Gurgle…
Bloop, bloop…
The medicinal soup inside Xu Xiaoshou’s enormous bathtub continued to bubble and condense as he casually glanced at the young girl to his side.
Mu Zixi was a little anxious. It was already the fourth stove she used for making the red gold pills. It now seemed like the art of condensing pills was not so easy to learn.
Even though she was gifted and had an excellent understanding of the medicinal properties of herbs and plants, she had failed three times already.
The reason…?
“Xu Xiaoshou, are you boiling a soup?” Mu Zixi couldn’t help but ask when she glanced at his bathtub where the liquid kept on simmering.
Had she been in a different situation, she wouldn’t have been so easily discouraged even after thirty times or even three hundred times, let alone merely three failures.
But this time, it was Xu Xiaoshou who was cultivating the magic pills against her. And the way he went about his preparation vastly differed from her.
It appeared he did not need to even look after the stove. He let the infernal heavens burn under the stove while staring at her with one of his hands supporting his chin.
Damn, is the flame so powerful?
Mu Zixi felt envious!
She also wanted to make the magic pills the way he did, instead of getting covered in soot and dust. Worst of all, she had no choice but to continue being high-spirited.
Xu Xiaoshou smiled when he heard the question. He dropped the hand supporting his chin and said, “You are right. I’ve invented this method of boiling soup to make the magic pills. Old man, do you want to have a look as well?”
Elder Sang remained silent as he continued to observe with care.
At first, he was not sure what the lad was up to, thinking he was just fooling around. Yet, after studying his method for a while…
The medicinal soup was being reduced as it kept on flowing back and forth, and there appeared to be very little loss of medicinal properties.
This method of making the magic pills—if it would succeed—would be a historic breakthrough in the history of cultivating magic pills!
“Boiling soup…”
Thinking of its name, Elder Sang felt like rolling his eyes upward.
However, even though the names given by Xu Xiaoshou sounded ridiculous—like the names of the large bathtub and small bathtub—those names were rather appropriate for those items!
It was simply impossible not to agree with him!
Since Elder Sang had said nothing, Xu Xiaoshou paid no more attention to him. He knew that the finished product was more important.
So far, all the major spiritual liquids he had made preserved their high quality with minimal loss of efficacy.
Of course, losing medicinal properties was taken a little more seriously than the production process of the magic pills.
Whether there is a better way to preserve the medicinal properties depends on how Elder Sang ultimately judged his finished product later.
All three of them were silent. Mu Zixi began to put more effort in her process discreetly.
Noticing that Xu Xiaoshou had spent so much time on one stove of magic pills, she couldn’t help feeling she had an advantage over him.
While the way he cultivated the magic pills was effortless, it was a rather time-consuming process.
For even if Xu Xiaoshou succeeded in making the magic pills, he was still going to lose if the medicinal power of his pills could not offset the time wasted.
“I have a chance to win!”
After calming herself down, Mu Zixi lived up to her reputation as a genius in cultivating magic pills. She learned from her two previous failures and finally succeeded in producing the pills.
Several black pills slipped out of the small bathtub. Mu Zixi didn’t even bother checking all of them. She picked out the only bright one among them.
Though it was one size smaller and looked withered, the medicinal fragrance it emitted showed that it was indeed a red gold pill!
“I’ve succeeded!”
The little girl looked excited, fiddling with the small bean in her hand affectionately.
Xu Xiaoshou was a little surprised and asked, “How many stoves?”
“I’ve succeeded with the ninth stove!” Mu Zixi said excitedly.
“That’s pretty good!”
Xu Xiaoshou gave her a heartfelt compliment. He remembered he had failed more than a hundred times when he first made the magic pills!
And he had always failed when he tried using the method of the infernal heavens to make the magic pills. Well, a failure is a failure, so he didn’t feel like dwelling on it any further.
Besides, it was quite normal to waste a thousand stoves attempting to cultivate the magic pills.
He thought it was quite a feat that this little girl can make the magic pills within ten stoves!
Mu Zixi handed the malnourished-looking red gold pill to Elder Sang, hoping to get praise from him. Having examined it, Elder Sang couldn’t help but show a smile on his old face.
“Not bad!”
Although it was smaller by one size, it was not too bad to get this kind of result after the first trial. It was indeed pretty good.
