Early the next morning, when Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai woke up, Yihuai was already gone.
Before departing, however, the old monk had left a slip of paper by Huang Donglai's pillow, weighed down by a palm-sized wooden box.
Huang Donglai picked up the slip of paper first and glanced over it. There were only a few brief sentences: "Five years of internal cultivation imparted to Yixie, in return for the grace of a meal. A rare treasure of the Western Regions bestowed upon Donglai, gifted to one destined to cross my path. The jianghu road is long; until we meet again."
Though brief, the meaning was crystal clear.
Having finished reading, Huang Donglai looked at Sun Yixie and said, "We really struck it rich this time. Five whole years of internal force, Brother Sun!"
"Oh? He passed me his cultivation while I was asleep?" Sun Yixie asked skeptically. "Why didn't I feel a thing?"
Huang Donglai replied, "Cut the nonsense. You sleep like a dead pig. Someone could probably slap you across the face five times and you wouldn't feel a thing."
"Piss off!" Sun Yixie snapped, though he didn't dispute the part about sleeping like a dead pig. Instead, he continued, "Even if he really passed it on, why only five years? Shouldn't a proper repayment be something like fifty years?"
"Holy shit, Brother Sun, are you even human?" Huang Donglai immediately retorted. "For the grace of a single meal, you want all of a man's cultivation? By that logic, the villagers you saved back in Nanyuan Village should be working themselves to the bone as your draft animals for life!"
"Well, put that way... I suppose that might be a bit much..." Sun Yixie conceded. "Still, in the novels I used to read, whenever the protagonist runs into an awesome old-timer, all it takes is hitting it off, and the old master empties his pockets to teach him everything he knows."
"Brother Sun, if you have free time, you'd better learn a few more characters instead of reading that trash," Huang Donglai remarked.
"Tch..." Sun Yixie curled his lip and quickly changed the subject. "Fine, fine, enough about me. Let's see what's in that box he gave you."
Huang Donglai shrugged and casually opened the small wooden box in his hands.
Inside lay only a single item: a brown, gelatinous sphere roughly the size and shape of an egg.
"A century egg?" Sun Yixie leaned in, the words slipping out of his mouth.
"Like hell it's a century egg!" Huang Donglai snapped. "The man explicitly wrote 'a rare treasure of the Western Regions.' How could it possibly be a century egg?"
"Damn it, it looks just like one," Sun Yixie said. "So what do you say it is, then? A Buddhist relic that dropped out of some lama he hacked to death?"
"Brother Sun, you think relics are gallstones? Even if you chopped someone to pieces, one wouldn't just fall out." Huang Donglai frowned as he scrutinized the object, speaking thoughtfully. "Hiss—still, bringing up relics gave me an idea. I reckon this might be an inner core formed by some animal."
"Bullcrap!" Sun Yixie scoffed. "You're the one who's read too many cultivation novels! Demons? Forming cores?"
"Aiya, you don't understand; they really do exist," Huang Donglai explained. "When I was young, I saw something similar in our family's alchemy chamber. It was harvested from a giant python, and they called it a 'Water Dragon Egg.' Materials like this, combined with other ingredients and refined through specialized methods, can be crafted into ingestible 'outer elixirs.'"
"And what happens if you eat one of these 'outer elixirs'?" Sun Yixie asked.
"Some can make you immune to winter's cold, some grant resistance to poisons, and others can directly increase your martial cultivation," Huang Donglai replied. "However, the more potent the outer elixir, the harder the base ingredients are to acquire. I've even heard a legend that if one could use 'dragon liver and phoenix marrow' as the base, it would produce an elixir of immortality."
"Give me a break," Sun Yixie said dismissively. "Anyone capable of scooping out dragon liver and gouging phoenix marrow is already an immortal deity, aren't they? Why the hell would they need an elixir of immortality?"
"I already said it's just a 'legend,' so it's probably bogus," Huang Donglai agreed. "Where would dragons and phoenixes come from in this world anyway? In my view, somebody ate a pot of snake offal and rooster stew, had a couple of drinks too many, and started talking out of his ass."
*Gurgle—*
Before Huang Donglai's voice even faded, Sun Yixie's stomach let out a loud rumble.
"Look what you did," Sun Yixie said with open palms. "Out here in the barren wilderness, we only have steamed buns, and you just had to bring up snake offal and rooster stew?"
"Damn it, who caused us to spend the night in this godforsaken wilderness in the first place?" Huang Donglai snapped. "If you'd listened to me and taken the official road, wouldn't we be drinking wine and feasting on meat at a post station right now?"
