An exceptionally skilled alchemist, especially a Purple Mansion alchemist, had no shortage of people coming to request pills and usually never lacked business.
On the other hand, she was desperately short of rare and precious spirit materials. Refining a thousand ordinary pills could not compare to a single supreme Grand Pill.
These days, even Purple Mansion cultivators lived on tight budgets. A hundred years of scrimping and saving bought them a spirit treasure or a fragment of one; only after saving up could they barely scrape together enough to fire up the furnace once.
Under such circumstances, even the landlord's household had little grain to spare. Qing Si was well connected, yet even she could not keep her furnace burning every day.
The profit from the West Peak Spirit Peach last time was secondary. What mattered was that it had broadened her knowledge and advanced her alchemy—gains she could never have earned by refining other pills.
"This isn't business this time. Your opportunity has arrived. It all depends on whether you can seize it."
Lin Xi Yu shook her head and spoke solemnly.
Hearing that she did not seem to be joking, Qing Si slowly put away her smile and asked with a frown:
"What exactly is it that has you being so serious?"
Seeing her solemn expression, Lin Xi Yu could no longer hold back her laughter.
"Scared you, didn't I!"
"Why, you, Lin Xi Yu! How dare you..."
Qing Si finally realized she had been played. Wrinkling her nose, she promptly reached over to make mischief.
"All right, all right, I surrender!"
Although no one would dare come snooping, Lin Xi Yu did not want the juniors to see her behaving like this and lose her dignity for nothing. She hurriedly produced a box sealed with a talisman.