For the entire next month, the rear courtyard of Cloudmist Manor all but became an active volcano, spewing scorching waves of heat all day long.
Feng Yuzi descended into utter madness. The supreme-grade ores he had treasured in his Storage Ring for decades-deep sea cold iron, ten-thousand-year red copper, and star iron-went into Qin Chen's Purple Copper Cauldron cartload after cartload, as though they were worthless scrap.
His original plan had been to spend three years building Qin Chen's foundation and ten years teaching him intermediate arrays. Now, that plan had been compressed into an outrageous handful of days.
"Chen'er, this is the method for engraving a combined Spirit Gathering Array and Lightness Array. The difficulty lies in their intersecting lines: you must use Soul Power to control the flow of true qi without the slightest error, or the furnace will explode. When I practiced this back then, I blew up over a hundred sword blanks. Watch closely..."
As Feng Yuzi explained, he carefully engraved a longsword. Before he could finish, however, a clear, humming sword note rang out beside him.
He turned his head stiffly and saw Qin Chen toying with a short blade that was deep blue from tip to hilt.
Not only had the Spirit Gathering and Lightness Arrays been perfectly fused on that blade, but Qin Chen had even casually added a Bloodthirst Array.
Dark-gold xiantian true fire danced at Qin Chen's fingertips like the gentlest of sprites. His inconceivably vast Soul Power meant that, when engraving arrays, he had no need to tread on thin ice like Feng Yuzi. For him, it was as effortless and unhurried as stamping a seal on paper.
"Master, did you just say the intersections could easily cause an explosion? Why do I feel it's more stable to compress the true qi into threads and pass them straight through? Look, this not only prevents conflicts, but also increases the true qi transmission speed by 30%." Qin Chen blinked, his expression utterly earnest as he discussed the technical question.
Looking at the short blade, which radiated fluctuations at the very peak of a mid-grade magical artifact, Feng Yuzi silently swallowed a mouthful of blood.
He suddenly felt he was unworthy of being this boy's master.
From the second month onward, Feng Yuzi no longer taught Qin Chen specific artifact-refining methods. Qin Chen had learned everything he knew, and had deduced what he did not know by drawing further conclusions from each example. The illustrious foremost artifact refiner of the Qianlong Continent had been thoroughly reduced to Qin Chen's "fire-tending boy" and "materials porter." Every day, he followed at Qin Chen's heels with a little notebook, frantically recording those wildly imaginative array improvements.
While Feng Yuzi was suffering and enjoying himself in equal measure, Qin De arrived at Cloudmist Manor with the second teacher.
The newcomer wore a green robe, his hair and beard both white, and exuded a medicinal fragrance so rich it seemed impossible to disperse. He was Mu Qing, the acknowledged foremost pill refiner on the Qianlong Continent, known as the "Medicine Immortal." Proud and eccentric, Mu Qing would never have set even half a foot inside this worldly prince's residence had Qin De not saved his life years ago and promised him countless rare spirit herbs.
"Your Highness, let me make the unpleasant part clear first. Pill refinement demands a heart as still as water and the most minute understanding of the nature of plants. You want me to teach a ten-year-old child-and one who's learning to hammer iron from that old ghost Feng? This is sheer nonsense!" Mu Qing expressed his displeasure without the slightest courtesy the moment he entered the main hall.
He glanced at Feng Yuzi, whose face was covered in soot as he held a jade slip and grinned foolishly, and snorted. "Old ghost Feng, you're going backward with age. How can crude manual labor like artifact refinement possibly compare with my art of pill refinement? If this child picks up that wild, fiery temper you artifact refiners have, he can forget about producing a single good batch of pills for the rest of his life!"
Feng Yuzi raised his head from the jade slip and gave Mu Qing a look as though regarding an idiot. "Old ghost Mu," he said quietly, "don't speak in absolutes. Don't blame me later for failing to warn you. Protect that fragile heart of yours."
Mu Qing frowned and was about to erupt when Qin Chen stepped forward with a smile and bowed respectfully. "Greetings, Uncle Mu. My name is Qin Chen. I've long admired the art of pill refinement. Please instruct me, Uncle Mu."
Looking at the exquisitely delicate boy before him and his clear eyes, Mu Qing's anger subsided a little, though his tone remained stern. "Boy, pill refinement is no child's game. Let me test you first. Do you know what 'extracting medicinal properties' means?"
As he spoke, Mu Qing took a blood-red, infant-shaped ginseng from his sleeve and tossed it onto the table. "This is a three-hundred-year-old blood jade ginseng. An ordinary pill refiner would need to simmer it over gentle heat for six hours to extract seventy percent of its medicinal potency. Tell me, how would you handle it?"
Qin Chen did not answer. Instead, he answered directly with action.
He extended his right hand, palm upward. With a roar, a ball of dark-gold flame ignited out of thin air. Not a trace of wild heat escaped from it; instead, it possessed a restrained weightiness that made the heart quail.
"What... what kind of true fire is this?!" Mu Qing's expression changed dramatically. He could feel the wood-aspect true essence within his body actually trembling in submission before this flame.
With a flick of Qin Chen's finger, the blood jade ginseng flew straight into the dark-gold flames. Mu Qing paled in alarm and was about to scold Qin Chen for squandering a heavenly treasure-such fierce heat would burn the spirit herb to ashes-but the next second, his voice caught in his throat.
Under the control of Qin Chen's immense Soul Power, the dark-gold flames instantly became hundreds upon thousands of fire threads as fine as gossamer, precisely piercing every vein of the blood jade ginseng. In just three breaths, the once-plump ginseng became a pinch of ash, while a crystalline drop of blood-red medicinal liquid hovered at the center of the flames, giving off a rich, extraordinary fragrance.
"Impurity removal rate, 100%... medicinal potency retention rate, 100%... how is this possible?!" Mu Qing's legs went weak, and he nearly collapsed to the ground.
Before this ten-year-old boy's brutal artistry, the gentle simmering he took such pride in seemed as laughable as a primitive man drilling wood to make fire.
Qin Chen did not stop. He casually grabbed several supplementary herbs from the medicine basket Mu Qing had brought and tossed them all into the flames.
Purification, fusion, pill formation-the entire process flowed like drifting clouds and running water. He used no pill furnace at all, taking heaven and earth as his furnace and true fire as his cauldron.
In less than half an incense stick's time, the flames dispersed. Three full, round, blood-red pills, their surfaces even bearing several natural cloud patterns, settled quietly into Qin Chen's palm.
"Pill... Pill Patterns?! Supreme Blood Lotus Pills?!" Mu Qing lifted the three pills in trembling hands, tears streaming down his aged face. In sixty years of studying the pill-refining arts, the number of times he had produced supreme-grade pills bearing Pill Patterns could be counted on his fingers. Yet this ten-year-old child before him, refining pills for the very first time without even using a furnace, had casually rolled out three!
"Old ghost Mu, now do you understand why I told you to protect your heart?" Feng Yuzi added from the side, gleefully twisting the knife.
Mu Qing spun around, shoved Feng Yuzi aside, and seized Qin Chen's hand in a tight grip, so excited that his words tumbled over one another. "Chen'er! No, my little ancestor! Your fire control, your soul perception... you're simply a god born to refine pills! From this day forward, you're my direct disciple! Old ghost Feng, get the hell out of the way! Don't let your scrap metal hold back Chen'er's future in pill refinement!"
"Bullshit! Chen'er is clearly an artifact-refining prodigy not seen in ten thousand years!" Feng Yuzi immediately grew agitated, rolled up his sleeves, and charged forward.
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