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Chapter 124: A Fork in the Road

After attuning part of her spiritual energy with the aspect of fire, Yun Ruoyan opened her eyes and had a short rest.

Qiuqiu did the same.

“Qiuqiu,” Yun Ruoyan began, “I still don’t fully understand what Grandfather told me yesterday.”

Yesterday was the first time that Yun Ruoyan had practiced pillmaking, and she had made an inferior low-grade pill. Although it was impressive that she had been successful on her first attempt, Yun Ruoyan had very high expectations for herself.

She’d asked Lin Zainan why, despite following his motions to the letter, her pill was inferior and his superior. After all, her cultivation was roughly the equal of his, and her spiritual flame wasn’t far weaker than his.

Lin Zainan’s response was that pillmaking wasn’t a matter of following a recipe exactly. Rather, it required thoughtfulness and ingenuity, not slavish adherence to some given way of doing things. Even now, Yun Ruoyan wasn’t quite clear what he meant.

“I’ve already been putting in a lot of thought and effort into this, haven’t I? Why is Grandfather saying that I’m not thoughtful enough?” Yun Ruoyan was somewhat flummoxed.

Yesterday, while Yun Ruoyan was practicing her pillmaking, Qiuqiu was awake and able to understand a little of what was going on even from within the pocket dimension.

“Everyone’s different,” Qiuqiu began. “Even though both you and your grandfather are third-rank pillmasters at the moment, his technique and sensitivity are far superior to yours. You might have thought that you’d copied his motions precisely, but even the slightest difference can have cascading effects.”

Qiuqiu continued to break down what it had observed. “And even if you both use the same types of spiritual herbs, the quality of the resulting pill may still depend sensitively on your own cultivation and on the history of the individual herbs that you’ve chosen. As a result, blindly following the proportions that your grandfather used won’t necessarily work well.”

Yun Ruoyan felt as though she had received a grand revelation. “You mean that different people need their own techniques for refining pills?”

“The techniques are largely identical; the devil’s in the details. You have to adapt your technique to the situation,” Qiuqiu corrected. “Before you begin, familiarize yourself with the herbs that you’ve chosen. Once you’ve completely grasped their quality and defects, plan out how you’ll combine them to get the greatest effect. This is what your grandfather means by ‘thoughtful’.”

“I understand, Qiuqiu.” Yun Ruoyan’s doubts felt like they had all been washed away with Qiuqiu’s words.

She stood up and retrieved the pill furnace, bringing it back to Qiuqiu’s side along with the four spiritual herbs necessary for the pill. She had a large stock of heaven’s sedge from the imperial territory; the other three herbs she’d taken from the Lin warehouse in preparation for her own practice.

Yun Ruoyan glanced at Qiuqiu before sitting down, bringing the furnace to her front, and starting the long, draining process of refining a pill once more.

This time, after she lit up the furnace, she didn’t rush to throw in the heaven’s sedge. Instead, she carefully examined the spiritual energy in each herb in her hands. Only when she had a reasonable understanding of the energy did she begin in earnest.

First, she dropped a drop of blood into the furnace, letting it familiarize itself with her aura. Then, she placed the heaven’s sedge on top of the furnace and began roasting it.

This time, rather than sticking to Lin Zainan’s tempo and actions, she tried to discern how to control the fire based on the changes in spiritual energy she could feel in the herb.

The red flame was warm, useful as a transition between the orange and yellow flames. The orange flame was hotter than the red, and the yellow the hottest of the three.

Yun Ruoyan completely ignored how Lin Zainan had manipulated the flames. Based solely on her intuition and the changes she could glean from the herbs, she continued lowering or increasing the temperature of the flame.

After a few additional attempts in which she charred the herbs with too high a temperature, Yun Ruoyan finally latched onto a set of techniques which felt natural to her and successfully created a second darkened heavens pill.

Yun Ruoyan handed the pill to Qiuqiu, who held it gingerly in its claws. After a careful examination, his evaluation was, “Smooth, no lumps, but not quite round enough. Lustrous, but not too fragrant. A regular quality pill, Mistress, you’ve improved!”

But despite the praise, Yun Ruoyan still wasn’t very happy.”

“Mistress, the fact that you managed to even form a pill on your first attempt was impressive enough, and you were even able to improve on your original success in a few short hours! Your talent’s likely far superior than your grandfather’s.”

Afraid that Yun Ruoyan wanted to rush things even further, Qiuqiu reminded, “At this rate, it won’t be a problem for you to surpass your grandfather in another two years, but you can’t rush it much more than that.”

“I know I can’t rush, Qiuqiu, but…” Yun Ruoyan glanced at the furnace in her hands. “Two years later, I have to compete against Wang Meng. If I lose, he’ll definitely challenge Grandfather, but his body has weakened quite considerably along with his cultivation. I’m worried about what’ll happen, Qiuqiu.”

Yun Ruoyan knew that her panic and agitation wouldn’t help, that she had to calm down and think things through carefully, but her emotions still overcame her logic.

“Mistress, there’s no need to worry. Once you’re a fifth-rank pillmaster, I’ll teach you how to make the poisons from that tome. Even if you can’t defeat Wang Meng, you’ll easily be able to poison him to death, so he won’t have a chance of hurting your family.”

