Spring Return Valley

On the southwestern frontier of the Great Yuan Kingdom, amid a vast primordial forest, lay a lovely little mountain range. Its highest peak was no more than seven or eight hundred zhang tall, and the range itself stretched barely over a hundred li. The tiny hills were like a beauty asleep in her boudoir—beautiful indeed, yet impossible to approach. Poisonous insects and savage beasts, drowning bogs and shifting sands, all manner of natural perils, sealed it tightly away from the human world.

At the heart of the range, where nine exquisite little peaks encircled the land like lotus petals, lay a valley that remained green through all four seasons.

Flowers that never withered in any season and trees evergreen for ten thousand years filled the valley. A casual glance revealed rare medicinal herbs of considerable age carpeting the ground; a leisurely stroll brought white apes offering fruit and gray deer carrying lingzhi mushrooms into view everywhere. Thin purple mist drifted through the valley at all times, while three or five pairs of red-crowned cranes occasionally beat their wings gently overhead, tracing carefree arcs across the sky. Added to this were the three jade peaks floating above the valley, each over a dozen zhang high, verdant from top to bottom and constantly seeping hazy white vapor. The valley could truly be called a realm of immortals.

This was Spring Return Valley, the gateway residence of the Great Luo Pill Dao.

The black-clad nun appeared like a ghost at the entrance to Spring Return Valley, Shen Xiaobai hooked in one hand and Lin Xiao dangling from the other.

She looked up at the memorial arch at the mouth of Spring Return Valley, carved whole from superb azure spirit jade. Grinning, she suddenly raised a hand and shot a green leaf toward it.

The leaf burst with a soft green radiance, pierced straight through the layers of green mist released by the arch, and vanished into the purple mist and white vapor within Spring Return Valley as swiftly as a shooting star.

What followed was a long silence. About the time it took to finish a meal passed, yet there was still no response. The black-clad nun's face twitched. She snorted coldly and slowly sat cross-legged atop a large boulder before the arch. Glancing at Shen Xiaobai, she said flatly, "Don't worry. Your master used a Spirit Return Pill to preserve this boy's life. He won't die anytime soon. But if those pill-crazed lunatics of the Great Luo Pill Dao still show no movement after another incense stick's time, even I cannot guarantee anything."

Shen Xiaobai's body jolted with a shudder. She crouched beside Lin Xiao, clutching his hand tightly as she repeatedly raised her head to look anxiously at the arch.

Feeling Lin Xiao's hand growing colder and colder, Shen Xiaobai could not help crying out in a tearful voice, "Master, your divine abilities are vast. Why not force your way in?"

Force their way in? The black-clad nun's face reddened slightly. Somewhat irritated, she scolded, "Do not speak such nonsense. The Great Luo Pill Dao... Their mastery of the Pill Dao is exquisite, their alchemy miraculous beyond imagination. Among the cultivators beneath heaven, who would not treat them with courtesy? Never mention forcing our way in again."

Though that was what she said, another thought ran through the nun's mind. Force our way in? Although no one can activate the Great Luo Pill Dao's ancient mountain-protecting formation, the Southern Heaven Illusionary Star Killing Array, and the one hundred seventy-two immensely powerful formations set up afterward have become mere decorations as their disciples have grown weaker and weaker, even this current Three Talents Trapping Array protecting the mountain is not something I can break alone! Looking at Lin Xiao, she thought with no small amount of malice, Better if he dies. At least Xiaobai's heart will settle down!

Just as all manner of ill intentions churned through the nun's mind, the azure spirit jade arch suddenly released a brilliant blue-green glow. Two middle-aged Daoists in green Daoist robes, their bodies steeped in medicinal fragrance, hurried out. At the sight of the black-clad nun sitting cross-legged there, both men froze briefly, their faces twitching before they hastily cupped their hands in salute. "Master Mieqing has honored us with her presence. This junior failed to welcome you from afar; please forgive us, forgive us! Master, please, please!" The two Daoists extended their left arms in a gesture of welcoming an honored guest.

The black-clad nun, Master Mieqing, raised her brows. Rising to her feet, she asked icily, "The gates of your Great Luo Pill Dao have become harder and harder to enter."

One of the green-robed Daoists hurriedly forced a smile. "Master, you may not know this, but five years ago Origin Sect commissioned a large batch of pills from our Great Luo Pill Dao. For these past five years, our sect has been busy refining pills for Origin Sect. We already have few hands to spare, and these past days, with the final batch of pills about to leave the furnace, we have been exceedingly busy."

