Great Bamboo Peak.
Song Daren stood guard outside Ye Xuan's door.
He was like an ant on a hot pan, pacing back and forth across the flagstones.
The sound of his soles scraping against the stone was giving Du Bishu a headache.
"Senior Brother."
"Stop pacing."
"If you keep it up, I'm going to throw up the breakfast I just ate."
Du Bishu crouched on the steps beneath the veranda.
He held two dice in his hand, but didn't dare roll them, afraid he'd disturb the little master inside while he refined the pills.
"Sixth."
"It's been a whole day and night. Why hasn't anything happened yet?"
Song Daren stopped, his thick brows nearly knitting together.
It wasn't that he didn't trust his seventh junior brother.
It was just that refining pills took years of hard work.
His seventh junior brother might be a peerless genius.
But the Heavenly Sun Pill he'd mentioned wasn't an ordinary pill.
And besides...
Master had returned from the back mountain yesterday with a black look on his face.
He'd looked as if someone had just dug up his ancestors' graves.
If Little Seventh's batch of pills had failed...
Song Daren feared Master had so much pent-up fury with nowhere to vent it that he'd set all of Great Bamboo Peak ablaze.
"What could happen?"
"Would a furnace exploding count?"
Du Bishu couldn't help making a snide remark.
He tucked the dice back into his robe, then leaned toward the crack in the door and sniffed.
"Sniff—"
That single sniff was all it took.
Du Bishu went rigid, as if he'd been struck by lightning.
"Holy crap!"
"Sixth, what's wrong? Did they burn?"
Song Daren jumped in alarm and hurried over.
Before he could get his nose close,
an overwhelmingly potent medicinal fragrance forced its