After being praised, the little girl couldn’t stay in her seat any longer. She walked around Xu Xiaoshou as she held her twin ponytails in her hands.
“Xiaoshou, your speed is not good. Even if you can cultivate the magic pills in the end, the time you used up making them is enough for others to make ten stoves of the magic pills. How can you compete with them?”
Xu Xiaoshou cocked an eyebrow, thinking to himself, ‘Isn’t this little girl becoming a little arrogant now?’
“The raisin-sized pills you’ve cultivated are not such a big deal. Forget the ten stoves, even a hundred stoves won’t impress me. Do you intend to fill your stomach with them?” he retorted.
Mu Zixi wrinkled her nose and was infuriated.
Raisins?
Fill my stomach?
“Ahh!”
She shrieked into Xu Xiaoshou’s ear, and it even startled Elder Sang.
But Xu Xiaoshou did not react, for he was aware of what she was doing behind his back. It was impossible to interrupt his process of cultivating the magic pills.
With the last drop of medicinal liquid flowing back into the bathtub, the “red gold liquid” finally took shape. As Xu Xiaoshou extended his hand to guide it, a golden-red jelly the size of a fingernail flew out.
When that happened, the two onlookers were astonished.
“What is it?”
Mu Zixi puffed up her cheeks twice and finally burst out laughing, holding her belly with her hands.
“Xu Xiaoshou, are you kidding me? Having boiled the soup for so long, I thought you should be able to produce a magic pill. But in the end, you only produced…”
“Snot?”
Xu Xiaoshou glared at her and snapped, “Your snot looks like this?”
“Haha, haha…”
: Ridiculed, passive point, +
Elder Sang, however, picked up the snot and licked it. His facial expression changed instantly, thinking that Xu Xiaoshou was indeed an extraordinary person.
“You’ve invented it yourself?”
“Mm.”
After getting an affirmative answer, Elder Sang couldn’t remain still.
He paced back and forth and licked the snot one more time. It seemed to have a familiar taste. In the end, he could only lift his conical hat and scratch his head.
Xu Xiaoshou gave Elder Sang a quizzical stare.
What was the meaning of this reaction?
Mu Zixi’s heart skipped a beat when she witnessed the scene, and she asked, “This snot of yours, can it…?”
“Red gold liquid!” Xu Xiaoshou glared at her. “It has a name!”
“Oh, okay. So this red gold liquid of yours, can it really be eaten?”
“What nonsense!” Xu Xiaoshou responded in exasperation.
Then, he took out a jar of honey from his ring and said, “Do you want to have a taste of it?”
Mu Zixi felt disgusted. Yet the thing looked rather familiar.
She was shocked and suddenly pulled out a jar of honey from her ring and asked, “Is this the same stuff?”
It stunned Xu Xiaoshou when he saw the half-emptied jar of honey, wondering why she had the same item.
Mu Zixi’s face turned white.
This was the only item she found in the ring that Xu Xiaoshou swapped with her for the sealing ring in the Tianxuan Gate.
The problem was she had already eaten half of it as she couldn’t help herself!
Does this mean that the snot…
“Vomit.”
Xu Xiaoshou found it amusing and said, “What happened to the other half of the jar? It turns out that you have already eaten the snot a while ago. Don’t tell me you picked it off!”
“Shut up!”
“Well, are you still going to call it snot?”
“Shut up!”
“No, I’m not going to. Snot, snot, snot, snot…”
“Vomit.”
The retching sound from the rear interrupted the duo’s bickering, and they were surprised to hear it.
Xu Xiaoshou turned around in shock and found that a puddle of yellow and white stuff appeared in front of Elder Sang.
As Xu Xiaoshou moved his eyes upward, he saw a trace of crystal liquid drooling from the corner of Elder Sang’s mouth. And his face had turned green from anger.
“This…”
Elder Sang thought he could no longer look straight at this sticky droplet on his hand. He wiped the corner of his mouth and growled, “You two, stop…”
“Vomit!”
But the moment Mu Zi Shi saw the bile in front of Elder Sang, she couldn’t hold back any longer and vomited as well.
Just as Elder Sang was about to chide the kids for quarreling, he choked on his words. He threw up again.
Xu Xiaoshou jumped aside as quickly as he could, watching the two of them facing each other and puking in turn.
“Vomit.”
“Vomit.”
“…”