"He's a late Foundation Establishment cultivator from Mount Ailao!"
"His visit to Dahe Market this time is to inspect and maintain the condition of the various spirit residences. After all, Mount Ailao was the one that originally designed and built Dahe Market for the Jade Cauldron Sword Sect."
"Not only that, the Jade Cauldron Sword Pavilion is even planning to invest heavily to commission him to redesign and construct a new landmark building."
Listening to Gu Caiyi explain this, Luo Chen's eyelids twitched.
*Damn, he's basically a general contractor!*
No wonder he was so wealthy, tossing out low-grade pills and magical artifacts like pocket change.
Still, no matter how rich someone was, throwing spirit stones around like that was ridiculous!
Faced with Luo Chen's bewilderment, Gu Caiyi pondered for a moment before venturing, "Could he have designs on me?"
The moment the words left her mouth, Gu Caiyi's lips parted in realization, and she grabbed Luo Chen's arm.
"My Grand Dao has hope!"
Luo Chen rolled his eyes. "Mooching off a wealthy patron is shameless, you know!"
*A wealthy patron?*
Being a cultivator after all, Gu Caiyi caught on to the meaning instantly.
Punching Luo Chen hard on the arm, she gave it serious thought and muttered to herself, "They say Fei Baiwen married into his wife's family and already has a Dao companion. On top of that, his Dao companion is the granddaughter of a Golden Core cultivator from Mount Ailao. He probably wouldn't dare keep a concubine."
*So he's a live-in son-in-law who married up?*
She scoffed softly, thought it over, and sighed.
"Forget it. That sort of man is best left alone. Even if he does have intentions, I can't afford to offend his Dao companion."
"Besides, that's not what I want."
With that, she turned toward the door.
Luo Chen called after her, "When you come back tomorrow, remember to pick up five hundred jade vials for me from Jixiang Workshop! Just this style—I'll pay you the spirit stones when you get back."
Without looking back, Gu Caiyi merely waved her hand.
Watching her walk away, Luo Chen sighed and headed back into the alchemy chamber.
***
"Failed again. Why is the afternoon success rate so low?"
"Is two cauldrons a day still pushing it too hard?"
Streaked with soot and grime, Luo Chen looked down at the pile of medicinal dregs he had shoveled out, his spirits sinking.
Each failure meant five spirit stones thrown down the drain.
Yet he was certain he had done everything properly!
He cleaned the alchemy furnace and swept the chamber.
After practicing his spells a few times in the room and washing up quickly, Luo Chen went to bed.
Swallowing one of his few remaining Qi-Nourishing Pills, he circulated the Eternal Spring Art.
He suspected that his cultivation realm was too low, causing his afternoon success rate to fall far short of the morning's.
As a result, a faint edge of urgency crept into his cultivation.
With his eyes shut tight, his breathing followed its rhythmic pattern, only somewhat heavier and more labored than usual.
*When will days like this ever end?*
*Gu Caiyi is so lucky. People just give her pills and magical artifacts, while I have to earn everything myself.*
*Did that Foundation Establishment cultivator really take a liking to her? Actually, she is pretty attractive. Her face might not be as delicate as Lady Xiangxiang's, but her figure is incredible.*
*Why can't a woman like that belong to me, Luo Chen?*
*Heh, does a mid-stage Qi Refining cultivator even deserve such a beauty? Unless I go slack off in the mortal world, that is.*
*Can someone with five-element spiritual roots really reach Foundation Establishment?*
*If all this blood, sweat, and tears amount to nothing in the end, won't I have squandered the best years of my life?*
*Maybe I should take it easy. Stop being so hard on myself.*
*Who's to say there won't be another transmigration? Maybe next time I'll be born with heavenly spiritual roots and a pair of almighty cultivators for parents, hehe...*
A faint, ethereal fragrance drifted into his nostrils, sinking deep into his soul.
*No, what on earth am I thinking?!*
Suddenly!
Luo Chen's eyes snapped open as a suffocating tightness surged straight into his chest.
*Spurt!*
A mouthful of bright red blood sprayed across the floor tiles.
Staring blankly at the glaring patch of blood, a term abruptly popped into Luo Chen's mind.
"Heart tribulation."
It was an unfamiliar term, yet fitting in every way.
While cultivating just now, a multitude of negative emotions had surfaced out of nowhere.
