Helping with the Brewing

The Emperor was undoubtedly a very dull person, with little to do besides cultivation.

After the Golden Crow Great Emperor, who accompanied him in brewing the wine, passed away, the Emperor no longer participated in brewing the wine, but instead fished for Golden Dragon Fish in the Wondrous Dharma Palace.

Zhang Xuezhou met with the Ten Yin Holy Son at the Wondrous Dharma Palace, but he did not meet with the Emperor. After their brief interaction, he returned from the Wondrous Dharma Palace to the brewery in Kunlun Ruins.

He didn't waste too much time. Although the Golden Toad Dharma King and Sha Li didn't have much skill in brewing wine, they didn't cause any problems.

Things are back on track.

"The success of brewing wine depends 30% on the ingredients and 70% on the heat. If the heat isn't controlled properly, even the best ingredients will be ruined..."

Zhang Xuezhou will be switching worlds in the next couple of days, and he won't be able to finish brewing the Nine Treasures Wine before then. He's entrusting it to the Golden Toad Dharma King so that the latter can take over later.

Of course, if the Golden Toad Dharma King brews something good, that's fine; if he brews something bad, there's nothing that can be done.

At this point, Zhang Xuezhou was desperate and wanted to try to gain as much benefit as possible.

The Nine Treasures Wine contains Bitter Apricot, Silver Fruit, Drunken Peach, dried jasmine fruit, thousand-year-old ginseng, Tongxuan grass, Ginseng Fruit, Exquisite Fruit, and five-hundred-year-old Solomon's seal. These medicinal materials are not something that can be obtained at will. From the Emperor's mind monkey, Zhang Xuezhou learned that the materials in the brewery were the last batch.

After wandering around for nearly ten years, he returned to the Kunlun Sacred Land and caught the last train.

Whether Zhang Xuezhou cherishes it or not, he only has so many opportunities.

He squandered the Emperor and Empress's opportunity to study and cultivate while they were away, and the Emperor also wasted these extremely important heavenly materials and earthly treasures for Zhang Xuezhou in the Sacred Land. There was no chance to make amends.

"You..."

As Zhang Xuezhou continued to give instructions, a snicker came from outside the brewery.

He looked up and saw two pairs of bright, alert eyes peeking into the brewery from behind the main gate. But when laughter came, those eyes turned to someone else.

"I wonder which palace maid has arrived or which esteemed lady has come in? Please come in quickly!"

Zhang Xuezhou recalled some goddesses that Ren Anran had described, and his guess leaned towards the women of Jade Pool Palace.

The Emperor has very few people around him. Most of them are either in seclusion, asleep, or stationed in a certain area and do not move around. Only the Golden Crow Great Emperor is always by his side. In the Jade Pool Palace, there are many goddesses. The goddesses accompany the Emperor and Empress and also maintain the basic operation of the Kunlun Sacred Land.

Only if he gains the approval of the emperor and empress will these goddesses come to secretly observe him, the newcomer to this Sacred Land.

Having figured out what was going on, Zhang Xuezhou had no choice but to get up and greet them.

"He calls us Your Majesty!"

"Oh no, oh no, oh no! They've already shut us out before we even met!"

"If the Holy Son addresses us like that, how can we have children with him?"

"The Holy Son can't accept the age difference right now; he'll get used to it in a few decades!"

Has the Holy Son achieved immortality?

"I really don't want to die of old age in a few decades!"

"Don't be afraid. Her Majesty's Peach Garden has plenty of peaches. One peach can extend one's life by three to five years. The Holy Son can just eat more peaches to replenish his life for several decades!"

Outside the distillery, a constant cacophony of voices filled the air, sending a shiver down Zhang Xuezhou's spine.

He had witnessed the fate of the Buddha Son Shigong, but he never expected that the same situation would occur in the Kunlun Sacred Land, where the openness of the women far exceeded his imagination.

Of course, this might also be because of his status as a holy son, which allows these goddesses of the Jade Pool Palace to make risqué jokes.

Zhang Xuezhou steeled himself and opened the door to the distillery.

"Shangyuan greets the Holy Son!"

