Chapter 30
JieDan Expert Shocked
“Move, let’s go to your concocting room!”
Without raising any objections, Zhu Chen Tao directly stood up to leave.
With this one move, other people who had still not dared to stand up, all hastily stood up. The elder in charge of Nine Earth Manor hurriedly stepped forward and hastily said:
“Elder, since you want to concoct pills, isn’t the Medicine Hall comparatively suitable? Moreover, all others wanted to observe and emulate younger disciple Yang’s pill concocting skill.”
He did not think this reason was enough, but due to this statement Zhu Chen Tao immediately remembered the palace master’s instructions, that the sect regards this xun qi pill as utterly important and no person should be made aware of it. Hearing the words of Medicine Hall’s elder, he straightforwardly gestured with his hands
“Do you have the herbs required by Yang Chen? Or do you have his pill furnace which he can use without much trouble?”
These few words declared his views, naturally everyone who heard this understood that Zhu Chen Tao absolutely did not want to look at Yang Chen’s pill concocting in here. Each and every person can only resentfully follow after Zhu Chen Tao, planning to pass by and take a look at what kind of amazing pill Yang Chen had concocted.
Seeing what was happening, Zhu Chen Tao wrinkled his brows slightly
“What are you all doing? Don’t you have any daily activities to attend to? Go do your own tasks. Those who don’t have anything to do, immediately go cultivate, don’t be lazy!”
Hearing these reprimanding words, even a fool could understand that Zhu Chen Tao doesn’t wish for anyone to follow him. At this moment, looking at Yang Chen’s gaze, everyone was extremely jealous of him. This was a JieDan stage expert of Medicine Hall, if this experienced guy were happy and had randomly said a few words of guidance to them, it would have benefited them for their entire lives. Ah! What a pity, they received no such opportunity!
Upon seeing this, in his heart Chu Heng was also unsure what to think, he hurriedly waved his hand towards everyone and loudly instructed
“Get busy all of you! Elder, permit this disciple to accompany you!”
“What are you going to assist me with? Since you don’t have the fire attribute, you will also not be able to learn concoction, what do you hope to gain by following me?”
Chu Zhen Tao did not care whether Chu Heng was an inner disciple or not, whether he was the Merit Transferring Disciple or not and directly refuted him harshly.
“You sure are one easy going Merit Transferring Disciple, don’t you have any matters you have to attend to every day, eh?”
Facing this rebuke from Chu Zhen Tao, Chu Heng did not dare to utter half a letter and hastily bowed, asking to be excused. However when his gaze swept across Yang Chen, it was filled with malicious blaming.
Zhu Chen Tao just happened to catch this glance of his and immediately said with utter dissatisfaction:
“What are you looking at? Why? Are you jealous of an outer disciple, just because he can concoct pills? Luminous Moon Hall’s disciple, why are you becoming more and more unworthy of my respect?”
These words were extremely serious, Chu Heng absolutely did not dare to stay at the same place. Everyone watching also didn’t dare to casually keep watching and very quickly fled. Even after this, it still seemed as if Zhu Chen Tao was unwilling to forgive Chu Heng and loudly yelled after him“When cultivating, the most important thing is to cultivate the heart and nurture the character. Your nature still requires some sort of tempering!”
Many people look forward to the day when they could receive a JieDan stage expert’s guidance, but Chu Heng was certainly not happy right now. The recent words of Zhu Chen Tao had been heard by everyone in the Nine Earth Manor very clearly. All of a sudden, he lost a lot of face. After this incident, the eyes of many disciples in the Nine Earth Manor could not help but turn somewhat contemptuous when looking at him. Naturally Chu Heng blamed all of this on Yang Chen once again.
However, Yang Chen did not care about Chu Heng’s opinion. Since he had already raised his value to Zhu Chen Tao, naturally he was happy to make himself even more significant. He respectfully invited Zhu Chen Tao to his tiny courtyard and immediately commanded Ho Lin to prepare the ingredients. Shen Da, Ting Yuan and Gu Qin were all standing by, waiting for orders, for fear of making Zhu Chen Tao feel dissatisfied.
Inside the simple and crude pill concocting room, only these few people were permitted to stay. Other people of the Nine Earth Manor, even if they were enormously curious in their heart still did not dare to peep in front of a JieDan stage elder.
Ho Lin was already shaking due to nervousness, following after her master just for a brief month, and surprisingly he is meeting with a JieDan stage elder. Previously she did not even dare to imagine this kind of thing, but now at this moment, the JieDan stage elder was sitting in front of her. All of this just seemed like a dream.
Despite being nervous, Ho Lin’s basic skills were pretty good. Soon all of the materials used for the concoction last time were all properly prepared. Even the quantities used were all properly weighed. Soon afterward, Yang Chen took out his pill concocting furnace from his qiankun pouch and placed it in front of him.
“This is your pill concocting furnace?”
