Yellow Skinned Taoist Master

Chapter 64: The Spring Wind Favors the Young

Third Master was a very unfamiliar concept to Chen Huangpi.

He had never seen Third Master.

Third Master existed only in the words of First Master and Second Master.

Now, hearing the brass oil lamp lay out this speculation, Chen Huangpi couldn't help but glance at his master in the pot.

Master currently had two heads — one was First Master, the other was Second Master.

If he were awake right now, he'd probably be raging against Third Master.

Thinking about it, Chen Huangpi felt an unexpected flicker of anticipation.

"If Third Master comes out — he'd surely love me just as much as First Master and Second Master do, right?"

But the moment those words left his mouth, something felt off.

Where was he getting a Third Master from?His master had gone mad — that was why he claimed to be three people, distinguished by three colors. In reality, they were all one person.

Chen Huangpi quickly shook his head and said earnestly: "I don't want a Third Master. I just want my own master back."

The brass oil lamp said in a melancholy tone: "That may not be possible."

The last time Chen Huangpi had his true form illuminated, strange phenomena had erupted across the Hundred Thousand Mountains. Guanzhu's words at that moment had been very clear.

He would not be waking up anytime soon.

Which meant — even if he woke, there would only be a Third Master added to the mix.

"Let's hope Third Master turns out to be at least somewhat normal."

The brass oil lamp felt a bitterness in its heart: "First Master wants to make pills;

Second Master wants to eat things raw. From what they've said, Third Master is supposed to be the good one — but please, please don't pull the same kind of thing."

Two Guanzhus were already enough to drive anything mad. Adding a third would upend the world completely.

And just then.

A weak voice drifted in.

"Chen Huangpi — I finally found you."

The voice arrived before the person.

Chen Huangpi looked toward the doorway.

But he waited and waited — and still no sign of the Fox Mountain God appeared. It was as if the voice had only been a figment of his imagination.

"Huang Er — am I hearing things again?"

"No — I heard it too."

"Then why hasn't it come in yet?"

"I don't know. I can't see the little fox anywhere. But there's something over there that looks like… a puppy."

The brass oil lamp was puzzled. Its copies were stationed throughout every corner of the Pure Immortal Temple — even an outhouse had one hanging in it. Nothing escaped its notice.

But no matter how long it looked, it simply could not find the Fox Mountain God.

Just at that moment.

A tiny puppy crawled up to the doorway.

The puppy was roughly the length of Chen Huangpi's arm. It was nothing but skin and bones, and its pointed little muzzle was clenching two severed legs between its teeth.

"Master always says that even an ant clings to life — I never believed it before. But I believe it now."

Chen Huangpi said with feeling: "Huang Er, it's too pitiful to live like this. I have a kind heart — I can't stand to watch this. Give it a clean end."

And with that, he closed his eyes.

"Wait! It's me — I'm the Fox Mountain God!"

"Ah — my legs!"

The moment the Fox Mountain God opened its mouth, both legs dropped out and nearly shattered on impact.

"It really is."

Chen Huangpi quickly opened his eyes and jumped down from the cooking platform. "Fox Mountain God — let me help you."

"Don't come near me."

The Fox Mountain God backed away in alarm: "You've already helped me more than enough — any more help and I'll be completely finished. I'll handle this myself."

Chen Huangpi was terrifying and fearsome, sure — but these weren't his legs. Even a slight lack of precision and both legs would be reduced to powder. It still harbored hopes of reattaching them one day.

"Don't worry, I know exactly what I'm doing."

Chen Huangpi remembered — this morning when he had carried the Fox Mountain God back to its room, he had been just a little bit too rough.

It must have been afraid he'd handle it without restraint, which was why it didn't want his help.

At those words, the Fox Mountain God reached up and felt the back of its own head.

There was a large hole there.

Left from when Chen Huangpi had punched it unconscious yesterday — a single blow had caved it in.

Which had resulted in its speech now somewhat sounding like there was air leaking out of it.

The Fox Mountain God gave Chen Huangpi a deeply aggrieved look.

Chen Huangpi turned his head away and pretended not to have seen anything.

The brass oil lamp looked at the Fox Mountain God's pitiable state and asked out of curiosity: "Little fox — you're down to the last thread of incense power, your divine body is full of cracks — how have you managed to survive?"

"How have I survived?"

The Fox Mountain God gave a hollow laugh. "No particular trick. I'm just cheap to keep alive."

A few days ago it had still been an exalted Mountain God.

Now it was a broken-legged dog, cheap to keep alive.

To have become this kind of deity — it might honestly have been better to die.

Just then.

The sound of vigorously bubbling water filled the room.

