Chapter 64: Disgusting Way to Produce Elixir (Please Follow!)

Southern District, Taiping Weird Market.

Li Yu, already disguised as a white-haired old man, was looking around at the extraordinary bazaar he found himself in with a face full of surprise.

No other reason, the changes were too great.

The original Weird Market was not small and was quite lively, but now it was very close to a mortal market; "a sea of people" might be an exaggeration, but there were truly a lot of people.

Most of them were low-level cultivators.

Once the threshold was lowered, they swarmed in from the four districts; one could tell what kind of people they were from their attire, accents, and mannerisms.

Pretentious Qian Kingdom fellows, monks and nuns from the Western District, barbarians from the Northern District, and all sorts of perverts from the Southern District.

At a glance, it really had the atmosphere of a market, even though it was midnight, the Hour of the Rat.

"Very good, the livelier, the better."

"Not only is it convenient for me to act, but prices can also drop a bit more."

Muttering in his heart, Li Yu smiled slightly and blended into the crowd.

His nose twitched slightly as he searched for his targets.

If others didn't know the name of the item they wanted to buy, or even if the shape they had in mind was wrong, it would be almost impossible to buy everything needed.

But Li Yu, as an "Elixir Apprentice," was naturally very different.

Thousands of strange odors were mixed within the market, but as long as the relevant scent appeared within range, he would know it immediately.

Very quickly, he smelled the scent of the first strange elixir material. Li Yu turned around and spotted the source of the smell.

It was a street stall covered in all sorts of miscellaneous items—a motley collection of everything. The stall owner was a middle-aged man who looked honest and simple, his face full of wrinkles, smiling foolishly, dressed like a poor, rustic farmer.

To Li Yu, the other items were all trash.

Only a stone urn in the middle, covered in thick grime, made Li Yu's heart stir.

Because inside that urn, it was shockingly filled with incense ash of various colors.

Yet there was no "fire energy," no fragrance, nor any Qi of pious faith—nothing at all.

If one leaned in to smell it, one would even catch a faint, cold, foul odor, an ominous sense that made one feel deeply disgusted.

"It is the incense ash from that Weird-imbued sacrificial meat."

"According to the scene I glimpsed through my Skin-Peeling Forbidden Weird avatar, these incense ashes are actually made by the 'Wild Folk' of the frozen plains, used to worship the various Weird entities within the frozen plains to protect them or grant them power."

"That branch of Wild Folk can survive tenaciously in the [Ten Thousand Weird Frozen Plains]; naturally, they have racial secrets to rely on."

With this thought, Li Yu stepped forward.

Initially, he just didn't want to be ripped off, so he used the bargaining techniques from his past life to chat with the stall owner.

But soon, Li Yu heard the following sentences.

"Old brother!"

"The things on my stall are all rare items. I picked them up on the frozen plains on my way into the city. Every piece is worth a fortune; for cultivators like us, even more so."

"Perhaps one of these strange items contains a legacy of godhood?"

These words had no value in the ears of others.

But for Li Yu, who was single-mindedly trying to escape Wanfu City, he captured some information.

His gaze shifted, and he stepped forward to say:

"Let's put the trade aside for a moment. This old man grew up in Wanfu City since I was a child, and I am very curious about the outside world."

"Which kingdom does fellow Daoist come from? How did you enter the city? Does your hometown have any special customs?"

The stall owner looked honest but was actually as cunning as a ghost.

When Li Yu asked, he immediately chuckled and began to prevaricate and fool him.

Seeing this, Li Yu understood instantly.

He picked up a few items at random, including the stone urn.

Not long after, Li Yu left the stall with a face full of smiles and headed to the next spot.

In the end, he spent two hundred taels to buy the stone urn filled with incense ash, which counted as quite a bargain.

And the harvest that truly satisfied Li Yu was the information he obtained from the stall owner's mouth.

Of course, it still required verification from multiple sources.

An hour later, Li Yu mingled in the crowd, slowly walking out of the dispersing Weird Market. With a face full of smiles, he boarded a night-shift monster bus heading to Tianji Workshop.

Tonight, his luck was exceptionally good.

The elixir materials needed to refine the [Skin-Peeling Weird Elixir], such as Wild Folk incense ash, frozen meat and broken bones of ancient Weird entities, bronze fragments completely submerged and polluted by Weird essence, mysterious Weird blood... and so on, were all bought by him.

The total cost didn't even exceed five thousand taels.

In other words, if Li Yu could refine it successfully, the "Skin-Peeling Weird Elixir," whose power would far exceed any previous spirit elixir, had the lowest raw material cost.

Of course, this was on the premise of excluding that lump of Weird-imbued sacrificial meat; if added, the cost would directly skyrocket more than tenfold.

Li Yu was already satisfied enough with this, not to mention he had other gains.

The first was the eighth Truth Bubble, its charge over half full again.

The second was some special information.

Most of these strange elixir materials were bought from those refugee city dwellers. Every time, Li Yu would turn into a chatty old man to pry information out of them.

