Translator: Silavin & Ashish
Editor and Proofreader: Leo of Zion Mountain & Dhael Ligerkeys
Even though the herbs inside the grooves of the stone platform tasted horrendous and their toxicity was so terrifying that they even made Yang Kai’s tongue numb…
If he wanted to leave this forsaken place, he could only complete the requirements as described in the small text on the stone platform. Yang Kai could only grit his teeth and continue to taste test the unfamiliar herbs.
It took him almost half a day to taste test all the herbs he couldn’t recognize and be sure whether they were poisonous or not.
He went through all kinds of pain and torture, and had it not been for Yang Kai’s sturdy physique and strong recovery, he might have lost his life.
Even so, he failed to pick the fifteen herbs.
“How come there are only thirteen?” Yang Kai tightly frowned standing before the stone platform. He looked rather confused.
Since the owner of this cave mansion left such a test for intruders to solve, he would surely not deliberately play tricks. In other words, fifteen of these twenty-five herbs were indeed poisonous.
But Yang Kai had used all three methods, looked, smelled, and tasted, but he could only ascertain that thirteen herbs were poisonous. He couldn’t find the remaining two.
[What’s wrong here?] His eyes swept across the grooves of the stone platform, one by one, but he couldn’t find the remaining two from them.
Just as Yang Kai was at a loss before the stone platform, all the cultivators who had entered this cave mansion were facing the same dilemma.
From the get-go, all the Raging Fire Temple cultivators cultivated Fire Attribute Secret Art. So, the first stone room wasn’t that difficult for them at all. Just like Yang Kai, they infused their Fire Attribute Energy into the stone platform and were transmitted to the second stone room immediately after.
Even Kang Si Ran had easily passed the first stone room’s test.
But now, everyone was stumped by the second stone room’s test.
In a certain stone room, a Raging Fire Temple disciple looked at the twenty-five herbs and scratched his head.
He wasn’t an Alchemist. He didn’t even know what these herbs were, let alone how to distinguish between the toxic and non-toxic ones. He waited and watched for a long time before selecting a few certain toxic herbs from among them. However, he couldn’t distinguish anymore.
Seeing the time slipping by, the Raging Fire Temple disciple grit his teeth and took out a herb from the groove.
And the moment he took out this herb, the entire stone room suddenly hummed before the stone platform in front of him sank at an extremely fast speed. It disappeared in the blink of an eye.
The cultivator was struck with panic. He hurriedly flew back and circulated his Source Qi, preparing for the unexpected.
Suddenly, *WENG WENG WENG…* noises rang from the stone room. The next moment, specks of light flashed in the room. The specks of light were dense and were just about everywhere. By a rough count, there were hundreds of them. At first glance, they looked like the eyes of fearsome monsters, giving the onlookers the chills.
In the next moment, these flickering lights shook a little as they bombarded the cultivator together, giving off fearsome energy fluctuations all of a sudden.
Seeing this, a look of despair immediately took over the Raging Fire Temple cultivator’s face. All he could do was let out a scream before he was drowned by the countless beams of light.
After a moment, when the light finally dissipated, the Raging Fire Temple disciple was nowhere to be found. All that remained was a pool of red blood and some tattered pieces of clothes where he had stood as proof of his existence.
This was not the only Raging Fire Temple disciple to suffer this kind of misfortune. All the cultivators who chose the wrong herbs had triggered the restriction in the room and were killed on the spot within a breath. Not even their bones were left.
In another stone room, Kang Si Ran solemnly took out a herb from the groove in front of the stone platform. After waiting for a while, when he realized that he was still very much safe and sound, he couldn’t help but heave a sigh of relief.
He might not be an Alchemist, but as the shopkeeper of the Spirit Pill Plaza and a native cultivator of the Star Boundary, his knowledge and experience of herbs was much better than that of Yang Kai. After all, he too could be considered as someone who dealt with the herbs every day.
Therefore, although the test in the second stone room was a little difficult for him, it was not without hope.
In another stone room, the Raging Fire Temple’s Vice Temple Master, Lian Yu Ming looked at the twenty-five herbs on the stone platform before him. He quickly selected about ten herbs and started pondering. He then chose a few more, making the count thirteen. Furthermore, the herbs he had chosen were exactly the same as the herbs Yang Kai had chosen after so much painstaking effort.
Only the final two remained.
Lian Yu Ming’s gaze alternated between the remaining herbs with lightning-fast speed as he searched his memories for the knowledge of herbs he had. After the time it takes for an incense to burn, a smile suddenly appeared on his face as he took out two kinds of herbs from the remaining herbs in the grooves.
And when he took out the last two herbs, the place where he stood suddenly lit up as a Transmission Array slowly emerged, teleporting him to another place and the stone platform in the stone room slowly sank at the same time.
