Extra's Strategy: Cultivate Protagonists, Become Invincible-Chapter 192: The Map And The Mask

The senior sister, who introduced herself as the current representative of the mountain, similar to Qing Hua, eventually gave him a quick tour after he badgered her incessantly.

"Since the rules against sightseeing were placed to protect secrets of pill making from being leaked, why don’t you take me to those pill projects that are too advanced and complex to learn through mere observation alone?"

She had no retort against that logic, except for insisting on abiding by the rules. So Han Xuhan had switched tactics by showing off his wealth and ’future potential’.

"I’m not bragging, but if I dare to claim that I’m the richest disciple in my generation, no one will dare to contest that claim. Naturally, I can afford to show interest in these secondary skills while everyone else is busy improving their basic cultivation levels!"

When she tried to ignore his request, he also became uncooperative, refusing to go to her hut to get the fog report materials. Faced with the childish tantrum, the senior sister could only acquiesce to the demand, not that she looked too displeased with the opportunity to show off the awesomeness of her mountain peak.

Half an hour later, Han Xuhan walked out of the Frost Pill Mountain’s entrance in a daze. There was a thick beast-hide scroll in his right hand, and a wooden mask in his left hand.

Both items were novelties; magical apparatuses that one couldn’t buy unless their wallet was overflowing with money. But Han Xuhan’s awe after witnessing the process of making pills was so overwhelming that he could not move his thoughts away from the fresh memories.

The ’cauldrons’ he had stumbled across at the lower part of the mountain were already pushing the borders of absurd designs. But after that senior sister had taken him uphill, his mind had been completely broken by the things he saw.

Cauldrons were formed out of pure qi and visible bright array light, innumerable symbols rotating in the air at the speed of an electric drill.

Alchemic spells turned materials into lava, plasma, and vapor simultaneously, creating balls of gas that distorted all elements of nature around them.

Monstrous crystalline constructs burned like palaces of hell as they spewed out waste, byproducts, and semi-transformed clumps of materials.

They treated even the heavenly phenomena as the guide and the earthly energy as the medium of alchemic transformation, using techniques so erudite in concept that even his guide, the senior sister, confessed that she didn’t understand what was going on in most pill projects outside her own.

Han Xuhan had also gotten a good glimpse of the mastermind Elder who had caused half the mountain range to be swallowed by the fog of his pill.

The man looked exactly how he had imagined he would look, with unkempt hair and a dirty beard, clothing that didn’t seem to have been washed in a few months, and an intense body odor that stemmed partly from ingredients and partly from not showering.

But in terms of grandiosity, this Elder’s pill-making process trumped all competitors. Running crazily all over the topmost peak of the Frost Pill Mountain, he maintained the stability of a semi-transparent mass of energy through countless arrays that had to be adjusted every few seconds.

At the center of his project lay a pitch-black ball of smoke. From every direction of the mountain peak, very thin tendrils of fog were being sucked into this ball of light slowly.

If one scrutinized closely, they’d be able to see a gargantuan network of fog connected to this ball of light, spread across the mountains around them like spiderwebs, pulsing from time to time like a living being.

Han Xuhan would’ve liked to talk to the Elder, but the intensity of the heat, the chaotic flux of qi, and the natural energy bubbling around the project formed a combination that made his bodily instincts shudder.

Besides, the senior sister wasn’t willing to let him interact with anyone on the mountain either. It wasn’t because she was discriminating against him. She just didn’t want to let him interrupt the busy disciples and Elders or distract them with their presence.

After being taken to her hut, he had been given the two special apparatuses. She taught him how to use them, which he managed to learn after only one demonstration.

This didn’t happen due to his innate talent or superior comprehension; the apparatuses were just too easy to operate.

The beast-skin scroll contained a map of the entire Bullhorn Mountain Range. Han Xuhan had almost choked on his own spit when she taught him the magical aspects of this map.