In the end, he had a vague guess regarding how Wanfu City recruited refugees and how the refugees entered the city:

"These so-called 'refugees' are actually some villains, marginalized figures, or those with other pursuits from the three kingdoms of Qian, Li, and Jing."

"They, either passively or actively, made contact with people sent by the Wanfu City Lord's Mansion and the overlords of the four districts, heading to the borders of the three kingdoms. There must be more than one extremely mature smuggling route within this."

"Afterward, they pass through forbidden lands. The four districts seem to have divided up all the refugees in advance, and then each uses their own methods to transport them into the city."

"For example, the Fallen Buddhism of the Western District seems to use an extremely secret and fast path on the Ten Thousand Weird Frozen Plains. During the journey, all the refugees' ears, noses, and mouths are sealed, and high-sequence powerhouses carry them collectively. Afterward, they even clear the relevant memories from their minds... Only a few cultivators remember some vague fragments, and those who are lucky can even grab some things along the way."

"As for the Southern District, it is even simpler and more brutal: giant mechanical slave-trading ships, euphemistically called [Fortune-Trading Ships], transport them to a base outside the city, and their memories are cleared afterward."

"The City Lord's Mansion might also participate in the sharing, but they might look down on ordinary refugees and only keep their eyes on high-level powerhouses or geniuses with potential."

Thinking this through, some thoughts couldn't help but emerge in Li Yu's heart.

Since there are so many safe paths?

Then there must be many ways to leave the city. I didn't know before simply because I was at the bottom and couldn't make contact with them.

Tomorrow, I might as well beat around the bush and ask those six people to see if there is a faster and safer way.

The sooner I leave this hellhole, the better. Long delays lead to trouble; staying too long invites change.

Once his mind was made up, Li Yu returned to his residence.

Pushing open the door, it was still that beautiful scene: Hongdou, who had been waiting, held an electric eel lamp, illuminating the dark and gloomy courtyard, calling out that she welcomed her master home.

"Hongdou!"

"Let's go, start the furnace and refine the elixir."

Inside the elixir refining room, Li Yu looked at the pile of gloomy things from the Ten Thousand Weird Frozen Plains, including the Weird-imbued sacrificial meat, and turned to look at Hongdou, feeling a bit uneasy as he said:

"Hongdou, repeat the orders I prepared." "Yes, Master!"

"Hongdou must raise the temperature to the maximum the moment Master enters the elixir furnace... During the process, no matter what changes occur, Master's body is not allowed to leave the elixir refining room; extreme measures can be taken if necessary... If Master enters a special state, Hongdou can light the Weird Candle to stop it... If the above methods all fail, Hongdou can contact the City Lord's Mansion via the Wanfu Badge to handle it."

"Very good!"

Li Yu nodded in satisfaction and then walked toward the pile of elixir materials.

The reason he set so many layers of orders was naturally because the [Skin-Peeling Weird Elixir] he created himself this time was extremely dangerous.

Even if he felt his Elixir Apprentice skills had reached a professional level, and even if a failure wouldn't cause any serious consequences.

But one must always fear the "what if"; being prepared is never wrong.

In Li Yu's estimation, the most serious consequence of refining this elixir was likely that he would directly degenerate and mutate into a new "Skin-Peeling Forbidden Weird," potentially killing all city dwellers below Sequence 7 on this old street, or even neighboring streets, overnight.

Of course, after he had made perfect preparations, such a thing would be impossible to happen again.

With this thought, Li Yu began.

To be safe, this time it was still internal and external refining combined.

=9+Shu_Ba

He saw him grin and begin to gorge on the elixir materials like a starving ghost, even stuffing the urn of incense ash into his mouth, until the final lump of cold, viscous Weird-imbued sacrificial meat slid down his throat into his stomach.

He, as a whole, once again experienced that terrifying feeling of being stripped of clothes, peeled of skin, and buried in permafrost.

Without a second of delay, Li Yu jumped into the burning red elixir furnace again.

If it were in the past, the moment he entered the elixir furnace, his clothes would have been burned to ashes.

But this time, they were not.

Accompanied by a "hissing" sound, the terrifying cold air surging from Li Yu's body actually resisted the high temperature of the elixir furnace, and streams of icy, foul-smelling steam erupted, looking exactly like the stench from a distant age after the permafrost thawed.

What was even more terrifying was that the cold air surged continuously and its power skyrocketed.

Even though the elixir furnace temperature was already at its maximum, it still extinguished after a dozen breaths.

The elixir furnace, which could even refine refined iron into molten iron, was actually frozen stiff by the cold air in Li Yu's body, and in the next moment, it exploded directly. It revealed Li Yu's dark blue body inside, which was almost indistinguishable from a "frozen corpse," and the color was still deepening, gradually changing toward a state of nothingness.

And who knew what Li Yu's heart and soul were encountering?

His body floated up automatically at this moment, wanting to go outside the elixir refining room; it seemed the instinct to peel skin had been triggered.

