However, with Han Yu and Lu Chang'an breaking through one after another, the Eternal Life Martial Sect's old, dilapidated courtyard was no longer remotely adequate.
With the explosive qi and blood of a Third Realm martial artist and the maximum speed of the peak Second Realm, even a little exercise from the two of them generated enough physical recoil to stamp deep pits into the dirt.
After a few sets of movements, the already tottering courtyard walls were riddled with cracks and could collapse at any moment.
The situation in the rear courtyard was just as strained.
Gu Qinghe's proficiency in alchemy kept rising, and the number of batches he brewed each day soared.
Discarded medicinal dregs piled up like mountains, and the scorching air had even begun to char the surrounding wooden roof beams, threatening to set them alight.
Expanding the sect could not wait.
Gu Qinghe stopped what he was doing, turned, and entered the woodshed where they stored miscellaneous items.
He dragged several large sacks out of a corner. They were filled with low-tier pills he had ruined over the past year, or inferior pills that had lost most of their potency.
These were useless to Han Yu and Lu Chang'an, who even disdained them for containing too many impurities.
But to the lowly martial artists and rogue cultivators of the Outer City, they were first-rate resources that could save lives and forcibly prolong them.
That night.
Gu Qinghe went alone to the largest underground Black Market in Azure Cloud City's Outer City.
Without the protection of a cultivation lineage's status, he was now merely a rogue cultivator.
Dressed in an unmarked black robe, he went straight to the Black Market's largest resource dealer and emptied two whole sacks of inferior pills onto the table.
The proprietor