"Taizhen greets the Holy Son!"

"I am Mi Fei!"

"Nongyu greets fellow Daoist!"

"Xiangjiang River!"

"Du Jiang greets the Holy Son!"

At the entrance of the brewery, six goddesses in armor arrived in a carriage lacking a mount, which surprised Zhang Xuezhou slightly.

Only after the women introduced the carriage did Zhang Xuezhou realize that it was a Law Treasure.

Of course, chariots Law Treasure are not uncommon; the Holy Mother of Wudang also had a bronze chariot that traversed the underground palace.

However, the goddesses' carriages clearly carried more than two or three people, and they were adorned with swords, forks, knives, banners, shields, ruyi scepters, nine-section whips, jade bottles, and other items, each of which seemed to contain a faint glimmer of Law Power and conceal countless dangers.

Such a heavily armed Law Treasure was clearly not something a palace maid in the Kunlun Sacred Land could possess.

After the six people introduced themselves, Zhang Xuezhou responded to each of them with "Hello, Your Majesty," so as not to be ridiculed for his poor judgment.

"I'm new here, so I hope you ladies will take good care of me," Zhang Xuezhou said politely. "The brewery is just producing wine, so if you ladies don't mind, you may come in and have a few cups!"

Zhang Xuezhou glanced back at the Golden Toad Dharma King, who was drunk from tasting the wine, and thought that the old toad demon couldn't drink anymore.

The transformation from the flames of the Golden Crow Great Emperor to fire made brewing Nine Treasures Wine much more difficult. Obtaining the original Nine Treasures Wine was extremely challenging, and Zhang Xuezhou could only repeat and experiment repeatedly, striving to adjust it before the base wine ran out.

This process inevitably involves waste and wine tasting.

With so many people arriving, it became easier for Zhang Xuezhou to use this opportunity to present his own offerings.

"Liquor?"

"I heard that the Emperor is brewing wine. Is this the wine he brewed?"

"Empress herself hasn't even offered us any wine!"

"I'll have a drink!"

Zhang Xuezhou acted naturally, and the goddesses were equally at ease and respectful in the Kunlun Sacred Land.

A short while later, the brewery was filled with the sounds of clinking glasses and drinking.

"Sour!"

"It's a bit bitter and astringent!"

"The smell is pungent!"

"I actually find that the spiciness makes my blood boil a little!"

"Don't you guys find this kind of liquor very invigorating?"

"I couldn't stop drinking!"

Everyone chimed in, and Zhang Xuezhou couldn't help but pat his chest again, assuring everyone that his brewing skills would improve and the quality of his wine would increase.

"In the past, the Golden Crow Great Emperor would burn three feathers in the stove. After the Emperor passed away, this method could no longer be used. We could only burn wood, but there was too much smoke and not enough flame, which resulted in a strange taste in the brewed wine," Zhang Xuezhou explained. "My teacher was heartbroken and didn't want to brew wine anymore, so I took over the brewery, hoping to brew this last batch of Nine Treasures Wine well!"

"Jin Laoshi's flames are derived from the True Solar Fire. This kind of flame is pure and without impurities. No wood can meet the requirements for his flames," said the Goddess of Xiangjiang.

"That's not entirely true," said Lady Taizhen. "In the Taiyin Palace, there is a cassia tree. That cassia tree is useless at everything, but it grows back after being cut down, and it never ages or dies. When the wood of this cassia tree burns, it produces pure, smokeless fire, somewhat similar to the True Solar Fire!"

"I remember you kept a piece of wood; could it have been taken from that cassia tree?"

"I originally intended to graft cassia wood onto the Drunken Peach Tree to see if this immortal Drunken Peach Tree could benefit it, but every time I grafted it, the tree died. I might as well burn it now!"

Empress Taizhen drank three cups of wine, then reached into her bosom and pulled out a ten-foot-long piece of wood.

Zhang Xuezhou blinked, momentarily unable to figure out how Empress Taizhen had hidden such a long piece of wood.

But with the addition of this smokeless cassia wood, his terrible situation in brewing Nine Treasures Wine quickly improved.