Beast Fire Old Geezer

Beast Fire Old Geezer "Since that was the case, this old man would make the trip with you!"

Yao Lao subconsciously raised a hand to stroke his beard, but forcefully stopped halfway, then helped Nalan Su up instead.

"Good... good!"

Nalan Su looked as if he had found his savior. He waved hard to disperse his attendants, and the crowd instantly opened up a path that gradually stretched ahead with the two men's footsteps. "This way, sir~"

"Mm."

The gaze beneath the black robe locked onto him without a sound.

Normally speaking, Xiao Yan should have been the one performing the actions while Yao Lao cooperated. But the moment he thought of having to meet Nalan Su, the man who had almost become his father-in-law, Xiao Yan used the excuse of being drawn in by pill refinement and kicked the task over to Yao Lao.

"Courteous and thorough, yet soft by nature on the inside. He doesn't seem like the son of a marshal's family. More like a smooth, worldly old merchant."

After looking him over a few times, Yao Lao's amused voice rang out in his heart.

"If my guess is right, half of Nalan Yanran's temperament was spoiled out of her by him. Sigh... you two are rather alike, actually."

"How am I like her!?"

Xiao Yan felt as if a great injustice had smashed down onto his head. He nearly exploded at just that one sentence.

"You aren't?"

Yao Lao did not know whether to laugh or cry. "You two are equally willful, always brooding over your thoughts and deciding matters on your own, aren't you? The only difference between you and her is..."

"She was a Miss pampered since childhood, never tainted by much of the mundane world. When it comes to dealing with people, she's practically got a pig's brain."

"As for you, it's as if someone slaughtered your whole family in your last life. Every day you're burdened with bitter grudges, worrying over the affairs of your household. From top to bottom, you insist on sticking your hand in and interfering."

For once, Xiao Yan did not argue back.

The sharp tongue he had always had failed to come out this time. He only stubbornly muttered half a sentence, "I'm doing it all for their own good..."

"Yes! I didn't say it was some bad intention either, but the people of the Xiao Clan are people, not objects for you to arrange however you please."

Yao Lao sounded somewhat helpless. "They have their own lives."

"Of course. No matter what decision you make or what danger you risk, this old man will help you. You don't need to worry about that."

After all, you are this old man's disciple. Even if the sky collapsed one day, this old man would do everything in his power to hold it up and keep you safe.

"..."

Xiao Yan fell silent. No one knew what he was thinking at that moment.

"Sir... sir!"

A loud shout suddenly came from the outside world.

The voice came from beyond layers of human walls. Judging from the sound, it should have been an old man with a weakened aura.

Heads surged. That person actually squeezed smoothly through a great mass of Dou Masters blocking the way and easily arrived nearby.

"Who is that? His aura is actually so strange!"

Nalan Su's brows knitted tightly.

This concerned his own father's safety, so he did not have his usual good temper.

The attendants looked that fellow up and down, their eyes shifting slightly. Clearly, they knew him. They hurriedly leaned in by Nalan Su's ear and introduced him:

"That fellow~ is a beast fire dealer who often appears in the merchant association. Who knows how many fire seeds of various ranks he has in his hands. Because he has never given his name, everyone calls him Beast Fire Old Geezer!"

"But this old thing's reputation is terrible. Not only are his prices absurdly high, there aren't many fires suitable for pill refinement, and their quality isn't guaranteed either."

"There was once an unlucky bastard who bought one back and opened the fire bottle, only to discover that the fire seed's source was nearly exhausted. It went out before he even had time to refine it."

At this point, the attendant's expression also turned a little strange. "This fellow practically specializes in scamming newbie alchemists with backgrounds. It's just unknown why no one has ever taken action to punish him."

Nonsense!

Nalan Su shot the attendant a sidelong glance, feeling that although his information was good, his brain was not.

Didn't he see those clustered Dou Masters being easily pushed aside? Obviously, it was because the man's cultivation was not weak that no one had gone looking for trouble! "Hehe... sir, I've brought everything."

