The Stone Boat Garden was part of the Wei clan's estate, bordering the shores of Jiuzhen Lake. Along this stretch of bank, willows swayed gracefully over wide, tranquil waters, making it one of the finest spots to admire the lake—so much so that the Wei clan had incorporated it into their private grounds.
Beside the water sat an immobile stone vessel, carved from greenstone quarried from the lake bed by skilled artisans summoned by the clan. Three stories tall and dozens of zhang across, the greenstone pleasure boat resembled a small islet resting upon the lake.
Known also as the Unmoored Boat or simply the Greenstone Boat, it was one of the clan's prized landmarks and enjoyed considerable fame throughout Jiuzhen Commandery.
The moment Cui Dan laid eyes on this singular vessel, he could not look away. Envy coloring his voice, he marveled, "Looking out into the distance, Jiuzhen Lake stretches endlessly like a bright mirror. Sitting aboard, one feels as though one were drifting across the water, yet with the curious sensation of the lake's shimmering surface moving while the craft remains still. An unmoving boat that seems to travel the lake—the names Unmoored Boat and Greenstone Boat truly do not flatter it in vain!
"To invite two or three close friends, embrace beauties aboard this vessel, compose verses, hold pure conversations, and enjoy song and dance... wouldn't that be magnificent?
"Why does my Cui clan possess no such wonderful place?" Cui Dan lamented with deep regret.
Beside him, the old servant Uncle Wu lowered his voice. "Even if we had such a plaything, once the Mistress learned of Young Master's ideas, she would surely dispatch people to smash it to pieces! Thinking back on our ancestors, there were many virtuous wives like the Mistress; that is why all our clan's pleasure grounds were thoroughly ruined!"
The smile on Cui Dan's face froze. Shaking his head, he sighed. "Uncle Wu, in such a splendid place, let's not speak of things that ruin the mood! The senior is right inside the boat. Let us enter!"
Leading figures from local prominent clans and jianghu factions had long since gathered inside. At the center of the Greenstone Boat rested an eight-dragon-footed purple copper furnace adorned with cloud-dragon motifs and beast-shaped ears. Purplish-red throughout, its body bore cast likenesses of eight exotic beasts, and from its ears emerged two bronze fire crows with heads peering down into the cauldron.
Cui Dan saw right through the trick and laughed. "The Wei clan is putting on quite a show of mystery. They hid two fire crows inside the furnace's ears to have them breathe fire during pill refinement. When the time comes, it will look like a magical implement furnace that conjures its own flames and possesses its own fire seed! Once their fiery vigor wanes, they must swap in fresh domesticated crows. Over the course of a single pill assembly, no fewer than a dozen fire crows will be worked to the bone...
"Only beside Jiuzhen Great Marsh, where serpents and beasts thrive and fire crows never lack for food, could anyone feed so many feathered brutes. If it were my household..."
Cui Dan paused before finishing, thought it over, and then gave a wry smile. "My mother loves peace and quiet above all else. Fire crows are such noisy, squawking creatures—if we kept them at home, she would have driven them off long ago!"
"Our clan possesses genuine superior-grade magical implement furnaces," Uncle Wu noted with quiet pride. "Take the Four Divine Beasts Sea-Calming Cloud-Pattern Qianyuan True Fire Furnace held by the Mistress: it carries Qianyuan True Fire as its seed, burning day and night without ceasing. When stimulated with magical power, one can freely regulate the flame's intensity. That is a true pill-refining implement—countless times superior to this half-refined cauldron that still relies on domesticated fire crows for heat."
Cui Dan simply asked, "Then why has no one in our clan ever refined wondrous spirit pills like the senior's?
"Why was I forced to go to the Daoist Academy to exchange for the pill to break through to Sensing?"
Uncle Wu's expression quickly soured, and he sighed. "Furnaces are easy to come by, but alchemists are hard to find! Many dozens of generations ago, our clan produced a few great alchemists who left behind fine furnaces. Since cauldrons are not defensive implements, they rarely suffer damage in magical duels, so sects and prominent clans usually keep several good ones in their pill chambers.
"Yet aside from the lineages of the Taishang Dao, who dares claim their sect produces brilliant alchemists generation after generation?