"Origin Sect?" Master Mieqing asked in surprise. "How many pills did they order, for you to enter seclusion for five years and still not finish refining them?"

The other green-robed Daoist smiled bitterly. "This time, Origin Sect opened its mountain gates wide on Qi Yuan Star and recruited twenty-five thousand new disciples at once. Thus, the quantity of pills they ordered was truly enormous. Even for the most ordinary Grain Abstinence Pills, they ordered one million!" Both green-robed Daoists shuddered at once. One million Grain Abstinence Pills was simply too terrifying. Whenever they recalled the past five years of desperately refining pills day and night, fear rose from the depths of their hearts.

"One million!" Even with Master Mieqing's excellent cultivation of heart and mind, her fingers tightened at that number. She snorted strangely. "What a grand gesture! Worthy indeed of the number one righteous sect in this realm. Hmph, hmph. Twenty-five thousand disciples? Can the Spiritual Energy around their mountain gate endure such squandering?"

Hearing the sour tang of envy in Master Mieqing's words, the two green-robed Daoists did not dare say more. They hurriedly led her into Spring Return Valley.

Spring Return Valley was surrounded by nine little peaks, with varying numbers of wooden huts built near each one. Beneath the peak due north stood a small cluster of palace-like buildings. Blue-green glazed tiles roofed them, white jade walls enclosed them, and large pieces of blue-green spirit stone were set into the railings. Though the palaces were not grand in scale, they possessed an innate air of solemn majesty. Threads of exceedingly faint Spiritual Energy dispersed from those blue-green spirit stones, gathering upon the ground into an extremely thin layer of white mist scarcely an inch thick.

Seeing that thin layer of mist floating over the ground, Master Mieqing could not help shaking her head softly and letting out a quiet sigh.

Shen Xiaobai blankly lifted her head to look at Master Mieqing, not knowing why she had sighed. Yet all her thoughts were focused upon Lin Xiao. Moreover, she was neither very familiar nor close with Master Mieqing, so she asked nothing. Her small hands gripped Lin Xiao's tightly as she felt his body growing colder and colder, while the faint breath at the corners of his lips and nostrils weakened by the moment. Tears immediately began streaming down her face again. The sight irritated Master Mieqing, who grabbed Lin Xiao and quickened her pace.

The two green-robed Daoists led Master Mieqing into a small hall. Its furnishings were exceedingly simple. A large banner hung on the wall facing the entrance, bearing a single enormous character for "Pill," its strokes flying like dragons and dancing like phoenixes. Beneath it stood a small incense table, with three large chairs before it. Five chairs lined each of the two side walls.

Master Mieqing casually tossed Lin Xiao onto the floor, then went to sit in the first chair on the right. Shen Xiaobai crouched beside Lin Xiao, sobbing as she patted his icy cheeks. As if she had not seen her own disciple's grief, Master Mieqing unhurriedly accepted the fragrant tea offered by a green-robed Daoist. After savoring a sip, she smiled and praised it. "Good tea. The goji berries in it must be over three hundred years old, yes?"

The green-robed Daoist serving the tea nodded with a broad smile. "Master truly has discerning taste."

Master Mieqing smiled, lightly stirring the tea with the lid of her cup as she said indifferently, "I imagine only Origin Sect and your Great Luo Pill Dao still possess medicinal herbs old enough to be worth anything."

The expressions of the green-robed Daoists in the hall all turned incomparably bleak. One Daoist with a long beard smiled bitterly. "Who knows what has happened? Over the past century, the Spiritual Energy between heaven and earth has grown scarcer and scarcer. It is already fortunate if a senior can cultivate a Nascent Soul today. In another hundred years, even forming a Golden Core may become something visible but beyond reach."

Master Mieqing's face twitched. She casually set the teacup on the side table beside her, her expression darkening as she said in a low voice, "Buddha above, who knows what exactly has gone wrong."

Shen Xiaobai knew nothing at all of Golden Cores, Nascent Souls, or the Spiritual Energy of heaven and earth. She only looked pitifully at Lin Xiao as tears the size of soybeans kept falling, drop after drop, onto his face. Threads of medicinal fragrance faintly wafted from the hidden pocket in her sleeve. These were the life-preserving pills Lin Xiao had used his final thread of strength to stuff into her hands when he had been making his last flicker of life. The fragrance drifting into her nose only made Shen Xiaobai's heart more tangled than a ball of hemp. Her little heart rose and fell in turmoil, drifting and wavering, as though it had been kneaded into fragments and glued back together. She could not describe what she was feeling.

