Fairness

The brightly lit fire chamber was suddenly filled with surging flames.

The next moment, a plume of black smoke rose from the pill furnace before Ye Jingcheng.

A faint stench began to spread, unpleasant even beneath the baking heat of the flames.

The temperature had been too high. The pill refinement had failed!

And it had been the Spirit-Feeding Pill he was most proficient at refining.

Yet Ye Jingcheng showed not the slightest disappointment. Instead, his eyes sparkled with excitement, filled with anticipation.

Because within his body, the first page of an incomparably ancient book had fully lit up and taken shape.

Ye Jingcheng was a transmigrator. He had crossed into the Ye Family more than ten years ago. From being utterly helpless at the start, to becoming the Ye Family's lofty immortal master, only to learn that he possessed merely four spiritual roots and cultivated at an agonizingly slow pace.

The hardships along the way had been even more turbulent than the ups and downs of his previous life.

This was a world of immortal cultivators. Great cultivators could summon wind and rain, capable of anything; if one cultivated to the end, one could even live as long as heaven and earth!

His sole reliance, and his greatest secret, was an ancient book with a yellow cover embedded with unknown spiritual patterns inside his body.

Just now, it had been the ancient book lighting up and releasing spiritual radiance that drew all his attention, causing him to make a mistake in the pill refinement he knew so well.

Half a day's work had gone up in smoke.

Faint spiritual patterns were outlined upon the ancient book, resembling strange and bizarre exotic beasts, and every page was different.

They were extraordinarily detailed. He had tested the spiritual light from the spirit book before, and it was immensely helpful in healing and promoting the growth of poultry. He had even tried treating birds on the verge of death.

But it consumed an enormous amount of spiritual light.

Fortunately, it could slowly recover, though it had never fully replenished. Today was the first time it had emitted rosy spiritual radiance.

It was only a pity that, although Ye Jingcheng belonged to a beast-taming family, he had yet to obtain a truly promising demon beast cub.

Ye Jingcheng pondered for a long time, until the ringing of bells sounded one after another.

Ye Jingcheng formed a hand seal, casting the Object Manipulation Technique. He deftly removed the pill furnace, then took out cold silkworm cloth and carefully wrapped it around the furnace's massive, scorching handles.

Only then did he pour the remaining pill liquid from the furnace into a wooden box he had prepared.

After storing it in his storage pouch, he used a special furnace-cleaning brush to scrub the inner walls of the pill furnace spotless.

Only after he could see no flaws with the naked eye—

did Ye Jingcheng stroke the still-warm furnace handle and let out a sigh.

"I wonder when I'll be able to own a pill furnace of my own!"

This pill furnace belonged to the Ye Family. As a Ye Family descendant, he could borrow it, but half the pills he refined each time had to be sold to the Ye Family at fifty percent of their normal price.

If he owned a pill furnace himself, however, he could sell them to the family at eighty percent of their normal price.

The bells outside rang again.

"Coming!" Ye Jingcheng answered. He hurriedly used the special broom nearby to sweep up.

He looked around, and only after confirming that the pill refinement chamber was no different from before did he step outside.

The hall outside was exceptionally spacious. Moreover, because of the immortal cultivation formation, it was not stiflingly hot at all, making it seem like an entirely different world from the chamber within.

An elderly man in a grayish-white Daoist robe was tapping the bell outside Ye Jingcheng's pill refinement chamber.

Behind the old man stood three or four Ye Family clansmen dressed just like him.

Those people had clearly been waiting for quite some time. Their faces appeared somewhat gloomy, as though they had been roasted by the heat for too long.

Ye Jingcheng smiled wryly. He knew that Ninth Grandpa Ye Haitian, who guarded the Pill Pavilion, had privately given him extra time again.

The old man walked over to a table in the hall, took out brush and ink, and began recording their results one by one.

"All right, come over quickly. Once the gains have been counted, the next batch will be coming in!"