"Our clans do not fling their doors wide to thousands of disciples like sects do, nor do we need mountains of pills to nurture pupils. Clan descendants are the cream of the crop; they barely have enough time to cultivate orthodox Daoist methods—who would dare distract themselves with external arts?"
Cui Dan sneered. "Cream of the crop? From what I see day to day, aside from my elder brother and a handful of others, who in the clans is truly remarkable? Most likely, those clan scions simply cannot stomach the grueling toil of tending fires and refining pills!"
"Then would Young Master be willing to become a pillar of alchemy for our Cui clan?"
"Coarse labor like tending fires is far too exhausting—it hardly suits your young master's tastes!" Cui Dan turned his head away, seemingly having forgotten what he had just declared.
By this point, guests for the pill assembly had packed the stone boat. Only then did two young acolytes step forward to open the furnace's beast-shaped finials. A faint glow flickered within; the cauldron was already warming.
Surprised, Cui Dan remarked, "Could I have guessed wrong? Is this furnace not powered by fire crows? Otherwise, why don't I hear any cawing?"
"If they cawed, wouldn't the Wei clan lose face? What point would there be in concealing them behind two beast ears?" Uncle Wu, seasoned and knowledgeable, said with absolute certainty, "They must have cut out the crows' tongues to keep them silent."
Cui Dan's face fell. "Calling out is a bird's nature. Was that truly necessary?"
Uncle Wu cared little for his young master's tenderheartedness, but he explained nonetheless, "Taming spirit beasts for practical use demands as much. If you indulged their natural temperaments, they would run wild and lawless. How could anyone tame and employ them then?"
While master and servant were chatting, a Daoist clad in black robes stepped before the cauldron. Cui Dan assumed this was merely a Wei clan alchemist warming the furnace on the senior's behalf and paid it little mind. To his surprise, an austere silence settled over the entire hall. The chatter died down until not a voice remained, leaving Cui Dan puzzled. He watched as the black-robed Daoist put on an elaborate show: first washing his eyes with spiritual spring water infused with golden-leaf willow, then having two retinues of boy and girl acolytes wipe down the hot cauldron with fire-rat pelt cloths.
The other guests naturally knew that Daoist Zhen was the guest of honor. Seeing him rinse his mouth with spiritual spring water and begin assessing the medicinal herbs assembled for the refinement, they felt an unspoken surge of anticipation for the wondrous arts he was about to display.
Uncle Wu studied the various herbs, musing, "This appears to be a spirit pill meant to purge internal evils, remodel the physical vessel, and prolong life. While wondrous enough, still..."
Cui Dan knew what Uncle Wu had left unsaid: such a pill hardly seemed worthy of that senior's stature.
They had witnessed with their own eyes that senior refining qi dan using gang-sha qi. When those spirit pills emerged from the furnace, the pill qi had swirled in vibrant, wondrous displays. Even his most ordinary primordial qi pills were completely free of impurities, let alone pill poison. He had crafted superior-grade pills capable of repairing Dao foundations and transforming latent talents, and his mid-grade pills for boosting magical power and cultivation had reduced side effects to the barest minimum—short of the innate danger that leaning on pills could dull one's resolve, they were virtually harmless.
Before those pills had even finished brewing, they had drawn spirits and monsters from across the entire city, accompanied by external visions of lingzhi sprouting directly from the pills. That Scarlet Essence Lingzhi was a top-tier spirit medicine, vastly more precious than any ingredient assembled here today.
Later, when Cui Dan introduced the Daoist Academy to the lingzhi chamber formed through the external phenomena born of the senior's alchemy, the academy's old supervisor had nearly gone mad with joy.
Upon learning that the fellow cultivator he had casually pointed toward Cui Dan was actually an expert capable of producing external phenomena upon pill completion, the old supervisor had beaten his chest in bitter regret, nearly fainting on the spot.
Yet the spirit pill about to be refined today was merely an herbal confection, and the recipe itself was far from extraordinary. In Cui Dan's eyes, it was merely an ordinary spirit pill designed to expel external evils, lightly cleanse body and mind, and aid Foundation Building. Granted, refining even this much would pose a challenge to the alchemists retained by the Cui clan.
Could an extraordinary expert whose qi dan arts manifested external phenomena truly be stooping to refine such a pedestrian pill?