A green-robed Daoist curiously glanced at Lin Xiao, and his expression abruptly changed. "Master, this little brother's injuries..."

Master Mieqing gave him a sidelong glance and said coldly, "Now that he has reached Spring Return Valley, are you afraid he will die? This is not something you can reason out. I must settle the matter with your sect master."

Soft coughing sounded outside the hall. A middle-aged Daoist in a purple Daoist robe strode in with several Daoists wearing pale purple Daoist robes. The middle-aged Daoist looked at Master Mieqing, then at Lin Xiao lying on the ground, and suddenly laughed. "An honored guest comes to our door, yet we failed to welcome her. Master, it has been eighteen years since we parted at Luojiu Peak, has it not?"

"Stop babbling. Your Great Luo Pill Dao has plenty of trouble ahead." Master Mieqing said icily, "Daoist Danling, this boy is one of yours. I saved him and brought him here, so how you deal with him is your affair. But you know my temperament. I never lift a hand for nothing."

Daoist Danling was the current sect master of the Great Luo Pill Dao, an expert who had already formed a Nascent Soul. Hearing Master Mieqing's words, he hurried forward several steps and gently swept Shen Xiaobai to Master Mieqing's side with a flick of his sleeve. He crouched beside Lin Xiao and swept his body with his right hand, gentle yet incomparably swift. "Hehe, what domineering blood qi. Is he from the Blood Kill Demonic Path? Eh? This is..." Daoist Danling removed the bracelet and ring from Lin Xiao's hand in surprise, then pulled the Pill Token from his inner pocket.

With a light tap of his finger, a thread of true essence entered the Pill Token. The token suddenly burst with blue-green light, changing from the appearance of rotten old wood back into something crystal-clear, like it had been carved from fine jade.

"He is a disciple of the outer Spring Return Hall. And since he possesses these three treasures, he must have already inherited the post of outer sect steward." Daoist Danling's expression shifted slightly. He pulled a thumb-thick porcelain bottle from his belt, poured out three golden pills the size of paulownia seeds, and carefully placed them into Lin Xiao's mouth.

The moment the three spirit pills entered his mouth, they transformed into three streams of Spiritual Energy and surged downward. The lingering Blood Kill demonic qi within Lin Xiao's body was thoroughly dispersed, and the severe injuries to his internal organs rapidly eased. The source essence he had exhausted after taking the Nine Dragon Life-Extending Pill also began slowly recovering. The purplish-black shade of his face gradually returned to its original fair complexion, and even a healthy flush appeared upon it.

Shen Xiaobai clapped her hands and laughed excitedly. "He's alive, he's alive! Brother Lin is alive!"

Master Mieqing snorted coldly. "He was never dead. Why say he has come alive?"

Shen Xiaobai stuck out her tongue and made a face at Master Mieqing. Because of Lin Xiao's "revival," the heart she had kept tense for so long suddenly relaxed beyond measure. She even forgot that her parents had died tragically, recovering a little of a child's nature. Even before the icy Master Mieqing, she now dared to make a face.

Master Mieqing snorted in displeasure and said coldly to Daoist Danling, "How many pills can one outer sect steward of your Great Luo Pill Dao be exchanged for? Danling, be straightforward. I have just taken in a fine disciple and need some pills to assist her cultivation. You also know that the Spiritual Energy between heaven and earth has become increasingly scarce of late. Even at my Lengqie Mountain, the Spiritual Energy..." At this point, Master Mieqing could not help sighing deeply. "Could it be that we cultivators can only rely on pills to increase our cultivation in the future?"

Daoist Danling waved a hand and said deeply, "Junior Brother Danyu, accompany Master Mieqing to the pill chambers. Let Master choose whatever she wishes to take."

Daoist Danling's generosity instead made Master Mieqing, who had been determined to loot the place thoroughly, feel somewhat embarrassed. She hesitated before asking, "Danling, you will truly let me choose any pills I want?"

Daoist Danling looked at Master Mieqing with great "magnanimity" and smiled. "There are no supreme-grade spirit pills in the pill chambers. You know that materials are scarce nowadays, and supreme-grade spirit pills cannot be refined at all. The high-grade spirit pills are all on my person, and Master cannot take those away. Master only needs to train this disciple, so how many mid-grade and low-grade pills could she possibly use? Hmm, if she needs many, how about I gift you one hundred thousand Grain Abstinence Pills?"

Master Mieqing opened her mouth but said nothing.

Daoist Danling grinned wickedly. "Origin Sect ordered one million Grain Abstinence Pills, but they sent excess materials. I had my disciples use them for practice, and we ended up refining over one and a half million Grain Abstinence Pills. If Master has need, take one or two hundred thousand away. I will not feel any heartache."

