“Yao Bi: This is the third update. I’ve already posted thirteen thousand characters today. I’ve finally gotten broadband set up back home. I can update on schedule starting tomorrow. Don’t hoard all your monthly votes, everyone! Give me some momentum to explode!”
Long Xuechan giggled, “So what if I figured it out? Can I still escape it? The Dragon Desire Spirit Yang Pill is a secret medicine of my Dragon Spirit Clan, invented specifically to enhance the fertility rate of our people. Only this method can resolve it. At that time, of course, I could only pretend not to know to avoid embarrassment. Should I have told him, ‘Little Brother Nie Kong, hurry up and work; we’re both afflicted with a potent aphrodisiac’?”
Long Meixian was choked with anger, raging, “But you can’t act so unconcerned, as if nothing happened!”
“What do you want me to do?” Long Xuechan asked playfully.
“What do I want?”
Long Meixian let out a cold huff. “We are both spirit bodies. It took us nine deaths and one life to escape the fate of spirit bodies always serving as stepping stones for others. We cultivated our Dragon Spirit Clan’s ‘Heart Vision’ and gained our current cultivation level. And now? I’ve lost so much formless spiritual power.”
“If it were just the loss of formless spiritual power, that would be fine. At most, it would just take some time to cultivate it back. If we had planted the Dragon Spirit Clan’s ‘Secret Rune Seal’ inside our bodies beforehand,” that would also have been acceptable; at the very least, the ‘Secret Rune Seal’ would have been branded into his soul, and our sacrifice would have been worthwhile. But now, without the ‘Secret Rune Seal,’ yet possessing the Dragon Spirit bloodline—do you know what this means?”
By the final words, Long Meixian was grinding her teeth in fury.
Long Xuechan slowly and charmingly giggled, “Of course I know. It means that the two of us and he have imprinted the ‘Dragon Couple’s Love Seal’—a mark only Dragon Spirit spouses possess—onto each other’s souls. Meixian, stay calm, stay calm. It’s just a soul imprint, what’s the big deal?”
“What’s the big deal? You say it so easily.”
Long Meixian’s eyebrows shot up, furious and exasperated. “Do you realize that from now on, whenever he wants to do that with us, he can do it? We won’t even have any room to resist!” As she spoke, a trace of blush appeared on her pale face from sheer anger.
Long Xuechan burst into laughter. “The reverse is also true! Whenever we want it, we can demand it of him anytime, anywhere. This is the soul mark between Dragon Spirit spouses; it’s perfectly fair! Besides, if neither you nor I mention it, how would he ever detect the existence of the ‘Dragon Couple’s Love Seal’?”
Her beautiful eyes darted around, and Long Xuechan suddenly cackled, “Meixian, I have a brilliant idea. Why don’t we plant the ‘Secret Rune Seal’ in ourselves right now, and then call him over? If we just repeat what we did yesterday, won’t your plan succeed?”
Long Meixian laughed in anger. “Xuechan, are you joking with your sister? Don’t you know that with this ‘Dragon Couple’s Love Seal’ already placed, it’s impossible to plant the ‘Secret Rune Seal’ in his soul anymore? Forget us; even the Dragon Ting sisters wouldn't be able to do it.”
Long Xuechan gasped, “Aiya,” and giggled, “How could I forget that?”
Forget? I think you said that on purpose! Long Meixian gave Long Xuechan a sidelong glance, then narrowed her eyes. Her high chest heaved violently, betraying her agitated state.
Long Xuechan patted Long Meixian’s shoulder and sighed softly. “Meixian, stop overthinking. It’s done now. What more can we do? Let’s consider this matter closed. We schemed against him, only to end up in this predicament. Truly, cleverness has betrayed us. We deserve this retribution.”
Long Meixian was silent for a long moment, then her eyes suddenly snapped open, two beams of cold light flashing from her beautiful eyes. She gritted her teeth, “No. I must kill him!”
Long Xuechan jumped in fright. “Meixian, don’t do anything rash.”
Long Meixian, her exquisite face grim, squeezed out a few icy syllables from between her teeth. “If I don’t kill him, I cannot quell the hatred in my heart!”
“Calm down, calm down!”
Long Xuechan quickly interjected, “Meixian, don’t forget, he is a Wood Spirit Master, and the only Alchemist we’ve discovered so far with mutated wood spiritual power. Without him, achieving that thing in the future will be even harder. We are Elders of the Dragon Spirit Clan; we must think for the good of the clan.”
“You—”
Long Meixian was utterly stifled. That last sentence was what she usually used to lecture her younger sister, Cui Mei, but she never expected her sister to use it on her today.
Long Xuechan winked playfully, “Am I wrong?”
“Even if you aren’t wrong? I… I…”
Long Meixian resorted to being unreasonable, about to declare, “I still have to kill him!” when Long Xuechan suddenly sighed, “Hee-hee,” and said with a charming smile, “Although yesterday’s events are a bit hazy, some things are still vividly etched in my memory. I remember when I was having a wonderful time playing with little brother Nie Kong, there was a knowledgeable…”
“Enough!”
Long Meixian’s pretty face flushed crimson with shame and annoyance. “If I don’t kill him, I won’t kill him! I’ve been too stagnant lately and feel like taking a trip deep into the Heavenly Wolf Mountain Range. If anything comes up at the Red Chamber, you deal with it yourself.”
Sensing Long Xuechan’s teasing gaze, Long Meixian felt that her authority had been completely shattered by yesterday’s events; she could no longer maintain that elegant and indifferent demeanor.
