Chapter 384: Exchanges

Chapter 384: Chapter 384: Exchanges

Only after the disciple from the Foreign Affairs Hall had left did Dong Min step forward.

"They actually managed to bring someone back from the Celestial Barrier Mountains?"

Bai Mo nodded and gave a vague explanation.

"He was someone who crossed the Celestial Barrier Mountains. I don’t know how he did it."

"He attacked and killed Sect Disciples like a madman before he was finally captured."

The two spoke no more on the matter. Dong Min handed a small cloth pouch to Bai Mo.

"It’s filled with the bones and blood of Demon Beasts. I personally selected them; they are all of the highest quality."

Bai Mo took the pouch, and Dong Min pulled a piece of amber from his robes.

"This is the jiao soul you requested, Junior Brother. The jiao was active not far from one of the sect’s routes. It lived in a deep lake, where it stirred up trouble and caused frequent disturbances."

"The senior brother who took the job was quite lucky. He eliminated the evil jiao and obtained its soul."

Bai Mo took the amber and held it up to the sun. He could faintly see a ferocious jiao soul darting about inside.

It was a soul-sealing technique he had never seen before.

After a moment’s thought, Bai Mo said:

"Five days. Come back in five days, Brother Dong."

"By then, I will have finished refining the Pill and will deliver it to you."

Dong Min smiled and bowed solemnly, his hands clasped.

"This concerns my young master’s cultivation, so I must trouble you, Junior Brother Bai. Please put your best effort into it."

After watching the two of them leave, Bai Mo returned to his stone house.

He took out the Black Prison’s register and recorded the new prisoner’s information. Pen down, he lit a fire to heat the Pill Furnace.

He fetched several medicinal ingredients and placed them in the Pill Furnace. Before long, a cauldron of bright yellow Pill Liquid had formed.

’For Bai Mo, this task wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t particularly difficult; he had already mapped out the entire process in his mind.’

He casually opened the cloth bag. A torrent of Demon Beast bones and blood spilled onto the floor, unleashing a metallic, putrid stench that filled the air.

The Black Prison was instantly thrown into an uproar. The prisoners grew agitated and restless.

"Blood... food..."

Screams mingled with frenzied roars and unsuppressible, maniacal laughter.

Some of the prisoners had been locked up so long they had ceased to resemble men.

Bai Mo paid them no mind, his gaze falling on the bloodstains splattered across the floor. He sighed.

’Why did I have to go and make the place look like a slaughterhouse?’

’Now I have to clean it up...’

He selectively gave the bones and blood a quick rinse before tossing them into the Pill Furnace one by one.

Even though the powerful Demon Beasts had been dead for some time, their flesh and blood still radiated heat.

Holding them in his hand felt as if they had just been freshly carved; they didn’t seem like parts of a dead creature at all.

The blood that continued to seep out was enveloped by the Pill Liquid in the furnace. Instead of dissolving, it condensed into a single, bright red mass.

Adding the flesh and blood of various Demon Beasts was a test of a Cultivator’s ability to maintain balance within the mixture.

Fortunately, this was an area where Bai Mo excelled.

The flesh and blood were refined of impurities inside the Pill Furnace, leaving only a dense, bloody, fist-sized clump.

Bai Mo tossed the jiao soul in. The amber melted away, and the evil jiao shot out like a bolt of lightning, plunging into the mass of blood and churning it violently.

The blood was the condensed essence of Demon Beasts, containing astonishing power. As it seared the jiao soul, it paradoxically ignited the soul’s ferocity even further.

BANG!

The lid of the furnace slammed shut.

The Pill would be complete once the jiao soul, in its struggle against the mass of blood, was finally permeated and enveloped by the surrounding Pill Liquid.

The Jiao Soul Pill. This Pill had once been popular in ancient times.

The physique it remolded was known back then as the Jiao-Demon Dao Body, and it was highly sought after by Body Refining Cultivators.

But as the paths of cultivation developed and changed over time, Pills like this gradually fell out of favor.

Leaving the Spirit Wood to burn beneath the Pill Furnace, Bai Mo went outside the stone house to fetch some Spiritual Water.

He rinsed the floor of the stone house with the Spiritual Water, sprinkled some medicinal powder, and then rinsed it again. Only then were the bloodstains finally gone.

