Chapter 52 A Piece of the Puzzle

The disappearance of the two brothers Yao Tian and Yao Xian did not cause any ripples on the surface. Only Feng Wutong sent someone to make a symbolic inquiry, and there was no further news.

However, Luo Xuanyi's reputation gradually began to spread among the team. This person even took a team of people from the spirit ship to test the medicine. Except for a man named Ren Xiaqi who survived the disaster, no one who went in survived.

As expected of Taoist Hua Shen's medicine boy. Even the proud inner disciples couldn't help but lower their voices whenever they approached Luo Xuanyi's room. Especially when they saw Ren Xiaqi, his hand wrapped in blood-red bandages, leaving to deliver incense, no one dared to approach or interrupt.

Luo Xuanyi established her position in the team by asserting her authority once. Now she doesn't have to worry about anything else and can concentrate on doing her own thing.

Since then, she has been refining incense in her room. The human furnace seemed inaccessible, but Ren Xiaqi assured her that as long as their souls could communicate, he could input the recipe; after all, he was a disciple of the Guiqi Pavilion. The neighboring disciple immediately offered his alchemy room and furnace to Ren Xiaqi. Ren Xiaqi had never received such treatment before, and was surprised and delighted. He became even more appreciative of Luo Xuanyi and immediately went into the alchemy room to study.

Before he could figure out how to communicate, Luo Xuanyi needed to refine enough incense for later use. Luo Xuanyi wouldn't share the incense recipe; knowledge was wealth, and she was only refining it for herself under the guise of a secret. Knowing it was Taoist Hua Shen's exclusive recipe, others naturally didn't dare ask for it.

The time spent refining the elixir passed quickly. Luo Xuanyi calmed down and stopped thinking about the complicated things. She just kept purifying the herbs and refining them, and her mind became more and more peaceful. After an unknown number of days, most of the herbs on hand had been used up. Ren Xiaqi knocked on the door excitedly.

"It worked!" His face turned pale, and his hair smelled of cigarette smoke. "Haha, I can find a way to crack it too!"

It was hard to tell whether his unkempt appearance was a result of genuine joy or a desire to please Luo Xuanyi, or perhaps a combination of both. However, Luo Xuanyi didn't mind the thought. He could truly contribute, and Luo Xuanyi could give him both fear and joy, and that was enough.

"Very good. In other words, the human furnace is not a dead spirit fixed in a certain one-sided space, but a real soul living in a certain space?"

Ren Xiaqi didn't know why this was her first question, but he answered anyway: "I don't have the authority to learn the relevant secret techniques, but my blood spiders can't capture them. Although they have been made into human furnaces, they don't seem to have an end in sight."

Ren Xiaqi walked anxiously to the alchemy furnace to show it to Luo Xuanyi, and missed her rare expression of ecstasy.

My destiny will never end here! This secret technique is a piece of the puzzle that will lead her to the future!

"After lighting the human furnace and placing the herbs, a groove will appear here to confirm the recipe, right?" Ren Xiaqi drew a circle above the pill's mouth. Luo Xuanyi forced herself to listen, hoping to get more information. "If the herbs he put in don't perfectly match what he knows, he will write down his questions instead of the recipe."

The flame of the alchemy furnace was ignited by Ren Xiaqi. Ren Xiaqi didn't know the recipe of Dengxiang's elixir, he just needed to throw in a bunch of medicinal herbs.

The light outlined the Taoist's puzzled face. He studied it carefully for a long time, finally picking up his pen. Luo Xuanyi saw the groove appear. At the bottom, there was no confirmation, but a large question mark button.

Ren Xiaqi immediately pressed the button, and the question mark immediately "melted" and flowed to the lower right corner of the groove, swirling into a vortex in the lower right corner and disappearing, leaving a small shadow. Luo Xuanyi looked carefully and saw that it was a small gap.

To them, the gap seemed only a small hole, perhaps the result of time. But the Taoist, upon seeing it, was instantly horrified. He waved his sleeves, and the breeze they stirred up transformed into thin streaks of light, forming a white crane. He mounted the crane and quickly flew off to safety in the "distant" area. To the two outsiders, it looked as if only the Taoist and the crane were shrinking.

"I suspect this is the secret technique used to refine the human furnace, the formation's eye or living eye. My blood spider can smell the remaining death energy. But this doesn't make sense, because the time it took to refine this human furnace has exceeded the blood spider's ability to capture undead spirits. Therefore, this must be the entrance to the interior, and the rapid sealing of the furnace has allowed the death energy to remain here."

