The Seven Great Medicines

After swearing a great heart-demon oath, Fang Hong and Su Yao were taken to two separate meditation chambers in a side hall.

The Yin-Yang Sect's cultivation methods and secret manuals could only be read inside the Teaching Hall. They could not be taken away or copied, only committed to memory.

Fang Hong waited in the meditation chamber for a short while before a puppet walked up outside the door.

The puppet was only as tall as an ordinary child, its entire body assembled from darkwood, with black gold components connecting its joints. Its eyes were two pieces of obsidian, flickering with an unusual light.

After entering, the puppet raised a hand to close the chamber door, then came up to Fang Hong. A slit opened in its chest, revealing two silk scrolls.

Seeing this, Fang Hong reached out and removed the two scrolls, set them on the jade table before him, and began reading them carefully.

The puppet silently went to a corner of the chamber. Its spiritual aura faded, and it stood motionless.

Fang Hong read the "Black Water True Explanation" first.

The silk scroll before him contained only the Qi Refining portion of this inheritance's overarching cultivation method.

Cultivating this method required refining vast quantities of the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, transforming it into Netherworld Heavy Water magical power!

After forming one hundred drops of Netherworld Heavy Water, one could draw in a wisp of the primordial qi of heaven and earth from within the Cosmos and use it to construct an immortal foundation Dao platform.

This was Foundation Establishment.

The immortal foundation Dao platform was the bedrock of all future Dao cultivation, determining the upper limit of a person's cultivation.

An unstable immortal foundation could not support divine ability talismans or a Golden Core. Forcing one's cultivation would only cause the Dao platform to collapse, severely damage one's primordial essence, reverse one's cultivation, and sever one's Dao path.

The original owner's father, Fang Jian, had been trapped in the early Golden Core stage for years precisely because he had been unable to cultivate higher vehicle Dao methods when establishing his foundation in his youth. His immortal foundation Dao platform was consequently unstable and could hardly support further breakthroughs.

Even after obtaining higher vehicle Dao methods, there was a second threshold that barred countless cultivators.

That was the primordial qi of heaven and earth!

If an inherited Dao method was likened to the construction blueprint for an immortal foundation Dao platform, then the primordial qi of heaven and earth was its bricks and stones.

Only by finding primordial qi of heaven and earth that matched one's cultivation method and was of exceedingly high quality could one construct a top-tier immortal foundation.

Fang Hong read the cultivation method in the "Black Water True Explanation" more than a dozen times, only setting it down once he was certain he had memorized it correctly.

This Nascent Soul-level cultivation method was vast and profound, concise yet rich in meaning, and unfathomably mysterious. Much of its content could only be grasped intuitively, not conveyed in words. Thoroughly comprehending it would require painstaking effort.

Fortunately, he had Su Yao.

When I go back to cultivate, I'll still need the help of that pot of Enlightenment Flowers.

With that thought, he picked up the "Precious Spring Pill Record."

This book described a rare water-method alchemy art. It required finding a treasured site with a spirit spring, first cold-extracting the medicinal essence of spirit medicines with the spring water, then using alchemical spells to gather it into pills.

The process was intricate, cumbersome, and immensely time-consuming, comparable to the molecular biology experiments Fang Hong had conducted in his previous life.

He read its contents with relish, finding quite a bit to interest him.

But I'm not short of pills at the moment, am I?

Fang Hong had no plans to become an alchemist for now. The Fang Household's reserves were sufficient to support his cultivation through the late stage of Foundation Establishment.

There was nothing unusual about the pill formulas in the book either. Most were pills that increased cultivation speed, augmented magical power, or healed injuries. The Fang Household could refine all of these or simply purchase them.

Yet the Fate Mirror had given an omen of great fortune.

After reading it once, Fang Hong continued carefully leafing through it, a trace of doubt in his mind.

This silk scroll had clearly been read many times, leaving it covered in annotations above and beside the text, interlinear notes, circles, and dots.

This time, Fang Hong focused on these annotations and gradually discovered that the handwriting seemed to have all come from the same person.

Sometimes, the annotations beside the same passage varied in the thickness and darkness of their ink strokes, likely because that person had read it repeatedly.

When he turned to a certain page, the candlelight in the Fate Mirror within his sea of consciousness blazed brightly again.

His gaze swept over the page before finally settling on an inconspicuous black ink dot in one corner.

As he concentrated on studying the ink dot, he hazily felt a patch of black ink slowly expanding before his eyes, gradually filling his entire field of vision.

