.

The other was the Dog Rearing Scripture — a cultivation method.

Without essence energy, both were useless.

At this point, the brass oil lamp had caught on to the same thing.

Right — Chen Huangpi had no essence energy. No techniques to use.

That meant the Dog Rearing Scripture was out of reach for him.

But the lamp could still use it.

"Chen Huangpi — the Hundred Thousand Mountains are dangerous, right?"

"They are — what about it?"

The brass oil lamp looked at Chen Huangpi with full seriousness: "You have no essence energy right now. You're even weaker than when you first started cultivating. If you ran into an evil spirit — wouldn't you just be on the menu?"

"Evil spirits don't care that you have no kidneys."

Hearing this, Chen Huangpi nodded in agreement: "You're right, evil spirits don't feel sorry for me. Only Master feels sorry for me most."

"And me! I feel sorry for you too, Huang Er does!"

"Oh really?"

Chen Huangpi looked the brass oil lamp up and down.

Huang Er had been his companion since childhood. They knew each other deep down — you could predict what each other was thinking before anything was said.

Chen Huangpi gave a cold laugh: "I think what you actually want is to be the master."

"This is purely a temporary measure! I'm doing it purely to protect you. Once you recover your cultivation, I'll absolutely give back the master position."

"Please — just pass me the upper volume of the Dog Rearing Scripture?"

"Don't even think about it!"

Chen Huangpi said, thoroughly on guard: "If you were in my position, would you pass it to me?"

"Of course I would!"

The brass oil lamp said with great sincerity: "You and I are like brothers — are we worth less than one volume of the Dog Rearing Scripture?"

"You can't use it anyway. You might as well give it to me to use!"

It had wanted to ride above Chen Huangpi for so long.

Even now, it still hadn't forgotten that humiliating moment when it had thought 'transform for me' — and ended up being the one who turned into a dog.

Now, the time had finally come to turn the tables.

"Huangpi — the times have changed!"

"Huang Er — I am the master!"

Chen Huangpi erupted in fury, and instinctively began to activate the Dog Rearing Scripture.

The brass oil lamp felt it — and yet it felt no alarm. Instead, it settled in comfortably and waited to watch Chen Huangpi be humiliated.

But the very next second, the brass oil lamp stopped laughing.

The Dog Rearing Scripture was divided into an upper and a lower volume.

Chen Huangpi had learned the upper volume — the Master's Scripture.

The lamp had learned the lower volume — the Dog's Scripture.

And now — the brass oil lamp suddenly felt the Dog Rearing Scripture inside it activate on its own.

In the blink of an eye, its body grew long and narrow. Its hands and feet transformed, claws sprouting from them. Its head shifted into a dog's head.

Its mouth opened — and out came a terrified bark.

"What…"

Chen Huangpi sensed it. He immediately turned his awareness inward.

And discovered — though both kidneys were gone, and with them the steady flow of essence energy from the space between them — in the area of his liver, a faint, barely perceptible energy had spontaneously appeared.

It was incredibly weak, almost undetectable.

But it was undeniably, demonstrably there.

And like essence energy, it was self-sustaining and self-renewing — as if it had its own life. The moment it appeared, it began circulating in an endless loop, steadily forging what would become the Liver Temple.

Different from kidney essence energy — the liver's essence energy was a yellow-green color.

But it was essence energy nonetheless.

Chen Huangpi opened his eyes and looked at the brass oil lamp with a cold smile: "Huang Er — did you just call me 'Huangpi'?"

"Ha ha ha!"

The brass oil lamp laughed three times and said: "Master, you must have misheard."

Then it added: "You don't have kidneys anymore — your body is bound to cause you problems. A little hearing trouble is entirely to be expected. Wait — look at that!"

"There's something growing out of your ear."

The brass oil lamp suddenly froze. It had just seen a small branch poking out of Chen Huangpi's ear — and then quickly retracting back in.

"You really think I'd believe you?"

Chen Huangpi said — but the moment the words left his mouth, his ear started itching.

Instinctively, he raised a hand to scratch it.

And then the smile faded from his face.

"Huang Er…"

"Yes, those are Demon Tree branches."

……

A quarter-hour later.

Inside the guest quarters, the Fox Mountain God groggily stirred awake.

Its entire body felt like it was about to fall apart.

The pain was unbearable.

"Granny Tang…"

The Fox Mountain God instinctively called for its temple priestess.

Last night had been full of chaos — yet the remnants who had stayed inside the guest quarters had somehow come through unharmed.

Every single one of them had survived.

There weren't many of them to begin with, but as long as there were people, they could still make offerings to the Fox Mountain God — enough to keep it hanging on by a thread.

At that moment, Granny Tang responded to its call.

The Fox Mountain God said: "Where were you? I remember seeing a temple — I hadn't even gone inside when I suddenly fainted. Was it you who brought me back to the guest quarters?"

"That was Chen Huangpi, not me."

"Him?"

The Fox Mountain God felt a wave of warmth. "Good, good, good — that little Huangpi is a decent soul after all. My incense offerings weren't wasted on him. Where is he? I must go thank him properly."