"Heh..." Sun Yixie sneered. "If I hadn't suggested taking the mountain path, would I have gained five years of cultivation? Would you have gotten your Western Regions century egg?"
Reminded of that, Huang Donglai perked up. "Hey, you're right, Brother Sun. You gained five years of cultivation, so your martial arts should have improved quite a bit. Why don't you try it out?"
"Ha! My thoughts exactly." Sun Yixie was riding high as well. "It's too cramped in here. I'll test it outside." Speaking as he moved, he walked out of the prayer hall.
And so Huang Donglai followed him out to the ruined temple's small courtyard, watching Sun Yixie perform high jumps, long jumps, shuttle runs, and punch a stone pier...
Punching a stone pier was normally something Sun Yixie's character would never allow him to do. But after finding his physical abilities dramatically improved while jumping and sprinting, he began to think he was "invincible" once more, which puffed his ego up enough to give it a try.
The result was that he nearly fractured the bones in his hand...
Fortunately, deep down in his bones he was still someone who feared pain and lacked courage, so he had held back when throwing the punch; otherwise, he would have had to attend the gathering in Luoyang with one arm in a sling.
Of course, the experiment was not without merit. At the very least, it confirmed that Yihuai's transmission of internal force to Sun Yixie had been successful.
It was worth noting that not long ago, Sun Yixie was merely an ordinary person whose meridians were completely blocked, utterly incapable of receiving transferred cultivation. Yet now, having practiced for only a month or so, his body could already handle internal force. Seen in this light... that Reversing Heaven and Earth Formula truly was miraculous, undoubtedly an upper-tier martial art.
Moreover, this indirectly proved that the item Huang Donglai received was worth at least as much as "five years of cultivation."
In truth, just as Huang Donglai had guessed, the "century egg" Yihuai gave him was indeed an alchemy ingredient, known as a "xie gallbladder." Yihuai had obtained it purely by chance while wandering the realm. Although he knew its value very well, keeping it on him was indeed of no use.
The night before, when Yihuai crossed paths with Huang Donglai, a descendant of the Huang Clan, he felt that this might be Heaven's arrangement. Thus, doing a casual favor, he had gifted the item away.
If one truly compared the worth of this xie gallbladder to five years of cultivation, the former arguably held far greater potential; it all depended on how Huang Donglai utilized it in the future.
...
After testing Brother Sun's martial abilities, the two ate a casual breakfast, then led their horses and set out.
For two people accustomed to sleeping in beds, resting on the hard ground last night had done nothing to relieve their fatigue, leaving them with aching backs and sore waists instead. As a result, their pace today was considerably slower than when entering the mountains yesterday. Fortunately... today was mostly downhill, which made it comparatively less exhausting.
Stopping and starting along the way, near dusk they finally reached terrain suitable for riding, allowing them to pick up speed at last.
Spurring their horses and cracking their whips, the two rode out of the mountains and followed a small path until they arrived at a little village.
At the village entrance stood a moneyhouse and small food stalls, but not a single inn. The two had no choice but to seek lodging in a villager's home. Of course, lodging was not hard to come by—it just took a bit of money.
And when it came to offering money, there was an art to it: you couldn't give too little, or they might sprinkle dirt into your drinking water; nor could you give too much, for flaunting wealth could incite malicious intent and bring harm upon you... The coin had to exceed the other party's inner expectation by just a sliver. Only then would you eat well, drink well, and sleep comfortably.
Huang Donglai was largely ignorant of these tricks of the trade, but Sun Yixie knew them intimately. After all, having spent all those years dealing with unruly folk at the fish market day in and day out, he understood the commoner's mindset best—human nature was complicated, and simple kindness and foolish malice were sometimes separated by nothing more than a single thought, a razor-thin line.
The night passed without incident, and the next day they set out once more.
Following the route pointed out by the villagers, the two quickly rejoined the official road, galloping along on swift horses.
That day, they circled around East Lake, crossed the sluice gate, and before dark, arrived at a settlement known as Chen Family Village at the foot of Mayi Mountain.
Just as they reached the village entrance, they saw a procession of villagers carrying torches, playing loud instruments, and marching out of the village in grand fashion.
Reining in their horses to look, they saw four burly men in the middle of the procession carrying a small, roofless sedan chair. Seated upon it was a young woman clad entirely in black, her head covered with a black cloth. Who knew where she was being sent in such an outfit just as the sun dipped behind the western hills?
Had Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai arrived a bit later and missed the scene, that would have been that. But now that they had seen it with their own eyes, they were naturally bound to make inquiries.
And this is what brought about—Sun Yixie thrice toying with Kang Haijiao, and Huang Donglai wreaking havoc in the Dragon King Cave.
Chapter 21