When Yun Ruoyan heard Qiuqiu’s words, she couldn’t help smiling. Although it sounded rather dishonorable, Qiuqiu’s words seemed to impart a comforting warmth to her.

The next day, Yun Moxiao fetched Yun Ruoyan early in the morning to head to the Lin manor. That afternoon, they would go shopping at the annual autumn fair with their cousins. The capital was jam-packed with people, and they could barely think amidst the vendors’ cries. Despite being next to each other, they couldn’t hear each other without shouting loudly.

Yun Ruoyan, Yun Moxiao, Lin Qingchen, and Lin Qingxue finally managed to squeeze through the most crowded part of the fair.

Lin Qingchen threw down all the miscellaneous bags she was carrying and grumbled to Lin Qingxue, who was contentedly carrying nothing. “These are all things that you bought—aren’t you embarrassed that you’re making us do all the work?”

Yun Ruoyan and Yun Moxiao’s hands were both full with all sorts of snacks and toys, and they too looked at Lin Qingxue upon hearing Lin Qingchen’s question.

“Because I’m the one picking out what to buy! If I have to carry things myself, it’ll obstruct my vision,” Lin Qingxue responded in a very natural manner. Then, pouting, she continued, “Sister, it’s so rare that I can ever go out shopping with you, so won’t you please help me out this once?”

Lin Qingchen was speechless. They’d barely been out for an hour! How tired would they be after shopping for the entire day?!

Usually, she would either be hanging out in her bamboo garden or working at the apothecary. She knew that if Lin Qingxue were to catch her and force her to go out shopping with her, she would be worked to death.

“Qingxue, is there anything else you want to buy?” Yun Moxiao asked, smiling.

Lin Qingchen immediately shot him an aggrieved look. More? Who’s going to carry all that?!

“Oh, let me see!” Lin Qingxue responded as eagerly as ever.

Lin Qingchen glanced up soullessly at the heavens.

“Ruoyan, isn’t there anything you want?” Yun Moxiao turned to his sister.

Yun Ruoyan shook her head. She hadn’t been lazing during the trip, and was keeping a close eye on any stalls selling herbs.

Qiuqiu had asked her to prepare a few poisonous herbs, and all that filled her mind at the moment were unusual ingredients like thunder-laced vines, grass of hoar frost, red-tipped centipedes. Before she had gathered the ingredients that Qiuqiu had specified, she had no time to think about anything else.

But even after going through a large ring of stalls and finding quite a few selling spiritual herbs, she hadn’t collected any of the ingredients she needed.

“Brother, do you know any places in the capital that might sell poisonous ingredients?” she asked her brother in a low voice.

Yun Moxiao shook his head. He was even less familiar with the capital than his sister, and Yun Ruoyan was asking him as a last resort.

“Why are you buying poisonous ingredients?”

“No reason—I’m just curious.”

“Ruoyan,” Yun Moxiao’s features became unusually severe. “A pillmaster’s talent is rare indeed, so you have to cherish it. You won’t go astray and disappoint Grandfather, will you?”

On the Chenyuan continent, there was a group of people who, despite possessing talent at becoming pillmasters, ended up becoming poisoners instead. Although concocting poisons advanced their cultivation in leaps and bounds and struck fear in their enemies’ hearts, their reputation suffered as a result. Righteous cultivators on the Chenyuan continent would scoff at those poisoners, claiming that they’d gone astray.

But Yun Ruoyan disagreed with this common wisdom. In both her lives, she’d been greatly affected by poison, but none of the people who had poisoned her were poisoners. Of the ten most wicked cultivators on the Chenyuan continent, only one was a poisoner, and his reputation was nowhere near the worst of the ten.

She didn’t believe that poisoners were necessarily malicious cultivators who would stoop to any depths; on the other hand, there were all sorts of malicious people who would scheme against others all day long.

From Yun Ruoyan’s perspective, anything that could strengthen her was something to consider seriously. If being able to concoct poisons would give her the power she so sorely desired, and if she could do so without killing the innocent while protecting herself and her family, then she didn’t consider it going astray.

And if concocting poisons would help her become a better pillmaster, then she would surely do so. As a result, Yun Moxiao’s gentle rebuke had actually reinforced Yun Ruoyan’s desire to learn how to concoct poisons.

Of course, she knew that this wasn’t an explanation that Yun Moxiao would accept. As such, she simply laughed the matter away. “Brother, of course I know! It’s just that I keep getting poisoned by one party or another. I’m just trying to procure some poisonous ingredients to familiarize myself with their characteristics, so that I might be better informed and able to detect such poisons in the future.”

“Oh, Ruoyan, detecting poisons isn’t that easy!” Yun Moxiao laughed.

Yun Ruoyan wanted to ask Lin Qingchen about the matter, but she gave up after seeing Yun Moxiao’s attitude. Lin Qingchen was even more orthodox a figure than her brother, and she was far harder to fool than Yun Moxiao.

It seemed that she would have to rely on herself once more.

“Thief, thief!” Lin Qingxue suddenly shouted. “Cousin, Sister, my coin pouch’s been stolen!”