Looking at this crude furnace that had already reached its limit, Zhu Chen Tao could not help but reveal an astonished expression. Just with the help of this pill concocting furnace, Yang Chen was able to produce the xun qi pill. What does this mean? Could it be that another pill concocting genius is going to emerge from the Pure Yang Palace?
This astonished expression on Zhu Chen Tao’s face only flashed for a moment before disappearing instantly. He was more interested in knowing Yang Chen’s pill concocting skill. He had already seen the ingredients used and compared to his analysis they were not very different, only there were slight inconsistencies with the amount used, but this was still not sufficient to make Zhu Chen Tao incapable of producing this xun qi pill. The only thing that can explain this discrepancy is precisely the pill concocting skill used by Yang Chen.
In front of a JieDan stage expert, Yang Chen also could not help but take this seriously. Sitting upright in his place, both of his hands started gripping the two handles of the furnace and he began to work. Before the eyes of everyone present, something suddenly shined brightly and two flames appeared in Yang Chen’s hands
Just with a glance at the flame in Yang Chen’s hands, Zhu Chen Tao immediately determined that this is only an ordinary fire of the five elements and that the flame doesn’t have any special characteristics. This was not surprising, it would be a miracle if an outer disciple at first qi layer had a unique flame. The xun qi pill also doesn’t have any marks of any eccentric flame, so obviously it is an ordinary flame.
Only, Yang Chen’s control over the flame made Zhu Chen Tao’s eyes open so widely that even his eyeballs seemed to come out. Just as the two thin spirals of flame began to rotate, he immediately fixed his entire attention on the flame within the pill furnace, not even blinking once.
Like last time as soon as the drug ingredients were mixed, they melted, then began to rotate and soon after homogeneously blended with each other. Finally, under Yang Chen’s flame control, it was successfully scattered into small, well-proportioned pieces. Afterward, Zhu Chen Tao helplessly stared, as Yang Chen used a seemingly absolutely ordinary pill collecting skill to take out those successfully refined elixirs and placed them in a jade bottle.
From beginning to end, Zhu Chen Tao had attentively watched Yang Chen’s skill without missing anything. With the rapt attention, he had observed and analyzed Yang Chen’s techniques until Yang Chen had finished the refining.
After Yang Chen had collected the pills in the jade bottle, Zhu Chen Tao took out a single xun qi pill with his fingers and put it in his mouth. Suddenly, a portion of qi tried to invade his meridians in a flash and disappeared. Yes, this was the genuine xun qi pill.
Everything taking place right in front of Zhu Chen Tao made him unable to have any suspicion. There were no unique drug ingredients, no mysterious pill furnace, not even a distinct and unique pill collecting skill. All that was different was Yang Chen’s fire arts, that kind of skill can even be described as having reached perfection in the eyes of the JieDan stage expert Zhu Chen Tao.
“You! You!”
Pointing towards Yang Chen, Zhu Chen Tao spoke the same word twice, seemingly as if he had not thought what he had wanted to ask. This is Zhu Chen Tao’s first time facing an outer disciple, but he was still feeling this way.
Yang Chen’s spirit power was quite inferior, Zhu Chen Tao also didn’t expect a first qi layer disciple to be more powerful. However just talking about his skill in fire arts, the skill he just showed, even Zhu Chen Tao himself wasn’t able to achieve it when he was at the first qi layer. Although now, relying on his cultivation of JieDan stage, he was barely able to achieve it, but he was still unable to do it as effortlessly as Yang Chen.
It is important to know, that Yang Chen already had so much control over those two flames that he can lengthen them by pulling them to their limits. The thin flame of fire was so thin, that even in the eyes of a great master like Zhu Chen Tao they were like threads of natural silk. Even if it was Zhu Chen Tao, achieving such a feat was monstrously difficult for him and furthermore, during the processes required for concocting pills not even the smallest mistake was allowed.
As a master of pill concoction, Zhu Chen Tao clearly understood more than half of the principles behind this xun qi pill after observing all the events during the concoction. All there is to it is that those spiral flames sealed inside the pill will instantly appear after consumption and when the spiral qi will bursts out, people will feel a kind of qi sensation being imposed externally, which will allow the new cultivators to become aware of this single thread and then rapidly enter into the state of sensing qi and that’s all there is to it.
The important part of this xun qi pill are the two spiral threads of flame. They should never intersect and the more they can be pulled, the stronger the medicine’s effect. In case, the two spirals of flame intersect, the qi sensation will be destroyed instantly and even the pill furnace will turn into a pile of scrap.
What shocked Zhu Chen Tao was that even if he understood the entire principle behind this xun qi pill if he himself tried to refine the xun qi pill this way, he did not dare to guarantee success every single time. However, Yang Chen in front of him, under the pressure of a JieDan stage practitioner, must be even more distracted when controlling the fire to refine the pills. Yet he had finished this serious refining quite easily. This one point even made Zhu Chen Tao feel inferior.
