Strike While It's Hot!

"Whew~"

Xiao Yan stood in the scorching molten pit and stretched his limbs to his heart's content. The power that had more than doubled in an instant surged back and forth through his body, and for a moment, it was actually somewhat beyond his control.

After all, it had been suppressed for so many years. This was also the first time his Dou Qi had been released so freely. The moment he broke through, it was like a wild horse throwing off its reins, no longer willing to obediently stop.

Comfortable. Exhilarating.

"Six-star Da Dou Shi... my progress is a little fast."

He had also expected a breakthrough after the seal was undone, but his own estimate had only been around the three- or four-star level.

Now that he had smoothly broken through all the way to the six-star level without any obstruction, even he was a little surprised.

It seemed he had suppressed himself far too much on ordinary days, and the rebound had gone a little out of control. The quality of the Dou Qi he had worked so hard to temper had dropped quite a bit for nothing.

This seemed like a bit of a loss, didn't it? Xiao Yan nodded, somewhat vexed. Raising his realm too quickly was not a good thing. If it affected his later cultivation progress, that would be bad.

"Looks like I'll have to suppress it even harder in the future—"

"Suppress your head!"

A pale-white flame suddenly rose from the Naring, and Yao Lao, wrapped in Bone Chilling Flame, rushed out in an instant!

Before Xiao Yan could react, he was swept up by the flames and turned into an arrow loosed from the bow, shooting into the distance.

After finding a place utterly devoid of people, the pale-white flame rushed into a barren mountain range. In just a few breaths, it melted out a cave dwelling.

Clang!

A huge medicinal cauldron descended out of thin air and sank deep into the ground.

Its entire body was pitch-black, and a heavy, ancient aura coiled around it. The flame totems drawn across its surface burned as though they were real.

Yao Lao's exclusive cauldron, the Black Demon Cauldron! "Teacher, what is this?" Xiao Yan could not figure out what had happened for a moment.

"You brat, you didn't even say a word before breaking through! If we'd been prepared, you'd be sitting down right where you were and continuing to charge upward right now!"

Yao Lao looked frantic. His Soul Power reached deep into the Naring and rummaged through everything. Those incomparably precious bottles and jars were swept aside in a chaotic rush.

The entire storage space was nearly turned upside down.

This brat...

After being suppressed for so long, this was the perfect moment of release. If he did not strike while the iron was hot while this momentum still remained, what was he waiting for?

He only hated that this little bastard Xiao Yan had not given him a heads-up in advance. Now, when he wanted to take out a few suitable pills to use, he did not have any.

"Black Sky Hemp, Ice Profound Leaf..."

Yao Lao was irritated for a moment. With a wave of his spiritual hand, he divided aside all those miscellaneous objects, and the messy items were poured back and forth between the outside world and the Naring as he quickly picked out over a hundred kinds of ingredients.

"Teacher, is there any need to keep charging upward? If I advance too quickly, won't my Dou Qi become unsteady? It'd be bad if my cultivation stalled in the future."

Xiao Yan looked at Yao Lao making such a huge fuss and was somewhat confused. "If it stops, then it stops. At worst, I'll just suppress it for a while afterward."

"Shut your mouth for this old man!"

Hundreds and thousands of suitable Pill Recipes were flashing rapidly through Yao Lao's mind. Hearing Xiao Yan's words made him even angrier.

Are you the teacher, or am I the teacher?

As a Dou Zun Peak expert, could he not know what a Da Dou Shi's Dou Qi was supposed to be like? The Dou Qi you released was already who knew how much denser than that of ordinary experts, and you still want to suppress it?

If you suppress your realm until it won't budge anymore, then you'll have plenty to cry about!

"The path of cultivation is about charging upward with courage! Accumulating in place is only so that your next step can be steadier and you can climb higher! Where is there any logic in suppressing yourself all the way and seeking no progress? Are you competing to see whose realm can remain stagnant the longest?"

Perhaps because every Pill Recipe he swept his eyes over was missing ingredients, Yao Lao, who had always had decent self-restraint, was so angry that he became somewhat talkative.

"If you keep going like this, when others are Dou Ling, you'll still be tempering. When others are Dou Wang, you'll still be tempering. By the time they're Dou Zong and Dou Emperor, you'll still be tempering, tempering, tempering!"

"Can't you cherish the breakthrough momentum that so many people dream of but can never obtain?"

"Yes, yes, yes..."

Xiao Yan lowered his brows and shrank his head, honestly taking the scolding. In this aspect, Yao Lao was the absolute authority. If he told him to stand on tiptoe and spin three times on the spot right now, he would have to do it.

To put it plainly: since Teacher had arranged it this way, he surely had his reasons! Just listen.

Could you possibly understand cultivation better than Yao Lao?

"Hmph!"

Seeing him obediently waiting to be fed, Yao Lao finally cleared away his nameless anger. With a wave of his sleeve, he rolled up numerous medicinal ingredients and refined them at the same time, while his mind still kept thinking nonstop.

Three-Pattern Azure Spirit Pill? No good. He only had Bone Chilling Flame on hand. If he refined it, it could only barely be considered acceptable.

Purple Heart Barrier Breaking Pill? This was even worse. Too many ingredients were missing. Even if he substituted similar medicinal ingredients and added a few more to rebalance the medicinal properties, it still would not be enough.

