Tortoise Snake Great Pillar Complete, Second Medicinal Bath, Gold Muscle Jade Tendons! Manor Lord Lu's Major Tendons Severed?

Several days passed.

Wind and Cloud Association, Medicine Hall.

Inside the pill room used to provide pills for the association members' alchemy.

Zheng Jun sat cross-legged beside a small furnace, painstakingly refining ninth-grade pills such as Tiger Leopard Pills again and again. His success rate hovered around forty to fifty percent. He worked from dawn until dusk without even a moment to rest.

Yet his face was filled with satisfaction and fervor.

"Eight years, eight whole years!"

"Thanks to Young Master Ji's care, the Medicine Master finally gave me a chance to temper myself."

"I must prove my worth to him—and to his elder!"

"I'll refine!"

Astragalus, codonopsis, leopard bone powder. Batch after batch was thrown inside.

Dark circles ringed Zheng Jun's eyes, but his spirits were high. He shouted slogans as he painstakingly controlled the heat, never stopping for a moment.

The Medicine Boys assisting nearby watched with trembling hearts.

They had rotated through three shifts, yet Apothecary Zheng, newly appointed to the post, still had not rested.

They had once envied pill masters and thought their status lofty. But now, they suddenly did not envy them quite so much.

Meanwhile, in the rear hall.

Inside the "pill room" Huang Xuan had specially set aside to refine medicine for his own chronic ailment.

The old man held a handful of peanuts, cracking shells as he sighed with feeling:

"Young Brother Ji truly has an eye for talent."

"This old man raised Little Zheng for eight years, yet I never realized he possessed such talent for being a workhorse!"

"Though his aptitude for alchemy is merely average."

"It is hard to imagine that the boy's energy could be so exuberant!"

"He works furiously for eight shichen a day. Tsk, tsk. Back when this old man was in the main household