"My eldest senior sister seems calm on the surface, but her moods are unpredictable. She just never shows it on her face. As the saying goes, serving the king is like serving a tiger. Staying by her side is no different from keeping company with a tiger!"
"She really is a rare beauty—or rather, the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. You can't judge a book by its cover! Can you imagine? She makes me gnaw on huge quantities of beast carcasses and medicinal-plant corpses at every meal. In the dead of night, she even makes me soak completely submerged in water full of medicinal-plant corpses, saying it'll strengthen my physique!"
"And once, when I wanted to learn spatial magic so I could travel more easily in the future, she taught me how to shrink instead. She held me in her palm and toyed with me as she pleased!"
Lu Yang condemned Yun Zhi's countless atrocities, and before long, the little Medicine Kings were all sympathizing with him.
The ginseng baby couldn't help saying, "In that case, we'll attack from within and without! You be our inside man, and we'll back you up from the outside. Let's rebel against the witch right now!"
Lu Yang jumped in fright and hurriedly tried to dissuade it. "Absolutely not! We need to think this through. Eldest senior sister is Ask Dao Sect's number-one disciple, and her cultivation is unfathomably deep. The few of us would be badly outnumbered."
He analyzed the situation calmly. "To be safe, why don't we wait until I reach the Tribulation Transcendence Realm? Then we'll have a much better chance. Once the time comes, we can all act together, strike back against eldest senior sister, and win in one fell swoop!"
"Then everyone can settle their scores and right their wrongs. Wouldn't that be better?"
The little Medicine Kings thought that humans really were thorough in their thinking. "I thought your intelligence was a little inferior to mine, but I never imagined you'd have such a meticulous plan. It seems our intelligence is evenly matched!"
With a common enemy, Lu Yang and the little Medicine Kings soon hit it off. They howled and clamored to bring down the witch.
With Lu Yang on their side, the little Medicine Kings' ranks were like tigers with wings. Victory was as easy as reaching into a bag and taking something out!
At the entrance to the medicinal garden, Uncle Ba watched Lu Yang's rousing plan through a water mirror and sighed.
Yun Zhi had specifically told him to keep an eye on Lu Yang and make sure nothing went wrong in the medicinal garden. If anything happened, he was to tell her at once.
Did this situation count as something going wrong?
If he told Yun Zhi, then even if nothing had gone wrong yet, something probably would.
"Why is there not a single young person nowadays who doesn't make trouble?"
"I've said so much, but I still haven't shown you the spell I can use." Lu Yang rolled his shoulders, cast the spell "Ground Shrinking," struck a diving pose, and plunged straight into the earth.
The Dao Enlightenment Tree King reacted much like Yun Zhi, watching in astonishment. It had lived for so long, yet had never seen a spell like this.
At first glance, it looked like a spatial spell of the "shrinking the ground to cover a thousand miles" variety, but in practice, it seemed more like a Five Elements spell.
To cast a never-before-seen spell at such a young age—he really was a spellcasting genius.
Lu Yang had gotten so good at using "Ground Shrinking" that he could do the crawl, breaststroke, butterfly, and freestyle. Watching him pop out of the earth now and then before smoothly diving back in, it was easy to get the mistaken impression that the earth was water.
The Qilin Immortal Medicine and the Flower of Time's End had finished fighting. The ginseng baby and the Three-Leaf Stargrass told them about Lu Yang's tragic life under the witch's clutches, and the story struck a chord. They were all worked up.
"Our Medicine Kings finally have a spy embedded among the humans!"
The four little Medicine Kings sat on the Dao Enlightenment Tree King's branches, clapping and praising Lu Yang.
Lu Yang let out a strange cry, kicked his legs, and leaped high. He spread his arms in a T-shape and spun thirty-six hundred degrees in the air before landing face-first with a thud—he'd gotten dizzy while spinning.
His attempt to look cool had failed.
The little Medicine Kings hurriedly and chaotically carried Lu Yang up.
For a Foundation Establishment Realm cultivator, an injury like this was only a superficial wound and would heal quickly.
Seeing that Lu Yang really could loosen the soil, the little Medicine Kings brought out a map of the medicinal garden and had him dig underground in a set order.
"The roots of the herbs in this area run deep, reaching three meters underground. Be careful not to touch them and give us the wrong idea. I suggest digging between three and five meters below the surface. That's the safe zone."
"The roots of the herbs in the other areas are between half a meter and two meters deep. Just dig below two meters there."
Lu Yang asked curiously, "What happens if I touch a root?"
The ginseng baby answered seriously, "We'll think you have a foot fetish."
"???"
The Flower of Time's End chimed in. "There are plenty of perverts among you humans. They like to suck the skin off our plant feet with wine, saying it tastes good and goes well with a drink. They even grow and cultivate us on a massive scale for it."
"What plant are you talking about?"
"Peanuts."
Lu Yang couldn't quite keep up with the little Medicine Kings' train of thought.
Fortunately, he didn't dwell on the matter for long and started digging according to the route the ginseng baby had given him.
The ginseng baby had grown tired of watching the earthworm couple burrow, but found it fun to watch a human do it. One after another, they ran over to Lu Yang and followed right behind him.
The little Medicine Kings could burrow underground too, of course, but they merged with the soil, a method completely different from Lu Yang's way of forcing his way through it.
The soil where Lu Yang passed became loose and soft, just right for the little Medicine Kings.
The Dao Enlightenment Tree King watched the little Medicine Kings having the time of their lives and sighed. Trees couldn't burrow underground.
It looked up at the sun and found its rays scorching. It sighed again. "Why did I have to grow so tall? There isn't even a patch of shade for me."
The Dao Enlightenment Tree King felt as if the whole world were against it.
The little Medicine Kings spent the entire day playing behind Lu Yang. On the way back, they were still fooling around, laughing and shouting. "Let's heat some water and take a bath!"
The Dao Enlightenment Tree King had already prepared a wooden tub full of water. It had drawn the water from the stream used to irrigate the herbs.
A bright glow appeared in the Qilin Immortal Medicine's belly and slowly rose until it reached its mouth, where it spat out Qilin True Fire.
The Qilin Immortal Medicine really did look like an actual qilin. No wonder the ancients had been so certain, at a glance, that they were looking at a qilin.
The Qilin True Fire was scorching hot. In the blink of an eye, it had the water boiling and bubbling.
The little Medicine Kings jumped in one after another, closed their eyes, and floated across the surface.
Lu Yang found the scene strangely familiar. It was like something he'd seen in the kitchen.
That was right. This was called medicinal cuisine.
But he'd never seen medicinal cuisine where the ingredients jumped into the pot of their own accord.
Before long, the medicinal fragrance wafted through the air. Lu Yang breathed it in and immediately felt invigorated. His cultivation even showed signs of improving.
"As expected of a Medicine King. Their medicinal power really is terrifying."
Lu Yang watched the little Medicine Kings playing and splashing around in the water, a helpless smile on his face.
He remembered eldest senior sister saying that immortality was poison, a torment no ordinary person could endure. Only a nature beyond that of ordinary people could bear the suffering of eternal life.
The little Medicine Kings had lived through endless years and witnessed who knew how many history-making events. The people and events recorded in history had all passed away. Only the little Medicine Kings were still alive.
Perhaps only a childlike nature could let the little Medicine Kings live for so long without breaking down.
They were just far too easy to fool.
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