After thinking about this, Zhu Chen Tao suddenly felt ashamed of himself. He was a JieDan stage pill concocting master, even he himself could not count how many times more experienced he was than Yang Chen, but in face of such a furnace and those ordinary drug ingredients, even using the worn out furnace when concocting the pills. Unexpectedly even he was inferior to a first qi layer disciple. How can he endure this?
“This control over the fire of yours, where did you learn it?”
Zhu Chen Tao finally steadied his mind and found the focus to ask this question. He wanted to know who had guided Yang Chen so much in the control of his flames that it had turned him into such a freak, which can even make him feel inferior?
“When I was at the Ye Xiu Manor, Manager Shangguan Feng guided me once.”
Yang Chen had already thought of a proper excuse. Facing Zhu Chen Tao’s inquiry, he was not even a little bit flustered and frankly spoke:
“He had said that since I had fire spirit root, in the future when I cultivate, no matter whether it is fighting, refining tools or concocting pills, all are inseparably linked with my control over the fire. He had particularly warned me again and again that I must be able to proficiently control the flame. I obeyed Manager Shangguan’s advice and after reaching the first qi layer, I especially practiced controlling my flame for more than half a year.”
“When you cultivate you only circulate once in a day, yet you train to control fire for over half a year?”
Zhu Chen Tao was startled, he had indeed heard about Yang Chen’s experience: This disciple, after entering the Pure Yang Palace within a brief period of one and a half years, had already reached the first qi layer, the required criteria to become an outer disciple. This kind of speed can already be regarded as equal to a person with extremely good comprehension. Unexpectedly he was actually training his control over fire for half of the year, in other words, he had already reached the first qi layer within a year.
Shen Da and the other servants standing on the side were just as stunned by this, but it also removed the doubt from their hearts. In the Ye Xiu Manor when Yang Chen had entered closed- door training, it was always these four servants serving him. During that time they had already sensed some spirit power fluctuations, but at that time he didn’t reveal anything, so they had some doubts about this. Now they understood; Yang Chen was not just cultivating once in a day but rather he was practicing his skills to control fire.
Compared to Zhu Chen Tao’s shock, within the hearts of Shen Da and the other servants even more stormy waves began to rise. Although the elders didn’t know, they were all aware how difficult Yang Chen’s cultivation road was. If the time when Yang Chen was learning letters and other basics was deducted, then from the time when Yang Chen began to cultivate to the time when he reached the first qi layer, would be the extremely short period of half a year. They were aware that even in the entire Pure Yang Palace, this would be an unprecedented achievement.
“Just because of Shangguan Feng’s words, you were practicing by yourself to this extent?”
Seeing Yang Chen nod his head admittingly, only pleasant surprise and shock were left in Zhu Chen Tao’s heart. This shock was different compared to Shen Da and the others. He was terrified by this kind of cultivation comprehension of Yang Chen.
For a person to achieve success in cultivation, apart from his own innate root that is the attribute of the spiritual root, what mattered most were other things, like the person’s own comprehension and meticulousness as well as the extent of assistance he received from others. Even if someone has a valuable spirit root but bad comprehension, then he can’t even understand let alone cultivate.
Yang Chen did not have any kind of external assistance. Just based on a single piece of advice given by Shangguan Feng, that newly promoted outer disciple, he had practiced his control over fire to this extent. This made Zhu Chen Tao unable to find any words to describe him and could only use the word insane to perfectly describe this kind of ability.
Zhu Chen Tao had a sudden impulse: this kind of innately talented disciple, surely the palace master should know about him. This outer disciple who, even facing against the pressure of a JieDan stage expert, could speak frankly and while refining herbs didn’t show the slightest amount of confusion. This kind of disciple has shown the highest potential for growth among the disciples recruited by the Pure Yang Palace in the past hundred years. If this kind of disciple is not carefully cultivated, then that would Pure Yang Palace’s greatest loss.
“So, Yang Chen, I won’t regard you as an outer disciple and you also shouldn’t regard me as an elder. We will get rid of our status and simply probe your control over the fire. What do you say?”
The more he observed Yang Chen, the more he became fond of him. Zhu Chen Tao had a sudden urge to take him as a disciple, but he was aware that at present this was not possible. But he could still give him directions. He certainly did not wish for Yang Chen to take the wrong path.
Once these words came out of Zhu Chen Tao’s mouth, Shen Da, Ting Yuan, Ho Lin, Gu Qin, all four people were dumbstruck. Who was Zhu Chen Tao? For these four people, he was a legendary existence! Even if any outer disciple sees him, he would immediately kowtow to the elder. What is he saying? To get rid of their identities? To investigate together equally? Have they misheard or is the world just going crazy?
“How can I deign the elder to trouble himself!”
However apparently as if Yang Chen had not realized Chu Zhen Tao’s implied intentions he modestly replied. Then immediately spoke out:
“I have somewhat not understood the situation, I request the elder to guide me!”
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