[The organization you and Dan Feng had founded turned out to be the Pill Tower. This was somewhat beyond your expectations.
But what followed close behind was a wave of shame.
You had clearly founded it together, yet you had spent most of your time enjoying its resources and refining pills in seclusion, never contributing anything to managing the organization, to the point that you had not even known it was called the Pill Tower.
You apologized to Dan Feng, but he said it did not matter. He said your talents for alchemy and cultivation were greater, and you should strive to reach your limits.
He felt that if any of the three of you could refine a supreme treasure of heaven and earth like a Ninth Grade Golden Pill, it could only be you.
Dan Feng whispered to you that he felt even refining a ninth-grade Xuan Dan would be a struggle for that fellow Xuan Dan.
You pondered this, wondering whether Xuan Dan was the founder who, without Dan Feng's involvement, had exhausted everything he had to refine the Pill Tower Ancestor.
You felt your guess was probably right, but you had no intention of changing anything.
With Xuan Dan's temperament, he was destined to die in the process of refining pills.]
[Year 81: You had fully absorbed the alchemical inheritance you had obtained in your early years. It was only the legacy of a Ninth-Grade Treasure Pill alchemist.
To improve your alchemy, you chose to travel the continent.
You asked your two close friends, Dan Feng and Xuan Dan, to take good care of One-Brow Old Man while you traveled to different parts of the continent.
That year, you first went to the Magical Beast Mountain Range in the Northwest Continent and left everything you currently possessed as an inheritance.
Leaving the Northwest Continent, you returned to the Central Plains and began seeking information about every secret realm containing an alchemist's inheritance.]
[Year 82: You learned of a secret realm containing an alchemist's inheritance. You entered it, defeated the other competitors, and obtained an alchemical inheritance for Ninth-Grade Treasure Pills, along with a recipe for a ninth-grade Xuan Dan.
You began absorbing this alchemical inheritance to remedy your shortcomings.]
[Year 83: You continued absorbing the inheritance...]
[Year 85: You fully absorbed the inheritance, improving your alchemy and increasing your success rate in refining Ninth-Grade Treasure Pills.
You left the secret realm and continued traveling the continent.]
[Year 98: You consumed a Ninth-Grade Treasure Pill, and your cultivation broke through to Three-Star Dou Sheng.]
[Year 105: In the south of the continent, you encountered the Dark Race, which had only been mentioned once in the original story.
This race was incomparably mysterious. Its members' fixed form was actually a mass of black mist, and the race had been born under the influence of a Dou Di in ancient times.
This race was not strong, with its strongest member merely a Nine Revolutions Dou Zun, but its unexpected moves in battle nearly injured you.]
[Year 116: You entered a secret realm in the north of the continent and, through good fortune, obtained an inheritance: a high-level Heaven-tier ice-attribute cultivation method, numerous Dou Techniques, and a portion of half-emperor blood essence containing a vast amount of energy.
Your cultivation broke through to Four-Star Dou Sheng.]
[Year 118: Through steady accumulation over time, your soul realm broke through to the Heaven Realm middle stage.
You researched alchemy on your own, and your success rate in refining Ninth-Grade Treasure Pills increased again.]
[Year 120: You went to the Yao Clan, hoping to study alchemy, but were rejected outright.
You could only continue researching on your own.]
[Year 130: You obtained a Soul Origin Fruit capable of enhancing soul power and refined it into a Ninth-Grade Treasure Pill, raising your soul power to the Heaven Realm late stage.
You began refining a ninth-grade Xuan Dan. Your soul power was nearly exhausted and your Dou Qi ran completely dry, but you successfully endured it. The pill was complete!
The emergence of a ninth-grade Xuan Dan could not be concealed. Several secluded ancient Emperor Clans learned that you were a Xuan Dan Grandmaster and began trying to recruit you.
Only the Yao Clan remained as arrogant as ever.
You did not want to join any clan and only established a cooperative relationship with the Xiao Clan. This Emperor Clan, with its long legacy, also possessed an alchemical inheritance, one left by a Ninth Grade Golden Pill alchemist.
You refined pills for the Xiao Clan, and the Xiao Clan gave you the inheritance.]
[Year 131: You entered seclusion and consumed the ninth-grade Xuan Dan, breaking through to Five-Star Dou Sheng.]
[Year 132: You refined three ninth-grade Xuan Dan and ten Ninth-Grade Treasure Pills for the Xiao Clan and were ruthlessly squeezed dry. Fortunately, the Ninth Grade Golden Pill alchemist's inheritance offered you some warmth.]
[Year 133: You returned to the Pill Tower and reunited with Dan Feng and Xuan Dan.
Old friends reunited, yet there was little to talk about. In tacit understanding, you simply began refining pills, giving it your all.
Xuan Dan refined a Ninth-Grade Treasure Pill with difficulty. Dan Feng also refined a Ninth-Grade Treasure Pill, but with greater ease.
You refined a ninth-grade Xuan Dan.
You consumed and absorbed the ninth-grade Xuan Dan, breaking through to Six-Star Dou Sheng.]
[Year 134: You generously shared the inheritance and studied it together with Dan Feng and Xuan Dan.]