The pale-faced old man bowed and scraped, holding a Naring in his hands like a treasure. In front of Yao Lao, he was as humble as a grandson.

Xiao Yan roughly sized him up.

"Teacher, can this person really gather enough materials?"

The person before him was the fellow who had scammed Xue Ni out of a fourth-tier Pill Recipe in the original story. The Poison Vine Fire that Yao Lao had used for pill refinement earlier had come from him, produced by a fifth-tier Poison Vine Snake.

That flame was seriously poisonous!

Of the Dou Qi infused into it, twenty to thirty percent could turn into poison.

If Yao Lao had not personally handled it, the poisonous smoke might have seeped into the medicinal pill. An alchemist whose fire control skills were lacking simply could not use it; whatever they refined would be ruined.

Who knew how many newbie alchemists this Old Geezer had scammed.

However, the beast fires in his hands counted as a considerable fortune to Xiao Yan. Even if all of them together could not make Fen Jue evolve, he could still use the beast fires' special properties to obtain quite a few small skills.

Using them while hiding his identity to roam the world, or even picking out a few flames to knead into bombs, were both decent uses.

And if he simply felt there were too many, he could directly feed them to the Bone Spirit Cold Fire to raise its experience bar...

In any case, even the last grain of rice in the bowl had value.

"Don't worry. He wouldn't have the guts!"

The first time Yao Lao saw Beast Fire Old Geezer, he could tell the man had been gravely injured.

His meridians were in chaos, Dou Qi clogged throughout them. Clearly, the injury had gone unhealed for years and had been dragged out until it reached this terrible state.

"With his current strength, it'd be impressive if he still had even half of it left. I could give him nine fingers and still take him down steadily."

He could easily take him down with one finger? Xiao Yan sized up where his strength stood, and for a moment felt that there really were far too many faulty parts in the broken cart that was the Jia Ma Empire.

The gravely wounded Nether Sea Flood Dragon Beast, Jia Xingtian on the verge of death, the sealed Hai Bodong, the poisoned Nalan Jie, the fallen Xiao Lin, Yun Shan in seclusion... and now there was one more strange old man.

And the empire still hadn't been destroyed? Were all those fellows outside dead or what? They could have just made a move and stewed the whole place in one pot!

"The three sets of ingredients and the promised payment are all inside. You can check them first. I'm not in a hurry..."

The old man glanced at Nalan Su, whose expression was off, and naturally yielded first.

He could still drag things out for a few more months or years. There was no need to fight with someone who might kick the bucket at any moment.

"Very well... your order will be postponed for now. If you're afraid you won't be able to find me later, you may come with me to the Nalan Residence first."

"Thank you, sir."

The old man bowed in thanks, then stood beside Nalan Su without the slightest sense of unfamiliarity, chuckling and baring his teeth, making the latter repeatedly move away.

Where had this country bumpkin come from?

And his realm was not low, either.

Nalan Su's gaze turned somewhat strange. He had memorized information on every expert in the Jia Ma Empire, but there was no memory of this old man in his mind at all.

He would have to investigate his origins properly later.

Snap.

Yao Lao pinched the Naring and easily erased the Soul Imprint, sweeping away the medicinal ingredients inside along with more than twenty kinds of fourth- and fifth-order Beast Fire.

After that, he even found two sixth-order fire seeds deep within the space.

One was fragmented, while the other was full and intact.

"It doesn't seem like fire from this region." After sensing its aura slightly, Yao Lao made his judgment.

The aura within Beast Fire was naturally connected to the environment its original body lived in. The higher the order of the fire, the older the original body often was, and the deeper the regional imprint would be.

Fire with an aura that clearly conflicted with the local environment... this fellow had probably run all the way back from somewhere else.

...Could these fires have been stolen? In that case, Xiao Yan really ought to thank this man for bringing him so many little gifts.

"As long as I refine them, who can tell where they came from? Then I obtained them with my own ability."

Could Beast Fire be used to rub out a fire lotus? Probably not... emmmm, without that destructive power, it could only suddenly explode in battle and disgust opponents of the same rank...

Hiss. That seemed even more excessive.