Ka-ka…
It was night, the moon was bright and the stars were sparse.
Xiao Bai was already lying on the bed, sleeping soundly.
The flames crackled as they burned.
Danxia sat by the campfire, watching Ye Shu sitting cross-legged outside the house, tossing medicinal herbs into the Pill Furnace time and again, repeating the same steps over and over.
This process was dull and tedious.
It had lasted for a full thirty-some shichen.
She didn’t know how Shu’er had persevered.
Aside from the necessary eight hours of rest, he had been repeating this dull Alchemy process, going from clumsy to proficient, from two pills to four, then to one Pill Vein, and now, occasionally, two Pill Veins would appear.
This child…
why is he pushing himself so hard?
If it were her former self, she certainly wouldn’t have been able to endure it and would have sneaked out to play long ago.
If Ye Shu knew her thoughts, he would surely laugh.
Couldn’t endure it after just two days?
Back in the day, on the BYD assembly line, working from 8 AM to 9 PM with only two days off a month, he had done it for a whole year.
And for something where effort yielded rewards…
No matter how long he did it, it would never be tedious.
Because the most precious and rare thing in this world is actually called ‘effort will be rewarded.’
But what Danxia couldn’t understand most was…
Why was he refining Qi Recovery Pills?
With his cultivation at the third level of the Qi Refining stage, he should be refining Qi Gathering Pills to Cultivate instead.
Recovery-type Medicinal Pills like Qi Recovery Pills were of no help in increasing cultivation.
“Shu’er, why are you refining Qi Recovery Pills?”
“To eat,” Ye Shu replied without looking back.
…
Danxia fell silent.
It was that perfunctory answer again.
She could feel that Ye Shu had walled her off with an invisible barrier, polite yet distant…
For a moment, the small hut fell back into silence.
Under the silent night sky, there was only the crackling of the flames and the sound of surging Spiritual Qi within the Pill Furnace.
Until the cry of a cicada rang out.
“Shu’er…
My reason for not letting you kill her wasn’t that your Master was soft-hearted and intentionally making things difficult for you.
It’s that the girl was dressed luxuriously; she’s from the Qingxuan Sect and holds no low status.
If you rashly killed her, it would inevitably trigger fluctuations in her protective Magical Artifact.
When the Qingxuan Sect comes to investigate…
with your current shallow cultivation, it’s not wise to make more powerful enemies.”
“Moreover…”
She paused but continued anyway.
“If you killed her, once we leave the Magical Beast Mountain Range and if I truly depart and no longer protect you, how would you survive the pursuit of the Qingxuan Sect?”
“If she’s killed, nothing can be explained.”
“Keeping her alive provides a bargaining chip.”
…
The cicadas outside chirped incessantly.
After a long silence, Ye Shu finally spoke.
He stopped putting in ingredients for Qi Recovery Pills and instead skinned a hunted Yao Beast, then tossed the hide into the Pill Furnace.
“I’m refining Qi Recovery Pills for two reasons.”
“First, with my cultivation at the third level of Qi Refining, it’s impossible to sustain long-term Alchemy.
I must refine pills while using Qi Recovery Pills to restore my Spiritual Qi.
Otherwise, I would waste time slowly recovering it, and I don’t have that time.”
Hearing this, Danxia was stunned.
This child…
was in a great hurry.
She could see an invisible sense of urgency weighing on Shu’er.
But she didn’t know what it was.
The Three-Year Promise?
It didn’t seem like it…
“Second,” Ye Shu continued as the Yao Beast hide began to soften and shrink under the Netherworld Ice Flame.
“I’m going to use Qi Recovery Pills to Cultivate.
Although Qi Gathering Pills help with cultivation, the speed is still too slow.”
Hearing this, Danxia became even more puzzled.
“With your talent and Qi Gathering Pills, you could reach the Ninth level of Qi Refining within three months.
Is that still slow?
For a normal Cultivator, going from the third to the Ninth level of Qi Refining usually takes three to five years even with resources.
Three months is already a speed that can be called a Prodigy’s!”
“Still too slow.”
Ye Shu slapped the Pill Furnace.
Bang!
A silver Medicinal Pill emitting a strange fragrance was revealed, its surface actually giving off an eerie metallic luster.
Ye Shu gripped the pill and said flatly,
“I want to reach the ninth level in three days.”
“The ninth level in three days?”
Even with Danxia’s vast experience, she couldn’t help but gasp.
She wanted to say that Shu’er was bragging again, but then she suddenly remembered that given their current relationship, she seemed to have lost the right to say such things, and Ye Shu had no reason to joke with her.
So she fell silent again.
She looked at the metallic-lustered pill in Ye Shu’s hand, and her confusion reached its Peak.
It wasn’t that she didn’t recognize the pill.
It was precisely because she recognized it that she was puzzled.
iron armor pill.
The iron armor pill is just as its name suggests.
It’s refined using the hide of a second-rank Iron Armor Beast as a catalyst, supplemented by metal-attribute herbs like Gold-Stone Grass.
After consumption, the entire body hardens, allowing one to briefly reach the Physical Body strength of the Golden Core Stage.
However, despite the physical strength…
…the side effects were too powerful.
After taking the pill, the body hardens like iron, making even the slightest movement extremely difficult and sluggish, almost resulting in a total loss of mobility.
One becomes an iron turtle that can only take a beating.
Once the medicinal effect wears off, an enemy will tear you apart without mercy.
Therefore, very few people refine this pill, and even fewer use it; it’s considered utterly useless.
She racked her brain but still couldn’t understand.
Ye Shu, however, had already sat down cross-legged, assuming a cultivation posture.
“Master, please feed me Qi Recovery Pills in a moment until I tell you to stop.”
With that, he swallowed the iron armor pill in one gulp.
At the same time, before the medicinal effect had fully taken hold, he took out thirty more Qi Recovery Pills and poured them all into his mouth like they were popping candy beans.
“Don’t!”
Danxia’s eyes nearly split from shock as she hurried to stop him, but it was far too late.
Thirty Qi Recovery Pills?
With Shu’er’s cultivation at the third level of Qi Refining, it was impossible for him to contain such a massive amount of Spiritual Qi.
Like a balloon, once over-inflated, the only outcome is to explode.
This was simply suicide!
However, the expected explosion did not occur.
A silver luster emerged on Ye Shu’s body.
His face was contorted in pain, yet he gritted his teeth and squeezed out a few words from his throat.
“Pills…
give me the pills…”
At that moment, Danxia finally understood his intention.
Ordinary Cultivators can only contain the Spiritual Qi of their current Realm.
So-called cultivation is the process of gradually expanding the Dantian until the Spiritual Qi reaches a certain Bottleneck, then breaking through the shackles to reach the next Realm.
Shu’er was using the iron armor pill to briefly attain a Golden Core Stage Physical Body, using that strength to withstand the terrifying sea of Spiritual Qi brought by the Qi Recovery Pills.
In this way, while still in the Qi Refinement Stage, he could forcibly absorb Spiritual Qi comparable to that of a Golden Core Stage Cultivator for his cultivation.
And at this moment, Shu’er had skipped the expansion step entirely.
He was…
pulling up seedlings to help them grow!