Chapter 97: Women Are All Petty

"…You don't need to know!" Hongzhi said.

"What if I don't agree?" Wei Yuning did not know whether he should be grateful or angry. The sect was too considerate—not only covering food, lodging, and cultivation, they even assigned a girlfriend!

"Don't agree? Why wouldn't you agree? Isn't this a good thing?" Hongzhi asked.

"For now I have no intention of finding a Dao companion. Qiu Hu and I are fake, and Ye Ying is fake too!" Wei Yuning said. This matter had already been figured out by Hongzhi and Yun Yan, and he was now simply going along with their conclusion. Though he had been sincere about Qiu Hu at first, there was no longer any need.

"So it's true. Yun Yan and I thought it was fake! But why would that Qiu Hu girl want to become your fake Dao companion? Where does she actually come from?" Hongzhi said, frowning.

Wei Yuning silently admired his sharpness—Hongzhi was indeed meticulous, hitting the key point at once.

"Martial Uncle, I really don't know that either!" Wei Yuning said guiltily.

"Of course you don't know. Qiu Hu even fooled the sect leader of the Green Luan Sect, let alone you!" Hongzhi said matter-of-factly.

"Then could you tell the sect leader that I don't want to find a Dao companion for now?" Wei Yuning said.

He felt truly suffocated inside right now, because of this matter the only two female friends he had in the Cloud Concealment Sect had both turned against him.

"Of course you can. This matter can't be forced to begin with. Sigh, never mind, I thought you'd like them. Such fine girls—what a pity!" Hongzhi said, shaking his head.

Relieved of this mental burden, Wei Yuning felt much more at ease.

"Martial Uncle, if there's nothing else, I'll take my leave!" Wei Yuning said.

"Wait—the sect is sending disciples to the Outer Domain Battlefield, did you know about that?" Hongzhi stopped Wei Yuning, who was about to leave.

"Senior Brother Qingwu just told me. I don't plan to go!" Wei Yuning said.

"That's true. With your aptitude and your living-body flesh, you probably won't encounter any bottlenecks before the Nascent Soul stage. There's no need to go to the Outer Domain Battlefield for training. All right, you may go!" Hongzhi nodded understandingly.

Leaving Kelai Peak with light steps, Wei Yuning headed for the alchemy room on the Pill Peak.

He needed to explain the misunderstanding to Qing Fei. Qing Fei was one of the Secret Medicine Pavilion's partners; the pills sold in the shop were all supplied by her. She had not contacted Wei Yuning for two or three days, nor had she gone to the Secret Medicine Pavilion. If this continued, the shop's pills would sell out.

The alchemy room occupied the southwest section of Liyao Peak's valley floor. One side was a cliff, the other a spirit lake. Slightly north of due west was the spirit herb refinement area.

The core area of the alchemy room was the alchemy zone where the alchemy furnaces were placed, totaling five floors—three above ground and two underground.

Inside were dozens of large pill chambers. Though the chambers varied in size, they were all built around a tall, hollow cylindrical structure that served as a shared exhaust chimney for all the chambers.

Though they were all disciples of the Pill Hall, the status of herb garden disciples was far lower than that of alchemy room disciples—even a "talented disciple" like Wei Yuning was no exception.

Not only the alchemy zone, but even the non-restricted area outside it was inaccessible. Wei Yuning was stopped at the gate of the outer wall of the alchemy room. Unlike the herb garden or the refinement area, where disciples of the same hall could come and go freely.

This was the requirement of the alchemy room manager, who was also the Pill Hall's chief manager, Xu Chen. Coming from the royal family of the Mortal Furnace Kingdom, he placed particular importance on rules. In his eyes, throughout the entire Pill Hall, disciples of all other divisions existed to serve the alchemy room, so their status was lower, and their treatment was the same.

Of course, he had his own reasons for this. The selection criteria for alchemy room disciples were extremely stringent, with particularly high demands on a cultivator's mental manipulation skills.

This was simply unavoidable.

If one wanted to improve the success rate of alchemy, the alchemist had to possess more outstanding multitasking ability, and the foundation of multitasking ability was mental manipulation skill—what everyone commonly called doing many things at once.

For example, if a person could effortlessly draw a circle with the left hand while drawing a square with the right, then they possessed the ability to do two things at once. Even harder was doing three things at once, and so on—the greater the number, the stronger the ability.

This ability could be cultivated, but aptitude was fundamental. Those without aptitude had no possibility of cultivation at all. In the Cloud Concealment Sect's Pill Hall alchemy room disciple assessment, doing two things at once was the baseline, three was passing, four was excellent. And Elder Xu Chen, as the current chief manager of the alchemy room, could achieve a fearsome seven tasks at once—he was the legendary "Seven-Orificed Exquisite Heart."

Similarly, the reason Qing Fei was taken on as a personal disciple by Elder Xu Chen was that she had unlocked four-task multitasking before the age of twenty, making her a super genius among alchemy disciples.

Guarding the entrance were two unestablished menial disciples. One was unfamiliar—Wei Yuning had never seen him before; the other was somewhat familiar, but he couldn't put a name to the face.

The unfamiliar one, seeing that Wei Yuning did not have the exclusive waist token for entering and exiting the alchemy room, immediately looked at Wei Yuning with a superior gaze, then said in a punchable tone: "Pill room restricted area—no unauthorized entry!"

Strangely, the other disciple who recognized him merely glanced at him and did not volunteer to explain Wei Yuning's identity. Well, Wei Yuning didn't seem to have much of an identity either—in everyone's impression, he was just an ordinary Foundation Establishment disciple from the herb garden.

If not for the need to quickly find Qing Fei and clear up the misunderstanding, he truly would have turned around and left right then. But for now, he could only endure.

"Please help me find Senior Sister Qing Fei of Pill Chamber Zi-Seven!" Wei Yuning said politely.

The unfamiliar disciple glanced at the familiar one. The familiar disciple gave a cold "Hmph" and said, "Are you Qing Mo, the Martial Uncle from the herb garden?"

Though he addressed him as Martial Uncle, his tone carried not the slightest respect.

"That's me. What about it?" Wei Yuning asked with a frown.

Based on that menial disciple's tone alone, according to the first rule of the Cloud Concealment Sect's regulations, he should at the very least be reprimanded—even disciplinary action would be permissible.

However, when something unusual happens there must be a reason. This menial disciple dared to ask like this, so he surely had his reasons—Wei Yuning could only listen attentively.

"Senior Sister Qing Fei left instructions: if someone called Qing Mo comes by, tell him she's not here!" the familiar disciple said.

"Senior Sister Qing Fei is not in!" the unfamiliar disciple chimed in immediately.

Wei Yuning found it both infuriating and amusing. It seemed this matter had really upset Qing Fei. Fortunately, it was a misunderstanding that could be cleared up sooner or later.

Still, women were indeed petty—the slightest offense was unforgivable. And besides Qing Fei, there was also Senior Sister Qing Ling who needed an explanation. Just thinking about it made his head ache. The crucial problem was that Wei Yuning was innocent.

For a moment, he didn't know whether to keep waiting or leave first.

Just then, two people emerged one after another from the entrance of the alchemy zone building. He recognized both of them: one was Hong Le, the manager of the herb garden, and the other was the head of the Pill Hall, Elder Xu Chen.

The atmosphere between the two was not good. From far away, Wei Yuning could already hear their argument. Both spoke rapidly, and Wei Yuning didn't catch the specifics, but he heard something about spirit herbs.

Perhaps seeing someone at the entrance, the two stopped arguing, and Xu Chen halted his steps as well.