After finishing breakfast, Shi Yu lay down in the gaming pod filled with nutrient fluid. As she closed her eyes, the pod door slowly slid shut.
“Welcome to 《Xian Yuan》.” Accompanied by a beautiful female voice, a soft beam of light pierced the darkness.
Standing within the beam of light was a young girl whose upper face was covered by a mask. The face beneath the mask was identical to Shi Yu's; it was the very game character she had created.
Her consciousness linked with the character, and in the next instant, Shi Yu appeared in the game's main city.
Before the halo of light in front of her could even dissipate, she saw figures surging toward her from all directions.
“Fellow Daoist Shi is online!!”
“Master Shi, the Nine Underworlds dungeon opens next month. Could you help our guild refine a few bottles of Resurrection Pills? We'll provide the materials, and you can name your price!”
“Fellow Daoist Shi, an ancient array diagram dropped from a dungeon run yesterday, and I thought of sending it to you right away...”
“Master Shi...”
Shi Yu drew a sword from the void and used it to draw a circle around herself. “Do not cross the line.”
The crowd hurriedly took a step back in unison.
Little Fellow Daoist Shi had clearly grown up pampered and spoiled in the real world. She spoke with a natural bossiness, yet somehow, it wasn't annoying at all.
Seeing that everyone had stepped back, Shi Yu lifted her eyelids and slowly looked toward the sword cultivator player who had just mentioned the ancient array diagram.
Her achievements in auxiliary professions were astounding; she had studied forging, alchemy, arrays, and talismans. Every day, countless people would wait for her to log in, hoping to beg her to refine pills or craft equipment at the first opportunity.
However, the one thing Shi Yu did not lack was money. To move her to act, the reward had to be something she found appealing, such as rare spiritual plants, crafting materials, newly surfaced pill formulas, array diagrams, or various strange and unusual items.
Everyone present was well aware of her quirks, so the items they gathered were all rare and unusual.
Seeing Shi Yu look his way, the sword cultivator's face lit up with joy. He hurriedly pulled out a jade slip engraved with the array diagram and offered it to her.
Just as Shi Yu was about to take it, a saber cultivator beside her pulled something out of his mustard bag. Squeezing forward, he spoke at a rapid-fire pace, “Fellow Daoist Shi, please refine a Grade Nine Wangsheng Soul-Returning Pill. I will provide the materials and bear the risk of failure. Whether it succeeds or not, this item is yours.”
As soon as these words were spoken, the bustling main city fell dead silent.
A Grade Nine pill was something no one in the game had ever successfully refined. But if anyone was qualified to try, it was probably only Shi Yu.
Wondering what kind of reward could possibly warrant a request for a Grade Nine pill, the crowd focused their gazes on the item the saber cultivator had produced—a bell.
Quietly, the onlookers cast inspection spells one after another onto the bell, only to discover to their surprise that they couldn't detect a single attribute. Even its name was completely unknown.
The saber cultivator explained, “I picked up this bell in a secret realm. I took it to several appraisal masters at the treasure appraisal house, but none of them could identify its attributes. I thought Fellow Daoist Shi might like it, so I brought it here.”
There was a hint of embarrassment in his voice.
The crowd couldn't help but complain, “If you can't appraise its attributes, it's useless. Is something like this really worth Master Shi's effort to refine a Grade Nine pill?”
“Aren't you just making a fool out of the master?”
The saber cultivator himself was also feeling very guilty.
Amidst the clamor, Shi Yu scrutinized the bell, which flowed with fluorescence and glowed with a faint, translucent light. Under the astonished gazes of the crowd, she accepted it with a smile.
She liked these kinds of exquisite little things.
After playing with it for a moment, Shi Yu put the bell away under everyone's complicated stares and glanced at the saber cultivator. “I haven't attempted a Grade Nine pill before. The success rate is extremely low.”
Seeing that she had agreed, the saber cultivator was ecstatic. Suppressing his excitement, he nodded. “I'll bear the risk of failure.”
He then handed over the materials for refining the Grade Nine Wangsheng Soul-Returning Pill.
Shi Yu pulled a cauldron out of her mustard bag.
Seeing that Shi Yu had made her choice, the others felt a bit disappointed, but they didn't leave.
None of them had ever witnessed the birth of a Grade Nine pill, so they planned to stick around and watch the show.
It had been three years since the game launched. While other alchemists were still lingering at Grade Six and worrying about how to advance to Grade Seven, Shi Yu had already successfully refined Grade Eight pills dozens of times. Now, indeed, only Shi Yu was qualified to attempt this Grade Nine pill.
Shi Yu set up her cauldron and used some materials to lay down a barrier.
The onlookers' eyelids twitched. The material used to set up the barrier was clearly Nine Underworlds Dark Silver.
Unbelievably extravagant, everyone complained inwardly.
Shi Yu's use of Nine Underworlds Dark Silver to set up the barrier wasn't actually a waste of resources.
—The birth of a Grade Nine pill would trigger a phenomenon of heaven and earth.
She glanced up at the bright, cloudless sky. Circulating the spiritual energy within her body, she flicked her finger, and a wisp of red flame appeared at her fingertip.
The flame had an elegant shape, and some kind of bird seemed to faintly glide within it, trailing fiery red tail feathers.
The flame was flicked into the cauldron and suddenly surged upward. The faint cry of a phoenix echoed out, instantly re-energizing the players present.
“Is that shadow in the fire... a phoenix?”
