Early the next morning, Luo Chen's biological clock woke him out of habit.
Checking the condition inside his body, he felt thoroughly satisfied.
Before going to sleep the previous night, he had circulated the Eternal Spring Art to recover his spiritual power, and then popped another Qi-Nourishing Pill.
In the row for the fourth layer of Qi Refining, his progress had ticked up by a point, rising from the initial one to two.
"It really is a progress bar, not proficiency."
He confirmed his suspicion once more: lifespan and realm both displayed progress.
Cultivation arts, spells, and skills displayed proficiency.
"In that case, once I finish all five bottles of Qi-Nourishing Pills I bought, they should be enough to push the progress bar about halfway."
It was a bit slow, but if paired with the perfect-level Eternal Spring Art and a Tier 1 spirit vein, the progress bar ought to fill even faster.
Compared to his past cultivation speed, which had crawled along like a turtle, this shift was already night and day.
After a brief calculation, Luo Chen stopped dwelling on it.
Pulling the forty fire hound whips from his storage bag, Luo Chen rubbed his palms in anticipation.
Because the other raw materials had come from Hundred Herbs Hall, he had been spared a great deal of prep time. All that remained was giving the main ingredient its special treatment, and then he could begin concocting Myriad Wonders Pills.
Time was spirit stones!
Time to get to work!
Around the hour of the dragon, with the sun on the verge of rising, Luo Chen finally had the medicinal solution ready.
Next, he just needed to soak the fire hound whips in it for three days and three nights until they were tender and soft.
Luo Chen stuffed the fire hound whips into the wooden tub one by one, and a foul, pungent stench burst forth, billowing into the air.
Luo Chen put on a homemade mask, occasionally turning the fire hound whips over.
Just as he was busy at work, a sound of retching came from the courtyard.
"Blech!"
"What a stench!"
Immediately afterward, hurried footsteps approached.
Thump, thump, thump!
The door was knocked on.
Luo Chen opened the door, and a somewhat familiar little face came into view.
"What are you—blech!"
The round-faced young woman was cut off midway through her sentence, gagging from the foul odor pouring out of the room.
One hand propped against the doorframe, she pointed with the other toward the reverse-facing room's only window.
"Hurry up and... *gag*... turn on the Pale Smoke and Sparse Rain Pavilion... *blech*!"
Luo Chen hastily channeled a thread of spiritual power, and the artifact Sun Shou had given him began to hum.
At the same time, the strange odors in the room gradually dissipated.
Meanwhile, at the outer end of the Pale Smoke and Sparse Rain Pavilion, clear drops of water began to patter down.
This was Luo Chen's first time activating the artifact; watching it work, he was dumbfounded.
"A cultivation-world range hood?"
"What range hood? This is a Tier 1 artifact developed by Tianfan City for absorbing smoke and removing odors."
The round-faced cultivator snapped, then glared angrily at Luo Chen. "What are you doing so early in the morning? How is anyone supposed to—huh, it's you!"
She trailed off, looking at Luo Chen hesitantly as she realized she actually knew him.
Looking at her makeup-free face, Luo Chen found it familiar too.
Suddenly, he remembered.
"You're Miss Xiao Ling from Hundred Herbs Hall!"
Bai Meiling wrinkled her nose. "Your surname is Luo, right? What's your name?"
Though she looked petite and cute, she was a genuine seventh-layer Qi Refining cultivator.
Unbothered by her blunt tone, Luo Chen said easygoingly, "Junior Luo Chen greets Senior Bai."
"What 'senior' and 'junior'? Am I old?" Bai Meiling pulled out a handkerchief and wiped her mouth. "And another thing: what on earth are you doing so early in the morning? Don't you know other people live in this courtyard? Carrying on like this, you're bound to get reported."
There really seemed to be something like that.
When Sun Shou rented the room to Luo Chen, he had mentioned it.