Azure Leaf Golden Lotus?

That would not work either...

Xiao Yan obediently stayed on the ground, watching Yao Lao display his might, while Yao Lao dug quite a few more supplies out of his collection.

Streams of fire wheeled across the sky; hundreds of medicinal ingredients with different properties, different extraction methods, and even different processing approaches depending on different needs were all being refined at the same time.

It could be called an encyclopedia of preliminary medicinal processing.

Some materials, under exquisite control, had their waste combined with one another to turn trash into treasure. Some ingredients that existed only in tiny amounts but had many uses were divided and processed into different reserve liquids with a precision Xiao Yan could not understand.

And all of this was something Yao Lao casually completed while deep in thought.

"The continent's number one alchemist..."

Xiao Yan murmured in awe. This was the first time he had truly felt the weight of that vague, distant title.

Those who knew nothing of alchemy would probably only think the smoke, fire, and brilliance filling the sky were dazzling and colorful. But if an alchemist came here, it would be no different from a fine drizzle of light entering the vast sea, a speck of dust beholding ten thousand heavens.

If one could imitate even one ten-thousandth of his technique, it would be enough to found a school and muddle one's way into becoming a Fifth or Sixth Grade alchemist. That should not be a problem.

"Don't tell me I really have to write a brand-new Pill Recipe on the spot?"

Yao Lao felt displeased for a moment.

Countless Pill Recipes swept back and forth through his mind, yet not a single one could be used right now.

It was also because too few things had been left in the Naring. Their grades varied hugely, and there were quite a few old medicines that had been sitting around for years, forcing him to spare even more attention for processing.

It would not be hard to create a new Pill Recipe, but right now there was no opportunity to test the medicine, and the materials would not allow him to refine several extra pills either.

Even if the new Pill Recipe was only a mere Fourth or Fifth Grade one, and with him personally handling it, the chance of side effects was no more than one in a thousand, he still did not want to take the risk.

After all, if Xiao Yan really ate it and something went wrong, that would be a huge problem.

"Damn annoying!"

Yao Lao was thoroughly irritated, and swept his senses once more through the Naring that had already been stripped clean of materials.

"Hmm?"

Several jade bottles marked with the characters "six" and "seven" caught his attention. He had little impression of these things. They were probably something he had casually refined for fun in his free time, then tossed here and ignored because they had no real use.

From the outside, Xiao Yan saw Yao Lao raise his hand and summon more than a dozen medicinal pills. Dense radiance spread from them, and just one glance made him feel as if he were about to drown in a torrent of energy.

This... Just what grade are these medicinal pills?!

Xiao Yan's eyes widened.

He's going to give me this? No way! I'm afraid I'd explode just from smelling it! How am I supposed to swallow something like this?

And Yao Lao's next move made his eyes almost pop out of their sockets.

He saw the bone-white flame lick across them, refining out the faintest trace of pill fragrance. The components and medicinal properties of these pills, their production process, their refinement methods, even the time they had spent gathering dust in the Naring, the loss of potency in each component, and their current effects—

In an instant, all was known! "Heh heh... I have a way." Yao Lao stroked his beard, finally revealing a satisfied expression.

With a slap of his palm, more than a dozen high-grade defective goods were directly crushed and thrown into the cauldron together with hundreds of medicinal liquids for refinement.

The pitch-black medicinal cauldron seemed to come alive. The flame totems leaping across its surface lit up, and inside the cauldron, a surge of crimson flame actually ignited as well, cooperating with Yao Lao in the refinement.

"This is getting more and more beyond the syllabus."

Xiao Yan watched until his head spun. All of Yao Lao's operations had completely leapt beyond the scope described in the original work, and the methods he revealed were truly shocking.

Yao Lao: Polish your grandpa's head! Temper your mother's head! Go polish your grandpa, your mother, your grandmother, all their damn heads! I want you to rise—!!

10.5 update—

Reality has also proven that my writing really isn't good; the meaning was expressed completely unclearly.

The Battle Through the Heavens instance only has two endings: die, or become an Emperor and win. Losing the ancient jade won't work, because there is still the Heavenly Evil God waiting, and you have to directly clash with Soul Emperor within a limited time.

So, under the condition that losing means death, the original route is indeed the only viable strategy. As for other routes and other instances, you have no idea whether they can be cleared or not.

Therefore, following the original route while accumulating even more, then increasing the probability of survival when facing life-and-death situations like absorbing Heavenly Flames—this is practically a 100% clear guide. But Yao Lao could not stand it.

When they had just met, Xiao Yan was a Dou Master. Three years had passed, and damn it, he was still suppressing his realm! Only seven-star!

Yao Lao would indeed have people temper their Dou Qi, but not waste time for nothing. When the protagonist was about to break through realms in succession, he could not endure it anymore and directly raised his cultivation to Dou Ling.

The protagonist went completely off the rails, because in the original work, he charged straight to the peak of Dou Wang.

The fallback path of following the plot was directly blocked by Yao Lao, forcing the protagonist, a salted fish who wanted to follow the plot, to start flopping around.

So many chapters have been written afterward, but on the timeline, only a few days have passed, with work going on nonstop. What I wanted was exactly this tense feeling—to drag out the protagonist's panic and confusion and let it air in the sun.

Things no longer allowed him to keep lazing around.