Five Tripod Cooking

Aunt Wang sighed. "Of course I know. Never mind. This is the only solution I can think of for now. Give me some time, and I'll find another way."

Lin Wanmo nodded and turned to leave. At the door, she stopped and asked tentatively, "What if I helped him weave a cage...?"

"Impossible." Aunt Wang said, "That's where the Inner Pill resides—the Purple Mansion of a Pill Cultivator, a mysterious, unfathomable place. Letting someone else do it, even the slightest mistake could ruin his cultivation. That would be the least of our worries. One wrong move, and the pill-powder Inner Pill could explode!"

Aunt Wang continued, "And don't think you can weave it beforehand and have him refine it with Bait/Food. He has to weave this himself. Once he's finished, he'll need to refine it with the Inner Fire in his belly. If the cage is touched by Inner Fire, then the moment it gets near the pill-powder Inner Pill, the Inner Pill will explode."

The worry on Lin Wanmo's face deepened.

Aunt Wang couldn't bear to see it. "Wait here."

She went up to the loft and came back down a while later—this time landing safely, without scattering herself across the floor.

"This is my cultivation method. At the level of Pill Cultivators, A Yuan probably hasn't learned a method yet. Take it back to him." Aunt Wang handed her an old, yellowed book.

Lin Wanmo stepped back and hurriedly waved her hands. "This is your most precious possession..."

Aunt Wang smiled bitterly, gazing wistfully at the old book in her hands. "For the first half of my life, yes, this was what I cherished most. Back then, I couldn't bear to give it to anyone who asked."

She suddenly pressed it into Lin Wanmo's hands. "But now, I don't even know if I'll make it to the middle of next year's seventh month. What does precious matter anymore? Take it. My cultivation method is extraordinary. The Inner Pill it produces is more stable and solid than those made by other methods. It should help A Yuan hold on a little longer."

Lin Wanmo wanted to thank her, but the gift was too precious. Any words she could offer felt inadequate.

Aunt Wang smiled kindly. "All right, hurry home. I'll think some more and see if there's another way."

Lin Wanmo said no more. Holding the old book, she bowed deeply to Aunt Wang before leaving.

Aunt Wang's cultivation method was called Five Tripod Cooking.

As long as cultivators of the Seven Great Gates could get started, they could cultivate step by step, even without a cultivation method, gradually climbing higher.

Circulating qi, Bait/Food, gathering and refining—cultivation amounted to little more than these practices.

The Seven Great Gates had become "great gates" partly because of this convenience at their very foundation.

Once people got the hang of it, they could keep cultivating, and the number of cultivators would naturally continue to grow.

By contrast, some smaller schools often required all kinds of special "aptitudes," or insisted that practitioners follow a particular cultivation method to the letter, and so on.

But the Seven Great Gates did have cultivation methods, and any method with a name worth knowing could boost cultivation speed by more than half.

Aunt Wang's Five Tripod Cooking had been brought from her hometown in the Inner Province.

Back then, the Wang family had been one of the prominent clans in their hometown in the Inner Province. By rights, a corvée assignment like "river labor" should never have fallen to them.

The reason it did was that someone in the Eastern Depot had taken a fancy to their Five Tripod Cooking.

He wanted to obtain it and pass it on to one of his adopted sons.

The Wang family's downfall came from having just a sliver of backbone.

If some other powerful family had taken a liking to it, the Wang family would have given it to them.

They could even have negotiated. We'll present you with this priceless treasure, my lord. Perhaps you could reward us in return?

Prominent clans didn't end up in melodramatic tales, refusing to give up some ancestral treasure to the powerful, getting their entire family wiped out, then having a surviving fugitive return for revenge twenty years later.

You wanted it? As long as you were strong enough, they'd hand it over without a fuss.

But you're a eunuch. The Wang family wouldn't yield!

The result was that the Wang family's main branch was exiled to Giao Chi to dig canals, while several collateral branches immediately fell to their knees before the Eastern Depot official.

They put together an incomplete version of Five Tripod Cooking to fob him off.

After countless deaths and injuries in the main branch, Aunt Wang was the only one left.

The collateral branches divided up all the family's property back in their hometown in the Inner Province, and no longer dared to acknowledge Aunt Wang and the others as kin.

From Xu Yuan's grandfather's generation to the present, three generations had never seen a better Pill Cultivator method than Five Tripod Cooking.

What's more, Five Tripod Cooking was a very complete, comprehensive cultivation method. It covered not only cultivation, but also techniques for condensing Inner Pills and Outer Pills.

