With a final, satisfied swipe of her cloth, Meixiu set the gleaming cauldron aside. It sparkled under the sun, a testament to her thoroughness. Tucking Mr. Bunbun more securely under her arm, she didn't just walk toward Elder Tao's corner.
She practically floated, her steps a light, skipping dance that was entirely out of place in the hallowed, serious atmosphere of the alchemy courtyard.
She came to a definitive stop before him, a bubble of vibrant energy disrupting the quiet intensity of his space. The other disciples, who had been cautiously presenting their own modest successes and failures, fell completely silent.
Their complex stares—a brew of awe, resentment, and sheer curiosity—were entirely lost on her. She placed her hands on her hips, striking a pose of mock-officialdom.
"Elder Tao~!" Her voice was a melodic chime, slicing through the hushed air. "A promise is a promise! I've made a hundred of those High-Tier 3 pills, just like you said."
She held up a single, delicate finger, her expression shifting to one of playful precision. "Well... ninety-eight were absolutely perfect, and two were just a tiny, little bit cloudy. You could barely tell!"
"So," she concluded, beaming at him, "it's time for you to teach me a Peak Tier 3 pill! That's the real next step to becoming a proper Tier 4 alchemist, right?"
A collective, almost imperceptible intake of breath came from the surrounding disciples. A hundred High-Tier 3 pills. In a handful of days. The claim was so astronomical it bordered on blasphemy.
The spiritual energy alone would drain a seasoned disciple for a month. The flawless control required for each one was the stuff of legends. They looked from her cheerful, unassuming face to the immovable form of their Elder, their minds reeling.
Elder Tao did not look up. His head remained bowed over his ledger, his wide-brimmed hat a shield against the world. But the movement of his ink-stained hand, which had been steadily recording notes, froze.
The tip of his brush hovered a hair's breadth above the page.
"A hundred," he repeated. The words were dry, rasping like dead leaves scraped across stone. "In a few days."
Slowly, with a gravity that made the very air feel thick, he lifted his head. The shadow cast by his hat deepened, but from within that darkness, two points of focused intensity gleamed as he peered at her.
"How?" The word was a stark, single note of pure, undiluted demand. "The 'Fading Sunset Root'... it turns to worthless ash if the spiritual flame wavers for the span of a single heartbeat past the seventh minute."
He let the silence press down. "The margin for error... is thinner than a ghost's sigh."
He leaned forward, just a fraction, but it felt like a mountain shifting. "How," he demanded again, his voice dropping, "did you not fail at least thirty times?"
This was not the grumbling of a tired teacher. Logically, he knew he should no longer be surprised by the monster he had accepted as a disciple.
His first two direct disciples had been talented, prodigies who had soared to legendary heights. But they had been comprehensible. They had followed the rules, even as they bent them.
She treated the rules as mere suggestions, and the art itself as a playful pastime. This was the core of his being, a master who had dedicated centuries to the sacred, rigid laws of alchemy, confronting something that defied them all.
He was not just asking her; he was demanding an answer from the heavens themselves for sending him such an impossible creature. The disciples watched, utterly captivated, their own questions forgotten in the face of this profound, bewildered confrontation.
Meixiu puffed her cheeks out in a show of mild offense, her brows drawing together. She held Mr. Bunbun up, presenting the plush rabbit to Elder Tao as if calling upon a key witness for her defense.
"It's not my fault!" she insisted, her voice tinged with genuine frustration. "The ingredients for those two were slightly off. The Spirit-Siphon Grass was harvested a day too early, I could taste the greenness in it! If everything had been perfect, I'd have a hundred perfect pills right now!"
She lowered the rabbit, clutching him to her chest. Her expression shifted, the momentary irritation replaced by a blazing, earnest light. Her eyes took on a determined, starry gleam.
"And of course I have to hurry! I want to become THE best in making pills and everything cooking-related..." she declared, her voice swelling with grand ambition, "...of this world!"
Elder Tao's hand, which had just begun to move his brush again, paused. He still did not look up, but his voice carried a new, dry, almost idle curiosity that cut through her passion.