“I heard that one of Fellow Daoist Shi's panel traits is 'Ancient Clan Descendant.' It looks like it's about to awaken.”
“Fellow Daoist Shi herself possesses a supreme-grade fire-attribute spiritual meridian, and the phoenix's natal flame, the Nirvana Pure Fire, is the king of all fires. In the future, Fellow Daoist Shi's alchemy skills will probably reach an even higher level.”
There were three traits in Shi Yu's character panel: Celestial Grace, Imperial Orphan, and Ancient Clan Descendant.
The phoenix now faintly visible in the flame was a sign of bloodline awakening from the “Ancient Clan Descendant” trait.
Unfortunately, she was still unable to fully unleash the flame's power.
One by one, spiritual plants were tossed into the cauldron for refining. The violent fluctuations generated when high-grade spiritual plants were refined lashed out at the surroundings, and Shi Yu was the one directly facing this impact.
Guiding every drop of medicinal liquid with her divine sense, she navigated through the violent energy and methodically continued the refining process.
The air within thirty feet of the cauldron became distorted from the intense heat. Fine beads of sweat seeped from Shi Yu's forehead and the tip of her nose, pooling together to hang from the edge of her mask.
As the crowd watched the trembling beads of sweat hanging precariously from the lower edge of the maple leaf mask on the upper half of her face, the topic of conversation naturally began to drift.
A female cultivator showed a look of envy. “Although she wears a mask and we can't see her true face, just looking at the lower half of her face, one can tell Fellow Daoist Shi is beautiful.”
Someone nearby couldn't help but gossip, “You all know the guild leader of the Vast Ocean Guild, right? I heard he comes from a wealthy family in real life and changes girlfriends like clothes. He claimed Fellow Daoist Shi was just putting on airs by wearing a mask because she was afraid to show her face, so he actually cornered her in a dungeon and snatched her mask off.”
Someone chimed in, “And then? What happened next?”
“Then, guess what? After he took off Fellow Daoist Shi's mask, he stood there dazed for a solid half-minute without even blinking. Then he hurriedly put the mask back on her. Afterward, he kept apologizing and sending gifts, following her around for over half a year. He really looked like a reformed playboy.”
The crowd listened to the gossip with great interest, which only made them more curious about what the face beneath the mask actually looked like.
“But it makes sense. Fellow Daoist Shi is the only player in the entire server to obtain the ‘Celestial Grace’ trait. Just how beautiful must she be for the system to award her that trait?”
...
As time passed, a rich pill fragrance wafted from the cauldron in front of Shi Yu, and a rapidly spinning pill embryo could be faintly seen inside.
The chatter and gossip of the crowd gradually faded away as they turned to watch with rapt attention.
Before they could even take a breath of this distant and wonderful fragrance, all of it was suddenly pulled back into the cauldron in an instant, forming a dense mist around the not-yet-fully-formed pill.
Within the mist formed by the pill fragrance, various phenomena frequently appeared. One moment, auspicious beasts were galloping; the next, mountains and rivers were shifting, constantly changing.
Around the tiny pill, a domain of its own seemed to have formed.
Everyone stared unblinkingly at the dreamlike scene inside the cauldron, only realizing something was wrong when the light around them began to grow increasingly dim.
When they looked up, the expressions on their faces changed drastically.
Without them realizing it, the cloudless, clear sky had been covered by dark clouds. The dark clouds rolled across the sky like liquid ink, with flashes of lightning occasionally weaving through them.
The entire main city was enveloped, and the thick, heavy clouds blanketed the entire sky, making the scene look like the end of the world.
“W-What's going on? Isn't the main city supposed to have clear skies all year round?”
“It looks like a thundercloud...”
“Fuck, is this a pill tribulation?!”
The crowd swallowed hard. In the game, they had heard of cultivators undergoing tribulations, but they had never heard of a pill needing to undergo one.
However, considering that the birth of high-grade pills indeed triggered special phenomena of heaven and earth, it was understandable that this highest-tier Grade Nine pill would draw down a lightning tribulation.
But did it really need to make such a massive scene?! Even the thunderclouds for someone undergoing a tribulation to reach the Mahayana Realm weren't this terrifying!
“The main city's restrictions sh-should be able to block this lightning tribulation, right?”
“Why do I feel like that's highly unlikely?”
With her sweat-dampened black hair clinging to the side of her face, Shi Yu's expression grew solemn—a rare sight. This was her first time refining a Grade Nine pill, and she hadn't expected it to cause such a massive commotion.
Shrouding the nearly formed pill in her vast divine sense, Shi Yu didn't dare to be distracted as she controlled the mist of pill fragrance, forcing it to retract into the pill embryo.
The mist of pill fragrance seemed to resist, but under the pressure of her divine sense, it slowly began to merge into the pill embryo. The uneven surfaces of the embryo were quickly filled in, and soon, a round, longan-sized pill that resembled azure glazed glass took shape.
“The final step...” Shi Yu coughed up a mouthful of blood, her cheeks and mask stained with a faint red glow from the firelight. She furrowed her beautiful brows, watching the constantly shifting phenomena within the mist of pill fragrance.
Auspicious beast patterns, mountain and river patterns... they finally began to imprint onto the pill, forming ancient, simple lines that contained the true meaning of the Great Dao.
And just as the pill was completed, the ink-dark clouds unleashed a world-destroying bolt of lightning.
Rate on N.U.
