Chapter 100: Qi-Gathering Pill

“When things have been cleared out over there and everyone has left, send some men here. Quietly transport these items to No. 72 in Central Capital, the Xinxin Food Factory. Someone there will meet you.”

Ye Tian gave the order.

He had already arranged for three thousand hardened bandits to follow Wang Zizai, along with a portion of the more trustworthy men, to garrison the Ye family ancestral home. For now, they were all resting in the old employee dormitories of the Xinxin Food Factory.

The rebuilding of the Ye residence had already been placed on the agenda, so this place could not be left to waste.

“Yes, Master. Do you want to be alone for a while?” Ye Xiaomei was very astute. Seeing Ye Tian so enthralled, she knew he must have discovered some extraordinary secret.

As a servant, she had no place staying at his side.

“No need for that. Follow me if you like. I’m only worried that what I’m about to do may pose some danger to you.”

“Ah!”

Hearing this, Ye Xiaomei’s pretty face went pale at once, then quickly flushed red again. “Master, isn’t that a little inappropriate here? Why don’t we go to a hotel first, take a bath or something…”

“No. What exactly is always going through your heads?” Ye Tian clicked his tongue. “Move, stand farther back, and don’t get in the way of my pill refinement.”

So it was alchemy. She had thought it was something else entirely.

A trace of disappointment welled in Ye Xiaomei’s heart, though even she could not say why she felt so let down.

Then she saw Ye Tian reach up and take down the treasured blade from the screen. She immediately cried out in alarm.

“Master, that is Onikiri Yasutsuna. It once slew demons and is especially fierce. It would be better not to use it!”

Onikiri Yasutsuna?

Hearing the name, Ye Tian instantly understood. No wonder Ito Sasuke had placed this blade in the collection room. It turned out to be one of the legendary Five Great Swords of Japan.

According to rumor, this treasured blade had severed countless demons, among them the infamous Shuten Doji. The sword carried a strange power, said to prevent the flesh of ghosts and monsters from regenerating, and possessed the ability to restrain immortality.

Of course, these were only stories passed around by the common folk. How much of it was true could not be known.

Ignoring his servant’s cries, Ye Tian drew the blade with a ringing sound and examined it closely.

“Not bad. Truly an excellent blade.”

It had to be said that the Japanese had one virtue worth acknowledging: they were quick to learn. In sword forging, they were by no means weak; on the contrary, in high-end craftsmanship, they even seemed to show faint signs of innovation.

Take this Onikiri, for instance. Its structure was stable, its form graceful yet practical, and its sharpness was no less than that of his own blade.

As for this supposed power to restrain immortality, however, he could not tell whether it was merely an exaggerated tale.

He could test that later.

After returning the sword to its place, Ye Tian moved to the corner, lifted the thousand-pound purple-gold cauldron to the center, then took out medicinal materials one by one from his sleeve and arranged them neatly.

Ye Xiaomei grew more curious the more she watched.

“Master, Master, why can your sleeve hold so many things?”

“It doesn’t even look that big, and there was clearly nothing there before.”

“Ah.” Ye Tian then remembered to explain. “This is called a sleeve of boundless space. It’s just a small trick for carrying things. If you’re willing to learn inner alchemy, I can teach you.”

At that, the girl was overjoyed.

If she could learn her master’s immortal arts, wouldn’t she also be able to go out into the world as an immortal herself?

“Really? Wonderful! Master, when will you teach me?”

“First, read this book through. If you can understand it, that means you have the proper roots. After that, come find me and I’ll teach you.”

With that, he tossed out an ancient-looking book.

The Seal of the Unity of the Three in the Book of Changes.

Ye Xiaomei took it and opened to the first page, reading aloud, “The creative and the receptive are the gateposts of Change, and the myriad hexagrams are...”

The entire text was filled with obscure and abstruse terminology. Let alone understanding it, she, as a Japanese woman, could barely make the sentences sound smooth when reading them aloud.

“I don’t understand it. I really don’t understand any of it!”

“Then you can’t learn it. Be obedient and stick to martial arts.” Ye Tian did not even look at her as he replied flatly. “Inner alchemy requires a very powerful spiritual sense. You can read the language of the Central Kingdom, yet you still cannot understand this. That means you have no roots for it.”

“In plain words, you don’t have the foundation for cultivation.”

Having said that, he fell silent.

To put it more plainly, Ye Xiaomei simply had no talent for immortality cultivation. She was nothing more than an ordinary person.

“Waaah, that’s so sad!”

“No pouting for attention.” Ye Tian cut off the act Ye Xiaomei was about to put on, then turned his full attention to the cauldron.

He was going to refine pills.

Thinking this over, he grabbed a handful of chaff and tossed it into the pill furnace, then drew out a talisman as a fire starter and instantly ignited the chamber.

After that, following the order stored in his memory, he began adding the medicinal ingredients little by little according to their heat resistance.

“Good. Everything is ready.”

Looking at the fire in the furnace, Ye Tian could not help but nod.

Ito Sasuke clearly understood alchemy. He had prepared quite a lot of chaff in this basement.

It seemed he had tried more than once to refine pills.

In alchemy, horse dung and chaff were often used as the main fuels, with charcoal taking second place. From this, one could see that Ito Sasuke knew quite a bit about the art of pills.

Horse dung, in the language of medicine, was exactly what it sounded like.

As for chaff, there was no need to explain it further: it was the outer husk of grain.

“Pity. If my cultivation were not so shallow, I could do away with fuel entirely and refine this pill using only the Six Ding Sacred Flame. In that case, the pill produced would surely be even purer.”

Ye Tian watched the pure blue flame in the cauldron with growing tension. Satisfaction mixed with nervousness he could not suppress.

What he was refining was the Qi Gathering Pill.

If an ordinary person took it, it could forcibly hold onto someone who was on the verge of death and keep them alive. If a cultivator took it, it would greatly advance their Qi Refining cultivation, allowing progress by leaps and bounds.

The most important ingredient among its materials was thousand-year wild ginseng.

And just so happened, Ye Tian had enough wild ginseng materials on hand.

One could only say that all stories begin with coincidence. Without thousand-year wild ginseng, there would be no raw materials. Without the memories of the Wanderer of Boshan, he would not know this method of pill refinement. Without the purple-gold cauldron as a foundation, there would be no suitable vessel at all.

Everything seemed to fit together into a closed loop, as if driven by the will of Heaven itself.

As time passed, more and more chaff was added to the furnace, while Ye Tian continuously circulated his true energy to maintain the airflow, keeping the fire within the furnace at the proper temperature at all times.

Unknowingly, more than three hours had gone by.

“Master, would you like some water?”

Having stood guard at his side for three straight hours, Ye Xiaomei could not help but grow bored, and so she asked.

“No need. Another five hours, and it will be done.”

“Five hours!” The girl’s eyes widened in disbelief.

That meant they would be refining from tonight until sunrise tomorrow?

“That’s too tiring. Alchemy isn’t fun.” Ye Xiaomei muttered. “But I’m hungry.”

“All right, all right, go on. Bring me back something to eat as well.”

Ye Tian waved her away in exasperation.

What a joke. A single Qi Gathering Pill only took eight hours to refine. If one went back to the old days, those Taoists who refined pills for emperors would not even blink at forty-nine days straight, or eighty-one days. That was what you called exhausting.