"Hmph." The sound was like a stone dropping into a deep well. "'Of this world'?" he echoed, his tone laced with a subtle, probing edge. "Are you planning to cook for the heavens and the hells as well, girl? Is my humble peak not enough to contain your ambition?"
Meixiu's eyes went wide for a split second, a flash of pure panic visible before she mastered it. A forced, tinkling laugh escaped her, sounding brittle in the quiet courtyard.
"Oops~! Ahem..." she stammered, her cheeks flushing faintly. "I-I mean, I want to master all pills and cooking! In the whole... uh... sect! Yes, the sect! Nothing else!"
She waved a hand dismissively, as if shooing away her own clumsy words.
Elder Tao let out a short, dismissive grunt. The brief spark of curiosity in him seemed to die out as quickly as it had ignited, already losing interest in her bizarre phrasing and theatrical recovery.
"Focus on the world in front of your cauldron first," he stated, his voice flat and final. "Ambition is a spice; too much, and you ruin the broth."
With that, he closed his ledger with a definitive, resonant thump. The sound echoed in the sudden stillness, a heavy punctuation to his words. He did not send her away, but the weight of his gaze from beneath his hat seemed to settle upon her once more, a silent demand for her to process the lesson just given.
For a long moment, the only sound was the faint rustle of leaves in the herb garden. Then, Elder Tao moved. He stood slowly, his ancient joints emitting soft, creaking whispers like the settling of an old tree. His hidden gaze swept from Meixiu's expectant face to her meticulously cleaned and polished stone table.
He gave a single, resigned nod. It was a gesture that carried the weight of centuries of tradition bending before an unstoppable, natural force.
"Fine," he conceded, his voice a low rumble. "A promise is a promise." He took a step toward her, the air around him thickening with palpable spiritual pressure. "But this is not a game. The energy contained within a Peak Tier 3 pill is a caged beast. It can maim a fool for life, or worse."
A visible wave of stunned disbelief rippled through the assembled disciples. For most of them, who had dedicated years of grueling, meticulous study just to reach the early stages of Tier 4 or Tier 5 alchemy, her demand to leap directly into Peak Tier 3 refinement after a mere handful of days was nothing short of blasphemy. It was an insult to the very art they revered. Yet, here was the Tea Tyrant himself, not just acknowledging her, but agreeing to guide her.
His movement was the cue they had been unconsciously waiting for. A sudden, shuffling commotion broke out.
The majority—about four or five disciples—immediately scrambled from their formal seats. They practically tripped over each other in their haste, abandoning all decorum to sit on the sun-warmed stone ground, forming a tight, eager semi-circle around Meixiu's stone table. Their faces were etched with rapt, almost desperate attention. This was a priceless, unplanned lecture from a legendary master, a glimpse into techniques they might not see for another decade.
But not all were so willing to humble themselves. Two disciples, a young man and a woman who had always prided themselves on their strict adherence to the proper forms, exchanged a look of pure scorn. The young man scoffed quietly, crossing his arms and pointedly turning his head away, too proud to be seen learning from "that clumsy girl" who treated their sacred art like a child's recipe.
The woman beside him sniffed, her nose in the air. She busied herself with meticulously reorganizing the herbs in her own pouch, a performance of utter indifference. Yet, she subtly angled her body just enough, and her head was tilted in a way that betrayed her intense focus, ensuring she would catch every word Elder Tao uttered.
Elder Tao moved to stand beside Meixiu's crystalline cauldron. He did not touch any tool or ingredient. He simply raised one bony, ink-stained hand, his fingers poised in the air like a sculptor about to shape the unseen.
"Listen," his voice cut through the tense silence, low and resonant, commanding the attention of every soul in the courtyard. "For a High-Tier pill, you are a cook, following a recipe. For a Peak Tier pill, you are an architect, raising a structure of power. You can no longer simply compress energy. You must bind it."
As he spoke, his fingers began to weave in the air. From his fingertips, a complex, shimmering lattice of pure qi blossomed over the empty cauldron. It was a visible, tangible demonstration of the principle, a web of light that made the abstract concept brutally clear.
