You're Not a Pharmaceutical Rep?

After class, the cultivators filed out of the classroom one after another. Time was money; no one was willing to waste a single second. Even Wang Heng merely shot Chen Zhuo a furtive glare before hurrying away to throw himself into cultivating with renewed determination. Meanwhile, in the back row, Liang Ningwan was gathering her things and preparing to leave when she suddenly noticed Chen Zhuo walking straight toward her. He pulled up a chair and sat down right beside her. Seeing this, Liang Ningwan frowned slightly and spoke up. "Classmate Chen, is something the matter?" Chen Zhuo smiled. "Classmate Liang, I have a few questions I'd like to ask you, if you have a moment?" "Uh..." Liang Ningwan hesitated for a beat, looking him over. 'Second layer of Qi Refining in three months, and he even managed to overpower Wang Heng at the fourth layer in actual combat. Even if there was some trickery involved, he's definitely someone worth making connections with.' After thinking it through, Liang Ningwan decided there was no harm in it and nodded. "Go ahead, Classmate Chen." If it had been anyone else—Meng Yan, for instance—she would have charged a consultation fee! Though she came from a decent background, Liang Ningwan led an exhausting life, having to earn her own money to fund her cultivation. Her mother felt bad for her and secretly transferred spirit stones to her on occasion, but that was a drop in the ocean. Liang Ningwan had dreams of her own! Her family wasn't much help. Her younger sister in particular had been born with a spiritual root, and though her spiritual qi perception was only twenty-eight, it was still considered very lucky. Yet nowadays, she spent every single day at home watching livestreams, obsessed with something called the Female Cultivator Rights Alliance. She watched the streams of a Golden Core cultivator named Perfected Que and showered him with gifts, blathering about how her heart bled for the Perfected One and how female cultivators needed to stand on their own two feet. Liang Ningwan was utterly drained by it. You're a mere Qi Refining cultivator who doesn't even bother figuring out how to cultivate yourself, yet your heart is aching for a Golden Core cultivator? When it came to her family of origin, Liang Ningwan desperately wanted to escape. Meanwhile, Chen Zhuo glanced around. Seeing that the classroom was empty, he lowered his voice. "Classmate Liang, you come from a Foundation Establishment family, so you're far more knowledgeable than an ordinary student like me. I wanted to ask about the pill toxins in 'waste pills.' Teacher Qin's explanation earlier was rather vague, and there are a few things I didn't quite grasp." Hearing this, Liang Ningwan's brow smoothed out slightly. So he was asking about cultivation-related matters. Liang Ningwan considered it briefly, then cut straight to the chase without any nonsense: "Modern immortal cultivation is very different from ancient cultivation." "The term 'pill toxin' actually refers to a specific phenomenon in modern cultivation, which is quite different from pill toxins in ancient cultivation methods." She continued explaining, "In the ancient cultivation world, due to poor technology and primitive methods, pills were never further refined, so every single one had some residual pill toxin." "Taking a few or a few dozen was fine, but if you took too many, the toxins would gradually accumulate, progressively damaging your spiritual qi circulation and making breakthroughs exceptionally difficult—to the point where you needed even more potent medicinal power to force your way through." "And after breaking through, the accumulated toxins would only become more severe. That's why in the ancient cultivation world, so many Qi Refining cultivators needed a Foundation Establishment Pill to break through to Foundation Establishment. Without overwhelming medicinal force to blast through the bottleneck, meridians congested with pill toxins simply couldn't withstand the spiritual qi impact during a breakthrough." Liang Ningwan paused, and seeing that Chen Zhuo was listening attentively, she went on, "In modern society, however, alchemy technology has progressively advanced. Most potent medicinal formulas have been converted into injectable forms, entering the body directly via subcutaneous injection to avoid the accumulation of pill toxins during gastrointestinal absorption. Therefore, qualified modern pills contain no pill toxins at all." "For instance, the Foundation Establishment Pill has now been refined into Foundation Establishment Fluid and Realm-Preserving Injections. Taiqing Pharmaceuticals, Shangqing Pharmaceuticals, Yuqing Pharmaceuticals, and even various pharmaceutical companies in the demonic path offer all kinds of styles and formulas of Foundation Establishment Fluid and Realm-Preserving Injections—at exorbitant prices, of course." "As for the remaining handmade pills crafted using ancient methods, most of them do contain pill toxins, though the toxin content varies." "Some are high, some are low. That's why