Chen Huangpi immediately jumped back up onto the cooking platform and lifted the lid.

Steam billowed up in great surging clouds, turning the entire kitchen into a world of mist.

And drifting through the air was a rich, remarkable fragrance.

"That smell…"

The Fox Mountain God took one small sniff — and in an instant its eyes went wide.

Its entire body started trembling as if shuddering through every crack.

Then it threw its mouth as wide open as it could and inhaled with everything it had.

Chen Huangpi hadn't noticed this at all. He was looking at his master in the pot — body still completely rigid, chest completely still, not the faintest trace of breath.

He had to admit — he was tough-skinned and hard-fleshed himself.

And his master was exactly the same.

Neither of them was easy to cook through.

But Chen Huangpi found himself puzzled.

"The pill's toxin should clearly have been driven out by now — Master's body should be showing some reaction. Unless the heat isn't high enough?"

With that thought, he called out: "Huang Er — turn the heat up. Get it ten times as hot as it is now. Otherwise I'm afraid we won't cook him through."

But the brass oil lamp didn't answer.

It was staring at the Fox Mountain God with thoughtful intensity.

At this moment, the Fox Mountain God had its eyes tightly shut, its pointed little muzzle stretched open as wide as possible, gulping down strand after strand of steam laced with that extraordinary fragrance.

It was absorbed in the sensations running through its body.

The more of the fragrant steam it absorbed, the more the Fox Mountain God's cracked, broken form softened and became pliable.

A deity's body was clay and wood at its core — even a cultivator who transcended into godhood would leave their original flesh behind as an empty shell.

But this steam, threaded through with its extraordinary scent, gave the Fox Mountain God a feeling unlike anything incense power had ever produced — and yet more like incense power than incense power itself.

As if, by nature, this was precisely what it had always been meant to feed upon.

What astonished the Fox Mountain God even more was this: it genuinely felt something taking root inside it — a force resembling incense power, yet different from it.

The incense power of the current age was human qi.

But the Fox Mountain God knew that before the Heaven and Earth Mutation, deities had required no such "incense power" — because incense in those days had been nothing more than candles and offerings laid before a shrine, gifts from mortals to their deities.

What deities had truly needed was spiritual qi.

Whether what was rising from this pot was spiritual qi or not, the Fox Mountain God didn't know for certain.

What it did know was: this time, it was really going to make it.

Because the fragrance in the air was growing richer and richer by the moment.

A single breath of it was enough to nearly send its soul flying.

"Fragrant — absolutely divine!"

The Fox Mountain God snapped its eyes open, about to summon its divine power and pull every last trace of that fragrance-laced steam into its body.

But then Chen Huangpi suddenly slammed the lid back onto the pot.

The fragrance vanished in the blink of an eye.

The Fox Mountain God bared its teeth in fury: "Chen Huangpi, you—!"

"What about me?"

"What are you cooking in that pot? It's extraordinary — I've never smelled anything so wonderful in my life."

"Oh, that? I'm cooking my master."

"What? That's Guanzhu?"

Everything went black before the Fox Mountain God's eyes. The shock was so great its soul nearly jolted loose from its body — and it seemed to see a gaunt, ancient face staring back at it, asking whether it had enjoyed the taste, because now it was the fox's turn to be tasted.

"Guanzhu — I didn't mean to!"

The Fox Mountain God's soul and body bowed together toward the pot, begging for mercy: "Forgive me, Guanzhu — I had no idea it was you in there. If I had known, you could have given this one ten thousand times the courage — I would never have dared inhale even a single breath of your aroma."

"I'll give it all back right now, I'm giving it back!"

And with that, the Fox Mountain God opened its mouth wide and exhaled — a stream of energy poured out.

Chen Huangpi frowned.

"Huang Er — what is this?"

The energy felt similar to his own essence energy, but not quite as pure.

The brass oil lamp said: "That's spiritual qi."

Though Guanzhu had created it after the Heaven and Earth Mutation had already begun — spiritual qi had still existed at that time. So it recognized it at a glance.

Chen Huangpi said, puzzled: "This can't be coming out of Master's body, can it? I haven't cooked him all the way through."

"If you actually cooked him all the way through, it wouldn't be spiritual qi coming out."

The brass oil lamp said: "This is nothing unusual. If you threw me in there and simmered me for a while, the water would probably produce some spiritual qi too."

With that, Chen Huangpi had an epiphany: "I understand — so that fragrance wasn't the pill's toxin being driven out. Which means even ten times the heat probably won't cook Master through. I need the alchemy furnace — that has real power."

