RUMBLE... The mechanism overhead sealed shut, and the entire Earth Palace rumbled.
After leaping into the Earth Palace, Qin Feng didn't immediately venture deeper. Instead, he waited on the greenstone steps at the entrance, his aura condensed, staring intently at the gate. If anyone had followed him in, they would have been met with a heaven-shattering strike.
Fortunately, no one else burst in before the entrance sealed itself again.
The underground ruins were enormous, resembling a vast, empty subterranean palace. Qin Feng turned and stepped inside, his eyes filled with wonder.
This Earth Palace seemed to have been carved by hand. Just past the entrance were several stone chambers, fully furnished with stone benches, tables, pots, and stoves, as well as porcelain vases, bowls, and chopsticks. The arrangement was simple, but though small, it lacked nothing.
WHOOSH!
From a distance, Qin Feng heard the sound of a flowing spring. His body flickered, and he shot forward like a cheetah. After passing two or three stone chambers, he found a crystal-clear spring. The faint sound of water bubbled up from its source. Qin Feng crouched, scooped up a handful of the clear water, and felt a refreshing coolness spread through him.
'There must be an underground river down here!' Qin Feng's gaze followed the stream, which originated from a spring channeled up from below. It formed a clear brook that meandered through the underground palace before disappearing into a dark hole, creating a living current.
He stood up and walked several hundred more paces, passing through a few more stone chambers. With a great RUMBLE, Qin Feng pushed open a stone door, and a massive Alchemy Room was revealed before his eyes.
Inside was a giant Alchemy Furnace. The room itself was laid out in the pattern of the Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams, with channels for Earth Fire carved into the floor, leading deep underground to draw upon the flames of the earth's core.
The underground ruins seemed to have been abandoned for a long time. The Earth Fire was extinguished, and everything was blanketed in a thick layer of dust. As the door opened, a breeze stirred, sending a suffocating cloud of dust rushing toward him.
Qin Feng quickly held his breath. Only after the dust settled did he enter the stone chamber and light a torch on the wall. Its brilliant flame illuminated the ancient Alchemy Room.
In the flickering light, the first thing to catch Qin Feng's eye was a massive Alchemy Furnace in the center of the room. It was several men tall, with an ancient and peculiar design. Cast entirely in bronze, it exuded a profound and heavy aura.
This was an exceptionally valuable Alchemy Furnace. Having been baptized and nurtured by countless elixirs over the long river of time, the Pill Qi had condensed and seeped into its very structure, causing it to emit the pure, fragrant aroma of Elixir Pills.
One could imagine that in its prime, it must have refined countless elixirs. Only a furnace tempered by the essence of so many elixirs could emit such a precious aroma.
It must be known that the value of an Alchemy Furnace is measured not by the quality of its materials, but by the number of elixirs it has refined. The more elixirs a furnace has processed, the more it is tempered by Pill Qi, and the higher its quality becomes.
A top-quality Alchemy Furnace typically takes hundreds or even thousands of years of nurturing to come into being!
The emergence of such an Alchemy Furnace would inevitably cause countless Alchemists to fight over it!
Without a doubt, this was an exceptionally high-grade Alchemy Furnace! A hint of joy touched Qin Feng's face. He was an expert in pharmacology and medicine, so he was naturally no stranger to the art of Alchemy; it would not be an exaggeration to call him an Alchemy Master. To an Alchemist, the value of a top-tier, ancient furnace like this was self-evident.
As he drew slightly closer, Qin Feng could still feel the aura of a perpetual, inextinguishable flame emanating from the Alchemy Furnace.
'This must be the furnace spoken of in the legends of Ancient Times, the one that nurtured the Mystic Turtle Divine Pill!' A smile touched Qin Feng's lips. The Mystic Turtle Divine Pill was a Divine Pill whose recipe had been lost since antiquity.
The emergence of a single Divine Pill would be enough to tempt even the God-Demons.
He did not act rashly. Instead, he scanned the entire Alchemy Room. An alchemy laboratory was a place of paramount importance to an Alchemist. To prevent their elixirs from being stolen, many Alchemists would set up various restrictions and traps. It was entirely possible to die in an Alchemy Room if one was not careful!
Around the Alchemy Furnace stood rows of shelves lined with Alchemy Gourds for storing elixirs. Qin Feng could see traces of restrictive seals that had once been placed upon them, but they had not been able to withstand the passage of time and had long since failed.
'Time is the greatest enemy of even the world's strongest,' Qin Feng lamented softly. He stepped forward, casually picked up a gourd, opened it, and sniffed. His eyes lit up.
'Three Flowers Antitoxic Pill!' This was an Antitoxic Elixir. Whether one ingested a poisonous flower or exotic fruit, was bitten by a venomous insect, or was afflicted by some other bizarre poison, this pill could neutralize it. Only a handful of the most terrifying poisons were beyond its curative powers!