"I know this will seem like a very foreign and novel concept to someone with your background, so pay attention here. Simply by touching this map and making this gesture with your fingers, you can enlarge any area under your selection until every blade of grass in that place is visible to you.

"Similarly, you can make this gesture to move in all four directions, focus in and out of any area, scrutinize, get overviews, follow the fog..."

In summary, as long as he could put his qi into the scroll, its function would be no different from the satellite-created digital maps found in the weather applications of a cellphone on Earth. Even the gestures for the operations were the same.

The only difference was that instead of providing live coverage of the weather, this map only showed the movements and attributes of the fog all over the mountain range.

While she was displaying how to track and examine the fog, Han Xuhan noticed a variety of attribute markers there.

In some areas, the fog was dense enough to spiritually damage anybody if they breathed in it for a couple of minutes. But these areas were far from the actual territory occupied by the Crimson Snow Sect.

These mountains had no human settlements either. As for the beasts that lived there, they didn’t have to worry about spiritual corruption since they weren’t Mystic Artists.

In the regions where there was some human activity, especially in the mountains that disciples of the Crimson Snow Sect frequented, the fog wasn’t so dense and dangerous. But the warning labels these places had been marked with were... odd, to say the least.

In some regions, the fog could apparently cause diarrhea to all creatures in its range.

There were also attributes like causing delirium, qi pollution, physical weakness, dampening Mystic Arts, meridian blockage, pill damage, rapid aging, and even things as strange as changes in eating habits.

"Everything was stable until recently, when the Elder’s big project entered its final phase," she had explained in an apologetic tone.

"The fog is starting to invade the residential areas of the sect, along with the varied harmful effects that we kept at bay for months.

"The air around any mountain peak can change anytime, and this map can show you what has changed within the fog; whether there are any warnings attached with the change.

"You’ll have to keep the disciples of your mountain peak constantly updated when such dangerous type of fog appears nearby. And that’s where the second apparatus comes in."

Realizing that the wooden mask was a far more useful apparatus compared to the map, which had a very narrow utility, Han Xuhan’s mind had gone into overdrive trying to extract more information about it.

"What happens if I don’t let it absorb qi from my meridians? Or what if my qi runs out?"

"The layer of protection will start to weaken, of course. Nothing can function without fuel. If it goes too long without the supply of qi, it’ll turn into an ordinary wooden mask."

That was a big downside in Han Xuhan’s eyes. His meridian system was so cursed that he could barely cultivate a normal Mystic Art. Absorbing and channeling qi for cultivation was difficult enough.

Having a foreign object stuck to his body, constantly sucking away his refined qi would be a nightmare.

This meant that he could only use this wooden mask sparingly. His disappointment upon realizing this was so heavy that it spurred him to ask a question based on wild speculations.

"What if I get someone else to inject their qi into the mask while I’m wearing it? Will its protective mechanism still be effective for me?"

The senior sister looked troubled while giving the answer.

"I... I guess so? I mean, I’m not an expert on apparatus mechanics. But this mask probably isn’t something at the level of recognizing its ownership. Who would bother to design that kind of esoteric mechanism if there’s no real demand for it?"

Han Xuhan, never having expected the loophole to exist, was delighted. He had minions who were playing with qi day and night, always available to be summoned. He could just make them fill in to charge this mask with their own qi!

Zhanxian and Tun Shi Tian had no idea that their usefulness had just gone through an update. Aside from the job of a porter, a homemaker, and a cannon fodder, they could now perform the job of a battery.

The best thing about the whole arrangement was that Han Xuhan didn’t have to pay a single spirit stone to use these two apparatuses. Having signed his name as the representative of the Salted Fish Mountain Peak, his ownership of the items had been sealed.

As he walked back to his hut, there was an extra bounce in his steps. The novelty of visiting the Frost Pill Mountain was slowly fading away, and his thoughts started to turn back to his own business.

The next few days were going to be really lively, if everything worked out the way he had planned...

The source of this c𝐨ntent is fre𝒆w(e)bn(o)vel