You Teach, I Refine

Ten million Source Points were wiped clean in an instant.

There was none of the imagined radiance that filled the heavens, nor were there a thousand streams of auspicious light.

Ye Xingchen only felt as though he had swallowed a collapsing star.

Crack.

The priceless spirit jade bed beneath him shattered instantly, turning into dust that filled the air.

Then came the floor.

The hard bluestone slabs cracked like a spiderweb, fissures spreading madly in every direction until they struck the formations at the walls and barely came to a stop.

This body was as heavy as a mountain.

At the center of his qi sea, that wisp of Primordial Purple Qi suddenly boiled and collapsed madly inward.

When the purple qi dispersed, a dull gray lotus seed covered in ancient patterns floated at the center of his dantian.

Crack.

A fine fissure split open across the lotus seed.

A tender sprout poked its head out.

In an instant, a desolate, ancient, supremely domineering aura swept through his entire body.

The surrounding spiritual qi flowed backward, while the chaotic mist within his qi sea gradually thickened.

This small spirit vein beneath the Left Clan had been drained of eighty percent of its spiritual qi, making Zuo Tianhe and the other Golden Core cultivators frown deeply.

"Does Master Yao need to consume this much spiritual qi to refine pills?"

The mist in Ye Xingchen's qi sea had already turned into a sea of chaos, glimmering with gray light.

At its center, a green lotus swayed, rippling with chaotic Dao resonance.

Ye Xingchen slowly opened his eyes and raised a hand, loosely curling his five fingers.

The air in his palm was forcibly crushed apart by pure physical strength, erupting with a muffled boom like thunder.

The Chaos Dao Body had initially formed.

"So this is power."

Boom—!

An earthshaking explosion abruptly shattered the tranquility of the night.

The ground shook violently, and dust rained down from the roof.

Then came the shrill screams of Left Clan disciples and the piercing clang of magical instruments colliding.

"They couldn't sit still after all?"

Ye Xingchen rose, casually draped an outer robe over himself, and pushed open the door.

The Left Clan estate blazed with fire.

High in the sky, two afterimages collided wildly, their sonic booms rolling like thunder.

Zuo Tianhe was drenched in blood, gripping a long saber, savage as a mad tiger.

"Zuo Tianhe, the road ends here."

Shen Wanshan stood atop a Bone Giant Eagle. Behind him, three pitch-black soul banners snapped in the wind, their eerie ghostly qi veiling half the sky.

"After today, the Azure Cloud Left Clan will cease to exist."

"Shen, you old dog! Keep dreaming!"

Zuo Tianhe roared and cleaved apart the incoming bone spear with a single strike.

Below.

Several black-robed figures moved like ghosts, harvesting the lives of the Left Clan's outer disciples. Screams and the sounds of shattered weapons intertwined into a melody of despair.

The Left Clan's defenses were ruthlessly breached.

At another battlefield.

Li Huairen of the First Saint Sect transformed his whisk into a thousand steel needles, blocking a Golden Core evil cultivator from the Netherworld.

Rumble—!

A muffled blast drowned out the slaughter filling the skies.

The sound had come from the rear courtyard.

A thick, pungent smell of burning instantly overwhelmed the scent of blood.

Zuo Tianhe froze, his heart turning to ashes.

That was the old ancestor's only hope.

It had exploded?

"Hahahaha! Heaven's will!"

Shen Wanshan laughed wildly and drove the Bone Giant Eagle into a dive. "Kill them! Leave not even chickens or dogs alive!"

The alchemy room was a scene of shattered walls and fallen ruins.

The defensive formation had long since collapsed, and several twisted corpses of Left Clan deathsworn lay across the doorway.

Zuo Xiaoqing sat sprawled on the ground, her normally proud little face now white as paper.

Before her, the Purple-Gold Bagua Furnace lay tipped over.

A black palm print marked its wall, hissing as black smoke rose from it.

The flames within the furnace flickered between bright and dim. Violent energy fluctuations churned like a volcano about to erupt, ready at any moment to raze this tiny space to the ground.

At the corner.

Yao Feng, a fifth-rank alchemist, had a caved-in chest, half his beard stained red with blood.

"Ruined... this batch of Nine-Turn Soul-Returning Pills is completely ruined..."

Yao Feng's eyes were vacant as he muttered to himself.

"Master Yao!"

Zuo Xiaoqing got to her feet and ran over, clutching the old man's sleeve tightly. Her voice was hoarse. "Save the old ancestor! Please! Try one more time!"

