Great Pills and Essence Blood!

The room.

The couple took their seats.

"Amnesia?"

"No wonder!"

After hearing Meng Nan describe his amnesia and regression in cultivation, Zhao Xiaoshuang was surprised for a moment, but soon accepted it just as she had in his previous life.

Whenever Meng Nan encountered anything, he made a record of it.

From Yinlian Village to Angming City, then from Angming City to Qingtian Mountain.

He had brought all those notes with him, unwilling to leave a single book behind. Even when something was missing, he would quickly fill it in afterward from memory.

Carrying them along the way was inevitably a hassle, but Meng Nan had always persisted.

From time to time, he would look back and organize them, sorting everything out.

Others thought this was simply one of Meng Nan's methods of cultivation.

Zhao Xiaoshuang had asked him about it, too, but he had never told her. He had only asked her to keep records of her cultivation insights. He required the same of Meng Xingzhe and the other two, as well as those disciples.

Everyone had to keep records.

After more than sixty years of this,

Meng Nan's diaries and notes had piled up until they filled three entire rooms.

Zhao Xiaoshuang had more than a thousand volumes of cultivation notes, too.

Half the rooms in their home were used to store these things.

She had never understood why.

Only now did Zhao Xiaoshuang finally understand—

"Did you know all along that you'd lose your memory?"

"You only remember things from before you turned eighteen?"

Startled by this, Zhao Xiaoshuang couldn't help bursting into laughter—

"So now I'm talking to an eighteen-year-old boy?"

"In your memories, I should be eighteen. That year, I'd just gotten pregnant with Meng Xingzhe. I was young, fresh as a flower. Look at me now—I've turned into an old woman. Are you disappointed?"

"Young man, are you scared?"

"How does it feel? Tell Granny all about it."

After spending more than sixty years together day in and day out, Zhao Xiaoshuang was much more at ease around Meng Nan. Though she was in her eighties, she was more lively than she'd been in either of their previous lives—or even in the real world.

She was even teasing Meng Nan.

She had never done that in either of their previous lives.

"You're much more improper than you were at eighteen."

Meng Nan smiled, too.

Zhao Xiaoshuang hadn't been unattractive when she was young, and she wasn't unattractive now, either. Her cultivation had kept her clean and fresh, while the years had added a wealth of charm.

Looking at Zhao Xiaoshuang, then at his own gray-white hair and slightly withered hands,

Meng Nan felt a strange sensation.

He hadn't lived through the years, yet he'd been taken straight to their twilight years. It was a curious, wondrous feeling.

The two chatted for a while.

Meng Nan wasn't the only one who found it strange and wondrous. Zhao Xiaoshuang felt the same.

What did it feel like to be in your seventies or eighties and have your partner turn back into an eighteen-year-old?

An old cow eating young grass?

A second spring?

Most people would never experience anything like it.

Zhao Xiaoshuang was enjoying every moment.

The old couple seemed to be talking across time, each finding the experience novel.

But Meng Nan hadn't forgotten what mattered.

For more than ten days, he kept reading his diaries while talking with Zhao Xiaoshuang and asking her about various things.

After more than half a month,

Meng Nan finally learned much more about the details of the past sixty-four years.

In this life,

Meng Nan hadn't been able to master alchemy overnight.

Without a foundation in alchemy, there could be no question of cooperating with Qian Yu.

Everything had to proceed one step at a time.

Fortunately, Meng Nan had no further bottlenecks before the Inner Qi Minor Heavenly Cycle, and he reached it smoothly around the turn of the year.

After that, he cultivated while studying alchemy.

Once he reached the Inner Qi Minor Heavenly Cycle, his cultivation progress slowed to a crawl.

Alchemy, meanwhile, had been difficult from the very start.

There were two main obstacles.

The first was the technical difficulty.

Distinguishing the medicinal properties of different ingredients, balancing primary and secondary ingredients, controlling the heat—all of these things demanded painstaking precision, making alchemy a hundred times harder than the chemistry experiments he'd done in his previous life.

If it hadn't been so difficult, that person probably wouldn't have sold the notes to Zhao Xiaoshuang.

Meng Nan was patient and persevered, unwilling to give up.

But that was only one obstacle.

The second was the cost.

One failure, two failures—every failed attempt ruined a whole batch and wasted a great deal of medicinal ingredients.

In the 18th year of the Immortal Calendar, an ordinary couple in Yinlian Village might earn around four taels of silver a year, equivalent to roughly four or five thousand copper coins.

An ordinary cultivator in the Inner Qi Stage might earn about twenty taels a year.

Meng Nan had previously worked as a carpenter, earning more than ten taels a year—a fairly good income.

Yet even the cheapest medicine listed in the Alchemy Notes, a hemostatic remedy called Hemostasis Powder, cost over one tael per batch to make.

Ten failures would eat up a whole year of Meng Nan's income.

Who could afford to burn through money like that?

For the first two years, Meng Nan hadn't dared to experiment freely. Instead, he'd focused mostly on theoretical research.

After two years, once his theoretical knowledge was solid and he had more confidence—and once he'd figured out which medicines were easiest to start with—Meng Nan began alchemizing in earnest.

He'd saved up some money during those first two years, of course, but it wasn't enough.

Still, Meng Nan had been in frequent contact with Qian Yu during that time. After two years, he secretly used Suoluo Seeds to persuade Qian Yu to switch to the medicinal herb trade.