Within the inky darkness, a white-clad figure faintly appeared, indistinct and hazy. His white clothing seemed to be the sort of lab coat Fang Hong had worn in the laboratory in his previous life.

A strange, bizarre illusion arose in his mind. Looking at this person felt somewhat like looking into a mirror.

It was as though the man in the white lab coat was himself!

No, his build and appearance are both different.

A thought stirred in his mind. If he used the Fate Mirror to examine this person's fate-chart divine baleful, would it be auspicious or ominous?

The candlelight in the Fate Mirror burned brightly, rising slightly.

Auspicious.

He secretly breathed a sigh of relief and turned the Fate Mirror toward the man in the white lab coat.

Several compass stars of different colors flashed through the Fate Mirror in succession.

Heavenly Virtue Nobleman... Golden Carriage... Yang Blade... Xianchi.

So this person's fate-chart divine baleful is actually the same as mine! No wonder I felt that inexplicable familiarity, as though I were looking into a mirror.

By now, he had realized that a wisp of his divine sense had entered the ink mark.

He moved toward the man in the white lab coat, gradually making out his appearance.

He was a middle-aged man with a somewhat wooden, stiff square face, ordinary features, and a calm gaze, seemingly lost in some train of thought.

When he saw Fang Hong approach, a look of gratification appeared on his face.

He raised a hand and offered Fang Hong a stack of white paper, his figure slowly dispersing and vanishing into the pitch-black ink.

Fang Hong stared in astonishment at the contents of the white paper. His mind instantly churned like overturned rivers and seas, surging with towering waves.

The heading at the very top of the white paper read-

[Kunxu Transmigrator Company, Canghuan Molecular Laboratory: Summary Report on the Results of the "Seven Great Medicines"]

Two hours later.

Fang Hong slowly closed the silk scroll, rose, and went over to the puppet, placing both scrolls inside its body.

The puppet raised its head, its spiritual aura reappearing. It moved its body, silently opened the door, and left the meditation chamber.

Fang Hong also walked out slowly and entered the Teaching Hall, where he saw Su Yao waiting quietly in a white dress. She seemed to have been out for quite some time.

Upon seeing him, a smile immediately appeared on Su Yao's face. Tender affection spilled from her eyes and brows, tinged with the allure of a newlywed woman.

They had only been apart for two to four hours, yet she already found it difficult to conceal her longing.

Fang Hong collected himself, his expression as usual. Just as he was about to leave the Teaching Hall with Su Yao, the cold-faced senior sister's expression suddenly shifted, and she said, "Wait."

Fang Hong stopped at her words and turned around. "Is there something else, Senior Sister?"

The cold-faced senior sister said flatly, "I just received a voice transmission from the Hall Master. He wants you to come over."

Fang Hong was startled, as though a thunderclap had exploded in his mind!

Could someone have discovered what happened in the meditation chamber earlier?

Yet his face remained calm. He looked inward at the Fate Mirror in his sea of consciousness and found its candlelight steady, without any unusual signs. Only then did he secretly breathe a sigh of relief.

"May I ask where the Hall Master is?"

He quickly steadied his thoughts and asked in an even voice.

"He's in the Teaching Hall's main hall right now. Go straight there, and you'll see him. Junior Sister Su can just wait here."

The cold-faced senior sister still spoke in the perfunctory tone of someone going through routine duties.

Fang Hong gave Su Yao a look. "I'll be right back."

Su Yao was curious too, but she could only continue waiting patiently.

The Teaching Hall's main hall.

Guided by the maid at the entrance, Fang Hong made his way to the rear of the hall.

A large square table stood in the center of the chamber. At that moment, a large, heavyset figure had his back to him and was painting at the table with a brush.

Tall bookshelves lined the chamber, filled with all sorts of wooden cases, jade boxes, stone tablets, and iron certificates.

Many jade boxes bore labels displaying the very names of cultivation methods he had previously seen in the Teaching Hall's jade slips.

Clearly, these jade boxes contained the Yin-Yang Sect's many inheritances.

Beneath the shelves stood two neatly arranged rows of puppets.

"Hall Master, Fang Hong is here," the maid said softly.

The heavyset figure gave a hum of acknowledgment, turned around, and looked at Fang Hong with a broad smile.

Fang Hong bowed with his hands clasped. "Disciple Fang Hong pays his respects to the Hall Master."

"No need for such formalities." The Teaching Hall Master chuckled and beckoned amiably. "Come over and take a look at the brushwork in this 'Romantic Painting Album' I've just painted."