"Every pill exists within a tier, from one to nine," he intoned, his voice like a recitation of fundamental law. "And within each tier, there are grades of quality: Low, Standard, High, Peak, and the legendary Flawless. To move from High to Peak is to cross a chasm."
His weaving fingers intensified. "As the pill condenses, your spiritual sense must become a loom. You weave a net of qi around the forming core. Not one layer." A new, glowing stratum of energy appeared in the lattice, distinct from the first. "Seven."
With each uttered number, another layer materialized, until seven concentric, shimmering webs of energy hovered in the air. And then, they began to move. Each layer spun, but not in unison. Each one rotated in the precise opposite direction to the layer adjacent to it. The air itself began to hum with a low, controlled thrum of power, the sound of immense forces being perfectly balanced.
"This is the 'Seven-Rotation Seal,'" Elder Tao declared, his eyes fixed on the mesmerizing, counter-rotating construct. "It is not a recipe for a single pill, but a foundational sealing method. Its purpose is singular: to contain and refine energies too unruly for any physical vessel. It is the minimum requirement to even attempt a pill of Peak grade, regardless of its tier. For a Tier 3 pill, it is demanding. For a Tier 6 pill, the complexity would shatter your mind."
He clenched his fist slightly, and the humming lattice tightened. "Opposing forces creating unbreakable stability. Fail to maintain the counter-rotations for even a single heartbeat, and the pill's own core energy will rebel, shattering its vessel into dust."
He opened his hand, and the seal pulsed with a serene, contained light. "Succeed, and the raging energy has no path outward. It has no choice but to turn inward, compressing, refining, perfecting itself. That is the birth of a Peak-grade pill."
Meixiu's playful demeanor vanished. Her eyes, wide and unblinking, were locked on the shimmering qi lattice. But there was no spark of understanding in them. Instead, they held a profound blankness.
She blinked once, slowly. Then twice. Her head tilted to the side in a gesture of pure, uncomprehending confusion. She looked directly at Elder Tao, her expression a silent, earnest plea for him to explain it again, to put it in simpler terms. It was a look that would have been instantly deciphered by one person alone, but it was lost on the alchemy master.
Yet, even as her conscious mind struggled, a faint, pure white qi had begun to swirl instinctively at her fingertips, moving in subtle, complex patterns she herself did not notice.
The eager disciples who had gathered close were left visibly reeling. Their faces were pale, minds struggling to hold the intricate image of the seven counter-rotating layers. One young man subconsciously mimicked the finger movements in the air, his face a tight mask of concentration and growing frustration as he failed to replicate the effortless grace of the Elder.
The two proud disciples who had refused to join the circle were now utterly still. Their pretense of indifference was shattered. They stole blatant, wide-eyed glances at the fading motes of light, their scorn replaced by a humbled, almost fearful awe. The woman's hands had stilled entirely in her herb pouch, forgotten.
Elder Tao let the magnificent qi lattice dissipate into a shower of shimmering motes that vanished into the sunlight. He gave Meixiu one last, inscrutable look, his gaze lingering for a moment on the faint, unnoticed swirl of white qi at her fingers.
"The lesson is over," he stated, his voice flat and final. "The rest is practice. Do not waste my time until you can form the first rotation without your cauldron trembling."
With that, he turned his back on them all. His robes whispered against the stone as he walked back to his simple wooden chair and settled into it. The moment of profound teaching was ended as abruptly as it had begun.
The courtyard was left in a hushed, awestruck silence, the air itself still vibrating with the weight of the advanced knowledge now planted like a dormant seed.
The last shimmering mote of the Seven-Rotation Seal faded from the air. Meixiu blinked, the complex image dissolving from her vision. She turned to Elder Tao, her expression not one of deep contemplation, but of simple, earnest curiosity.
"Elder Tao," she began, her voice breaking the awed silence. "Can I taste one? A Peak Tier 3 pill you've made yourself?" She held Mr. Bunbun a little tighter, as if for support. "It's always easier to understand a recipe if you can taste the final dish first."