That was when the two hit it off.

Meng Nan traded Suoluo Seeds for medicinal ingredients and studied alchemy; Qian Yu used the seeds to rapidly improve her cultivation.

Ten years passed in a flash.

Qian Yu successfully advanced to the True Essence Stage, while Meng Nan mastered the production of four medicines, including Hemostasis Powder. At last, he managed to break even.

By then,

Meng Nan had also reached the Greater Celestial Circuit in his cultivation.

Another twenty years passed.

By the time Meng Nan, Zhao Xiaoshuang, Qian Yu, and the others fled Angming City, Meng Nan had finally broken through to the True Qi Stage.

True Qi Accumulation.

True Qi Body Cleansing.

The True Qi Stage was a cultivation stage that consumed a great deal of time.

Take Wang An, for example.

He'd advanced to the True Qi Stage at twenty, but even at forty, he still hadn't made it through the stage or advanced to the True Essence Stage.

That showed how difficult it was.

But after Meng Nan advanced to the True Qi Stage in the 50th year of the Immortal Calendar, he quickly completed True Qi Accumulation over the next thirty years and reached True Qi Body Cleansing. He then swiftly completed the four stages of flesh, sinew, skin, and bone.

The year before last, when Meng Nan was eighty, he successfully refined his five viscera. He was only one step away from Blood Replacement and advancing to the True Essence Stage.

But by then, he was nearing the end of his lifespan. He had no time left.

In the end, he died at eighty-two, at the peak of True Qi Body Cleansing.

"You only remember things from before you turned eighteen, so you should remember that the year you killed Zhou Boren, you obtained an Iron Token bearing the image of the Eight-Armed Demon God. The token is strange. It can absorb the blood and essence of the dead, then condense it into Essence Blood. Essence Blood contains spiritual energy and can help someone break through. But you didn't dare swallow it. You only used it as an ingredient to make Great Pills, hoping to reduce the baleful energy and impurities in it. They weren't quite as effective, but with Suoluo Seeds and Qi Circulation Powder, you managed to make steady progress through the True Qi Stage."

"Most people in the True Qi Stage can live to a hundred or even a hundred and twenty, but you already felt your lifespan running out at only eighty. At the time, you guessed that the hidden danger came from using Essence Blood to make Great Pills."

Zhao Xiaoshuang took out one of the so-called Great Pills. Meng Nan accepted it and saw that it smelled delicious and was as round and lustrous as a pearl. Only a few faint streaks of blood on its surface added a touch of eeriness.

"Great Pills."

"The Iron Token."

Meng Nan hadn't found any of this in his diaries. Only when Zhao Xiaoshuang flipped through them did she find all the research on the Iron Token recorded in a single notebook.

He'd been afraid the information might leak, so he'd kept it secret.

He hadn't told anyone else. Only Zhao Xiaoshuang knew.

"The Iron Token is strange. Even now, its origins remain unknown."

"When you hold the Iron Token, a Nameless Demonic Art appears within it. It focuses entirely on cultivating by devouring Essence Blood, and can let someone reach the True Essence Stage in just a few short years."

"But the art is strange. It can affect a person's mind. You refused to practice it, so you set it aside."

"Essence Blood, on the other hand, has countless uses. Even if you don't use it to cultivate the demonic art, you can still use it to perform the Blood Arrow Secret Technique. Relying on Essence Blood and the Blood Arrow Secret Technique, we escaped death by a hair several times."

"Even now, with this Essence Blood and the Blood Arrow Secret Technique, you could threaten those in the True Essence Stage, even though you were only in the True Qi Stage before."

Zhao Xiaoshuang took out a small bottle and opened it. Inside was a drop of bright, almost dripping-red Essence Blood.

She kept it as a means of protecting herself.

Normally, using the Blood Arrow Secret Technique consumed one's own Essence Blood, which was difficult to restore afterward. It was a last-resort trump card, not to be used lightly.

But if Essence Blood condensed by the Iron Token was used instead, it would not only be more powerful, but would also spare the user harm.

For sixty years, Essence Blood combined with the Blood Arrow Secret Technique had been the old couple's ace in the hole.

They hadn't passed it on to anyone before.

Only after they arrived during the city's founding period did they teach it to Meng Xingzhe, Meng Jian, and Meng Santan.

The three of them—

They'd still been born.

Meng Xingzhe had died in an accident in their fourth year at Qingtian Mountain.

In the tenth year, Meng Jian had left to seek opportunities and try to break through.

Meng Santan had stayed for two more years, then left as well, seeking immortality.

More than ten years had passed, and neither sibling had returned.

Their fates were unknown.

"If they were still alive, they should have come back by now."

"They probably died out there."

Zhao Xiaoshuang sighed. It wasn't a parent's complaint; it was her conclusion based on the circumstances.

Demon beasts lurked in Ghost Mother Mountain, and Rogue Cultivators roamed there. It had always been a dangerous place.

The siblings weren't any kind of prodigies, either. After more than ten years without coming back, it wasn't hard to guess what had happened to them.

But as long as she hadn't seen their bodies, a small part of her still held on to hope.

Meng Nan finally pieced together the situation sixty-four years later, along with everything that had happened in the intervening years.

For a moment, he fell silent.

For a moment, he felt a rush of emotion.

In the end, all he could do was sigh—

"Time is merciless."

"Cultivating immortality is no easy feat!"