Lai Li’an watched her reaction, laughing inwardly, but his face remained impassive: “Why wouldn’t I?”
Ruan Se turned her face away, the redness from her ears spreading to her neck: “Senior, why must you pretend not to know? Such… such filthy things. I have practiced the Alchemy Path for more than ten years and have never touched them, nor am I willing to.”
“Filthy?”
Lai Li’an asked calmly.
“You don’t even know what it becomes when refined, yet you call it filthy?”
“This is….”
Ruan Se was momentarily speechless, her neck stiff as she said nothing more.
Lai Li’an was not in a hurry. He leisurely added a sentence: “This pill is a Sixth-Rank pill, with the Green Wood Spirit Fruit as the sovereign ingredient and the other four as minister and assistant. After entering the furnace, it is not primarily refined with fire, but uses the Wood Transformation Art to stimulate the medicinal properties. It is most suitable for a Wood Spiritual Root cultivator to refine. If you can refine this pill in the final competition, a Sixth-Rank against a Fourth-Rank—who do you think the judges will award the champion to?”
“Besides, this pill is a bit different from others. It’s relatively simple to refine and very suitable for you.”
Ruan Se’s lips moved.
Sixth-Rank. Even if the quality of her pill was suppressed as much as possible, Sixth-Rank was still Sixth-Rank.
At the Alchemy Grand Assembly, pill rank was the hardest rule. No judge would dare rank a Sixth-Rank pill behind a Fourth-Rank one.
She understood this principle, and precisely because she understood, she felt even more uncomfortable.
She took a deep breath, raised her head, and tried to make her voice sound calmer: “Senior is correct. The probability of a Sixth-Rank pill winning the championship is indeed much higher than a Fifth-Rank, but…”
“Even if it is Sixth-Rank, even if it can win the championship, the ingredients of this pill are what they are. Senior knows full well what kind of stuff will be produced. I am not so desperate to win that I would refine such a thing. I beg Senior to withdraw the order and teach me another method.”
Lai Li’an’s gaze darkened. Ruan Se’s attitude was more resolute than he had anticipated; it wouldn’t be easily brushed aside with a few casual words.
“Fellow Daoist Ruan, Venerable Self asks you a question.”
Ruan Se suppressed her emotions and straightened her body again.
“What do you think alchemy is?”
He had asked a similar question before, but this time, Ruan Se keenly sensed that Senior was not testing her but was about to tell her something.
She was silent for a moment, then gave a more sincere answer: “Using medicinal herbs as the foundation, spiritual flames as the medium, merging Heaven and Earth Spiritual Energy with the medicinal properties of plants in a single furnace, transforming the creation of heaven and earth for the use of cultivators—this has always been my understanding.”
“Not bad, standard and proper.”
Lai Li’an nodded, then changed the subject.
“But Venerable Self asks you again: How do you view every single pill you refine?”
Ruan Se was silent for a moment, not answering immediately.
“In your eyes, which kind of pill is nobler—one that heals a cultivator’s injury or one that takes a cultivator’s life?”
Lai Li’an’s gaze fell on her face.
“Naturally… the healing pill,” Ruan Se replied, but she hesitated, realizing this question would not be so simple.
Lai Li’an gently shook his head: “In Venerable Self’s view, pills have never been distinguished as righteous or evil, noble or base. They are merely clumps of spiritual energy imbued with specific medicinal properties. They have no will, no good or evil, no purpose. If a Return Spring Pill saves an evil Demon Cultivator who has committed countless crimes, is it still a good thing? If a Poison Pill kills a villain who has brought calamity to the world, is it still a bad thing?”
He paused, pointing to the several medicinal herbs on the table.
“Joyous Grass—everyone knows it can stir emotions, but how many know that this herb has been listed by generations of Alchemy Grandmasters as the ‘First Grade for Meridian Unblocking’? Dragon Yang Vine—market merchants use it to make aphrodisiac wine for profit, thus categorizing it as a low-class herb.”
“Yet its medicinal properties travel through the Shaoyang Meridian. With a little harmonization in the furnace, it can unblock the meridians throughout the entire body. Ordinary cultivators beg for it but cannot obtain it.”
His voice gradually rose, carrying a firm conviction: “These medicinal herbs themselves have no distinction of evil or righteousness. It is the usage that gives them good or evil. And what alchemists must avoid most is binding their own Alchemy Path with worldly prejudices. If you don’t even have the courage to look a medicine straight in the eye, how can you talk about alchemy?”
Ruan Se stood still, her lips slightly parted, but she couldn’t utter a single word.
Every word Senior spoke was like a precise knife, layer by layer cutting open the prejudices in her heart that she herself had never noticed.
She herself had never wondered where the evil in those recipes classified as ‘Evil Pills’ actually lay. She had been indoctrinated with a concept since childhood, so she had lumped those medicinal herbs into the category of ‘dirty,’ never giving them a proper look, let alone considering their actual medicinal properties.
Wasn’t this prejudice?
She was silent for a long time. Lai Li’an thought she wouldn’t answer and was about to add more fuel to the fire when Ruan Se finally spoke.
“Senior.”
She had a bit more apology in her voice than before.
“I have practiced the Alchemy Path for more than ten years. I consider myself diligent, and I consider myself inferior to no one. Yet just now, the moment you announced the names of the ingredients, my first reaction was contempt. Not contempt for this pill formula, but contempt for the herbs themselves.”
She took a deep breath and gathered the herbs on the table again. Her movements were much gentler than before, even carrying a hint of caution, as if touching something that had never been truly acknowledged.
“I don’t even have the courage to look a medicine straight in the eye, yet I call myself an alchemy prodigy and want to win the championship at the Alchemy Grand Assembly. Truly… utterly ridiculous.”
She was not someone who didn’t know how to reflect. On the contrary, precisely because she had delved deep enough into the Alchemy Path, she understood better than anyone that what Lai Li’an had just pointed out was the deepest crack in the foundation of her Alchemy Path.
She had practiced for a long time, thinking she had thoroughly understood the Alchemy Path. But only today did she realize that half of that understanding was built on prejudice.
Senior’s words were like a mirror, reflecting the narrow-mindedness hidden beneath her shiny surface in perfect detail.
This feeling was very unpleasant, like having one’s decent coat stripped off in public. But she couldn’t say a word in rebuttal, because every word Senior said was correct.
Ruan Se lowered her eyelashes, pressing down the surging emotions bit by bit. After a moment, she raised her head again, her gaze already restored to its usual coolness.
“Senior, what is the name of the pill you mentioned?”
The corners of Lai Li’an’s mouth lifted, and he slowly uttered a few words: “Green Wood Harmonizing Qi Pill.”
Ruan Se silently recited the name of the pill formula twice in her heart, then nodded solemnly.
She didn’t say anything more. Turning around, she picked up the Green Wood Spirit Fruit she had put down earlier and placed it together with those ‘filthy’ herbs.
“Senior.”
With her back to Lai Li’an, she said earnestly, “Just now you said pills are not distinguished as righteous or evil… I… have been taught.”
Having said that, she quickly turned around, back to Lai Li’an, and hurriedly gathered the herbs on the table into a jade box.
The redness at her ears deepened a few shades, but she didn’t turn her face away again. Instead, she stood straight, letting the red hang openly behind her ears, as if bearing the mark left by her earlier prejudice.
Lai Li’an leaned against the doorframe, watching her back, unable to suppress a smile.
This girl was far more interesting than he had imagined.