students like us in the Appraisal Department are assigned to test pills. Through personal experience, we provide a pill toxin evaluation report to determine whether a pill is worth further refining. If the toxin level is too high, there's no point in refining it." Hearing this, Chen Zhuo experienced a sudden flash of insight. So that was how it worked! This information was immensely useful to him! After all, the Spirit Bead World was clearly an ancient cultivation world. If he hadn't learned about this and had rashly consumed pills from that other world, the accumulation of pill toxins would have been a disaster. However... A sudden idea struck Chen Zhuo. Could he sell waste pills to cultivators in the Spirit Bead World in exchange for physical spirit stones, and then convert those physical spirit stones into digital spirit stones to buy better equipment? Chen Zhuo was inwardly thrilled in an instant, but he maintained a serious facade and said to Liang Ningwan, "I see. Thanks." Liang Ningwan nodded and was just about to stand up and leave when Chen Zhuo suddenly shifted the topic, lowering his voice: "Classmate Liang, do you happen to have any spirit coins on hand?" Liang Ningwan: ??? What's that supposed to mean? You want to borrow money?! Hearing this, Liang Ningwan instantly went on guard, stepping back. "Classmate Chen, I don't lend money." Seeing her reaction, Chen Zhuo wasn't surprised. He merely smiled faintly, glanced around the classroom to confirm that no one was around, and whispered, "Classmate Liang, you've misunderstood. I'm not trying to borrow money. It's just..." "I've got goods!" Chen Zhuo murmured, "Interested in some immortal Dao resources? Ninety-nine point nine percent pure. The only reason I reached the second layer of Qi Refining so quickly is thanks to this stuff!" Liang Ningwan's look turned completely strange. Holy crap! You're dealing on the black market?! Ninety-nine point nine percent pure? Could it be smuggled black-market medicinal injections?! At that thought, Liang Ningwan's heart couldn't help pounding. She whispered, "This isn't the place to talk. Let's take this outside!" She had no objections to this sort of thing whatsoever. In the Immortal Mansion, there were three things a cultivator could never escape in life: Cultivation, loans, and black-market deals. Are you kidding? With the Immortal Mansion's prices so sky-high, how else were you supposed to make money without dabbling in the black market? That was just how the underground pharmaceutical scene worked! Many senior cultivators secretly took advantage of laboratory resources to brew extra batches of medicine. For instance, if an assignment required making a batch of ten-tenths pure injections, a senior cultivator's greed might kick in; they would skim off some materials and covertly whip up a two- or three-tenths pure injection on the side to sell on the black market. This sort of thing was commonplace and practically impossible to stamp out. And inside the Alchemy Academy, it was even more rampant! Even many medicinal pills with relatively low toxin contents were treated the same way. The pills distributed for testing were all waste pills. Yet what about the massive swarms of cultivators who couldn't afford injections? Were they just supposed to give up popping pills? How could that be possible! Our grand Immortal Mansion naturally had to thoroughly harvest everyone, from Qi Refining all the way to Nascent Soul. Therefore, pills with a toxin content under 5% were considered standard qualified pills circulating on the market, mainly consumed by Qi Refining and Foundation Establishment cultivators. These pills were also hot commodities among pharmaceutical representatives, who frequently smuggled defective goods that weren't too terrible—say, pills with a toxin content under 10%. Though they still carried toxins, if you took too many, you could simply get a shot of detoxification agent. Thus, Liang Ningwan's imagination immediately ran wild. She figured Chen Zhuo must have hooked up with some senior alchemy student who had been enrolled for at least a decade and was acting as a pharmaceutical rep for him. Well, well, well—if you had connections that went straight to heaven, why didn't you say so earlier? Delighted, Liang Ningwan promptly dragged Chen Zhuo straight into a nearby grove. Her eagerness left Chen Zhuo completely bewildered. Why does it feel like... Classmate Liang is even more familiar with this routine than I am? Once they reached the grove and confirmed they were outside the surveillance cameras' reach, Liang Ningwan's eyes sparkled, and she whispered, "Chen Zhuo, let me see your goods! Let's get one thing straight first: if the purity is too low, I'm not paying a cent!" Seeing this, Chen Zhuo immediately took out a stone shimmering with a faint spiritual glow and waved it in front of Liang Ningwan. At the sight of the stone, Liang Ningwan froze. Then, the words burst out of her mouth: "You're not a pharmaceutical rep? If you're just selling a spirit stone, why the hell did you have to make it sound so shady?!"