Chapter 32

Chapter 32: Left is Life, Right is Death

“Also… also poison?”

Bone Blade’s eyes widened, and his expression revealed despair. He wanted to say something, but the next moment his consciousness grew fuzzy and he passed out.

Just then, the fog surged forwards, quickly engulfing Xu Qing and Bone Blade.

Four hours later, at a crossroads at the edge of the forbidden area jungle, Bone Blade woke up to a sharp pain in his body and opened his eyes.

As his eyes opened, he looked around blankly for a second before jumping up nervously.

After finding no danger nearby and realizing Xu Qing was nowhere to be seen, Bone Blade breathed a sigh of relief. He immediately noticed that his face’s swelling had gone down, and his body seemed to be no different from before he was poisoned.

"I'm not dead?"

Bone Blade’s heart pounded, and he was filled with a sense of barely surviving a catastrophe. At the same time, he noticed a bamboo slip beside him that had a sentence written on it.

“The insurance has expired.”

Bone Blade had a complex feeling as he read these four words, and he felt a little ashamed of his previous trick. After a while, he sighed softly and turned towards the depths of the jungle, giving a deep bow.

"Thank you."

As he muttered these words, he turned and looked at the fork in the path up ahead. The right path would bring him back to the camp, and the left path would lead him away from the camp over to Pinewind City.

He didn’t sense anyone nearby, so he stood there silently for a long time.

“The camp owner is from the Vajra Sect, and the Vajra Sect’s sphere of influence covers all the nearby cities. Even if I escape to Pinewind City, it will still be difficult for me to avoid the camp owner’s fury, especially since his subordinates were killed.”

Bone Blade’s heart struggled with his rationality. He knew that the best chance for him to survive was to go to the camp owner and snitch on Kid. If he dumped everything onto Kid’s shoulders, the camp owner might let him off.

But doing this was against his conscience. After all, Kid had saved his life. However, after a moment of thought, his inner struggle transformed into decisiveness.

“In this chaotic world, my own survival is the most important thing. I can’t care so much about others!” With these thoughts, Bone Blade suppressed the guilt in his heart and decisively embarked on the right path toward the camp.

But as soon as he stepped in the direction of the camp, a cold light instantly penetrated his head from behind.

With a bang, Bone Blade’s whole body shook. Blood splattered everywhere, and his eyes widened as he fell to the ground, twitching. An approaching figure seemed to take up the whole world in his vision, until darkness consumed his sight forevermore.

He died in despair.

Xu Qing stood before Bone Blade’s corpse and silently removed the iron skewer.

In fact, he hadn’t left. Xu Qing had a deep understanding of human nature, so he had given Bone Blade a choice.

On the left was life.

On the right was death.

Bone Blade chose the right.

Xu Qing expressionlessly took out the corpse-scattering powder and sprinkled it on Bone Blade’s body. As the corpse melted into blood, Xu Qing calmly turned around and ran into the jungle depths.

As for the matter with the camp owner, he was too lazy to get involved.

Although there was still the bewilderment fog, it didn’t affect him too much as he ran through the jungle, so when dusk fell, Xu Qing had already arrived at the valley.

Almost at the moment he entered the valley, a faint wolf howl echoed over from the distance, which Xu Qing ignored.

He first carefully observed the area around the medicine house, making sure that the arrangement he had left behind last time hadn’t been touched. After ensuring that nothing had changed, he pushed open the door of the medicine house and stepped in.

The medicine house wasn’t large and didn’t have any beds to rest on. There were only small wooden lattices all around, and each lattice held a different medicinal herb or poisonous plant.

Some of these medicinal herbs and poisonous plants had already been processed, and some remained untouched. In this room, there were hundreds of these herbs packed densely together.

Xu Qing swept his gaze across them, heart filled with satisfaction.

He had been collecting these from the forbidden area ever since he started studying with Grandmaster Bai. Most of them were from the outer area, but a few of them had been taken from the depths of the jungle.

There were many poisonous plants and only a few medicinal herbs.

After checking them over, Xu Qing sat on the ground and began to ponder.

The White Pill recipe that Grandmaster Bai had given him was hidden in the daily lessons. Xu Qing had a habit of always taking notes and he also had a good memory, so he had figured it out long ago, but… He didn’t have all the herbs necessary to refine the White Pill.

