LZR Chapter 4 Part 3) The Road To Xiaguang Town (Patreon)

I walked over to the small hut that Little Nine told me was for pill refining and entered it. What stood before me was a large golden pill cauldron—at least ten times the size of me! It was huge. “Not bad.” From my memories, this was actually a high-ranked furnace, but I could not tell how high of a rank.

Besides the cauldron, multiple shelves lined the wall with small drawers. They were filled with different herbs, each labeled with its type. In from of the pill furnace there were a bunch of soft-looking pillows. This was normal for any alchemist. Some pills would take days to refine and you could not move until you were done.

“Mother, I will be spending some time in here.” I really could not wait to begin. Our lively hood was on the line!

“Mother will go back and tend to the herbs at the house then. Ruo’er when you are done, you should take a long rest before you continue traveling.” My mother seemed worried about me which warmed my heart. I smiled at her and nodded.

After my mother left I sat on one of the cushions and took a deep breath. A pill flame was needed in order to refine pills using a pill furnace. Such flames were formed through your spiritual qi and mental energy. To condense a flame I would need to take things slow or else I might end up failing and receive a backlash which would take a while to heal.

The last thing I wanted was to get injured and worry my mother. So I fell into a meditative state to calm my mind and held my hand out. To condense a pill flame a person needed an understanding of alchemy and what it meant to create a flame using spiritual qi and mental energy. The mental energy was the process of how to shape and form your pill flame. Not all flames looked the same. Some looked like a person other’s looked like animals.

When I think about flames, I think of a giant dragon—a beast that could never be beaten. This is probably due to my own race being part dragon, but to me, dragons should be undefeatable. At least I want to be undefeatable.

I focused on this image in my mind and how it would look like as a flame. Knowing it should be very hot yet controlled, so I could adjust the temperature. As time ticked by I finally felt a small breeze in front of my face. I opened my eyes and looked down to see a small dragon, a long snake-like body with claws, two horns, and large jaws with rows of sharp teeth. It floated about my hand and swirled around almost life-like in a way. I smiled and began my focus on bringing it into my body. Once the pill flame was formed it could sit in your dantian and grow in strength as you raised your cultivation and alchemy skills.

After about a minute the flame flowed into my hand, through my meridians, and into my dantian. “Master, congratulations on forming your rank one flame.”

“Thanks, Little Nine. But I need to rest a little.” I said as I fell back onto the pillows. I was covered in sweat. Condensing the flame really took a lot out of me. I closed my eyes and quickly fell asleep.

When I woke next, Little Nine called out to me, “Little Nine, what’s wrong?”

“Master, sorry to disturb you but I figured you might want to know that a battle is currently going on outside.” Little Nine’s words piqued my interest.

“Oh? Can you let me see?” I asked and not even a second later a mirror appeared in front of me showing me what was going on outside. It was two groups. One wearing black robes and the other wearing blue robes. They seemed to be fighting over something.

 “Brother Tian, we can’t let them get the egg.” A young woman cried out. From what I can tell these people were all around fifteen to twenty years of age. Some were at the peak of body refinement while others were in qi gathering. The highest seemed to be rank three qi gathering.

“What egg are they talking about, Little Nine?” I asked since I had no idea what was going on. I only know they have been fighting over some egg.

“There seems to be a cave nearby with a black egg inside. That is as much as I can tell but I am not sure what kind of egg it is.” Little Nine replied. It was nice to have Little Nine around since I could not form my divine sense until the foundation establishment realm.

“Well… since we do not know what it is, I guess we should go check it out.” I knew one thing about cultivation: Stealing things from others' noses was not going to make me any friends, but at the very least, I would get the rewards while others would not.

“If you are quick you can duck behind the trees without being noticed. The two groups seem to want to take the other out before going to retrieve the egg.” Little Nine was right. They were very busy fighting one another and not paying attention to their surroundings. I smiled and decided to test my luck. If worst comes to worse I can just jump back into the pagoda.