…
In the stone room, Yang Kai still had a worried look on his face. Once again, he carefully checked the remaining herbs but he was still unable to determine which two were poisonous.
Just as he was at a loss, he suddenly seemed to have been struck with a realization as his eyes shone with an intelligent gleam.
Immediately, he hurriedly tore a piece of the remaining herbs, one after another, and carefully ground and mixed them in pairs.
After a short while, when he was grinding two herbs with his hands and mixing their paste, a pungent and spicy smell suddenly permeated from his fingertips. This pungent smell immediately made him dizzy as a scorching-hot feeling spread from his fingertips.
Yang Kai immediately circulated the Profound Art and dispelled the discomforting feeling. His face immediately lit up with joy as he burst into laughter and spoke, “That’s it!”
In this world, some herbs were non-toxic in nature, but when they were mixed with some special herbs, they might become highly toxic. This common-sense wasn’t just applicable in the Alchemy World but also in the lives of ordinary people, who hadn’t even cultivated.
Yang Kai hadn’t thought of it at first, but now this situation had proved that his notion was correct.
He decisively took out two reactive herbs from the groove and set them aside.
A Transmission Array suddenly appeared underneath his feet and his eyes were blinded by a dazzling flash of light before the feeling of being teleported struck him again.
After he regained his footing, he turned his head and looked around. Suddenly, a weird look appeared on his face as he nodded and said, “As I had expected!”
He was still in a stone room, one that was no different from the stone rooms he had been in before. There was also a stone platform in the middle.
At this point, Yang Kai had faintly guessed the role of this place from the various clues he noticed.
Suppressing the joy in his heart, he stepped forward and came to the stone desk.
He focused his gaze and found that there were a total of three identical herbs placed on the stone desk. Judging by the aura they were emanating, their grade shouldn’t be that high. It should be about the level of Origin Grade.
He stretched his hand out and brushed away the dust on the stone desk. Yang Kai read the small text on the stone desk and immediately understood the purpose of this stone room.
It was to actually refine the medicinal liquid.
As long as the purity reached a certain level, the Transmission Array in the stone room could be activated.
Refining medicinal liquid was nothing to Yang Kai. He had refined medicinal liquid hundreds of thousands of times in Alchemy so far. Furthermore, he also had the unique Conflagration Knowledge Sea, which made his job of refining medicinal liquid and removing all kinds of impurities from it easier.
And extracting the medicinal liquid from an Origin Grade herb was a piece of cake for him.
At this point, he no longer hesitated and prompted his Conflagration Knowledge Sea, wrapping the herb inside.
After a while, the herb was reduced into a drop of green liquid as its impurities continued to burn away, making the green liquid clearer and more brilliant.
Because he had already guessed some things from the various tests here, Yang Kai spared no effort to extract the medicinal liquid and did a perfect job.
When he had refined all three herbs into the medicinal liquid, he placed them in the groove of the stone platform again. Immediately after, the familiar Transmission Array appeared again.
…
Over the course of the next few days, Yang Kai spent all his time in stone rooms. Each stone room gave a different test. Some required him to draw the Spirit Array used during refining pills, some required him to refine pills, some required a mastery of heat… the tests were numerous and strange.
But the purpose of all the tests couldn’t be separated from Alchemy.
At this point, Yang Kai was completely sure that his previous conjecture was right.
This was definitely Gong Sun Mu’s test to check the mastery of later generations’ Alchemy techniques. He was an Alchemy Grandmaster, so it wasn’t surprising that he would be testing in this aspect.
As an Alchemy Grandmaster of his generation, he naturally hoped that his relics could be obtained by someone who was also an Alchemist, instead of some insignificant people. All those tests could completely determine whether a person was a qualified Alchemist or not.
Perhaps, Gong Sun Mu also wanted to find a successor for himself.
…
In the stone room, Yang Kai put his newly refined pill into the groove of the stone platform. After a while, the familiar feeling of transmission struck him as he disappeared again after a flash of dazzling light.
When Yang Kai finally regained his senses, he couldn’t help but smile happily after looking at the surroundings around him.
Because the place where he was now wasn’t the unvarying stone room, but a tunnel.
The tunnel was abnormally dry. There was even a faint fiery radiance and a strange bubbling noise. The hot aura in the tunnel gave the feeling of falling into magma.
Yang Kai pushed his energy to defend himself as he walked towards the place where the fiery light was coming from.
After a while, he entered a stone cavern.
Heaven knows how deep under the ground this stone cavern was, but it didn’t appear to be man-made. It seemed to have been formed naturally.
There was a bright red fiery glow in the front. Yang Kai narrowed his eyes and found that the source of the fiery glow was actually a stream of magma! The magma had gathered into a pool. From time to time, one or two bubbles would emerge from below and burst, splashing the magma around.