"Jingyun refined thirty Spirit-Feeding Pills. Using the family pill furnace, each pill is valued at 1 contribution point, for a total of 30 contribution points. Three days' rental costs 6 contribution points, leaving 24 contribution points!"

Before long, it was Ye Jingcheng's turn.

As usual, he took out five palm-sized pill bottles and set them before the old man.

Every bottle was full to the brim and gave off a faint pill fragrance.

The old man raised his head. Rather than praising him, he gave Ye Jingcheng a surprised look. "Buying a spirit beast?"

In the past, Ye Jingcheng could refine seven batches in three days. Spirit-Feeding Pills were mass-produced pills like fasting pills; each batch yielded at least ten pills, and sometimes as many as fifteen or sixteen.

Thus, in his eyes, Ye Jingcheng had kept some for himself.

The Ye Family was a beast-taming family. Unlike other families, which cared only about spiritual roots, the Ye Family also valued the quality of one's spirit beasts.

One could even say that if one cultivated their spirit beast well, the Ye Family would focus on nurturing them even if they possessed five spiritual roots.

"Ninth Grandpa, you truly see through everything!" Ye Jingcheng scratched his head and nodded with a smile, revealing a rare bit of his usual honest simplicity.

"Let's calculate your contribution points, then!" Ye Haitian took Ye Jingcheng's family token and began speaking in a routine manner.

"Jingcheng refined fifty Spirit-Feeding Pills. Using the family pill furnace, each pill is valued at 1 contribution point, for a total of 50 contribution points. Additionally, the Spirit-Feeding Pills have pill fragrance, earning an extra reward of 30 contribution points. Three days' rental costs 6 contribution points, leaving 74 contribution points!"

Ye Haitian spoke softly.

Ye Jingcheng's face was full of shock. Spirit-feeding pills with pill fragrance were indeed somewhat better, but they were absolutely not enough to warrant a reward.

The Ye Family had no such rule. Ye Haitian was privately subsidizing him.

"Ninth Grandpa..."

"Jingcheng, remember this: in the cultivation world, absolute fairness is precisely unfairness. The Ye Family is no exception!" Ye Haitian offered no further explanation, merely telling Ye Jingcheng to leave.

He continued sorting through the scrolls recording contribution points.

Clutching his family token, Ye Jingcheng gave a deep bow.

The Ye Family's exchange rate for contribution points was one-to-one with low-grade spirit stones.

But in truth, contribution points were more precious than low-grade spirit stones.

Some of the family's treasures, as well as certain spirit beast cubs, could only be exchanged for with contribution points.

Though the Ye Family was not considered a great clan, possessing only a modest reputation among Foundation Establishment families, when it came to spirit beasts, it could be counted among the notable names throughout Taihang Mountain.

Ye Jingcheng had four spirit roots—metal, wood, water, fire, and earth—lacking only metal. He had gone up the mountain at eleven, and now, at twenty-one, he was at the fourth level of Qi Refinement. This was already the result of his diligent, painstaking cultivation and his greater understanding than his peers of how precious cultivation was!

Yet even so, he still lagged far behind other cultivators of his age with three spirit roots.

That was why he had diligently practiced alchemy for the past three years, saving up contribution points to exchange for a good spirit beast.

His family token now held exactly four hundred contribution points.

But four hundred should not be considered a small amount. A mid-stage Qi Refinement cultivator in the Ye Family received only five low-grade spirit stones a year, and even as an alchemist, he only received an additional two each year.

The reason he could still have four hundred points left over after cultivation was because he possessed a small talent for alchemy.

Moreover, he could not spend all of them on a spirit beast cub. His own cultivation required contribution points, purchasing alchemical materials required contribution points, and the future food for the spirit beast cub would require contribution points...

His only hope was that the jade book within his body had effects on spirit beast cubs beyond merely healing injuries!

Ye Jingcheng's head began to ache again.

As he strolled onward, Ye Jingcheng soon arrived at the family's Demon-Hunting Hall.