Unfortunately, perhaps because they had been stored for far too long, the pills had all turned into small, round fossils. When he poured them out, they hit the ground and instantly crumbled to dust.
This shelf held a variety of Antitoxic Elixirs: Nine Flowers Jade Dew Ointment, Black Wood Antitoxic Pill, Exorcism Pill, and more. All of them were exceedingly precious Spirit Pills that would be nearly impossible to find in the outside world.
Unfortunately, with the passage of time, their medicinal properties had completely dissipated, turning them all to stone.
On another shelf, Qin Feng discovered several even more precious elixirs, including the Divine Power Breaking Barrier Pill, used for breaking through bottlenecks. This was a rare Spirit Pill capable of helping an expert at the Martial Arts Ninth Layer Heaven break through to the Condensing Vein Realm.
The Black Bone Quenching Essence Pill, a Spirit Pill that could increase one's True Power and strengthen their Divine Abilities.
The Great Strength Demon God Pill, an elixir that allowed one to comprehend the Great Strength Divine Demon Skill. A single pill could grant comprehension of an incredibly precious Divine Ability.
The Cyan Wood Creation Pill, a Spirit Pill that could evolve one's Cyan Wood Divine Abilities and amplify their power.
...
On the other wooden shelves, Qin Feng found Healing Elixirs capable of bringing the dead back to life, as well as various other pills with all sorts of miraculous effects.
For example, there were Spirit Pills that could greatly increase the spiritual nature of a Fierce Beast, or even trigger a mutation and evolution!
However, to Qin Feng's immense regret, the passage of time had caused every single elixir filling the Alchemy Room to lose its spiritual nature.
'It seems Qin Fang wasn't lying about this part,' he thought. 'The medicinal properties of the Spirit Pills here really have all dissipated!'
Qin Feng searched the entire Alchemy Room and was just about to give up when he suddenly noticed a small mechanism on one of the stone walls and pressed it.
CLICK! CLACK! The sound of grinding stone echoed from the wall. Before his astonished eyes, a section of the wall slid away to reveal a hidden compartment.
A shimmering golden Silk Book rested within the secret compartment.
'There's something else hidden in this compartment. Could it be some kind of Alchemy Secret Technique?' A look of interest appeared on Qin Feng's face. He casually took it out, and after just one glance, his eyes lit up.
Just as he had guessed, this thin sheet of golden silk did indeed record an Alchemy Secret Technique.
However, his guess was slightly off. This golden silk recorded only a single Pill Formula: the Mystic Turtle Divine Pill!
That's right—the Mystic Turtle Divine Pill, the very object of his quest.
According to the records on the golden silk, the Mystic Turtle Divine Pill was indeed refined from a Black Tortoise Divine Embryo, supplemented by countless precious Spirit Medicines. However, the book clearly stated that the Xuanwu in the furnace was merely a half-finished product! The Mystic Turtle Divine Pill capable of granting one a Flawless Saint Body was only an incomplete version!
Qin Feng's eyes widened in disbelief! According to the Silk Book, a true Mystic Turtle Divine Pill could not only grant a Flawless Saint Body, but could take it a step further and forge a Black Tortoise Divine Body—a physique comparable to the Divine-Demon Immortal Body!
A complete Black Tortoise Divine Body would possess all the Divine Abilities and strength of the Divine Beast Xuanwu itself. Its bearer would essentially become a Xuanwu in human form.
The Alchemist who wrote the Silk Book also mentioned that his end was near. Faced with a life-or-death crisis, he was only able to hastily complete the first stages of the Mystic Turtle Divine Pill's refinement. He hoped that a successor would one day fulfill his wish and see the pill to its completion.
The rest of the book was filled with a plethora of ideas, methods, and speculations about refining the complete Mystic Turtle Divine Pill.
'This person was an alchemy fanatic!' Qin Feng's eyes were wide, the scope of it all hard to fathom.
A Divine Pill that could create a physique rivaling the Divine-Demon Immortal Body... it was simply insane! Such an elixir was an act of defiance against the heavens themselves.
The alchemy secrets it involved were especially fantastical, seeming to infringe upon the profound mechanisms of the sun and moon, to seize the very essence of heaven and earth.
And yet, with Qin Feng's own wisdom and his eons of experience in alchemy, he could sense a strange, profound logic within the Alchemist's mad ideas. They touched upon the fundamental mysteries of the universe's operations, telling him that if that Alchemist were still alive, he might very well have succeeded.
Qin Feng's gaze fell upon the massive Alchemy Furnace, his eyes shining brightly. He, too, was an Alchemy Master, an expert in the way of elixirs. Now that he held the complete Pill Formula for the Mystic Turtle Divine Pill, there was a real chance he could complete the final steps and refine the pill to perfection!!
(Author's Note: I got the contract offer yesterday! Please add this to your library and vote with your recommendation tickets!)