Chapter 1210 — The Qihuang Sacred Hall
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 3
Cold sweat broke out on the Alchemist's brow. Round and round Shen Mu he paced, his sleeves streaming on the air, his myriad elixir-refining arts wrought with such uncanny mastery that the eye could scarcely follow.
Elixir-refining was a divine art in its own right, and in that art, if the Alchemist accounted himself second, no man dared claim first.
Long ago, back in Yincan Village, the Village Head had said as much: if the Alchemist could turn his elixir-refining arts to battle, his Daoist arts and divine powers would advance by leaps and bounds; and if he should add to that a mighty cultivation base, then the Alchemist too could stand among the strong men of the world. Yet the Alchemist had never set his heart on cultivation, nor studied the arts of the Dao; he bred venomous insects and planted medicinal herbs, until at last he ranked lowest of all in Yincan Village for cultivation realm.
And now Shen Mu lay in mortal peril.
The spirit elixir the Alchemist had refined carried a potency too fierce; his aim was to dissolve Shen Mu's cultivation and smelt it into a heavenly palace of the Medical Dao—in other words, to lend his own hand to Shen Mu's entering the Dao through medicine. Loath as he was to brawl and vie, there was pride in his heart too; he had set his will on outdoing the Village Head, the Silent Artisan, and the rest of them.
Little had he guessed that he would not merely fail to surpass their perfected heavenly palaces—he could not even command the potency of his own spirit elixir. The Alchemist's feet flew; round Shen Mu he spun, his elixir-refining arts shifting through a thousand forms and growing ever faster. Sweat poured from his brow, and before a drop could fall it steamed away into white vapor.
He took Shen Mu for his elixir furnace and the medicinal power within Shen Mu's body for his ingredients, and sought to refine Shen Mu himself into a spirit elixir. Only now did he rue his failure to train hard and raise his cultivation. Shen Mu was too strong in himself; to use Shen Mu as a furnace, to drive this human-shaped furnace, demanded magic power of mighty depth.
And the medicinal power inside Shen Mu was too fierce; to drive that power to evolve into a heavenly palace of the Medical Dao was doubly hard.
He was gasping now, his vital essence draining away faster and faster—at any moment one breath that could not be drawn would undo everything. His face was swollen red as cloth just hauled from a dye vat as he desperately marshaled his cultivation, striving to turn the pure true essence within Shen Mu into a heavenly palace of the Medical Dao.
Only when that heavenly palace of the Medical Dao took its final form could the rules of medicine it held within it save Shen Mu's life. Yet strain as he might, with all his strength and all his cultivation, he could not turn Shen Mu's true essence into a heavenly palace of the Medical Dao.
Pff— A mouthful of fresh blood burst from the Alchemist's lips.
He felt his vital essence spent to the last drop, and still Shen Mu's heavenly palace of the Medical Dao stood only half-built. "I will spend my life if I must—I will not let anything happen to Shen'er!
" The Alchemist's stubborn temper flared. Of a sudden he reversed his own art, burning his qi and blood, and went on striking out at Shen Mu with every elixir-refining art he knew, to feed this human-shaped furnace and speed the refining of the medicinal power.
Just then Shen Mu abruptly raised his hand and swept it wide, blocking the Alchemist's techniques.
"Grandpa Alchemist," he said with a cold laugh, "you've botched it, haven't you? I knew you would botch it.
Every time you refine a new elixir, there is always something missing or something short.