The Poison Pill dissolved instantly upon entering her mouth. Jiang Anya desperately clawed at her throat, trying to vomit it out, but to no avail.
“What did you give me?” Jiang Anya asked, her voice trembling, her eyes filled with terror.
“Since you refused to keep me company, I’ll make you wish you were dead instead.” The girl before her was so small and lovely, yet in Jiang Anya’s eyes, she seemed like a devil.
The Poison Pill took effect the moment it slid down her throat. A powerful force began devouring the Spiritual Energy within her body, destroying wherever Spiritual Energy existed. Jiang Anya writhed in agony on the bed.
Murong Chao watched coldly. Hadn’t Jiang Anya watched her struggle between life and death just like this earlier today?
But this wasn’t enough. Murong Chao struck at her heart, saying, “Oh, by the way, I didn’t waste the pastries you made. I enhanced them a little and sent them to the small kitchen of the General’s residence. As for who will be fortunate enough to taste your culinary skills, it depends on their luck.”
Jiang Anya’s heart sank. The Jiang family was her greatest support. Chao Chao was truly ruthless—not only had she crippled her, but she also wanted to destroy her support completely.
She herself had been the one to tell Murong Chao that the small kitchen was where pastries were prepared for the masters. She had truly brought this upon herself.
If the pastries were delivered to the small kitchen, only the masters of the Jiang family would eat them.
Jiang Anya understood all too well what “enhancing them” meant. She was filled with regret, but not for trying to kill Murong Chao. Instead, she regretted having acted personally. If she hadn’t, even if Chao Chao had died, she would never have known who was behind it, and today’s events would never have happened.
Having failed to form her Golden Core, her body was already suffering from backlash. Now, with the Poison Pill wreaking havoc, Jiang Anya couldn’t use even a trace of her Spiritual Energy.
Her meridians were destroyed, and the poison rampaged through her body. Soon, the backlash shattered her dantian.
This Poison Pill was called the Spirit-Chasing Pill.
It had been developed by the old man of the Alchemy Peak in the Xuantian Sect to take revenge on the disciple who betrayed him. Apart from giving her two pills, he had never given it to anyone else.
As its name suggested, the Spirit-Chasing Pill pursued Spiritual Energy. It wouldn’t kill immediately but would instead corrode the body’s Spiritual Energy, destroying wherever Spiritual Energy existed.
No method could stop it. Only when one’s Cultivation Level was destroyed and the body was completely devoid of Spiritual Energy would the Poison Pill lose its effect.
However, the poison would not disappear. Once Spiritual Energy reappeared in the body—even if it was external Spiritual Energy entering—the effects of the Poison Pill would automatically trigger again, continuing to destroy wherever Spiritual Energy existed, tirelessly and forever impossible to eradicate.
By now, the poison had already chased the Spiritual Energy into Jiang Anya’s dantian, corroding her Spiritual Root. In moments, her Spiritual Root was completely devoured by the poison. Losing her Spiritual Root meant losing her Cultivation Level.
The excruciating pain of having her Spiritual Root corroded by the poison caused Jiang Anya’s body to tremble violently. This scene reminded her of the struggling girl she had watched on the rocking chair earlier that morning.
Was this retribution?
Overwhelmed by extreme pain and despair, Jiang Anya fainted.
As she lost consciousness, Jiang Anya remained puzzled. Could a soul after death be this powerful? How could Chao Chao, who had no Cultivation Level, manipulate objects from a distance and even administer poison?
Murong Chao glanced at Jiang Anya, who lay slumped on the bed, her breathing faint. A portion of the hatred weighing on her heart dissipated, and her body felt lighter.
Not to mention a hundred years ago, even a hundred years later, the old man from Alchemy Peak of the Xuantian Sect who refined the Spirit-Chasing Pill couldn’t solve it himself.
The Poison Pills he refined had no antidotes.
In his own words, those he poisoned were unforgivable people. The purpose of the Poison Pill was to kill, so why would he need an antidote?
The Spirit-Chasing Pill only required a small dose to have a continuous effect, which was also the main reason why Murong Chao was reluctant to use it on the Jiang family.
Jiang Anya and the Jiang family members who had consumed the Spirit-Chasing Pill pastries would never be able to become cultivators again in this lifetime.
Could the Protector-General’s Estate still maintain its status?
“Jiang Anya, enjoy my revenge.”
In truth, killing Jiang Anya would have been easy, but that would have been too lenient. Murong Chao wanted Jiang Anya to lose everything she desired and live a life worse than death.
What better way to make Jiang Anya spend every day in regret? A life worse than death was the best form of revenge.
Offending Murong Chao made even death a difficult wish to fulfill.
Moreover, she didn’t want anything unexpected to happen to Chen Qingyang and Jiang Anya’s marriage. Jiang Anya had to marry Chen Qingyang.
Wasn’t this what Chen Qingyang and Jiang Anya had dreamed of? How could she not fulfill their wishes?
The two must be bound together, resenting and despising each other—wouldn’t that make life more flavorful?
The news of Jiang Anya’s crippling wouldn’t be leaked by the Jiang family before the wedding.
The Jiang family would never give up the chance to tie themselves to Chen Qingyang, the War God. A daughter who was already crippled had only this last use left.
Murong Chao controlled the small Porcelain Person to extract a wisp of soul essence from Jiang Anya’s body and transmit it back through her spiritual sense.
The Porcelain Person’s mission was complete. With a thought, it dissipated.
Murong Chao opened her eyes in the small courtyard room and sighed deeply. Indeed, her Cultivation Level was still too weak. Even with a powerful spiritual sense, her Cultivation Level held her back. Controlling the Porcelain Person for an hour and a half was already her limit.
Now she felt somewhat exhausted.
She glanced down at the wisp of Jiang Anya’s soul essence trapped by her Spiritual Energy and curled her lips into a smile.
She wanted Jiang Anya to live a life worse than death, but she didn’t want her to have any chance to harm her again.
Closing her eyes, she drew a strand of special power from her Spiritual Root within her dantian and directed it onto Jiang Anya’s wisp of soul essence, forming a binding force.
With this binding force, if Jiang Anya harbored even the slightest intention to harm her, she would be punished by the binding force. If she harbored murderous intent, the binding force would cause her internal organs to rot and die.
Murong Chao would never again be someone who showed mercy.
Both her past self from a hundred years ago and her current self shared the same secret in their Spiritual Roots, perhaps because they were essentially the same person. It was just that her past self hadn’t discovered it.
In fact, there was another similarity between her past self and her current self: their Spiritual Roots had awakened spontaneously.
After all, both were orphans with no trusted elders to protect them during the awakening. They could only rely on spontaneous awakening, with success depending entirely on luck.
Normally, after a Spiritual Root awakens, its color corresponds to the type of power it represents. As an all-element cultivator, her Spiritual Root should have been colorful, but instead, it was purple-gold.
Now, thinking back, it likely had something to do with the purple-gold path that appeared at her birth.
Later, while studying Porcelain Refining, she discovered that her Spiritual Root possessed a peculiar power. She couldn’t quite explain what this power was—it resembled something akin to the workings of Heavenly Dao Rules.
Especially after she became a Porcelain Refiner, this power grew somewhat terrifying.