[Year 155: You spent more than twenty years researching in seclusion, leaving the Pill Tower entirely in others' hands while continuing to use its resources as usual.
Your soul power reached Heaven Realm great perfection, but you also sensed a powerful barrier blocking your path. An emperor realm soul was truly difficult to attain.
Dan Feng's soul power reached the Heaven Realm late stage.
Xuan Dan's soul power reached the Heaven Realm middle stage.
Your cultivation reached Seven-Star Dou Saint, while Dan Feng and Xuan Dan also rose in star rank.]
[Year 156: The three of you emerged from seclusion and held a Pill Gathering open to the entire continent. Whoever won would be the continent's greatest alchemist.
This Pill Gathering caused a sensation across the entire continent, even drawing the Yao Clan.
The Pill Gathering began. After successive rounds of competition, only Ninth-Grade Alchemists entered the final contest.
To allow everyone to perform at their normal level, you arranged for them to refine their pills in separate batches. Whoever refined the highest-quality pill would be the victor.
In this contest, Xuan Dan refined a Ninth-Grade Treasure Pill, and Dan Feng refined a ninth-grade Xuan Dan. The Yao Clan sent three people, two of whom refined ninth-grade Xuan Dan, while the third refined a Ninth-Grade Treasure Pill.
You were the last to begin refining. You took out tens of thousands of medicinal ingredients and began the refinement using the Mysterious Yellow Flame, which had long since developed intelligence.
What you intended to refine was a Ninth Grade Golden Pill!]
[Year 157: Refining the pill took you an entire year. Your soul power and Dou Qi bottomed out countless times, and you endured solely through pills and natural treasures.
Just like that, the refinement of the Ninth Grade Golden Pill gradually approached its end, while you were almost a lamp with its oil burned dry.
You had a premonition that if you forced the pill to completion, you would surely perish, your cultivation extinguished with you.
Would you stake everything? You already had your answer.
With a breakthrough to the Emperor Realm currently impossible, the Ninth Grade Golden Pill was the limit.
Now that the opportunity to refine it lay before you, what reason did you have to refuse? At worst, you would merely die.
You chose to complete the pill.
The Ninth Grade Golden Pill encountered an obstacle as it formed. You poured your own blood essence and vast amounts of soul origin into it, as though creating a life, and finally brought the Ninth Grade Golden Pill into being.
And your life began its countdown.
The Ninth Grade Golden Pill took the human form of a little girl and, as though born with knowledge, addressed you: "Father."
From the shadows, a Nine-Star Dou Sheng-level being struck, attempting to capture her. The Ninth Grade Golden Pill's expression changed, and she fled into the void.
You hoped she would not be caught. After all, she could be considered your own flesh and blood.
With that, the Pill Gathering came to a close. You indisputably became the continent's greatest alchemist, an object of admiration for countless alchemists. Even the members of the Yao Clan admired you immensely.
After the Pill Gathering ended, Dan Feng and Xuan Dan looked at you, one grieving, the other filled with longing.
You told them not to grieve. Having refined a Ninth Grade Golden Pill, you could die without regrets.
Dan Feng said you clearly could have raised your cultivation further before beginning the refinement. That way, perhaps you would not have ended up so utterly drained, like a lamp with its oil burned dry.
You smiled without a word.
Xuan Dan looked at you in admiration and declared that even if he had to die someday, he absolutely wanted to die for pills, just as you had!
You nodded in approval, while Dan Feng looked helpless.
You returned to the Pill Tower and went to see One-Brow Old Man once more. After consuming large quantities of pills, he had broken through to Half-Saint and looked even younger than you, whose remaining days were few.
He angrily berated you, demanding to know why you had pushed yourself so desperately and how you dared die before him. He even struck you.
You felt no pain. Instead, you smiled from the bottom of your heart, but One-Brow Old Man cried. This was the second time you had seen him cry.
You kowtowed deeply to him, left most of your resources and pills to him, and then departed.
From then on, you vanished, and no one could find you again.
When your figure vanished once more, you had already appeared in the Magical Beast Mountain Range of the Northwest Continent.
In the little mountain valley, you updated your inheritance.
The alchemy of a Ninth Grade Golden Pill alchemist, the fire-control essentials and Fire Control Art you had developed yourself, every cultivation method and Dou Technique you had learned, and the pill recipes you had created or learned elsewhere-you left them all behind.
There was also the Falling Star Cauldron. You had hardly used this medicinal cauldron since becoming a Ninth-Grade Alchemist, but your main body in a later age would most likely have a use for it, so you simply left it behind.
Finally, you summoned the Mysterious Yellow Flame, which had accompanied you for over a hundred years, erased your mark, and told it that you would return to the Magical Beast Mountain Range a thousand years later. If it was willing to wait, you would meet again. If it was unwilling to wait, it should find somewhere to take good care of itself and not be devoured by other heavenly flames.
The Mysterious Yellow Flame remained silent.
You raised your head toward the sky, your consciousness settling into stillness. Your body turned to powder and dispersed bit by bit, vanishing entirely from between heaven and earth.
No one knew that you had left a world-shaking inheritance in this Magical Beast Mountain Range, except... yourself.]