"What is this? The quenching elixir you refined?" Qin Ran looked at the two small, black, pill-like objects in Long Qiqi's tiny palm.
With his many years of alchemy experience, they did not seem to be quenching elixirs... Although the appearances of elixirs were not completely fixed, the quenching elixir did not seem to look like that.
Long Qiqi nodded her head, then shook it.
"What do you mean?" Qin Ran did not understand.
Long Qiqi gestured at the elixirs in her hand again.
Qin Ran understood. She wanted him to confirm. He hesitated for a moment, then picked up one of the elixirs.
As usual, he first lightly sniffed it. Then he realized this elixir had a pungent and spicy odor that immediately made him feel dizzy. It was clearly toxic, and the toxicity was not weak!
He was shocked and quickly circulated his spiritual power to expel the toxin from his body.
"What is this stuff you refined?" He furrowed his brows tightly.
Long Qiqi shook her head, indicating that she also did not know.
Qin Ran hesitated and glanced at Long Qiqi. Still, he projected his spiritual sense into the elixir to analyze its composition and structure...
"Hmm..."
After a while, he fell silent.
This was because he discovered that the ingredients of this elixir were indeed that of the quenching elixir, just with slight differences in the elixir's structure.
The quenching elixir was an elixir for tempering the flesh and strengthening the physique. Qin Ran had Long Qiqi learn this elixir first, precisely wanting her to take it regularly in the future, to slightly improve her terribly awful constitution.
But...
"How did you refine this stuff?" He was utterly puzzled.
Long Qiqi took out a clump of paper from her clothes with her other small hand, and handed it to him.
Qin Ran accepted the paper and unfolded it. It was her alchemy notes, very thick, at least several dozen sheets.
It seemed Long Qiqi had followed his requirements to record every instance of alchemy. These dozens of sheets... specifically twenty-seven, were Long Qiqi's results after a day and night's efforts.
Qin Ran looked through them one by one. Long Qiqi's attitude was very serious, very academic... She incrementally adjusted the dosages based on her failures, incrementally changed the medicinal ingredients based on her constitution. She was indeed experimenting, refining a quenching elixir tailored for herself.
Only...
According to the final sheet's alchemy steps, what she had refined was indeed a toxic elixir, a pure, literal toxic poison pill.
He couldn't help but flip back through the sheets. When exactly did this quenching elixir turn into a toxic pill? Right under his nose, it had turned into a toxic pill through the incremental changes!
After reading through it twice, he doubted life itself. Holding the final experimental record, he stared at Long Qiqi and asked her, "Are you sure you refined this according to these steps?"
Long Qiqi nodded.
"...Quenching flowers and celestial spring water, these body-nourishing medicinal ingredients can also produce melting muscles and bones?" Qin Ran looked up to the sky, deeply doubting his twenty years of alchemy knowledge.
"I don't know..." Long Qiqi finally reacted and spoke in her crisp, sweet voice. She asked Qin Ran, "I did follow the alchemy methods you taught me. So I want to ask, can I eat these two elixirs?"
"Are you crazy? These are clearly toxic pills, why would you eat them?" Qin Ran rolled his eyes.
"But..." Long Qiqi gave Qin Ran an irrefutable reason. "I'm a venomous snake!"
Qin Ran understood elixirs for cultivators well, but for beast elixirs, he had only refined beast feed elixirs. For elixirs specifically tailored for venomous snakes among beasts, he truly did not understand.
His kindhearted side told him these were toxic pills, it was best to keep them for research and absolutely not ingest them.
But his academic side told him perhaps Long Qiqi should try them. Special circumstances called for special research...
After struggling for a good while, he said to Long Qiqi, "Why don't you try?"
Long Qiqi hesitated slightly, but still picked up the black elixir in her hand and popped it into her mouth.
"Are you all crazy?!" Li Shiyin timely came over and pointed at Long Qiqi's hand, snatching away the elixir. "You keep saying it's a toxic pill, yet you still eat it?!"
She had watched this pair of neurotic alchemists the entire time, watching as they directly ignored the exploding furnace incident just now, watching as they excitedly discussed pharmacology of elixirs and poisons, watching as their discussion led them to directly pop a poison pill into their mouths.
Were all alchemists like this?
"Ah, cough cough!" Qin Ran felt a little guilty and hastily changed the subject. "It's getting late, let's go eat breakfast!"
Li Shiyin stared at Qin Ran and Long Qiqi for a long time. These alchemy nuts were all too dangerous. She would have to watch them closely in the future, or who knew when they would poison themselves to death.
Those two elixirs ultimately were not eaten by Long Qiqi. Qin Ran collected them in a porcelain bottle for commemoration or future research.
The three of them walked from the research building back to the small log cabin, just happening to run into Chasing the Wind squeezing out of his cat bed with great difficulty.
Chasing the Wind had charged out a large hole in his room door that one night he chased after Qin Ran crossing his tribulation. Qin Ran felt that no matter how many times he replaced the door, Chasing the Wind would smash through it again sooner or later, so he never repaired it. His room had a hole ever since.
Chasing the Wind was also lazy. With the hole, he didn't need to open or close the door anymore. He went in and out through that hole.
Earlier when he was still small, it wasn't a big problem and he passed through it easily. But now he had grown very large, and every time he squeezed through, it took a lot of effort and looked rather amusing.
He squeezed out from the hole in the door, stretched under the pagoda tree, then went behind the pagoda tree to the "Qin Ran Brand" cat scratcher to sharpen his claws. Only then did he lazily circle around the spiritual pagoda tree, yawning.
Circling around the tree, he saw the trio containing their laughter standing across from him...
"Ah..." He yawned and asked, "Ah... where did you... go..." (Why do I get sleepy every time I write about Chasing the Wind?)
"Didn't you hear that huge commotion earlier?" Li Shiyin suppressed her laughter and asked him.
"What commotion?" Chasing the Wind was clueless.
Long Qiqi walked over and rolled her eyes at him. "You idiot!"
"How am I an idiot again?" Chasing the Wind looked at Qin Ran aggrievedly.
Qin Ran ruffled his big cat head and smiled. "You've lost all the face of felines."
"Huh?" The country bumpkin cat remained clueless.
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
e vast world of cultivation, where he becomes the master of the Heavenly Ruins Sacred Hall, a dying old man with barely a tenth of his former cultivation remaining. He is immediately confronted with a deadly crisis: his subordinates have rebelled, and his protectors are forcing him to abdicate. At the critical moment, the system descends from the heavens: [Ding! The host has been detected facing a life-or-death crisis. The system is now officially activated!] [As a gift, you have received the Supreme Beginner’s Pack and awakened the ultimate cheat: ten thousand years of pure cultivation essence every second!] Yin Tianjue: “Wait… ten thousand years of cultivation every second? That’s six hundred thousand years a minute, and in one day… I can’t even calculate it. Either way, I’m already invincible!” You’re a peerless prodigy rarely seen in ten thousand years? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re an undying ancestor who has guarded a sacred land for countless ages? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re the strongest chosen one, blessed with heaven-defying destiny? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. From this day forth, I have only one thing to say: “I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. Now, how exactly are you supposed to deal with that?”
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
