Cleansing Himself

Zhang Xuezhou had to admit that he had gotten a little carried away.

He figured out the conditions for Tai Sui to form top-grade pills; the more pills there are, the easier it is to produce top-grade ones.

This allows him to tend towards the maximum yield of pills when refining them.

However, he failed at the very first step in refining top-grade pills; he lacked the ability to successfully produce his first batch.

After tricking Li Shaojun, Zhang Xuezhou couldn't help but doubt his life, feeling that the probability of him failing four times in a row in alchemy and medicine making was a bit high.

"You surnamed Dong... Dong, today we sever all ties... we cut off all relations!"

Watching Zhang Xuezhou shovel a pile of grayish-white waste pills from the Pill Furnace, Li Shaojun felt all the joy he had felt from refining the Eight Steps to Immortality Pill vanish completely.

He suddenly felt calm and collected, and once again plunged into the arduous task of seeking elixirs.

"I've toiled away for decades, accumulating this material from childhood to old age, and you just destroyed it all in one go!"

Li Shaojun clutched his chest, breathing heavily. Only after touching the remaining medicinal herbs in the pouch did he feel somewhat relieved.

"There are successes and failures in alchemy, that's normal," Zhang Xuezhou argued. "I'm also feeling very bad right now, I've put in a lot of effort too!"

"We're no longer on good terms. Don't even think about getting medicine from Master Li for alchemy anymore!"

Li Shaojun stomped his feet and cursed several times before sneaking into the side hall where the medicine chest was kept. He found several bundles of dried ginseng that were easy to sell and exchange, secretly stuffed them into his pouch with a spell, glanced at Zhang Xuezhou who was completely ignoring him, and then looked around before slipping out.

"That doesn't make sense!"

In theory, Zhang Xuezhou felt he had an 80% chance of successfully refining the elixir, but his repeated attempts yielded a zero success rate.

He was helpless even though he encountered a minor event with a 20% chance of failure.

The same applies to alchemy. An 80% probability does not mean eight consecutive successes followed by two failures. As long as one is caught in the probability of failure, repeated failures are not surprising. However, as long as one is caught in the probability of success, even with only a 10% chance, repeated successes are not impossible.

This definitely has a bit of a gamble involved.

If it weren't for the fact that using the Fortune Technique would be easily detected by the Emperor Qin, Zhang Xuezhou would have really wanted to use Fortune Technique to travel to Chang'an City and gain some good fortune for himself.

"I wonder if the cauldron at the Holy Mother Wudang of Wudang can wash away my bad luck and restore my good fortune!"

When Zhang Xuezhou was experiencing a period of bad luck, he went to the underground palace of the Holy Mother Wudang of Wudang and washed his body under the Yuzhou Cauldron. Dong Zhongshu also did something similar.

But that method is somewhat like wiping everything out, and Zhang Xuezhou wasn't sure if it would have a negative impact on him.

He pondered for a while, and finally walked out of the hall.

After observing his surroundings, Zhang Xuezhou leaped into the night sky.

"Holy Mother, open the door! I'd like to borrow your cauldron to cleanse myself of bad luck. I've been having such bad luck lately, and it wouldn't be good for you to keep me waiting outside. It might even bother you!"

Come in!

Zhang Xuezhou found a good spot on Mount Li and then shouted to the surrounding area.

His communication went quite smoothly.

A section of the ground sank, revealing a tunnel through which a person could pass.

As Zhang Xuezhou stepped into the tunnel, the soil behind him surged and filled in.

After walking a hundred meters in the pitch-black tunnel, Zhang Xuezhou's eyes lit up as he saw the familiar underground palace.

"You've built a place for Pilan to stay, so she doesn't have to bother me every day, which saves me some trouble. The lock over there has been removed, and a token has been left. Go in yourself!"

The Holy Mother Wudang accepted Zhang Xuezhou and explained her reasons for welcoming Zhang Xuezhou.

But the Holy Mother Wudang clearly didn't want to see someone as unlucky as Zhang Xuezhou, and didn't even show her face.

"What bad luck have you had that you need to come here to borrow a cauldron to wash away your bad luck?"

Seemingly unable to contain her curiosity, the Holy Mother Wudang Zhang Xuezhou stepped into the underground palace locked by the bronze door.