A profound stillness fell over the courtyard. The disciples stared, aghast. To ask a master alchemist, the Tea Tyrant himself, for a sample of his personal work was beyond audacious. It was to treat a masterpiece as a common snack. They watched, barely breathing, for the eruption they were sure would follow.
Elder Tao stared at her for a long, silent moment, his face unreadable beneath the shadow of his hat. Then, with a slow, deliberate movement, he reached into his sleeve. He retrieved a simple, unadorned jade vial. Without a word, he tipped it, and a single, luminous pill, glowing with a soft inner light, fell into her waiting palm.
Meixiu caught it, popped it into her mouth without a moment of ceremony, and closed her eyes. She rolled it on her tongue thoughtfully, like a connoisseur sampling a rare candy.
Her eyes snapped open, sparkling with sudden insight. "Oh! I see!" she exclaimed, a bright smile spreading across her face. "It needs a little more... spin at the end, right? To make the energy settle smoother. And maybe just a hint of Starlight Moss to balance the aftertaste. It's a bit sharp otherwise. Okay, I got it!" She beamed at him, radiating the satisfaction of someone who had just decoded a simple family recipe.
A wave of stunned disbelief washed over the disciples who had gathered around. They exchanged looks of pure, unadulterated shock. Their whispered words were a mixture of shattered pride and dawning horror at the sheer scale of the gap between them.
One disciple, his face pale, could only stare. "She's going to try it... right now?" he breathed, his voice full of awe. "After one lesson? After one taste?"
Another, a young woman who had struggled for months to master a High-Tier 2 pill, shook her head in sheer skepticism. "The theory is one thing," she muttered, "but the qi control for the Seal... it's immense. It took me twenty attempts just to form two stable, counter-rotating layers. There's no way."
A third disciple, his shoulders slumping, looked down at his own hands. "That pill she just tasted," he whispered, the words tasting like ash. "The purity, the aura... it would take me three days of perfect focus and a stroke of luck to produce one of that quality. And she... she treated it like a seasoning sample."
They watched as Meixiu, humming again, turned back to her pristine cauldron, her fingers already flexing as if eager to begin. She was not burdened by the weight of their years of struggle. She saw only the next dish to be perfected.
Meixiu, humming her nonsensical tune, began without any visible preparation. Her movements were fluid, almost careless, as she gathered ingredients. She did not look like she was performing a profound and dangerous art, but like she was casually preparing a pot of soup. The crystalline cauldron began to glow, the energies within it swirling and harmonizing under her instinctual, almost casual guidance.
Her hands wove through the air, and a shimmering lattice of qi—the Seven-Rotation Seal—bloomed above the concoction. It was unthinking, a perfect mirror of Elder Tao's demonstration, yet executed with the effortless grace of someone who had done it ten thousand times. The layers spun, counter-rotating, containing the unruly power.
She completed the process and, with a final flick of her wrist, opened the lid. A wave of pure, potent spiritual energy washed over the courtyard. Inside, resting on a bed of condensed light, was a beautiful, luminous pill. Its surface was flawless, marked with four distinct, shimmering lines—the undeniable signature of a Peak Tier 3 pill. By any standard known to the disciples, it was a staggering, impossible success.
The disciples, who had been watching with bated breath, leaned forward as one, their faces etched with awe and a touch of despairing envy.
But Meixiu picked the pill up. She held it between her thumb and forefinger, examining it for barely a second. Her nose scrunched in clear disapproval.
"Hmph," she sniffed. "The energy feels... lumpy. It didn't spin right at the end. This one's bad."
And with that, she casually tossed the priceless, Peak-grade pill over her shoulder as if it were a piece of spoiled fruit.
A collective, sharp gasp ripped through the disciples. One of the young men who had been sitting closest lunged forward instinctively. He fumbled, his hands scrabbling in the air before he barely caught the pill before it could strike the stone pavement.
He stared at it lying in his trembling palm. It was warm, almost alive, pulsing with a deep, potent energy that sang to his spiritual sense. It was a masterpiece, the culmination of everything he was striving for.
