Helper

As soon as he swallowed that pill, Li Huowang felt a warmth like a ball of fire in his dantian, and that fire showed signs of burning hotter and hotter.

It burned so fiercely that he couldn't even spare a thought for the nausea and revulsion churning inside him.

"Xuan Yang, go back and rest. The medicinal effect is strong; it'll take a while to fully absorb it."

"Yes, Master."

Stumbling back to his own quarters, Li Huowang braced himself against the doorframe and retched violently, but all he could bring up was some clear fluid. The pill had already been completely absorbed.

"Crack, crack." The joints all over Li Huowang's body creaked and popped, his limbs twitching uncontrollably.

By now, the fire in his dantian had spread through his meridians to his arms and legs. He felt like he was wearing a thick cotton coat in the middle of summer, his whole body as if boiled.

The heat also left his mind groggy and dazed. Lying on the bed, Li Huowang stared at the spinning ceiling above him, thinking about everything that had just happened, recalling the looks of terror and despair on everyone's faces in the Material Room.

He had become Danyangzi's nauseating accomplice, forcing onto others what had been forced onto him.

That man might not be literate, but he was far from stupid. In the face of absolute power, anything Li Huowang did was meaningless.

"I have to kill him. I have to find a way to kill him!!" Li Huowang roared madly in his heart.

His right hand unconsciously gripped the edge of the stone bed. As that last sentence screamed in his mind, the veins on the back of his hand bulged.

With a "crack," he broke off a chunk of the hard stone bed.

This change caught Li Huowang off guard. He looked at his hand, then at the stone fragment he was holding, and quickly realized—this was the effect of the pill.

It wasn't just strength; other things had changed too. Li Huowang even felt like his eyes could see farther. That pill gave him a sense of being reborn.

But the moment he thought about how this power had been obtained, the nausea surged back up.

"Senior Brother Li? Are you alright?" Bai Lingmiao cautiously poked her head in from the doorway.

Li Huowang looked up at her with a complicated expression, momentarily at a loss for words.

Bai Lingmiao stepped forward and said, "Senior Brother Li, you don't need to blame yourself. We all know you had no choice. If... I mean, if Master tells me to go again, don't swap me out for someone else. Anyway, we all end up the same."

Li Huowang didn't want to talk about that with her. Seeing the blood on her forehead, he pulled out a pill he had refined earlier and held it out. "Take this. It'll stop the bleeding."

Bai Lingmiao saw the pill in Li Huowang's hand and shook her head violently in fear. "I won't take pills. I absolutely won't take pills."

Li Huowang let out a dry laugh and tossed the pill to the ground. "Yeah, every medicine has its poison. Taking it isn't good."

Bai Lingmiao bit her lip, thought for a moment, then asked Li Huowang, "Senior Brother Li, do you want to go against Master?"

Li Huowang's expression shifted. He nervously glanced at the door, then rushed over to close it tightly.

"It's fine. Master can't hear us right now. He relies on 'Lord You' to keep watch. Every time the Great Market comes around, 'Lord You' has to go back to the market."

"What is Lord You?" Li Huowang asked, puzzled. This was the first time he had heard that term.

"Lord You is just Lord You. You can't see or touch him. I heard my grandfather say that only High Monks with cultivation can command them."

"Oh?" Li Huowang's heart stirred. He filed this away in his mind—this information was crucial to him.

"When does the Great Market happen?"

Hearing this, Bai Lingmiao looked at him in confusion. "The First and Fifteenth are the Great Market days. Senior Brother Li, how do you not even know that? Didn't your dad and mom take you to the market?"

Li Huowang shook his head. The memories in his mind—whether real or illusory—told him he had only ever lived in a city, never taken part in a rural goods exchange like a market.

"Senior Brother Li, let's get back to business. Do you really want to go against Master?"

Li Huowang's expression hardened. "Of course. I want to eat his flesh and drink his blood!"

Bai Lingmiao took a deep breath and nodded firmly. "Then count me in, Senior Brother. I want to help with this too!"

Li Huowang looked at the girl before him, at her resolute gaze. Bai Lingmiao might not be as fragile as he had imagined.

"Alright, you're in." Li Huowang agreed. He really did need help right now.

After thinking it over carefully, Li Huowang said to her with a grave expression, "The two of us aren't enough. First, go keep an eye on the Material Room and see if anyone else is dissatisfied."

Others might not dare to resist Danyangzi, but the Medicinal Guides in the Material Room were doomed to die. Some of them were bound to be unwilling—that was a fundamental contradiction. Among them, there had to be people he could win over.

"Mm." Bai Lingmiao nodded and turned to leave.

Li Huowang sat for a while, then picked up the Round Jade Pendant tied at his waist. He thought of that senior brother who had failed to escape.

"Xuan Yang, Xuan Yang. Was it the same for you and your group back then? I hope I don't end up like you."

In the days that followed, Li Huowang threw himself wholeheartedly into integrating into Qingfeng Temple, organizing the Material Room in perfect order, both in terms of people and supplies.

Faced with such an obedient disciple, Danyangzi naturally had to reward him. He taught Li Huowang about all kinds of basic pills, as if he truly intended to train him as a disciple.

These ordinary pills weren't very effective—at most, they let Li Huowang treat minor colds and external injuries.

And Li Huowang didn't know if it was just Danyangzi's pills or all pills in this world, but they all had limits. Take too much, and what was meant to cure would become poison.

There were also taboos: you couldn't mix them. Mixing them could easily cause problems.

It wasn't so much that Li Huowang could now pass as a mediocre doctor, but rather that he had become a qualified poisoner.

The pills weren't the key point. The key point was that through this contact, Li Huowang's relationship with Danyangzi gradually warmed.

Sometimes, when Danyangzi was refining pills, he would even have Li Huowang assist him on the side.

When Danyangzi took on another Daoist Child as a disciple, Li Huowang was no longer the youngest. He had fully integrated into Qingfeng Temple.

Through such close contact, Li Huowang confirmed his suspicion: Danyangzi truly could not read, and moreover, he was extremely averse to others being literate.

He would not allow his disciples to surpass him in any matter, so the disciples he took on were essentially all illiterate.

This struck Li Huowang as somewhat off. He still remembered what Danyangzi had said to him back then.

"Because the method of becoming an immortal is written in Lord Lao's Heavenly Book, and Lord Lao personally delivered that Heavenly Book into my hands. I ask you, in all the world, who else could become an immortal? He said I can become an immortal. Then I surely can!"

Since the Lord Lao he spoke of had given him a Heavenly Book, and none of his other disciples could read, and he himself couldn't read either, then who exactly had read it aloud to him?