“I can’t refine it by exactly following the pill recipe, but it should be possible to use other herbs to substitute for the missing ones according to their medicinal properties.”

Xu Qing didn’t know if this method was possible, but even if he failed, he could still increase his experience in pill refining.

With such thoughts, Xu Qing waved his right hand, and several different kinds of medicinal herbs flew out of the wooden lattices and landed in front of him.

He inspected them carefully and thought for awhile. Then he left the medicine house and went to its backyard. Here, besides all sorts of colorful flowers, there was also a small plot of land planted with many medicinal herbs.

These were all plants that could only survive for a limited time outside of the soil. Xu Qing moved them here, and as time passed, it became a small medicine field.

As Xu Qing came over to the small medicine field, he could clearly wolf howls not far away.

Xu Qing’s expression didn’t change. Ignoring the howls, he plucked three kinds of herbs from the medicine field before returning back to the medicine house.

Back inside the medicine house, he took out a stone bowl and began to process the herbs.

Whether it was plucking the leaves, extracting the juice, or removing the pollen, Xu Qing’s movements were extremely meticulous. Striving for exact precision, he mixed the herbs together, and they gradually fused into a black liquid inside the stone bowl.

“I’m missing five kinds of herbs…”

Xu Qing looked at the small lattices around him, and after some deliberation, he picked out a few and tried to create a satisfactory concoction according to the yin-yang dual extremes method.

But this sort of thing was extremely difficult. It was only after the whole night passed and dawn approached outside that Xu Qing barely managed to find a matching set of herbs.

Looking at the black liquid in the stone bowl, Xu Qing frowned.

This wasn’t quite the same as the White Pill in his mind, but at this point, he wasn’t willing to just give up.

So he gritted his teeth and took out a large batch of seven-leaf grass, mixing it in according to the correct ratio.

In the next moment, the medicinal liquid in the stone bowl began to boil. Its color showed signs of of lightening, but this only lasted for three breaths before it stopped.

When he looked at it, the color of the medicinal liquid in the stone bowl was no longer pitch-black, but a dark brown.

Xu Qing hesitated, touching his chest where he had buried the purple crystal. Considering his strong poison resistance, he felt secure. He raised his hand and carefully scooped out some of the medicinal paste, kneading it into a round pill shape. After forming the pill, he lifted it to his nose and sniffed it.

A strong stench wafted off of it. Xu Qing didn’t dare to put it in his mouth.

“Can it be eaten…” After hesitating, Xu Qing took the pill and walked out to the medicinal field.

As soon as he left the medicine house, he heard wolf howls again. Xu Qing walked past the medicine field straight to the place the howls were coming from.

Soon, he arrived at a large cage made of ironwood vines behind the medicine field.

Inside the cage was a thin black-scaled wolf lying down weakly.

When it saw Xu Qing, the black-scaled wolf immediately stood up. It bared its teeth and let out a low growl, but the terror in its eyes clearly showed how afraid it was.

Xu Qing had met this black-scaled wolf when he was picking herbs in the depths of the jungle. At that time, the wolf tried to attack him, but he captured it alive. Instead of killing it, he brought it back here to become a medicine-testing animal.

Seeing the brown-colored pill in Xu Qing’s hand, the black-scaled wolf trembled, retreating deeper into its cage.

But it was of no use. Xu Qing reached into the cage with his left hand, grabbed the black-scaled wolf by the neck, and dragged it to the front of the cage as it struggled helplessly.

Xu Qing gazed at the trembling black-scaled wolf expressionlessly. He took out the pill he had refined and pushed it against the wolf’s mouth.

The black-scaled wolf trembled more and more, but it finally succumbed under the threat of death, opening its mouth and obediently swallowing the pill.

Nothing happened for a while, but then the black-scaled wolf started emitting black smoke from all over its body. It vomited, and a big lump swelled up on its head. Soon, the lump burst, and the wolf collapsed, panting weakly.

Xu Qing frowned and threw a few pieces of meat into the cage. He returned to the medicine house and sat down to ponder.

“How could it be ineffective… The final outbreak of the pill’s effect was wrong. That wasn’t dissolving heterogeneity but exploding it.”

After a while, Xu Qing concluded that it should be due to the lack of a primer. He needed to add a medicinal primer to purify the effects of the rest of the herbs.