"You think I raise pigs, that I would need one or two hundred thousand Grain Abstinence Pills?" Master Mieqing was so angry that her eyelids trembled repeatedly. Too lazy to say anything further to Daoist Danling, notorious throughout the cultivation world for his laziness, she took Shen Xiaobai's hand and followed the dark-faced Daoist Danyu out of the hall.

Master Mieqing forcibly pulled Shen Xiaobai out of the hall. With Master Mieqing's cultivation, there was simply no allowing Shen Xiaobai to stop. Shen Xiaobai could only keep looking back at Lin Xiao, crying loudly, "Brother Lin, Brother Lin, don't forget Xiaobai, don't forget Xiaobai!" Her tender voice quickly faded into the distance. A few faint wet marks remained on the floor, tears Shen Xiaobai had shed. Pale mist gathered in from all directions, slowly concealing those water stains.

Several Daoists in pale purple Daoist robes surrounded Daoist Danling and asked at the same time, "Senior Brother Sect Master?"

They found it most strange. Daoist Danling had never been so generous before. Letting Master Mieqing, that notoriously eccentric old nun, freely choose pills in the pill chambers—was that not like releasing a tiger into a pigsty? Daoist Danling had always calculated every pill down to the last detail, yet today he had first generously used three Sun Gathering Golden Pills to save Lin Xiao's life, then generously allowed Master Mieqing into the pill chambers. Could Daoist Danling have changed his nature today?

Daoist Danling weighed the Pill Token, bracelet, and ring in his hand. "Something has likely happened at the Spring Return Hall in Guihua City. Our Great Luo Pill Dao has been in seclusion for five years, so it is inevitable that some things have happened. Dansheng, Danrang, take several disciples to Guihua City and investigate the exact course of events." After pondering for a moment, Daoist Danling solemnly instructed, "Our Great Luo Pill Dao was founded upon pills. We are somewhat lacking in killing arts, restrictions, flying swords, and magical treasures. There is a thread of Blood Kill demonic qi from the Blood Kill Demonic Path within this child's body. You must be careful."

The two middle-aged Daoists in pale purple Daoist robes made slight salutes. One of them smiled. "Senior Brother, do not worry. We will bring several bottles of Pill Poison with us, so we need fear no one."

"Mm, excellent. Go quickly." Daoist Danling waved a hand. Only after watching Daoist Dansheng and Daoist Danrang leave the hall did he flick his sleeve and lift Lin Xiao from the floor into his arms.

Looking at Lin Xiao, Daoist Danling nodded and smiled. "Unexpectedly, the Spring Return Hall branch of our Great Luo Pill Dao's outer sect has produced a disciple with such excellent aptitude this time. A pure fire-aspected constitution—nothing could be more suitable for pill refinement."

"A pure fire-aspected constitution?" The other Daoists were startled, then delighted, but in the blink of an eye, they began looking at Daoist Danling with some hesitation.

"Mm, I understand your concerns. The way of pill refinement stresses the balancing of yin and yang, the harmony of the five elements. A pure five-element constitution holds no particular advantage in pill refinement. But this child possesses a pure fire-aspected constitution. In his control and understanding of flames, perhaps no one beneath heaven can compare with him. If we do not have him refine pills, making him specially manage the furnace fires would also be excellent." Daoist Danling smiled until his eyes became slits. Stroking his beard, he added, "How could I ever make a losing bargain? Once this child's cultivation grows profound, he alone will likely be able to tend the fires of a hundred pill furnaces. Tsk, tsk, how much labor would that save?"

The Daoists exchanged glances, then all gave Daoist Danling a thumbs-up. "Senior Brother, brilliant insight!"

Thus, joyful laughter rolled out from that small cluster of palaces, shaking the drifting Spiritual Energy all around into motion.

Master Mieqing, her sleeves stuffed bulging with bottles of every kind of pill, was carrying Shen Xiaobai away from Spring Return Valley through the air. Upon suddenly hearing the laughter of Daoist Danling and the others, she could not help turning back and shouting in a low voice, "You bunch of dead ox-noses, pleased with yourselves this time, are you? A disciple with a pure fire-aspected constitution—how much firewood and labor can he save you? Hmph. Though I took a few too many pills this time, no matter how I calculate it, you are the ones who got the better bargain!"

A streak of black light flashed through the void, and Master Mieqing, carrying Shen Xiaobai, quickly vanished among the white clouds at the horizon.