"Eldest Senior Sister may look calm on the outside, but she's utterly fickle and mercurial! She just never shows it on her face. As the saying goes, accompanying a sovereign is like accompanying a tiger—staying by her side is no different from living with a beast!"
"She truly is a rare beauty, or rather the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, but you can never judge a book by its cover! Can you even imagine? Every meal, she forces me to gnaw on mountains of severed beast limbs and the corpses of spirit herbs! And in the dead of night, she submerges me entirely in water steeped in the remains of herbs, claiming it will strengthen my physique!"
"And another time, when I wanted to learn spatial divine abilities to make traveling easier, she instead taught me how to shrink so she could pinch me in her palm and toy with me between her hands!"
Lu Yang denounced Yun Zhi's countless atrocities, quickly striking a chord with the little Medicine Kings, who all felt deep sympathy for him.
The Ginseng Baby could not help but pipe up, "In that case, we can work together from the inside and outside! You be the mole inside, and we'll be your outside support—let's rebel against that she-devil right now!"
Startled, Lu Yang hurriedly talked it down. "Out of the question! We must plan this thoroughly. Eldest Senior Sister is the number one disciple of the Dao Seeking Sect, with an unfathomable cultivation. With just the few of us, we'd be vastly outmatched."
He offered a cool-headed analysis: "To be safe, we should wait until I cultivate to the Tribulation Transcendence stage. We'll have a much better chance then. When that time comes, we will strike together, mount a counterattack against Eldest Senior Sister, and succeed in one fell swoop!"
"When that day comes, whoever has a grudge can avenge it, and whoever suffered injustice can settle the score. Wouldn't that be much better?"
The little Medicine Kings felt that humans truly lived up to their reputation for thorough thinking. "I originally thought your intellect was slightly below mine, but who knew you had such a meticulous plan? It seems our intellects are evenly matched!"
With a common enemy, Lu Yang and the little Medicine Kings hit it off at once. Howling with excitement, they clamored about taking down the she-devil.
With Lu Yang joining their ranks, the lineup of little Medicine Kings was like a tiger taking wing. Victory was practically in the bag, effortless!
At the entrance of the Herb Garden, Old Ba peered through a water mirror, watched Lu Yang's inspiring plan unfold, and let out a long sigh.
Yun Zhi had specifically instructed him to keep an eye on Lu Yang's movements so no accidents would happen in the Herb Garden, and if any did, to inform her immediately.
Did this current situation count as an accident or not?
If he really told Yun Zhi, even if it wasn't an accident now, an "accident" would almost certainly happen soon.
"Why can't any of these youngsters just give an old man some peace of mind?"
...
"After talking so much, I haven't even shown you the spell I know." Lu Yang loosened up his limbs, activated the "Shrinking the Earth" spell, assumed a diving posture, and leaped headfirst into the ground.
The Enlightenment Tree King had a reaction similar to Yun Zhi's, marveling in wonder. In all its long years of life, it had never seen a spell like this.
On the surface, it resembled a spatial spell like Shrinking the Earth to Inches, yet in practice, it operated like an elemental Five Elements spell.
To cast an unprecedented spell at such a young age—he truly was a genius of magic.
By now, Lu Yang wielded "Shrinking the Earth" with complete ease. He could do underwater swimming, breaststroke, butterfly, freestyle—everything. Watching him pop out of the dirt from time to time and glide smoothly back in could easily fool someone into thinking the soil was water.
The Kirin Immortal Herb and the Flower of Time's Demise had finished their scuffle. When the Ginseng Baby and the Three-Leaf Star Herb recounted Lu Yang's tragic ordeal under the she-devil's clutches, it resonated deeply with them as well, stirring up fierce excitement.
"We Medicine Kings finally have an undercover agent planted among the humans!"
Perched on the trunk of the Enlightenment Tree King, the four little Medicine Kings clapped their hands, thinking Lu Yang was simply amazing.
