Time to Eat a Periodic Table!

Sensing Shi Jian's aura, Liu Xiu hurriedly rose from his chair and looked at the tea above the teacup, which had turned into a curtain of water. There in the water curtain appeared that stern, unsmiling face of Shi Jian's. Liu Xiu hurriedly bowed with respect. "Greetings, Master!" "Mm. Your master and your Martial Uncle Qianhe have together taken a job escorting a frontier prince back to the capital. I have something here I can't get away from. You go and meet up with your Martial Uncle Qianhe first..." "???" You're sure you want me to go meet him? You old man, are you sure you're not sending me to my death!! Knowing who Daoist Qianhe was, the little man in Liu Xiu's heart stared wide-eyed, while the expression on his face never changed. "Understood, Master. But where am I supposed to meet Martial Uncle Qianhe?" At the same time, the narration cheat's voice rang out! [You suddenly sense that something is wrong. You know Shi Jian has always been used to coming and going alone. How could he suddenly partner with Daoist Qianhe to drive corpses? You feel there must be something hidden in this! Damn it—this old thing actually means to use you to block the disaster. Already knowing how to control the Yizhuang Great Array, you decide to steal the Muchun Great Art and the Lightning-Rushing Thunder Hand overnight, hide in the deep mountains to cultivate, and once your divine arts are fully accomplished, make this old undying pay! After you've made the old undying pay, you'll sweep through every sect under heaven and dominate the cultivation world!] Liu Xiu paid the narration cheat's voice no mind. He only asked Shi Jian a few questions. When the questions were done, Shi Jian withdrew the Thousand-Li Voice Transmission, and the respect on Liu Xiu's face slowly disappeared. It wasn't that he believed what the narration cheat had said! It was that he felt something was off! "Strange. This old... this master, old yet ever firmer, firm as bedrock—how did he suddenly get in touch with Daoist Qianhe?" Learning that the time to meet Daoist Qianhe in Yulin was six days later, the first of the sixth month, Liu Xiu was puzzled. He was puzzled that Shi Jian would partner with Daoist Qianhe to drive corpses. As everyone knew, although Shi Jian was the senior brother of the Maoshan Sect, and knew thunder arts besides, he was a man who rarely smiled. On top of that, Shi Jian was wholly bent on competing for the seat of the next person in charge of the Maoshan Sect by slaying demons and eliminating evil, and as for worldly ways— his character was proud. So his relations with his fellow disciples were only ordinary. The junior brothers respected their senior brother, but that did not mean the senior brother was well liked. At least, in Shi Shaojian's telling, Shi Jian was that sort of person. He basically almost never cooperated with anyone. Even with fellow junior brothers such as Ninth Uncle and the others, Shi Jian hardly kept in touch on ordinary days. In Shi Shaojian's words: why would Shi Jian contact those junior brothers? Shouldn't those junior brothers be the ones contacting Shi Jian, their senior brother! To this, Liu Xiu had nothing to say! What was more, he was beginning to understand even better why the Maoshan Main Altar looked more favorably on Lin Jiu as the next person in charge. Ahem, that was wandering off. As for this martial uncle, Daoist Qianhe, Liu Xiu had also learned about him from Shi Shaojian's mouth. Combining that with the Uncle Jiangshi plot he had already known, he came to the following: Daoist Qianhe had majored in the spirit-summoning art, and yet the job he had landed was that of a corpse-driving daoist. A daoist who loved to smile! This smiling Daoist Qianhe, just like the Four-Eyed Daoist whom Liu Xiu had never met, made his living by driving corpses. As for why Daoist Qianhe, whose secular surname was Xu, had clearly majored in the spirit-summoning art and yet was employed as a corpse-driver, Liu Xiu had not asked. After all, a major was a major, and a job was a job. Just as he himself had studied fine arts back then, and still ran off to do finance, and in the end even ran off into the entertainment