[Middle-Lower Draw: Refine the Demon Furnace, and you will do the work for another’s gain, becoming a dog for a Purple Mansion Cultivator and falling into a Nascent Soul’s plot. Your life may be at risk. Inauspicious!]

"As expected, there’s a problem!"

Qin Xuan slapped his thigh, a delighted look on his face.

’This time, I’ve finally gotten ahead of my Golden Finger.’

’Damn you, Jin Wuhai, just you wait. I made you so much profit back in the day, and you still want to steal my Magical Treasure.’

It took almost no thought for Qin Xuan to realize that the one scheming for his Yin Yang Demon Refining Furnace had to be that bastard Jin Wuhai.

Following that logic, the Purple Mansion Cultivator must be Ruan Fusheng.

"But... which Nascent Soul Demon Monarch is plotting this?"

Qin Xuan knew he wasn’t important enough to catch a Demon Monarch’s eye, but his Demon Refining Furnace was likely a trivial part of the Monarch’s larger scheme.

"Whatever, I’ll deal with it when the time comes."

Qin Xuan chuckled and took out the Eight Desolates Forging Fire Furnace that Shen Xiyue had left him.

This Furnace Cauldron was too powerful, its grade too high.

Ever since the day he got it, Qin Xuan had never even managed to activate it, let alone refine it and make it his own.

So it had been sitting inside, collecting dust.

Today, it would finally see the light of day.

"Taoist Artifacts are said to have spirits, so why have I never met this one?"

Qin Xuan couldn’t figure it out.

He placed the two Pill Furnaces side by side, looking them over.

He even took out a few Tier One Low-grade Spirit Medicines, tossed them into the Pill Furnace, and attempted to perform Alchemy.

However, the Yin Yang Demon Refining Furnace, which was said to be capable of refining Tier Three Great Medicine, did nothing but belch black smoke; there was no other change.

On the other hand, the extremely high-grade Eight Desolates Forging Fire Furnace suddenly showed a strange phenomenon.

A Spirit Body, in the form of a Cyan-robed Little Daoist Child with his hair in a topknot, suddenly emerged from the Eight Desolates Forging Fire Furnace.

"WAAAH! Lord Huang can’t take it anymore! You damn Demon Cultivator! Insulting me with Tier One Low-grade Spirit Medicine is one thing..."

"But this Demon Refining Furnace’s Artifact Spirit is trash, and there’s a hidden Restriction inside it! Are you blind? Can’t you see that?!"

The True Sun Fire around the Cyan-robed Little Daoist Child blazed as he fumed with rage.

’The Artifact Spirit appeared!’

Qin Xuan was inwardly delighted, but his face remained expressionless as he continued his Alchemy.

He acted as if he hadn’t seen the Cyan-robed Little Daoist Child at all.

He even deliberately scorched a few Tier One Low-grade Spiritual Plants with his Demon Fire and tossed them into the Eight Desolates Forging Fire Furnace.

"Damn you, damn you! Can’t you see me, Lord Huang?"

The Cyan-robed Little Daoist Child was so angry that the True Sun Fire around him burned fiercely. However, due to the Restriction placed by his master, Shen Xiyue, he couldn’t harm Qin Xuan in the slightest.

After Shen Xiyue’s Cultivation dropped to the Foundation Establishment Fifth Level, the little Daoist child’s power as an Artifact Spirit was also sealed, but its own intrinsic grade remained.

Finally, it turned and shot a vicious glare at the Yin Yang Demon Refining Furnace, which was merely at the Magical Treasure grade.

It started kicking and punching the Demon Refining Furnace, its blows making the furnace body ring out. BANG! BANG!

"Where’s the Artifact Spirit? Get the hell out here for Lord Huang!"

BOOM!

Wisps of cyan smoke rose up.

From within the Yin Yang Demon Refining Furnace, the soul of a two-headed Demon Flood Dragon appeared.

Its heads, one black and one white, were coiled together, trembling in fear.

The black head spoke, "This lowly one is Ao Yong, greetings, Senior!"

"Not you! The Restriction is on it! Spit it out for Lord Huang!" the Cyan-robed Little Daoist Child barked, one hand on his hip while pointing at the white flood dragon head with the other.

A wisp of golden True Sun Fire descended.

It instantly scorched the black head until it was nearly transparent.

"ROAR!" The black head let out a bloodcurdling shriek. Its soul dimmed, and even the golden crow pattern on the corresponding black half of the furnace glowed red-hot.

For a moment, it looked as if the furnace might melt into molten metal!

"Senior, spare me! I... I..."

The white head wore a human-like expression of terror. Its draconic eyes lost focus, and its face was a mask of despair. Before it could even finish speaking, it fainted from sheer fright.

"Useless trash."

The Cyan-robed Little Daoist Child grumbled, raising his small fists.

With two punches—POW! POW!—he smashed the white head’s soul to pulp, then fished out a blood-red mark and crushed it with a SNAP.

Qin Xuan watched from the side, utterly astonished.

The Cyan-robed Little Daoist Child’s fists showed no discernible fluctuations of Spiritual Power, yet the blood mark, which had emanated a dense Purple Mansion aura, simply dissipated in his palm.

"Hey, you Demon Cultivator, stop gawking. Next time you find a garbage Magical Treasure like this, don’t bring it near me. It’s bad luck."

The Cyan-robed Little Daoist Child tilted his head up, his cheeks puffed out in anger. After a moment’s thought, he threw a ray of golden light that shot into Qin Xuan’s sea of consciousness.