"In other words, our speech and actions outside won't be detected, but through this gap, we can enter the inner space?"

"Although there are still many uncertainties, we can make this assumption." Ren Xiaqi was very happy that Luo Xuanyi said that. At least he no longer had to be afraid of the scrutinizing look she sometimes gave him.

“How does that affect the interior?”

Ren Xiaqi immediately replied, "Use the undead. Right now, I only know that the undead can work. Of course, it's not the two souls that Senior Sister asked me to collect, but the ones I collected before. I just need to use my blood spider to eat the undead and then weave it into a web. I can weave the information into the web, and the web will be able to manifest inside through this hole."

This was clearly not the correct method for communicating with the furnace, but as an outer disciple, Ren Xiaqi was able to avoid the path and find another one on his own. It was no wonder he was so excited. After all, he had even reached a bottleneck in his cultivation, and was being brought here as a sacrifice to die.

Speaking of bottlenecks, Luo Xuanyi remembered the Dust-Clearing Pill she had prepared long ago, and now it was just the right time to give it to him as a prize.

"Junior...brother," Luo Xuanyi was taught by Su Yang that he should call the elder brother "Senior Brother" before, and now he felt a little uncomfortable. "You can't practice, so you were chosen to be taken to the ruins."

Ren Xiaqi was startled and immediately woke up from his complacent mood. How did she see that?

Ren Xiaqi's comprehension was actually quite promising, which is why he was snatched away from others by True Lord Bei Lian. However, he delayed his progress for unknown reasons, and the other disciples were happy to see him being neglected, so they would not tell him that he had contracted a serious poison due to his cultivation.

This was also because the Zang Yao Sect's alchemists were so rare that those who knew of his own poison were considered to have some knowledge or connections. Furthermore, the majority of the elixirs refined by the Zang Yao Sect were poisons and used for cultivation, with only a small portion used for other purposes. Those who could obtain the elixirs were extremely rare, and the degree of poisoning they suffered was rarely as severe as Ren Xiaqi's. Ren Xiaqi had fallen into this situation because his senior brother had secretly betrayed him, despite his perceived importance, and he was therefore still completely baffled.

"It's such a simple thing, you don't need to ask me how I figured it out." Luo Xuanyi flipped her hand, took out a porcelain bottle containing the Qingchen Pill and threw it to him.

"Take two pills from the bottle and circulate them once a week, and the toxins in your body will be completely expelled. This is the reward you deserve for finding this method."

When Ren Xiaqi got it in his hand, his first reaction was that Luo Xuanyi was going to get rid of him. His hands were shaking as he pulled out the stopper, but he soon realized that he was wrong.

Just a wisp of medicinal fragrance inhaled into his cavity, and he felt a sense of spiritual energy flowing so easily that he hadn't felt it in a long time. With a surge of excitement, to gain Luo Xuanyi's trust, he poured out two pills in front of her and swallowed them, crossing his legs and circulating the Qi in her body. After a few breaths, he bowed his head in ecstasy and said respectfully, "Thank you, Senior Sister! I am a humble person, but I am honored to receive your pills. From now on, I will work even harder to serve you!"

Seeing him carefully put the porcelain bottle away, Luo Xuanyi was very satisfied with his attitude. Seeing that Ren Xiaqi couldn't wait to go to the room to practice, she also raised an eyebrow and agreed.

Ren Xiaqi wasn't completely blinded by joy. He stopped dead in his tracks, slicing flesh from his palm. He waited until Luo Xuanyi wrote the recipe on paper, resolutely not even glancing at it, letting the blood spider devour the page. The web the blood spider wove from the dead was a faint gray rather than pure white, and felt as light as a feather in his hand. Ren Xiaqi gently rolled the fabric into a small bundle and placed it over the gap. It instantly vanished as if melting away.

When the fabric vanished, the gap also vanished, never to reappear. The Taoist finally approached cautiously, peering at the spot corresponding to the groove. After a long pause, he peeled off a layer of text and, holding it in his hands, began to study it with an expression of both fear and curiosity.

Once the Taoist figured out the clue, the incense could be mass-produced in the human furnace. Ren Xiaqi immediately said goodbye and rushed out of the room. Luo Xuanyi ignored him and instead moved closer to the human furnace, watching the Taoist's actions with almost fanatical enthusiasm.

The secret is already in hand, but this is still too open an environment. Luo Xuanyi dare not study the soul-locking spell, so he has to study the finished product, the human furnace.