business. Nothing for it. Life was hard; one muddled along for a mouthful of food! But according to Shi Shaojian, Daoist Qianhe's relationship with Shi Jian was likewise only ordinary, so he understood even less how Shi Jian could have partnered with Daoist Qianhe to go drive corpses. And if they were partners, then why was there no Shi Jian in Uncle Jiangshi! Also, could his master drive corpses... Fine. His master really could drive corpses! Thinking of Shi Shaojian, who in Jiangshi Supreme was refined by Shi Jian into a corpse demon, Liu Xiu frowned slightly, looked at the moon outside the window, and began recalling the Uncle Jiangshi plot that was about to arrive. The plot was simple, but he decided to sum it up with the lyrics of the Zhuzhuxia version of the Jiangshi March. The plot, in lyrics, went as follows! Lulalu lalei, lulalu lalei. Lulalu lalei, lulalu lalei. On along the mountain road; the barren ridge hides peril. Together they suppress the corpse-spirit. Need a peach-wood sword, need glutinous rice cakes. Need a corpse-suppressing talisman, need a Three Purities bell. Need an ink-line rope, need a corpse-collecting cauldron. Drive out evil, and covet not ease. Monk Yixiu is kind and mild. The Four-Eyed Daoist loves to quarrel. Master, disciple, and neighbors often tease and play. A voice-transmitting bamboo tube quietly shares the heart. Qianhe escorts an imperial-clan corpse. A bronze-cornered golden coffin wraps rotting hide. Storm-rain and startling thunder split the outer coffin. A fierce jiangshi bursts the coffin, baring bloody teeth. Qianhe, wounded, cries that he is powerless. He fears he will turn demon and slaughter the village. He severs his own meridians to cut off the corpse-poison. He gives his body to keep faith whole; he envies not the golden coffin, but the earthen mud. Let us hush and see him one stage on; where paper money flies, the soul returns to the mud. I'll draw the talismans, ah; you come recite the sutras. ... The recollection ended. Liu Xiu frowned slightly and thought. "Maybe I should run... Run, my ass!" Get ready. Set out! Having at long last succeeded in taking Shi Jian as his master and becoming a Maoshan disciple, Liu Xiu sighed inwardly and began to prepare. "Six days still until the meeting. From here to Yulin is a bit over five hundred kilometers. Old... Master said there's a Jia Ma talisman in the ritual room that travels eight hundred li in a day, and I can use it... so that means I have five days to prepare..." The Jia Ma talisman's eight hundred li in a day did not mean a full day, but twelve hours. In other words, eight hundred kilometers a day! ... The next day, the twenty-sixth of the fifth month. Near noon. The Yizhuang. The bedroom in the west wing. "I'll take the gamble..." Sitting on the meditation cushion on the floor, Liu Xiu looked at the medicinal herbs before him, which the medicine shops had only finished gathering today. He decided to go big. Since the Celestial Circuit Mercury-Cooking and Stone-Refining Formula could already refine elixir toxin, then in Liu Xiu's view there was no reason it couldn't refine elixir pills. Worst case, heavy-metal poisoni— Hmm? Eating this shouldn't kill a man, right? It shouldn't, right?! Liu Xiu's brow lifted. "If I really get poisoned, then I just won't have to go!" Liu Xiu muttered inwardly. Nothing for it—the showing that imperial-clan jiangshi put on in Uncle Jiangshi was a little too strong. His cultivation had only just begun. He was still far from able to deal with a jiangshi that even his martial uncles' generation could not handle. As for not going, and missing the plot—hilarious. How could any plot matter more than his, Liu Xiu's, little life! "A little life comes first. Mm. Better first look into whether chomping straight down on these heavy-metal herbs would kill a man..." Liu Xiu did not immediately start gnawing the medicinal herbs to cultivate an immortal aspect. He went to the study and once more flipped through the medical books he had already read, lest a slip of memory get him killed. He felt he could not fully succeed in cultivating Ice-Skin Jade-Bones in these few short days, but he felt that cultivating it would, more or