"With what?"

Yao Feng gave a bitter laugh and coughed up a clot of blood. "My divine sense was scattered by the attack. I can't control the fire anymore. This furnace is about to explode. Girl, run... run as far as you can."

Zuo Xiaoqing froze where she stood.

Despair was like an invisible hand gripping her throat.

"If it hasn't exploded yet, it isn't ruined."

An indifferent voice suddenly rang out.

Zuo Xiaoqing raised her head blankly.

She saw Ye Xingchen step over the rubble on the ground and walk straight toward the trembling pill furnace.

He raised a hand and pressed it against the scorching furnace wall.

"Are you courting death?! Don't touch it!"

Yao Feng roared, "That's Earthfire! Do you not want your hand anymore?!"

Ye Xingchen ignored him.

With the Chaos Dao Body newly formed, this little heat was not even enough for a warm-up.

His divine sense entered.

It truly was a disaster.

The medicinal liquid had solidified, its properties clashing together like a ruined pot of porridge, brewing toward one final eruption.

"Hey."

Ye Xingchen turned around and looked down at Yao Feng. "Give me the pill formula."

Yao Feng froze, then laughed in extreme anger.

"You want the pill formula? This old man only dared open this furnace after immersing himself in the Dao of alchemy for sixty years! You little brat want the formula now? Are you planning to learn on the spot and sell your skills right away?"

"Yes."

Ye Xingchen nodded as though it were only natural. "You teach, I refine."

"Madmen... all of you are madmen!"

Yao Feng trembled with rage. "Alchemy depends on heat control, medicinal theory, and hand seals! This is a fifth-rank pill! It requires Golden Core-level divine sense to guide it! What the hell does a Qi Refining Stage brat like you know?!"

"Divine sense?"

The corner of Ye Xingchen's lips rose slightly. "You mean something like this?"

Buzz!

An invisible fluctuation erupted abruptly.

There was no violent spiritual power, only soul pressure pure to the utmost extreme.

As though the heavens had overturned.

Within the cramped alchemy room, space seemed to be instantly sucked into a vacuum.

The furnace fire, which was about to lose control and explode, shrank into a ball like a startled quail beneath that pressure.

The mockery on Yao Feng's face stiffened, then shattered.

His eyes widened as he stared fixedly at the youth before him, strange clucking sounds escaping his throat.

Vast as the sea!

Unfathomable!

This level of divine sense... even at his peak, he had not possessed one ten-thousandth of it!

Was this the Qi Refining Stage?

This was clearly an ancient Nascent Soul monster wearing human skin!

Ye Xingchen was now at Golden Core Early Stage, yet his divine sense already rivaled that of a Nascent Soul cultivator.

Concealed by the Chaos Taiji Diagram, Yao Feng could not see through Ye Xingchen's true depth at all. He only felt as though he were facing a god.

"Is it enough?"

Ye Xingchen withdrew his pressure, his tone calm.

"Enough... it's enough..."

Yao Feng panted heavily, cold sweat instantly soaking his back.

He shakily raised a hand. "But... the techniques are complicated, this old man..."

"I don't have time to listen to your nonsense."

Ye Xingchen stepped in front of Yao Feng, his black eyes deep and still. "Pass your memories to me."

Under that gaze, Yao Feng could not muster even the slightest thought of resistance.

Instinctively, he gathered the last wisp of his divine sense, turning it into a point of light and sending it toward Ye Xingchen's brow.

"These are this old man's lifelong insights... whether it succeeds or not depends on fate!"

The point of light entered him.

A vast and tangled stream of information instantly washed through his mind.

[Ding! Memory fragment of the "Fifth-Rank Alchemy Art" detected.]

[Consume five million Source Points to use One-Click Skip on alchemy cultivation?]

"Skip."

Ye Xingchen answered silently in his heart.

Boom!

Source Points burned.

That obscure and incomprehensible alchemy memory was instantly dismantled, reorganized, and infused into him under the system's mighty power.

Countless medicinal principles, changes in heat, intricate hand seals...

In that instant, it was as though he had sat before a pill furnace for a thousand years.

From initiation to mastery, from mastery to grandmastery, and then to returning to simplicity.

One breath later.

Ye Xingchen opened his eyes.

The awkwardness in his gaze had vanished completely, replaced by an indifference that saw through all things.

He turned and walked toward the pill furnace.

"Watch carefully."