…Six, she flashed out through the open door of the secret chamber, her figure quite hurried.
“Hee-hee, hee-hee…”
Long Xuechan held her belly and chuckled, her crisp, sweet, and charming voice echoing in the secret chamber.
A moment later, Long Xuechan’s smile faded, replaced by a look of deep thought. She murmured to herself, “It seems that the Dragon Desire Spirit Yang Pill, which was about to mature, truly transformed into a colorless and odorless medicinal vapor at the last moment. That’s how the three of us unconsciously absorbed its potency and committed those absurd acts.”
“It’s just, why did the Dragon Desire Spirit Yang Pill change? Could it be because he was startled and his elemental fire surged? That doesn’t seem right either; at the critical moment of pill refinement, any fluctuation in elemental fire caused by a disturbance should lead to failure. Could it be an excessively high degree of medicinal potency fusion?”
After contemplating for a long time, Long Xuechan couldn’t find an answer that convinced her. She glanced at the messy floor and couldn’t help but sigh wistfully, “Little scoundrel, you really got away with it. My sister and Meixian worked hard to cultivate that formless spiritual power, and you absorbed nearly half of it in one go. I suppose your cultivation has increased greatly?”
Nie Kong had questioned Long Ting and Long Ting for quite a while but hadn’t obtained any valuable information. He finally let them go prepare dinner.
After lying by the headboard for a while, Nie Kong suddenly sat up. He took out a brush, ink, paper, and inkstone from the drawer and began writing rapidly: Night Blue Fragrance one liang, Thorn Hook Grass three qian, Golden Silk Harmonious Vine eight qian, Fine-Leaved Sinking Dragon Pearl two qian, Phoenix Eye Fruit seven qian, Pearl Bellflower six qian…
Nineteen medicinal ingredients—the exact formula from yesterday’s refinement! After finishing the writing, Nie Kong put down the brush and began meticulously studying the ingredients one by one.
This formula was given by Long Xuechan, and he had helped with the refinement, so Nie Kong hadn't paid attention to the specific medicinal properties yesterday. The reason he was interested now was that Nie Kong suspected the problem still lay in the medicine he had refined. Since the cauldron hadn’t exploded and there were no dregs inside, the medicine he was supposed to refine had likely succeeded, strangely transforming into a colorless, odorless gaseous form and diffusing into the air.
Out of the nineteen ingredients, Nie Kong didn’t recognize five, but having refined them, he had some understanding of their properties. As he examined them one by one, Nie Kong sensed that something was amiss. He then deduced the order in which the medicines were added yesterday and realized that what he had refined was indeed an aphrodisiac. If this medicine were successfully refined, it would immediately integrate into the body and take effect upon ingestion.
If vitality further evolved from within the medicine, the speed at which the potency integrated into the body would likely be even faster, manifesting its effects so quickly that no trace could be found. No wonder the little guy had tried to check twice yesterday and failed, finding no residual medicinal power.
This meant that the third-grade medicine had definitely been successfully refined! But why did it turn into gas and spread throughout the secret chamber at the moment the cauldron was opened?
“Ben Xiang.”
Nie Kong shifted his attention to the little guy. Xiangxiang’s sensitivity to medicinal power was even greater than his own, so perhaps it knew something.
“Ah… ya…”
Sensing Nie Kong’s thoughts, the little guy stuttered, then bent its stalk, wrapping the two uppermost leaves around its tiny flower bud. It curled up inside the Yaochi Acupoint and cautiously extended a rootlet to touch Nie Kong’s acupoint.
“You don’t know? You definitely know!”
The moment Nie Kong saw the little guy’s movement, he knew there was something. Its reaction was clearly one of guilt, so he chuckled. A thought was transmitted: “Xiangxiang, I’ll count to three. If you don’t confess by then, I’ll take the ‘Fire Tree Silver Flower’ out of the pet pack and finish it off.”
“Ah ya, bah!”
Before Nie Kong could count, the little guy bounced out of the Yaochi Acupoint. Two streams of green rushed into the pet pack, coiling around the pot of ‘Fire Tree Silver Flower,’ afraid Nie Kong would really move it. Only then did it start tickling Nie Kong’s side with its rootlet in a coquettish manner.
“Speak!”
Nie Kong’s resolve didn’t waver in the slightest. He said sternly, “Otherwise, your Master will still finish off the ‘Fire Tree Silver Flower’ and cut off your food source!”
“Ah ya ya…”
The little guy’s leaves drooped, and it cried out a few times in dejection.
An image flashed in Nie Kong’s mind. It turned out that the moment he was startled, the little guy had secretly released a stream of its innate medicinal power. The medicinal liquid that had already condensed into a ball instantly burst open, causing the mist-like liquid to be vaporized into a colorless, odorless gas by the suddenly enhanced elemental fire. Although the form was wrong, the medicine had been preserved after all. The little guy thought it had done a good deed, but it realized it had caused trouble only after sensing the strange situation inside Nie Kong’s body! It was likely scared Nie Kong would be angry, which is why it hadn't revealed this matter, but Nie Kong had discovered it after all.
“You little thing!” Nie Kong was torn between laughter and tears. The moment the little guy used its innate medicinal power was precisely when his mind trembled, causing him to fail to notice. Now he didn’t know whether to praise Xiangxiang or blame it. If it hadn’t preserved the medicine, he wouldn’t have been incited to lust, and under that haze, his cultivation naturally wouldn’t have jumped from Spirit Channeling Ninth Grade all the way to Fusion Spirit Second Grade without him realizing it!
This was truly a tangled mess!