less, add a bit of defense. Even if it was only a tiny bit! Nothing for it. Chenxiang, that predecessor of his old Liu family, had already shown him in actual deeds what came of falling short by that tiny bit. So he could not fall short by that tiny bit!! After a while, the medical books were finished. Certain that gnawing these herbs would not kill him on the spot, Liu Xiu returned to the meditation cushion in the bedroom and sat down properly. He decided to start with small doses of the medicinal herbs for refining the Ice-Skin Jade-Bones Pill, and cultivate the Ice-Skin Jade-Bones immortal aspect, one of the three immortal aspects. "One mercury, two sulfur, lead oxidized; Ice-Skin Jade-Bones, nothing but lead and sand... A CT shows the bones white as snow; blood mercury off the charts, a life in tangled ruin..." Sitting on the meditation cushion, Liu Xiu picked up the herbs he had weighed, poured them into his mouth in order, washed them down with water, and recited a poem in his heart: "Refining it this way should be fine, right?" Having taken the herbs in order, Liu Xiu ignored the foul smell in his mouth and the heave in his stomach, thinking, not very certainly. After all, by the normal process of refining the Ice-Skin Jade-Bones Pill, he would first have to refine in a cast-iron alchemy furnace for thirty days. And he would have to keep a gentle fire going the whole time with jujube wood besides. This human-body great elixir version of the Celestial Circuit Mercury-Cooking and Stone-Refining Formula, after his tinkering, amounted to skipping that complicated, tedious process. As his thoughts wandered, Liu Xiu sat cross-legged, pinched a hand seal, and began circulating the Celestial Circuit Mercury-Cooking and Stone-Refining Formula he had altered a little. Time hurried past. Half a day later, Liu Xiu suddenly opened his eyes, withdrew the hand seal, and felt his abdomen, from which waves of a dry, burning heat were coming. He exclaimed inwardly: "What a fine anomaly, a blazing scorch in the dantian after taking an elixir. Worthy indeed of— screw your mother. Isn't this just heavy metals like mercury, lead, and sulfur burning the lining of the gut? Bullshit, a 'blazing scorch in the dantian'!" Liu Xiu cursed furiously in his heart. He felt those old bastards back then had only ever known how to say pretty words. Then he went on circulating the Celestial Circuit Mercury-Cooking and Stone-Refining Formula after his alterations. Right. He had succeeded! He had successfully changed it into a method that used the human body as the alchemy furnace to refine a human-body great elixir. There was just one negative effect. Before he finished absorbing the medicinal power of the elixir in his body, he was as good as a walking elixir pill. A living elixir pill with an extra hundred-odd jin of flesh, blood, and bone. Liu Xiu felt this was no problem. After all, his luck was pretty good. "It's not as if I'll be unlucky enough to walk out the door and run straight into a man-eating monster..." Liu Xiu stopped tempting fate, and ended the Celestial Circuit Mercury-Cooking and Stone-Refining Formula he had altered until even he did not understand how it ran. But that was a minor issue! Just like a program: who cared how it actually ran, so long as it could run. Just like his narration cheat. Liu Xiu began, in the order of absorbing and then refining elixir toxin, to circulate the Kun-Earth Elixir-Bearing Transformation Method and the unaltered... "Hm? The tinkered Celestial Circuit Mercury-Cooking and Stone-Refining Formula still keeps the effect of refining elixir toxin! Not bad, not bad!" A pleased look came into Liu Xiu's eyes. While circulating the Celestial Circuit Mercury-Cooking and Stone-Refining Formula, he went on absorbing the medicinal power in his body and dissolving the elixir toxin. At the same time he looked at the skin of his body, which had turned a little whiter. At that one look, he knit his brows. "Well, I'll be. So this is the 'ice skin'... The capillaries contract under the stimulus of metal poisons like lead and mercury, so the skin looks a bit whiter..." Have to say, it was perfectly reasonable! What a fine Ice-Skin Jade-Bones indeed!!