"This is the Eight Desolates Dao Artifact Sacrificial Refining Spell. With your current Cultivation, it will allow you to dispel any Restriction of Tier Three or below."

As he spoke, the little Daoist child pulled a Divine Sense Scripture from the Yin Yang Demon Refining Furnace.

"This is a Tier Two Alchemy inheritance, the True Yin Yang Fire Demon Pill Heart Method. It centers around using a Demon Beast Core and seems to be an accessory to this useless Pill Furnace."

"Hurry up and say, ’Thank you, Lord Huang.’"

"I appreciate the trouble."

Qin Xuan gave a slight nod, pretending not to hear the last part, and tossed the Eight Desolates Forging Fire Furnace into the Black Flood Dragon’s Reverse Scale.

"WAAAH! I’m so mad! You ungrateful Demon Cultivator..."

As the Eight Desolates Forging Fire Furnace entered the Reverse Scale Space, the Cyan-robed Little Daoist Child’s voice grew fainter and fainter until it disappeared.

A smile touched the corners of Qin Xuan’s lips.

’What an interesting Artifact Spirit. Even though my current strength isn’t enough to use a Taoist Artifact, that doesn’t mean I can’t trick some more things out of it in the future.’

...

"Yin Yang Demon Refining, Artifact Spirit Manifest!"

Qin Xuan shouted softly as Demonic Essence surged in his palm.

The twin flood dragon soul that had been beaten to a pulp reappeared. Unfortunately, its spiritual light was now dim, and its aura was less than a tenth of what it had been.

An Artifact Spirit that would have originally taken Qin Xuan several months to Refine was instead finished in less than a mere ten days!

Cradling the small and exquisite Yin Yang Demon Refining Furnace in his palm, Qin Xuan swaggered out of his Cave Mansion, mounted his gloomy cloud Magical Artifact, and headed for Yinluo Country.

Hiding in the shadows, Jin Wuhai’s face lit up with joy when he saw that Qin Xuan had already refined the Pill Furnace.

"Such speed! The boy must have a more profound refining method!"

...

「Yinluo Country, Heart Rot Valley」

Although the name sounded brimming with demonic intent, after a careful investigation, Qin Xuan found the place was no different from the mortal world.

The mortals here lived and worked in peace and contentment.

What was hidden in the Rotting Heart Ancient Spiritual Field, however, was quite peculiar.

Over three hundred mu of Spiritual Fields spread out like a sea of blood, with ghastly white skeletons half-exposed in the soil.

Blood Patterned Demon Plants hissed in the wind, a sound like sucking.

Qin Xuan bent down and pinched a bit of the red soil, and an immediate stinging, gnawing pain shot through his fingertips.

"My lord, don’t touch that! That’s Blood Marrow Rice! It consumes human marrow! The slightest carelessness and it will pierce your skin and devour your marrow!"

An old, anxious voice suddenly sounded behind Qin Xuan.

Qin Xuan turned around instinctively.

And saw a familiar figure.

The man started as well, freezing on the spot for a moment, lost in a daze.

"Senior Brother Tan Fu?"

Qin Xuan said in pleasant surprise, "What are you doing here?"

Tan Fu was from the same batch of Cultivators who had entered Ten Thousand Poison Peak under the Plague Poison Daoist along with him.

He remembered that when he first met him, he himself was only at the Qi Cultivation Sixth Layer, his Cultivation lower than Tan Fu’s.

Yet fifteen years later, he had reached the Foundation Establishment Ninth Level, while Tan Fu was still stuck at the Qi Cultivation Tenth Layer. The difference between them was like that of the clouds and the mud.

"You’re... Junior Brother Qin?"

Disbelief flooded Tan Fu’s face, but he immediately realized his mistake.

"No, no... This old man was blind! Greetings, Valley Master Qin! I pray the Valley Master won’t increase the taxes! This old man is just a worthless slave, I spoke without thinking!"

Tan Fu slapped himself—SLAP! SLAP!—and dropped to his knees, kowtowing with a THUD! THUD! His voice trembled, and his forehead was already bright red.

Fifteen years had passed, but Qin Xuan’s bearing was as impressive as ever.

Tan Fu, however, had lost all of his former pride.

His hair was withered, yellow, and sparse. His large hands were covered in calluses and scarred all over from being gnawed, no different from the Spiritual Farmers Qin Xuan had seen at the Qixing Royal Family’s estate.

He looked even worse, in fact!

"Senior Brother Tan, please, get up. We knew each other when we were nobodies. If you’re so formal now, aren’t you creating a distance between us?"

Tan Fu cowered, curling into a ball. He slapped his deeply-lined old face even harder, and it swelled up, visibly reddening.

His back was hunched, but he still carried that faint, strange odor—a mix of rotting earth and medicinal herbs.

"Valley Master, you’re being too kind to this old slave! I... how could a lowly being like myself be compared to you, my lord!"

Tan Fu refused to let Qin Xuan help him up. He kept his head pressed to the ground and shuffled backward on his knees, the sharp gravel scraping his forehead and leaving a long, bloody trail.

It was as if a thick, lamentable barrier now stood between them.

Qin Xuan could only shake his head with a helpless, bitter smile.

He never thought meeting an old acquaintance would be like this.

He also had a good idea of why the gap between them had grown so vast.

’Back then, under Wen Shichu, I chose the Positional Divine Techniques [Flame Demon], while Tan Fu and Yu Qi chose the Yin Wood Divine Techniques [Rotting Body Miasma].’

’That single choice back then must be what created the difference between master and servant today.’