As he circulated the Eternal Spring Art, those thoughts had brought the spiritual energy in his dantian to the brink of boiling over.
Yet shouldn't an elevated concept like a heart tribulation only apply to Golden Core Masters or Nascent Soul True Persons?
As a mere low-tier Qi Refining cultivator, how could he have gotten entangled in something like this?
Amidst his bewilderment, Luo Chen gathered his emotions and began reflecting on what had just occurred.
Gradually, a glimmer of understanding dawned upon him.
*Perhaps switching to a new alchemy environment lately has pushed my body too hard.*
*Or maybe my anxiety over the persistent low success rate and severe material waste made me too impatient.*
*Caiyi's recent fortune might also have served as a bit of a trigger.*
Luo Chen considered many possibilities, even realizing that the drastic shift in worldview and daily habits since his transmigration had built up a vast reserve of negative emotions within him.
They had simply been suppressed by his relentless busywork until recently, when relaxing slightly allowed them to gradually bubble to the surface.
*If I hadn't snapped out of it in time just now, I fear I would have succumbed to qi deviation and perished, my Dao extinguished.*
Recalling that sensation of spiritual energy boiling over and violently surging through his meridians, Luo Chen felt a shudder of terror.
*Thank goodness the moonlight grass saved my life.*
His gaze landed on the pristine, crescent-shaped little herb beside his pillow, and Luo Chen felt immensely relieved.
Moonlight grass possessed the efficacy to calm the mind and stabilize the soul; the older the plant, the greater its potency.
Rumor had it that a thousand-year moonlight grass could even aid the cultivation of a Nascent Soul True Person.
Luo Chen did not possess a thousand-year moonlight grass, but he was merely in the mid-stage of Qi Refining.
Just now, it was precisely the fragrance wafting from this potted moonlight grass that had jolted him awake, sparing his life.
Shaking his head with a wry smile, he realized he had inadvertently come to owe Fu Xiuxiu a debt of gratitude.
Then again, if he told anyone that he had encountered a heart tribulation during Qi Refining, nobody would believe him!
Getting up to wash himself, Luo Chen walked outside.
The night was deep and quiet; all was still.
Sitting on that small, child-sized swing, Luo Chen looked up at the star-studded sky.
"Nothing more than a few bumps on the road to immortality."
"What does having five spiritual roots matter? With enough resources, even a pig could attain immortality. Why should I belittle myself?"
"Work hard, struggle on, never stop until death!"
Beneath the starlit sky, the man was as humble as dust, yet his heart shone as brilliant as the stars.
***
The next day brought the same tedious routines.
Luo Chen was already accustomed to them, and especially after surviving the heart tribulation last night, his mindset had become far more tranquil.
Even though he failed again in the morning, he did not rush the afternoon's second batch of Myriad Wonders Pills.
"Rise!"
Forming an incantation gesture, his Attraction Art—already at the Proficient level—grasped the warm furnace lid from afar, lifting it slowly into the air.
A familiar, wondrous fragrance wafted into his nose.
Luo Chen smiled knowingly.
Success!
Unlike an iron spirit pot, pills produced inside an alchemy furnace could condense into shape under the control of its formation array.
Thus, Luo Chen gathered the ten Myriad Wonders Pills directly into a jade vial.
While collecting them, he rubbed his temples.
Before, whenever he refined pills in the afternoon, he would often feel a sense of mental exhaustion in the later stages.
Yet today, that feeling seemed to have vanished.
What was more, his mental energy felt faintly greater.
Nearly doubled, in fact.
*Is this the reward from overcoming the demonic barrier last night?*
Luo Chen pondered.
Legend had it that when high-level cultivators faced tribulations, they had to weather not only external heavenly thunder tribulations, but also internal heart tribulations.
Be it obsessive fixation, demonic barriers, or extraterrestrial demons stirring mortal desires.
As long as a high-level cultivator endured an internal heart tribulation, they would gain unexpected benefits.
Luo Chen knew he was nowhere near that level, but then again, ordinary people did not encounter heart tribulations during Qi Refining either.
Following that logic, such an explanation truly seemed plausible.
This was naturally a good thing. At the very least, Luo Chen felt much more confident about refining two cauldrons of Myriad Wonders Pills a day.
Furthermore, he had a hunch that this experience might bring unforeseen benefits to his future path of cultivation as well.
Chapter 42