"I've tried refining eight hundred pills in a row, and I've failed every single one of them!"

"Then hurry up and go inside!"

After Zhang Xuezhou Zhang Xuezhou explained his reasons, he heard a slight sound of the stone door moving, Holy Mother Wudang seemed much farther away.

"It's not like I wanted to lose!"

Zhang Xuezhou replied sullenly.

Heading to the Ding in Yuzhou was undoubtedly a familiar route for Zhang Xuezhou, and he strode forward holding the token.

The five-legged Yuzhou Ding exuded a sense of peace, Zhongzheng and stable aura brought Zhang Xuezhou a sense of tranquility.

He stood beneath the large cauldron, watching wisps of mist-like vapor rising and falling from it.

"Could it be that after I refined a batch of top-grade pills, my luck has truly run out, and I need to suffer several major setbacks to replenish the balance of my fortune?"

The aura didn't give Zhang Xuezhou any special feeling, but its ability to react with the Yuzhou Cauldron was somewhat related.

"If I could wash away the great decline that followed my great prosperity, then every time I refine a batch of top-grade pills, I'd come and bother the Holy Mother, thus avoiding the continuous waste of materials!"

Zhang Xuezhou's mind was racing.

He stood beneath the Yuzhou Ding (a bronze cauldron), and in his spare time, he glanced at the terracotta warriors and horses beside it, pondering the return of the Great Qin Dynasty.

"Holy Mother, have you heard the rumor that the Great Qin Dynasty's terracotta army returned a hundred years after their burial?"

Zhang Xuezhou called out towards the distant underground palace, then used Demonic Sound Technique to amplify the sound.

"If you were the Emperor Qin, would you let people know when you would return?"

"Well!"

"Clumsy lies are not worth paying attention to!"

It is difficult to announce any war or large-scale operation to the outside world years or decades in advance, which is the reason for the Holy Mother Wudang" rebuttal.

However, Zhang Xuezhou's story about the return of the Great Qin after a hundred years was not entirely fabricated. He first heard it from Ao Li, and then he had spoken with the Emperor Qin through his Fortune Technique. Although the Emperor Qin did not make any definitive statements, he did mention many soldiers' efforts to cultivate for a hundred years.

"If you happen to find out anything, be sure to give us old acquaintances a heads-up, lest we lose our lives in the chaos of war," Zhang Xuezhou said, ignoring any objections.

Given that this secret place contained human and horse figurines that Zhang Xuezhou had seen at Qingzhou Ding, Zhang Xuezhou felt that the Holy Mother Wudang and the Emperor Qin might have some connection.

There are some things that Zhang Xuezhou finds inconvenient to discuss with the Emperor Qin, Holy Mother Wudang might be able to.

He delivered the message, not in a hurry to achieve immediate results. After all, his personal focus was far more on himself than on these long-term, unrelated matters.

After using the Yuzhou Cauldron to cleanse his body and chatting for a while, Zhang Xuezhou only noticed that the Yuzhou Cauldron had stopped breathing and was hanging down Holy Mother Wudang said, "It's time to leave after you've finished washing."

"I will refine another eight hundred pills. If I still fail repeatedly, I will come back to the Holy Mother then," Zhang Xuezhou said, cupping his hands in greeting.

"If you fail to refine another eight hundred pills, what you need isn't to wash away the bad luck, but to improve your skills in alchemy and medicine making!"

The Holy Mother Wudang responded softly.

The gate to the underground palace opened by itself without any wind, and a tunnel appeared outside the gate.

Zhang Xuezhou had no choice but to clasp his hands in a fist salute and give up trying to stay there.

He walked out of the underground palace through the passage, his body leaping into the air and disappearing into the darkness. The stone door in the main hall of the underground palace opened, and a middle-aged woman carrying a lantern with a complicated expression walked out from behind the stone door.

"Which of Laojun, Yuanshi, or the Jade Emperor is easy to mess with!"

"One hundred years... Is one hundred years really enough to shorten the distance between us to zero?"

"If others already knew that you planned to build a glorious legacy with an army of terracotta warriors a hundred years from now, would you still succeed?"

Standing in the underground palace, the Holy Mother Wudang murmured several times.

She looked at the Yuzhou Cauldron with hesitation, muttered a few more words, and finally pulled up the bronze door that sealed the cauldron, then hung up the heavy lock.