That one spirit stone management fee included the duty of resolving neighbor disputes.
"My apologies, I'll be more mindful in the future. Whenever I process herbs, I'll definitely remember to activate the Pale Smoke and Sparse Rain Pavilion. Senior Ba—Miss Xiao Ling, please don't report me this time!"
Luo Chen said with an apologetic smile. He had noticed she didn't seem to mind being called Miss Xiao Ling.
If anything, she was sensitive to being called Senior Bai.
"Hmph!"
Bai Meiling let out a soft huff, letting the matter drop.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the wooden tub by the stove, and her expression turned odd.
"What are you soaking those things in?"
"Uh, trade secret. I can't really say."
This was a neat trick from the pill recipe that maximized the medicinal potency extracted from the fire hound whips.
Why were aphrodisiacs for cultivators so expensive on the market?
Precisely because raw material costs were sky-high.
Luo Chen could substitute cheap fire hound whips without losing any potency, and the secret lay in the processing formula.
Her curiosity unsatisfied, Bai Meiling looked displeased. Her eyes rolled as she thought for a moment.
"Are you an alchemist?"
"I'd like to think so!"
Fasting Powder barely counted as a medicinal pill, but the Myriad Wonders Pill certainly did.
Luo Chen had the confidence to claim the profession.
"Then what pills do you refine?"
Luo Chen felt a headache coming on. How had two women asked him this exact question in the span of a single day?!
"Embarrassed to say? Or afraid to say?" Bai Meiling's eyes narrowed slightly. "You're not refining some demonic pill, are you? The Jade Cauldron Sword Sect is an orthodox sect. Cultivators aren't allowed to refine immoral demonic pills, you know!"
Luo Chen stiffened instantly. "It's definitely not a demonic pill!"
Bai Meiling countered, "Then why are you hemming and hawing?"
Luo Chen was starting to wonder if renting a room in this courtyard house had been a mistake.
It wasn't that he was too thin-skinned to admit what pills he made.
He had cast his shame aside the moment he made his decision.
In front of male cultivators, he could talk at length with eloquence, citing chapter and verse.
After all, male cultivators were his target clientele.
But female cultivators?
That was utterly awkward.
Saying it would bring him nothing but contempt.
With any other woman it wouldn't have mattered, but Gu Caiyi and Bai Meiling happened to be his neighbors for at least the next three months.
Who would want to spend three months living under daily looks of disdain?
"Hmph, this lady knows a thing or two about pills too. Whatever you're making, once it comes out of the furnace, sell one to me. If it turns out to be a demonic pill, I'll take it to the Jade Cauldron Sword Pavilion to report you and collect the informant bounty."
"I have to go to work. Bye!"
With that, she hurried out through the main gate.
Only then did Luo Chen notice a stout, sturdy woman standing by the front gate, apparently waiting for Bai Meiling.
If nothing else, that had to be Feng Xia, who lived in the other side room and worked alongside Bai Meiling at Hundred Herbs Hall.
Watching the two female cultivators rushing off to work, Luo Chen felt a faint pang of nostalgia.
There was an earthy, everyday quality to them; rather than looking like immortal cultivators of this world, they seemed more like white-collar career women from Earth in his past life.
On their faces, one saw neither the ascetic devotion to the Dao nor the fierce brutality of outer city cultivators.
All they had was the simple contentment and happiness of clocking in and out each day.
Her conversation with a minor fourth-layer Qi Refining cultivator like Luo Chen had been blunt, yet lacked any cold aloofness, as if realms of cultivation had been entirely set aside and two ordinary people were simply talking.
Between ordinary people with nothing to ask or gain from each other, why bother putting on airs of polite deference?
"Pity that big companies like Hundred Herbs Pavilion and Spirit Source Studio only hire female cultivators. Otherwise, I'd apply for a job too."
Muttering under his breath, Luo Chen threw himself into the busy work of processing his medicinal materials.
Chapter 30