But the foul, metallic stench in the house probably wouldn’t dissipate for some time.

Just as he was about to take a rest, he suddenly heard the clear cry of a goose from outside.

Bai Mo paused for a second, then hurried outside onto Mi Mountain.

A wild goose was circling in mid-air, seemingly waiting for him.

Bai Mo hadn’t seen the goose since the Sect Disciples had been mobilized for the expedition into the Celestial Barrier Mountains.

And now, it had finally returned.

"Heh, Brother Yan, it’s been a while."

Bai Mo stepped forward and fed it a Feeding Pill.

The goose ate the Feeding Pill, but then turned its gaze toward the green vegetation on the mountain.

Bai Mo followed its gaze and instantly understood.

Some of the plants on the mountain had indeed borne fruit.

"You can’t eat those. Many of them are quite poisonous. Don’t go pecking at things randomly, Brother Yan..."

As expected of a creature trained by the Foreign Affairs Hall, the goose immediately averted its gaze as soon as Bai Mo finished speaking.

He could even see a faint hint of apprehension in its eyes.

Bai Mo took out a letter and held it out.

"Please deliver this to Immortal Arrival City..."

In the letter, Bai Mo described the sect’s activities in the Celestial Barrier Mountains and told the staff at his shop to be on the lookout.

Most importantly, he reminded Lanshan and the others not to let a moment of carelessness get them killed in the mountains.

With a flick of its wing, the goose took Bai Mo’s letter, and in its place, an exquisitely crafted envelope appeared in Bai Mo’s hand.

Only then did the goose spread its wings and depart.

This time, however, it wasn’t drawn in by the alluring fragrances on the mountain, and it flew off, keeping its distance.

Deep within the mountain, several vines bearing massive flowers quietly retracted their thorny, barbed tendrils.

’This is...’

Bai Mo opened the envelope and took out the letter. The paper felt soft yet resilient in his hand—it was of excellent quality.

After reading it, he realized it was a letter from Baitouweng.

The Pill Sect elder, whom he had met in Celestial Mountain City, had apparently only just returned home when he sent the letter.

The old man had exchanged many ideas with his peers in Celestial Mountain City, and the journey back had brought him many new insights.

Upon his return, his disciples had run into a problem concerning a method of infusing Qi into a Pill during Alchemy, which prompted him to write to Bai Mo.

At first, Bai Mo thought it must be some urgent matter, but it turned out one of Baitouweng’s disciples was trying to refine a Pill as part of a marriage proposal. The process was now stalled, as the disciple couldn’t get the qi to infuse into the Pill.

Bai Mo pondered for a moment. He already had an answer in mind.

’This isn’t a very important matter. It’s probably just an excuse to start a correspondence.’

Bai Mo recalled their time together. The man was an interesting fellow, a fellow Daoist who had been immersed in the Alchemy Dao his entire life, and his experience was astonishingly deep.

’Hmm, we could certainly correspond more in the future.’

Back in the stone house, Bai Mo picked up his brush and, in just a few words, answered the question from the letter.

Afterward, he added his own thoughts—some ideas that had come to him while he was refining the Jiao Soul Pill.

He wrote that for a violent Pill like the Jiao Soul Pill, an ordinary disciple might be able to handle it, but a Cultivator with a more delicate constitution probably couldn’t.

To improve it, it would be best to use a water-refinement method. This would not only suppress the jiao soul’s ferocity but also soften the Pill’s medicinal effects.

However, since the jiao’s nature is aligned with water, refining it with water would be like returning a fish to the sea. He feared there would be a difficult struggle to control it...

Bai Mo had his own ideas about using softness to overcome hardness in this way, but none of them were perfect.

Baitouweng’s alchemy techniques were gentle; he would likely have a different perspective.

The tip of his brush paused. Bai Mo exhaled, and the ink on the page dried instantly.

He just had to wait for the goose to return, and then he could send the letter.

BANG!

Just as he finished folding the letter and putting it away, the Pill Furnace beside him trembled violently.

Bai Mo was unconcerned. He guessed this was the last burst of the jiao soul’s remaining power. Now it was just a matter of seeing how long it could hold on.

The final quality of the Jiao Soul Pill would be determined by this struggle.