Of the five bottles of elixirs, Jiang Yang had kept two, while Qing Si had traded for another two. Only the last bottle remained.
To be precise, there were three pills, which Jiang Yang had placed in a jade bottle he had found himself after collecting them.
Qing Si frowned at the bottle's brand-new design, but paid it little mind and tipped out the white pills to examine them closely.
The elixirs were round and brilliantly white, each encircled by three lines. They looked different from other elixirs and had been lying among the furnace ashes when Jiang Yang found them.
They gave off no medicinal fragrance at all. Had they not been found in an alchemy furnace, Jiang Yang would probably have believed someone who told him they were jade beads.
This seemed to be Qing Si's first time seeing such elixirs, too. After scraping off some powder, she even stuck out her tongue and tasted a little in front of Jiang Yang. Identifying them took twice as long as before.
Only after a long while did her brow relax, and she slowly said:
"What strange pills. They were inside the furnace when you found them, weren't they?"
Jiang Yang had not expected True Person Qing Si to know even this. His head shot up at her words, and he replied:
"Your insight is uncanny, True Person. This junior found them among the embers in the Pill Furnace."
"Hmm... then that explains it. First refined, then nurtured. After they were made, these pills must have been baked in a fire vein for who knows how long. Three Grand Pills were forcibly refined down into something resembling ordinary pills, no larger than a fingertip."
Qing Si nodded as she spoke. Had her mastery of the Pill Dao not been so