Off to the side, the Fox Mountain God was listening to the back-and-forth between a boy and a lamp — and was absolutely horrified.

So that spiritual qi had been steam from Guanzhu's bath water.

Well — that much it could accept. Never mind spiritual qi. Even if celestial qi had wafted out, that wouldn't have been surprising.

But Chen Huangpi was actually cooking Guanzhu?

And by the sounds of it, he thought the heat wasn't strong enough and was afraid it wasn't going to cook all the way through — and now wanted to put him in the alchemy furnace to refine him with fire?

This was a complete reversal of all natural order — he was genuinely trying to finish Guanzhu off.

With that thought, the Fox Mountain God quickly looked toward the pot.

And then let out a horrified shriek: "Chen Huangpi — what have you done to Guanzhu?!"

"Master got knocked out by a pill I made. Once I drive the pill's toxin out of him, he'll wake up."

"His soul is already gone — what is there to wake up with?"

The Fox Mountain God trembled: "Can a dead person wake up? If Guanzhu were able to wake… actually—" It shook its head sharply. "No — Guanzhu will definitely wake up. But the one who wakes won't be him anymore. It will be a reborn master of the Hundred Thousand Mountains. The moment he appears — the whole world is finished."

"You're wrong," Chen Huangpi said immediately. "Master is capable of anything. He will not die — and he certainly won't become an evil spirit."

"Reborn from death…"

The brass oil lamp suddenly caught on to something.

It scrambled up to the cooking platform, golden light flashing in its eyes.

Before now, it had never entertained the thought that Guanzhu could die. It had never dared peer into what was happening inside him.

But hearing the Fox Mountain God put it like that — it finally worked up the nerve to take one look.

One look was all it took, and it couldn't stop trembling.

It leaked a few drops of lamp oil in sheer terror.

Because Guanzhu's soul inside that pot was genuinely dissipating.

Specks of gold drifted like something out of a dream.

The brass oil lamp had never even been certain Guanzhu possessed something as ordinary as a soul — yet what else could this dissipating thing be?

Unless he was just asleep and having a very vivid dream.

With that thought, the brass oil lamp gave a bitter laugh: "Reborn from death. Well, isn't that something."

The Demon Tree had died and been reborn — and that was how it had escaped the Old Temple.

Third Master was likewise trapped in the Old Temple.

And now — through the Seven-Jeweled Esoteric Elixir Scripture, through Chen Huangpi's own hands, he had used Chen Huangpi as a weapon against himself.

One lethal strike from the inside.

The Demon Tree had not revived early. It had not revived late. It had revived at precisely this moment.

If Third Master hadn't reached out from behind the scenes and given it a push, the brass oil lamp would refuse to believe it with every fiber of its being.

Because Chen Huangpi's Kidney Temple was complete — before a guardian was installed, it suppressed any evil spirit or deity in its vicinity, no exceptions. And Guanzhu was supremely powerful: dying would take time, and reviving would take even more time. In that span, the Demon Tree was exactly the shield Third Master had placed in Chen Huangpi's hands.

"Well done. What a Heaven Toxin Pill."

The brass oil lamp said with a trembling voice: "Touch it and you die. Brush it and you perish. Soul and spirit shattered within three breaths."

"One pill to kill Guanzhu. With First Master and Second Master gone — Third Master claims the body for himself!"

"Dark. Truly, profoundly dark."

Even someone as simple as Chen Huangpi, hearing this, finally grasped the severity of the situation.

If Third Master emerged — it meant he would never again see his master as he truly was.

And at this moment, the brass oil lamp gripped Chen Huangpi's hand with a bitter edge to its voice: "You are Guanzhu's most treasured person — every one of them loves you deeply. But I've been divided into thousands of pieces and used to suppress the Old Temple for so many years. Tell me — when Third Master emerges, do you think he'll try to kill me?"

"I don't know, Huang Er. I genuinely don't know."

Tears glimmered in Chen Huangpi's eyes.

A heaviness settled into his heart, as if a shadow had been drawn over everything. Even the image of his master — always warm and gentle, always pressing a candied hawthorn skewer into his hands — seemed to be slowly receding into the distance.

Mistakes bring lessons.

Loss leaves wounds that go to the bone.

And only now did Chen Huangpi suddenly understand — his body had long since grown taller. His Daoist robe had long since stopped fitting him properly.

It was time to learn how to be a real young man.

Chen Huangpi wiped his tears away, his voice steady and certain: "I'll go down to the Yellow Springs. Into the Yin Lands. I'll climb Luobo Mountain — at its peak is the Soul-Returning Jade. With it, I can save Master's soul."

"I can do it. I'm not afraid."