But just as he rose, he heard a "bang."

The pretty maid flashed before him and kicked him back with one foot.

It was fortunate that Li Yu was not clear-headed at this moment; otherwise, he would definitely suspect: was this maid taking revenge on him for refusing the Spirit-Replenishing Great Method?

Fortunately, it was also this kick that seemed to trigger Li Yu.

Suddenly, clusters of flames sprouted from within his body without root, forcibly pulling him back to a state of reality.

And so, what followed was a cycle of the aforementioned scene.

Every time Li Yu’s physical shell was about to turn into nothingness to peel the skins of his neighbors, he would be kicked back by Hongdou, and the color of his flesh and blood would be dragged back by the elixir fire.

After repeating this many times!

Finally, the elixir fire began to gain the upper hand.

The void-like dark blue faded away bit by bit.

When the last trace of "fishy, cold aura" overflowed from the top of Li Yu’s head, an extremely eerie and horrifying scene ensued:

Li Yu!

He began to shed his skin.

It was as if an invisible hand in the void had pinched Li Yu’s scalp and pulled upward; in the blink of an eye, an entire "human skin" was pulled off.

Yet beneath it was not exposed, crimson flesh, but a fresh, tender new Li Yu.

The human skin rolled up automatically, and amidst the flickering dark blue radiance, it slowly condensed into a spirit elixir, which was caught in a jade box by Hongdou, who had been prepared on the side.

This, however, was not the end.

Only a single breath later, the second human skin began to shed.

Afterward, it was the third skin.

When Li Yu woke up as if from a nightmare and opened his eyes, what he saw were three spirit elixirs with excellent appearances, resembling dark blue ice pellets.

After all, since he had refined them himself, he knew their complete effects just by sniffing the elixir aura.

"Three of them? It’s a success!"

"The Skin-Peeling Tricky Elixir has stolen the yin-cold tricky essence from the Ten Thousand Tricky Frozen Plains, as well as a portion of the rule-power of that forbidden tricky entity."

"After consuming it, I will possess the [Void Tricky Body] and [Skin-Peeling Strange Power], and practitioners below Sequence Seven, or other living beings, will find it difficult to resist me; even the Sorrowful Corpse sequence is the same, because I am not a forbidden tricky entity truly from the Ten Thousand Tricky Frozen Plains, so the anomalies of the Sorrowful Corpse cannot deceive me."

"As for the side effects, I will feel cold for a period of time afterward and have a slight urge to peel skin off people, which is harmless."

"This elixir is simply perfect."

Just as Li Yu finished saying this, the next moment Hongdou followed his prior orders and replayed the entire process of him "shedding skin into an elixir" right before his eyes.

Every detail was clearly visible.

Hongdou, this mechanical maid, naturally felt nothing.

But Li Yu, at this moment, felt somewhat uncomfortable.

His face turned pale as he struggled to complain and comfort himself:

"Actually... it’s also fine, after all, the inspiration for this elixir, as well as the main materials, all came from the Skin-Peeling Forbidden Tricky Entity."

"Besides, many people have the weird habit of biting their nails, which is essentially no different from me taking this elixir."

"I, Li Yu, am a very normal person."

"It is the Spirit Venerable path itself that has a problem; it doesn't look like the Evil God faction, but I fear it isn't any particularly upright deity either."

"Of course, it could also be that Sequence Eight Elixir Disciple is just like this; the next Sequence Seven, [Alchemist], sounds very prestigious, and the style should improve significantly..."

Although the way the Skin-Peeling Tricky Elixir was produced was somewhat disgusting, he quickly persuaded himself and adapted.

With these three spirit elixirs, Li Yu’s combat power soared in a straight line.

Unless they were some extremely special sequences, he no longer looked down upon others of the same Sequence Eight level.

The next day, dressed in new clothes and carrying a transit token, Li Yu looked every bit like a true office worker of Wanfu City, and one with a formal position at that.

He boarded a monster bus and, after a few stops, arrived at the complex and majestic building cluster on City Lord Street.

Along the way, he nodded to other "colleagues" he passed, and soon rode a steam elevator to appear in the camp of the Ninth Pioneering Team.

He had yet to see his six teammates and colleagues: Zhan Kui, Luo Sheng, Sang Zhu, Zhu Wugou, Shu Fu, and Mi Wuniang.

What he saw first were the large quantities of elixir materials, tricky objects, rare ingredients, and so on, neatly arranged before him.

In Li Yu’s eyes, greed and the desire for possession emerged almost instinctively.

And he truly possessed the right to control these things; thoughts of embezzlement and lining his own pockets surged up directly, and he settled on them without any sense of guilt.

"Tsk tsk, since no one is supervising me, and reaching out won't be punished."

"Zhan Kui, this captain of the pioneering team, even encouraged me to report losses... then naturally, there is no reason for me not to take them, hehe."

PS: Four thousand characters, so as usual, there will be two chapters tomorrow.

(End of this chapter)