"B-Bad?" he stammered, his voice a horrified whisper. "This... this is a Peak-grade pill!"
Elder Tao, who had been observing the entire process from his chair, went completely still. Not a single fold of his robe shifted. The dried tea leaves on his ribs did not rustle. His hidden gaze was locked on the "failed" pill now cradled in the disciple's shaking hand.
Internally, his mind, usually a placid lake of ancient knowledge, was a raging storm.
'Lumpy...' The word echoed, absurd and terrifying. 'She calls a 99% pure spiritual fusion... lumpy. Her standard is not Peak... it is only Flawless. Nothing less will satisfy her instinct.'
He watched as she cheerfully began cleaning her cauldron, utterly unfazed by her own dismissal of a masterpiece. She set up for the next attempt with practiced ease, her expression one of simple, determined focus, as if correcting a slightly over-salted stew and completely unconcerned with the treasure she had just discarded. The chasm between her perception and reality was not a gap; it was an abyss.
She began again. Her hands wove the Seven-Rotation Seal, the qi lattice forming with the same unthinking grace. But this time, the energies within the cauldron fought back. The harmonious swirls turned chaotic, clashing against the delicate structure of the seal.
There was a sudden, muffled WHUMP! from within the sealed vessel. It was a sound that made every other disciple flinch back instinctively, their bodies tensing for the acrid scent of scorched spirit herbs and the sight of a ruined, wasted batch.
Meixiu merely adjusted her grip on Mr. Bunbun, tucked securely under her arm. She hummed her nonsensical tune a little louder, as if to drown out the disruptive noise, and pushed through the instability with sheer, oblivious will.
When the process completed, she opened the cauldron lid. A faint, ethereal shimmer rose from within, not the smoke of failure, but a visible aura of profound purity. She peered inside, a slight, confused pout forming on her lips.
"Oops~!" she murmured, more to herself than anyone. "Even though the explosion happened... the pill is made." Her head tilted. "But... why is it looking different??"
She carefully lifted the pill out. It was flawless, its surface a perfect, unblemished jade. But now, a barely perceptible, shimmering ring of light—a Spiritual Halo—floated a hair's breadth above its surface. The halo was utterly silent and radiated an aura of such perfect, self-contained harmony that it seemed to quiet the very air around it.
She had not just created a Peak Tier 3 pill. The pill's quality was so supreme it bordered on the legendary, a quasi-Tier 4 pill, its potency only a whisper away from officially crossing into the next great tier of power. She had, through a chaotic process no one could comprehend, willed into being a Flawless Peak Tier 3 Pill.
The courtyard was plunged into a silence so profound that the distant song of a mountain bird sounded like a shriek. The disciples stood frozen, their faces pale, their mouths agape. The two proud disciples who had initially refused to watch were now staring openly, their feigned indifference and arrogance completely shattered, replaced by a hollowed-out awe.
Elder Tao moved. Slowly, as if his bones had aged a century in a single moment, he rose from his chair. The simple wooden frame creaked softly in the overwhelming quiet. He walked over to Meixiu, his steps stiff and measured. He did not look at her. His entire being, his hidden gaze, was fixed upon the pill resting in her palm, its silent, shimmering Spiritual Halo a beacon of impossible perfection.
He stared at the Flawless pill. He stared at Meixiu's confused, innocent face, which looked back at him with a simple curiosity about the "different" appearance of her creation. He stared back at the pill.
He did not utter a word. No praise for the miracle she had wrought. No criticism for the chaotic method that had birthed it. The silence stretched, thick and heavy with the weight of his unspoken, tumultuous thoughts.
Then, abruptly, he turned on his heel. The motion was sharp, final. Without a single word of dismissal, instruction, or acknowledgment, he walked away. His robed form retreated into the shadowed interior of his pavilion, leaving the stunned courtyard behind. The weight of what he had just witnessed—the casual, almost accidental dismantling of the difficulty that had defined his life's work—was simply too immense for words. He simply retreated, leaving behind a void of silence and the lingering glow of a flawless pill.
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