Cui Dan felt a pang of disappointment, and the lavish praise he had prepared in advance stuck in his throat.
"With so many precious spirit medicines, could they be refining a genuine spirit pill?" Just as Cui Dan's spirits flagged, an astonished commotion erupted among the seats below the alchemy dais. "Whenever we harvest rare spirit herbs, we either sell them after processing or turn them into powdered compounds, baking them into powders in a cauldron before rolling them into pills with beeswax or pill wax.
"I've heard that when a true spirit pill leaves the furnace, it naturally takes form on its own—perfectly round, imbued with the secret mysteries of Core Formation! Only genuine alchemists can pull that off!"
"Daoist Zhen is indeed a true immortal master! I heard that not long ago, an itinerant priest came knocking with spurious pills to swindle people, only to be effortlessly unmasked by Immortal Master Zhen and forced to slink off in shame. Seeing him now, he truly is extraordinary. Word has it... this pill even prolongs life!"
"Purging a hundred parasites and purifying the physical apertures naturally extends one's years... Truly a top-grade spirit pill!" The head of the Jiuzhen Commerce Alliance gazed toward the furnace with gleaming eyes, heaping on shameless praise.
The chief of the Tuolong Gang went so far as to spread all five fingers, booming, "I am willing to offer five thousand gold pieces to purchase this pill!"
Listening to the shameless bluster around him, Cui Dan hesitated, blushing on their behalf. "Could it be this pill truly holds some rare virtue we fail to grasp? Is our knowledge simply too shallow?"
Uncle Wu shook his head. "Young Master, that isn't the senior refining... It is merely a Wei clan alchemist warming the furnace in advance to stir up the crowd. I have heard that the Wei patriarch is adept in worldly affairs and goes by the moniker 'Vulture.' It seems he truly understands human nature: having his retained alchemist refine a batch beforehand builds anticipation, which will only highlight the extraordinary grace of the senior when he takes the stage later.
"People in these remote borderlands have narrow horizons; how could they tell superior spirit pills apart? Without this preliminary show, the senior's supreme alchemy would never shine as brightly. Think about it, Young Master: if these locals have an eye that rates only ten out of a hundred, then even alchemy scoring a hundred points would appear merely ten points wondrous to them.
"If you don't first present a nine-point performance for comparison to show them what tenfold splendor looks like, they would mistake a Taiyin Primordial Pearl for a mere Moon Soul Primordial Pearl even if it were placed right in front of them!"
Cui Dan nodded in realization. "Uncle Wu speaks wisely... Let us first watch how this Wei clan alchemist conducts himself!"
Daoist Zhen had not detected the slightest trace of Qian Chen's tampering. When he had previously 'assessed' the Qi-Replenishing Pure Yang Pill, he had unwittingly laid bare the exact level of his Sensing to Qian Chen. The covert manipulations Qian Chen designed around his sensitivity to primordial qi were naturally in no danger of being exposed. Having appraised and confirmed the herbs' properties, Daoist Zhen apportioned the quantities with natural ease.
He then drew a crimson powder from his robes and scattered it into the furnace. Instantly, the demonic flame coughed up by the fire crows shifted into a pale, bluish-green hue.
Standing nearby, the actual Wei clan alchemist, a white-haired elder, exclaimed in awe, "Could this be flame-kindling powder—the legendary secret powder used in alchemy fires? Tossed in, it can transform ordinary flames into wondrous spirit fires of every variety!"
Paying no heed to the crowd's gasps, Daoist Zhen kept his eyes glued to the furnace. With occasional sweeps of his sleeve, he introduced one or two herbs into the cauldron. Using eye techniques to observe the flame's color and judge the internal heat, he drew upon his experience and the recipe's instructions to slowly roast the herbs, drawing out their requisite medicinal essences within the cauldron's inner chamber.
Most of the useless medicinal properties were reduced to ash by the alchemy fire and dropped into the fire pit below, while a small portion turned into dross, mingling with the refined essence. A significant amount of the beneficial properties was also wasted in the process.
Only about forty percent of the herbs were effectively utilized, and even that remained tainted by ten to twenty percent impurities.
Following the temperatures required to extract each herb's properties, Daoist Zhen methodically added the ingredients.
And dozens of li away, Qian Chen had likewise commenced his own art of 'pill refinement'...
Chapter 62