Night at the Danta Branch Tower was even quieter than the day.
During the day, the city was filled with pill flames, medicinal fragrance, the arguments of Alchemists, and the clamor of people refusing to back down over a single pill, a remnant formula, or a rare herb. But once deep night fell, all that noise seemed to be pressed down by the starlight above the Danta, leaving only the sandalwood incense that nourished the soul slowly burning in the courtyard.
Xiao Fan sat beside the stone table in the guest courtyard.
On the table lay a seventh-tier high-level Alchemist badge.
The badge glowed with a warm sheen beneath the lamplight.
If placed in the outside world, this badge would be enough for countless factions to treat him as an honored guest, but Xiao Fan merely glanced at it before closing it in his palm.
He had status now.
But the road ahead was still long.
He had come to the Danta not for glory, nor to make those Alchemists sigh in admiration that he was young and accomplished.
He needed the Danta's roster, the connections of the Dan Region, and an identity that would stop people from casually treating him as prey and carrying him off.
But what truly kept his heart from calming for a long time was not passing the assessment.
It was that Seven-Colored Transformation Pill.
Die's pill was finally complete.
It was not severing her tail, not abandoning the origin of the Snake-People, nor was it a cage draped in human form.
Inside that pill remained Die's own old scales, the medicinal principle that allowed her snake tail to move according to her will, and also Medusa's stubbornness—clearly caring to the extreme, yet insisting on pretending she simply could not be bothered to throw them