Lu Yang let out an odd yelp, pushed off hard with his legs, and leaped high into the air. With his arms outstretched in a cross, he spun three thousand six hundred degrees midair before crashing face-first into the dirt with a thud—he had spun himself dizzy.
Showing off: failed.
In a frantic fluster, the little Medicine Kings rushed over to heave Lu Yang up.
For a cultivator in the Foundation Establishment stage, an injury like this was just a scratch and healed quickly.
Seeing that Lu Yang truly could loosen the soil, the little Medicine Kings produced a map of the Herb Garden and had him burrow through the ground in sequence.
"The herbs in this patch have very deep roots that reach three meters into the soil. Be careful not to touch their roots and cause any misunderstandings. I suggest burrowing and loosening the soil between three to five meters underground; that's the safe zone."
"The herbs in the other areas have roots between half a meter and two meters deep, so just dig below two meters."
Lu Yang asked curiously, "What happens if I touch their roots?"
The Ginseng Baby replied solemnly, "We'll think you have a foot fetish."
"???"
The Flower of Time's Demise chimed in, "There are so many perverts among you humans! They love sucking on plant foot skin with their wine, claiming it's delicious and pairs great with alcohol. You even cultivate and grow them on a massive scale just for that!"
"What plant are you talking about?"
"Peanuts."
Lu Yang found it rather difficult to follow the little Medicine Kings' train of thought.
Fortunately, he didn't dwell on the matter and began burrowing along the route the Ginseng Baby had mapped out.
The Ginseng Baby and the others had grown tired of watching the earthworm couple burrow. Finding a human tunneling through the dirt far more entertaining, they scurried behind Lu Yang, tagging closely in his wake.
The little Medicine Kings naturally possessed the ability to earth-escape, but they merged seamlessly into the ground, a stark contrast to Lu Yang's method of physically parting the dirt.
The soil where Lu Yang passed was soft and loose, just right for the little Medicine Kings.
Watching the little Medicine Kings having the time of their lives, the Enlightenment Tree King sighed. A tree couldn't burrow into the ground.
It looked up at the sun in the sky, felt the scorching heat, and sighed again. "Why did I have to grow so tall? I don't even have a patch of shade."
The Enlightenment Tree King felt that the world was full of malice toward it.
The little Medicine Kings spent the entire day tagging right along at Lu Yang's heels, playing around. On the way back, they frolicked and giggled, "Boil some water! Time for a bath!"
The Enlightenment Tree King had long since prepared a wooden tub filled with water fetched from the stream used to irrigate the herbs.
A burst of light appeared in the belly of the Kirin Immortal Herb, slowly crept upward, and finally reached its mouth, spouting Kirin True Fire.
The Kirin Immortal Herb looked just like a real kirin; no wonder the ancients, upon sighting it, insisted without a doubt that they had seen a true kirin.
The Kirin True Fire burned with extreme heat, bringing the water to a rolling, bubbling boil in the blink of an eye.
One by one, the little Medicine Kings leaped in, closing their eyes as they floated adrift on the water's surface.
Lu Yang found the sight strikingly familiar, like a scene he had witnessed in a kitchen.
He remembered: this was called a medicinal feast.
Though, a medicinal feast where the ingredients willingly jumped into the pot was a first.
Before long, a fragrant medicinal aroma wafted out, filling the air. Lu Yang took a breath and instantly felt invigorated, his cultivation showing signs of growth.
"Truly worthy of Medicine Kings. Their medicinal potency is downright terrifying."
Watching the little Medicine Kings splash and play in the water, Lu Yang offered a helpless smile.
He remembered Eldest Senior Sister saying that longevity was a poison, an agony beyond what normal mortals could bear, and that only personalities far outside the ordinary could endure the torment of eternal life.
The little Medicine Kings had lived through endless epochs and witnessed countless monumental events recorded in history. The people and deeds etched in those historical records had all faded away; only the little Medicine Kings remained alive.
Perhaps only a childlike temperament could allow the little Medicine Kings to live so long without collapsing.
It was just that they were far too easy to trick.
Chapter 36