“For the primer... I can mix it with snake venom.”

With a wave of his hand, three different poisonous plants flew towards Xu Qing. After he squeezed out some drops of poison, the medicinal liquid in the stone bowl hissed and a puff of green smoke rose up.

Xu Qing noticed that this smoke contained a strong poison, so he immediately raised his right hand and created a gust of wind that dispersed the smoke. After that, he put the bowl of medicine aside to ferment.

As he waited, Xu Qing closed his eyes and crossed his legs to exercise his breathing.

The sky gradually darkened, and Xu Qing opened his eyes. Seeing that the medicinal liquid had become more viscous after fermenting, he scooped some out, rubbed it into a pill, and went back to the black-scaled wolf.

A moment later, a series of loud bangs rang out. Xu Qing returned to the medicine house with a sullen look on his face. He sat down again and continued to ponder, even taking out a real White Pill to study.

Just like that, six days passed by.

During these six days, Xu Qing immersed himself in researching the White Pill, seemingly forgetting everything else.

He had already used more than half of the medicinal herbs in the medicine house, and the medicinal field was almost empty. He had modified the medicinal liquid more than ten times by now.

As for that black-scaled wolf…

After Xu Qing tested the most recent medicinal liquid, the heterogeneity in its body instantly reached its limit, even triggering the surrounding heterogeneity to converge on it. The black-scaled wolf immediately collapsed and turned into a blood mist.

If it weren’t for Xu Qing’s shadow and its heterogeneity-devouring powers, even he might have been harmed by the sudden convergence of heterogeneity.

This event made Xu Qing feel a little discouraged.

But he knew that the White Pill wasn’t easy to refine. He didn’t even have all the proper herbs to make it, so it was only expected that he would run into such difficulties.

Despite this, his experience in mixing herbs had increased. At the same time, although he never succeeded in creating a White Pill, his most recent modification to the formula had a certain effect.

It was just that this effect was completely the opposite of the White Pill.

The White Pill dissolved heterogeneity, but Xu Qing’s most recent modified pill was able to quickly attract heterogeneity.

Right now, he was looking down at the stone bowl in front of him.

There was a thin azure membrane on the inner surface of the bowl which had been created by melting seven-leaf grass. Contained within the membrane was a pitch-black medicinal liquid.

The reason why Xu Qing had created the azure membrane was because without the membrane, the medicinal liquid would automatically attract rich heterogeneity without even needing to be swallowed.

This was half the reason the black-scaled wolf had died.

Xu Qing sighed and rubbed the center of his brows. Feeling the fluctuations of spiritual energy coming from his body, some of his frustration was relieved.

Although his research into the White Pill wasn’t going well, his cultivation base had grown very rapidly during the past few days. Now, he had already reached the peak of the fifth level of the Sea and Mountain Art.

“Tonight, I should be able to break through to the sixth level.”

Xu Qing took a deep breath and put aside the matter of the pills. With some anticipation in his eyes, he focused all his efforts on breaking through in his cultivation.

In this chaotic world, every time his strength increased, his ability to survive also increased.

That night, when the bright moon hung high in the sky, a loud rumble came from Xu Qing’s body.

This time, the rumbling was much louder than before. Xu Qing had originally thought his body had become completely pure, but at that moment, a large amount of impurities flowed out through his pores.

As an unprecedentedly clear feeling pervaded Xu Qing’s whole body, a roar came from behind him.

The Imp Shadow, which used to appear only when he punched, now appeared behind him. However, it had a bigger body and looked more ferocious than before, and below its waist there was no longer just one leg but two.

Even more astonishingly… this Imp Shadow actually had a faint horn on its head!

This wasn’t an Imp, this was the figure of a young Chief!

The moment it appeared, a silent roar spread from the young Chief to all directions, causing the cries of the many mutated beasts in the jungle to abruptly stop.

Xu Qing’s eyes slowly opened, and purple light filled the entire medicine house like a flash of purple lightning.

As the purple light filled the surroundings and the young chief behind him roared, Xu Qing’s expressionless face gave off an unprecedented pressure.

After a while, the purple light in Xu Qing’s eyes faded and the Chief Shadow behind him disappeared as he muttered.

"Sea and Mountain Art, sixth level!"

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