It had its own unique methods for circulating qi, Bait/Food, and gathering and refining.

Many famous cultivation methods in the Great Ming were actually skilled in only one of these areas.

Cultivating with this method made "great fire cauldron cooking" incredibly fast, usually more than three times as fast, and at its peak, over five times!

And since the method covered exactly five areas—Inner Pills, Outer Pills, circulating qi, Bait/Food, and gathering and refining—the senior who had created it had stretched the truth a little and named it Five Tripod Cooking.

The Wang family had fallen to its present state because of this cultivation method. On top of that, the Great Ming had always insisted that "methods should not be passed on lightly." Even ordinary cultivation methods were rarely taught to others. So Aunt Wang had treasured this one all the more.

For instance, Xu Yuan's father had once thought Aunt Wang would take Five Tripod Cooking to her grave.

His stepmother brought Five Tripod Cooking home, only to find Xu Yuan gone.

Xu Yuan hung the clothes up to dry, then went out.

Master Qiao's residence in the county town was in Wangjing Ward, in the northeastern corner within the city walls.

It was a world apart from River Worker Alley.

River Worker Alley was old, low, and run-down. This place was quiet, imposing, and immaculate.

It was the only area in Shanhe County with ward walls and gates.

The walls were lined with thirty-six pillars, each decorated with a vermilion-eyed auspicious beast. Two stone lions, each as tall as a person, stood before the ward gate.

These things deterred evil spirits far more effectively than Door Gods. So even on nights when Forbidden Night Travel was in effect, there was a fifty percent chance of surviving a walk through the ward.

It was impossible to eradicate the supernatural altogether. Even the imperial palace in the Northern Capital couldn't manage it.

The richest and most powerful people in Shanhe County lived in Wangjing Ward.

Master Qiao could stomp his foot in Qihetan Town and make the whole town tremble. Here, he was only a minor figure.

The place was called "Wangjing Ward" because it lay in the northwest corner, making it the part of the county town closest to the Northern Capital in the Inner Province.

When the canals were dug, which official, soldier, or commoner who had been forced to settle here hadn't dreamed of returning to the Inner Province?

Xu Yuan first went to Golden Attire Building to buy new clothes. It was the only place in the entire county town that sold ready-made garments.

They cost him a full three taels and two mace of silver.

In the past, he hadn't spent that much on clothes in an entire year.

When Xu Yuan stepped out of Golden Attire Building in silk and satin, he looked just like a wealthy young master.

By day, two militiamen were always stationed at the ward gate. Xu Yuan wouldn't have been allowed in wearing what he had on before.

Master Qiao had a three-courtyard residence in the southwestern corner of Wangjing Ward, with more than ten people in all: wives, concubines, servants, and maids.

Xu Yuan climbed over the wall into the rear courtyard, evaded the people there with his agility, and began searching for Qiao Zi'ang's study.

A Literary Cultivator, after all—he'd surely keep all his good stuff in the study.

There were nine rooms in the rear courtyard. Xu Yuan could tell whether one was a study with just a glance through the window crack.

The first two weren't. When he reached the third, he suddenly heard a muffled sound from inside.

It sounded like a cat's soft mew.

Xu Yuan peeked in. It was a bedroom. A beautiful woman in her early thirties had half her body exposed beyond the bed curtains. Mm, she must have been cold.

She was biting down on a bright red silk mandarin-duck bodice, her hair damp with sweat.

Inside the curtains, a burly figure was working up a sweat.

The shadows and the large bed shook without pause.

Xu Yuan watched for a couple more moments, comparing the woman with Widow Yang, and came to a conclusion: Master Qiao was indeed a lucky man!

Too bad someone else was enjoying the good fortune now.

Fortunately, Xu Yuan still remembered what mattered. Reluctantly, he crept toward the next room.

After checking three more rooms, he finally found the study.

But Xu Yuan didn't go in right away. He first crouched at the door and peered through the crack.

Qiao Zi'ang was deep-laid, treacherous, and cunning. Xu Yuan didn't believe he'd leave his study without some kind of safeguard.

Cough, cough. I'd finally seen my name on the rankings this morning, and by noon I'd been kicked off and couldn't find it anymore. How embarrassing.

Please, please spare me a pity vote!

And one more thing about the stepmother in the previous chapter: she and Xu Yuan are just "siblings," with no romantic ambiguity, okay?

P.S. There'll be more tonight.