The thanks were pretense. Rolling over to lick his boots was the real plan.

In this Pure Immortal Temple, if you wanted to live comfortably, your only option was to cling to Chen Huangpi's leg.

Otherwise, you risked getting literally sucked dry and killed by that terrifying being, some unspecified day in the future.

Granny Tang's tone was complicated: "Old one is down the mountain helping everyone rebuild the village. I don't know where Chen Huangpi is right now. I only know that earlier he was carrying that strange lamp and dragging Guanzhu toward the kitchen. He may still be there."

……

Inside the kitchen of the Pure Immortal Temple.

The brass oil lamp had grown eight arms — one hand per arm carrying a bucket of water, passing them up to Chen Huangpi, who stood on top of the enormous cooking platform.

His master — now sporting two heads, robe still threaded through with interwoven strands of purple, white, and cyan — was standing perfectly rigid inside the pot.

No choice about it. Master was simply too tall, and his body had gone completely stiff. He wouldn't fit lying down — he could only go in standing up.

As bucket after bucket of water was poured into the pot, once the water reached the level of both necks, Chen Huangpi finally stopped.

Any higher than the mouth — and when Master woke up, he'd choke.

"Hurry up and add the firewood! Get it burning!"

"Oh — okay, okay, okay…"

The brass oil lamp scrambled to gather an armful of firewood and stuff it into the firebox. In moments, a fire roared to life.

Earlier, a branch of the Demon Tree had poked out of Chen Huangpi's ear — and this had left him deeply uneasy.

He knew he was different from ordinary people, and that as he grew older, things beyond just black smoke might emerge from his body.

But this was a Demon Tree branch.

It had nothing to do with him.

It was an outside element — and the Five Viscera Spirit Refining Art was Master's technique. The only way to sort this out was to wake Master up and ask him what was happening.

The brass oil lamp was also flustered.

Though for a completely different reason than Chen Huangpi.

With the Demon Tree already sealed inside the Kidney Temple, a few branches poking out was nothing — it couldn't possibly injure Chen Huangpi. And it certainly wasn't getting back out again.

What the lamp was flustered about was that Chen Huangpi was going to stew Guanzhu alive.

"Does this method actually work?"

The brass oil lamp kept the fire burning hot while it couldn't help saying to Chen Huangpi: "Your fight-poison-with-poison approach knocked Guanzhu out — and now you're braising Guanzhu in a pot. I'm starting to suspect you've also gone mad and want to eat him."

"What are you talking about?"

Chen Huangpi said seriously: "The madness is a mild poison — my pill was a strong poison. Strong poison overcomes mild poison: fighting poison with poison is correct. The only problem is the pill was a little too potent."

"Master is getting on in years — his digestion isn't great."

"What I'm doing now by putting Master in the pot and simmering him is forcing the pill's toxin out of his body. Once the toxin is expelled, Master will wake up."

The way he put it — it actually sounded almost logical.

But the brass oil lamp still felt something was off. It said: "You are a master of pharmacology — though I don't know nearly as much as you, even I know there are detoxification pills. Why don't you just make one of those?"

"You think I haven't considered it?"

Chen Huangpi produced the Seven-Jeweled Esoteric Elixir Scripture and said: "There are no antidotes in here. I am not a quack doctor — I cannot simply invent a formula out of thin air."

Making pills was not like preparing a dinner party.

It was not like painting or writing.

A thing is what it is. Without a recipe, how do you make a pill?

Over the years, Chen Huangpi had given his master many different medicines — but always following the formula precisely, perhaps only increasing the dose. He had never added a single extra ingredient or left one out.

"You should throw away that Seven-Jeweled Esoteric Elixir Scripture."

The brass oil lamp said with unease: "Xu Qingshan turned into an evil spirit long ago. When he gave you that scripture, he certainly wasn't acting out of kindness."

"It's possible that the reason Guanzhu ended up like this is because of that scripture."

Even though Chen Huangpi's technique for refining pills had possibly been wrong — the fact that whatever he produced knocked Guanzhu out cold was clearly even more wrong.

And besides: after eating the pill, Guanzhu had been dyed cyan — and an additional head had grown out of him.

Which was obviously First Master and Second Master.

The brass oil lamp remembered very clearly — just before Guanzhu was knocked out, he had shouted "Third, you're playing dirty!"

So Third Master had been pulling strings from behind the scenes.

But Third Master had never appeared before — so why would he do this?

Thinking through it all, the brass oil lamp had a sudden flash of understanding.

"Chen Huangpi — do you remember that time we entered the Old Temple and the Nine Separation Bell suddenly started ringing on its own?"

"Of course I do."

Chen Huangpi replied without hesitation: "At the time I thought Master had rung the Nine Separation Bell to save us — but no matter how I called out, Master never answered."

"That may have been Third Master."

The brass oil lamp said with a complicated expression: "I suspect Third Master has been suppressed inside the Old Temple by First Master and Second Master this whole time. Once you wake Guanzhu up — Third Master will emerge."