Looking at the nearly empty bottle of Body Tempering Liquid, Lin Shisan felt a little melancholy again.
He had only just glimpsed a ray of dawn on the path of cultivation, yet he was about to be forced to stop again for lack of Body Tempering Liquid.
It was not that Lin Shisan did not want to use Niu Shan's twenty Spirit Stones. He was afraid of exposing himself.
On closer inspection, every one of those Spirit Stones had a Five-Pointed Star mark on its underside.
He had no idea what it represented.
He merely felt that it was rather out of the ordinary.
His instincts told him it had some connection to the inexplicable beating he had received from that long-faced enforcement officer that day.
Besides, wealth should never be flaunted.
For a Servant Disciple who had just arrived at the Azure Cloud Lineage to produce twenty Spirit Stones all at once was far too unusual.
It would surely bring undeserved trouble down on his head.
"If the scroll absorbed the spiritual energy of the Body Tempering Pill, could it absorb these twenty Spirit Stones too?"
Once he had calmed down, Lin Shisan began pondering the Body Tempering Pill the scroll had secretly devoured.
No matter how he looked at it, the Body Tempering Pill could not have vanished from the Little Black Cauldron for no reason.
There was another possibility: the Little Black Cauldron had eaten the Body Tempering Pill.
But if the Little Black Cauldron had secretly eaten the Body Tempering Pill, why had it not eaten those apples and peaches?
In the end, there was only one possibility: the scroll had secretly devoured the Body Tempering Pill.
And in doing so, it had upgraded the Tai Chi Body Tempering Manual into the Nine Heavens True Dragon Art.
The energy for that upgrade had come from the Body Tempering Pill.
At that thought, Lin Shisan took a Spirit Stone out of his ring.
He actually put it into the Little Black Cauldron.
What if it worked?
"Could the Little Black Cauldron raise a Spirit Stone's grade too? Turn a low-grade Spirit Stone into a mid-grade one?"
"Heh heh heh..."
Even Lin Shisan thought the idea was far too absurd.
He lay down on the bed with a self-mocking smile and soon drifted off to sleep.
He even had a lovely dream.
The Spirit Stone he had put in the Little Black Cauldron had not risen in grade.
But that one Spirit Stone had become ten.
More importantly, the cross-shaped marks on them had disappeared. The Little Black Cauldron had secretly eaten them all.
Only when he woke did he realize it had been a dream.
The Spirit Stone was still the same Spirit Stone, and the scroll was still the same scroll.
Nothing had changed.
The difference was that the scroll had not secretly devoured the Body Tempering Pill this time, though there was no pill mark on the pill.
This time, Zheng Qian and that smiling face of his had swindled him.
For three days straight, no one came to refine pills, and Lin Shisan's work was easy.
That day, after a quick wash and breakfast in the dining hall, he was just about to clean the Pill Room when he was summoned to Greenstone Plaza.
By then, quite a crowd had already gathered in the plaza.
Ning Hao and Bigmouth Feng Qiufeng were both there.
Most of them were whispering among themselves, chatting and shooting the breeze.
None of them knew what major event had brought them all together-some three to five hundred people.
A dozen or so servant stewards stood on the raised platform.
Chen Yang was among them. His injuries had already healed.
He had returned to his old arrogant, overbearing ways, a perfect example of forgetting the pain once the scar had healed.
Feng Qiufeng was no longer an acting steward either. He had gone back to being a servant.
He did odd jobs just like Lin Shisan and the others.
They stood beneath the sun like that for roughly two hours before two figures in green flew toward them through the sky.
Two immortal ladies came treading through the air.
"Whoa..."
The three to five hundred Servant Disciples all looked over at once.
Every face was filled with envy, jealousy, and resentment.
Anyone who could fly through the air had to be at least at the ninth level of Body Tempering-an exalted existence they could never hope to reach in their lifetimes.
More importantly, the women were beautiful.
Though simply dressed, they were fresh and lovely, beautiful from the inside out.
When had these rough men ever seen such stunning women?
Even several of the stewards on the platform grew restless.
Their eyes looked ready to sprout styes as they stared over, as though their souls had been stolen away.
It was not that the Azure Cloud Lineage had no female Servant Disciples. The men and women were simply kept apart for ease of management.
Each had their own duties, and they seldom crossed paths.
Besides, after doing odd jobs all day in the wind and sun, the women were as dark as coal miners and charcoal sellers.
How could they compare to these two immortal ladies, wreathed in ethereal grace?
Their skin was delicate, tender, and fair, their beauty a feast for the eyes.
In Lin Shisan's mind, however, these two immortal ladies were quite ordinary-looking. They were not even as pretty as Hu Niu, the older girl next door.
"...Hiss, hiss."
A cold wind swept past.
Those restless men with wandering thoughts shuddered with a sudden chill.
It was as though they had been thrown into an icy well in the dead of winter.
They lowered their heads of their own accord, that little flame of heated desire utterly extinguished.
All that remained was submission and reverence from the depths of their souls, along with trembling fear and unease.
"Please quell your anger, immortal ladies. These lads merely wished to admire your supreme grace. They meant no offense."
The head servant steward rose with a chuckle.
He was a middle-aged man with a thick beard.
He also held a wine gourd.
Among the three to five hundred servants present, he alone had not opened his eyes or even stood up.
He was fairly dignified-looking and had reached the sixth level of Body Tempering.
His name was Han Yansong.
He had supposedly been an outer sect steward before.
Later, part of his cultivation had been severed as punishment for a mistake in his work.
In consideration of his past merits, he had been sent to District C as its head servant steward.
The district where Lin Shisan lived was only one of many.
The Azure Cloud Lineage had a hundred and eighty such servant districts, with thirty to fifty thousand people.
The two immortal ladies glanced at Han Yansong without saying anything, then turned their gazes toward the dense crowd below.
Without a word, they began picking people out.
"Those who've been picked, stay. The rest of you, hurry up and get the hell back to work."
Head Steward Han Yansong was utterly coarse.
He paid no heed to his position and was already thoroughly drunk so early in the morning.
The Servant Disciples hurriedly filed out of Greenstone Plaza in their respective teams.
With an hour wasted, they would definitely be working until dark today.
"You, stop."
Lin Shisan was just about to leave with Chen Yang when one of the immortal ladies called him back.
"Shisan?"
Chen Yang called out to Lin Shisan.
Deep in his eyes was envy he could not conceal.
Even Lin Shisan had
been selected by one of the immortal ladies.
How could this brat be so lucky?
What a tremendous honor. Even in his dreams, Chen Yang longed to work by an immortal lady's side.
Unfortunately, he had not been chosen. There was no place for him.
Meanwhile, an entirely different world unfolded in Lin Shisan's heart.
What he had feared had happened after all.
This immortal lady was none other than the white-robed woman who had called him over to find the Spirit Cat while he was cutting Black Maple Bamboo in the Black Maple Bamboo Forest that day.
"This humble lad pays his respects, immortal lady."
Lin Shisan spoke respectfully.
Yet his chest tightened.
A chill ran down his spine.
Why were those eyes so cold?
Remembering Niu Shan being eaten by the Spirit Cat filled him with unease.
Working under an immortal lady who treated Servant Disciples as less than human offered absolutely no guarantee that he would keep his life.
He had practically buried his head in his chest earlier, yet she had still spotted him.
After all, the people she had picked were all pleasing to the eye but useless. None of them looked capable of doing any work.
Perhaps she had some other purpose in mind.
He had heard Ning Hao mention it in private.
Every so often, a group of Servant Disciples who were pleasing to the eye but useless would mysteriously disappear.
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