Cannon Powder

The Ghost Fire had gone out. Xu Yuan let out a breath. A numb feeling spread through the wound on his back. Carrying the cage containing Master Qiao's corpse, he hurried away.

This place was still too close to the old locust's territory.

After putting another dozen miles between himself and the place, Xu Yuan found a sunny hillside and sat down. He took off his shirt and turned his back to the sun.

He didn't know if it would help.

Then Xu Yuan dragged Master Qiao's corpse over and felt around for anything else on him.

Several sheets of calligraphy were hidden in the corpse's clothes. Xu Yuan unfolded them and saw that they all had phrases like "Soaring Cloud" and "Riding Wind" written on them. The ink was still fresh; Master Qiao had written them recently.

What Xu Yuan didn't know was that Master Qiao had never needed this sort of calligraphy before. Whenever he went out, he had a carriage.

But two days ago, he had gone into the mountains to investigate.

The targets of Master Qiao's inquiries were, of course, the powerful and strange entities in Ghost Witch Mountain.

But all those entities wanted from Master Qiao was Blood Food.

Master Qiao had gone in a hurry this time and hadn't prepared enough Blood Food. To get the information he wanted, he had no choice but to leave his own page, coachman, and draft horse behind for the entities.

The coachman had worked for the Qiao family for twelve years, and the page had served Master Qiao for five.

Without his horse and coachman, Master Qiao couldn't possibly have pulled the carriage back himself. So when Xu Yuan had run into him on the official road the day before yesterday, he'd been walking along with the "Soaring Cloud" and "Riding Wind" calligraphy in hand.

Under the stack of calligraphy were several pages of paper. In tiny writing, they recorded how to cultivate and use a Dao Method.

The Dao Method was called Body Entering Situation. Xu Yuan gave it a quick read. It was the very same move Chang Xunbei had used.

These are all good things for me. Xu Yuan quickly put them away, then continued searching the corpse.

There were a few taels of loose silver in the purse, a ten-tael gold ingot, and, on top of that, two banknotes worth two hundred taels each!

Xu Yuan's breathing quickened. He'd lived this long and had never seen so much money!

The most valuable property the Xu family owned was the old opera stage in River Worker Alley, along with the few rooms in the adjoining back courtyard.

All together, they wouldn't be worth more than a hundred and fifty taels.

Cultivators were people too. They had to clothe and feed themselves, meet and greet others, and maintain social ties.

And cultivators spent far more than ordinary people.

Xu Yuan hurriedly stuffed the money into his clothes and muttered, "Master Qiao shouldn't have been carrying this much money."

Normally, Master Qiao would carry loose silver and a gold ingot, but not those two banknotes.

Master Qiao's Yi Fang Ting inn also served as a money exchange in town. Traveling merchants often needed to break large banknotes, and they went to the inn for help.

These two banknotes had been exchanged recently. Master Qiao had planned to take them back to the city this time.

After coming into a windfall, Xu Yuan felt refreshed from head to toe. He even thought the numbness in the wound on his back had eased a little.

He kept searching lower down. At Master Qiao's waist, he felt something hard.

He pulled it out and was startled. "He had a treasure like this. Why didn't he use it?"

It was a short-barreled Three-eyed Gun. Two stamps were clearly engraved on its barrel: "Nandu Artisan Craft" and "Chen Wutong."

"Nandu Artisan Craft" meant it was made by a workshop under the Ministry of Works in Nandu.

"Chen Wutong" was the maker's name.

People commonly called this thing a "Three-eyed Cannon." Those made by the government's artisan workshops were especially prized.

And Master Qiao's was even more exceptional: it was an Artisan Cultivator creation!

One shot from this thing would blow Xu Yuan's head apart.

No wonder Master Qiao could keep all of Qihetan Town in line. He had a trump card hidden away; he wasn't relying solely on his strength as a Ninth Stream Literary Cultivator.

This treasure could blast a Seventh Stream cultivator to death!

—But in that life-or-death moment just now, why hadn't Master Qiao used it?

Xu Yuan inspected it and soon realized, "So it's broken."

Some component inside had gone wrong, and it could no longer be used.

Xu Yuan felt a wave of disappointment.

The Three-eyed Gun was kept in a leather pouch. Inside was also a small gourd filled with cannon powder.

They said this cannon powder was nothing like the stuff inside firecrackers set off during the New Year. It was many times more powerful.

"I'll take it back and see if stepmother can fix it." If she could, it might come in handy.

Xu Yuan was about to put the Three-eyed Gun and the powder gourd away when he suddenly stopped. His eyes fixed on the gourd, his expression strange.

"I have a crazy idea!"

"Could this cannon powder... be used as Bait?"

Xu Yuan's first thought was to refine the cannon powder into an Outer Pill, but pill refining required Inner Fire.

Cannon powder and fire... His belly would probably explode on the spot.

But then he remembered that Bait was also a method of cultivation.

For Pill Cultivators, it wasn't merely a way to refine pills and gather ingredients.

Xu Yuan was currently a Ninth Stream Pill Cultivator. Condensing an Inner Pill would allow him to advance to Eighth Stream.

For a Pill Cultivator, the Inner Pill was the "great medicine," the very foundation of their cultivation.

Before condensing an Inner Pill, a Pill Cultivator first had to find a precious object to serve as a "fetal medicine."

It could be a thousand-year-old medicine, a rare treasure of heaven and earth, the essence of a spiritual object, and so on.

Xu Yuan remembered his father once telling him that the strangest Pill Cultivator he'd ever known had used a mysterious Artisan Cultivator creation as his "fetal medicine"!

But using cannon powder as fetal medicine...

"Isn't that a little too reckless?"

And yet Xu Yuan couldn't help looking forward to the Inner Pill this fetal medicine might produce.

The downside of being alone out here became clear: he had no one around who could advise him. If he'd been at home, his stepmother could at least have helped him think it through.

But he hesitated only briefly before pulling out the gourd's stopper and pouring the cannon powder into his mouth.

Master Qiao was dead, but Saint Aunt was still out there. Falling into her hands would mean death all the same.

Xu Yuan wouldn't be able to find another, more suitable "fetal medicine" anytime soon. He had no choice. Since he had a chance to get stronger, he absolutely couldn't hesitate.

Unexpectedly, compared to those rare treasures of heaven and earth, cannon powder was easier to "digest"! After using cannon powder as Bait, Xu Yuan condensed an ash-gray Inner Pill in less than half an hour.

It was only about the size of a soybean.

This tiny thing meant that Xu Yuan's level as a Pill Cultivator had risen from Ninth Stream to Eighth Stream.

Xu Yuan couldn't help thinking that Pill Cultivators really were among the strongest in the early stages.

And his tiny cannon-powder Inner Pill... had truly brought him some special benefits!

An Eighth Stream Pill Cultivator could infuse certain "properties" of their Inner Pill into an Outer Pill.

"Once I'm back in the city, I'll have to sneak into Master Qiao's residence and search it thoroughly."

"There must be even more cannon powder hidden in his house."

Xu Yuan gathered his things and tossed the corpse into a nearby ravine.

The corpse crushed its way through the wild grass and fell into the darkness at the bottom. A moment later, the sound of tearing and chewing rose from below.

Xu Yuan shuddered and hurried away.

After running another dozen miles, a faint, indistinct scent drifted on the mountain wind. Xu Yuan suddenly felt some instinct inside him flare up beyond his control. With a rumble, he rolled onto the ground, his eyes vacant and dazed. Like a fleshy worm, he began wriggling and crawling toward somewhere...