Chapter 64

South District, Taiping Mystic Market.

Li Yu, who had disguised himself as a white-haired old man, was looking at the transcendent grand market he was in with a face full of surprise.

Nothing else, the change was too big.

The original mystic market was not small and was very lively, but now it is very close to a mortal market. "People mountain people sea" might be an exaggeration, but there were really a lot of people.

Most of them were unranked practitioners.

Once the threshold was lowered, they swarmed over from the four districts. From their clothing, accent, and style, one could see that there were all kinds of people.

Pretentious Qian Nation guys, monks and nuns from the West District, barbarians from the North District, and various perverts from the South District.

At first glance, there was really an atmosphere of going to a market, even though it was midnight.

"Very good, the livelier the better."

"Not only is it convenient for me to act, but the prices can also be lowered a bit."

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

His nose twitched slightly, searching for his target.

If others didn't know the name of the thing they wanted to buy, and even the shape might be wrong, it would be almost impossible to buy it all.

But Li Yu, as a "pill apprentice," was naturally very different.

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

Very quickly, the smell of the first mystic object pill material was smelled by him. Li Yu turned around and saw the source of the smell.

It was a street stall covered with all kinds of sundries, five flowers and eight doors, everything. The stall owner was a middle-aged man who looked honest and honest, with a face full of wrinkles, smiling foolishly, and dressed like a poor old farmer.

Other things were garbage in Li Yu's eyes.

Only a stone urn with thick patina in the middle made Li Yu's heart move.

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

But there was no "fire energy," no fragrance, or the aura of pious belief—nothing at all.

If you smelled it closely, you would also smell a faint icy stench, an ominous meaning, making people feel very disgusted.

"It's the incense ash in the Mystic-Infused Sacrificial Meat."

"According to the scene I glimpsed when I transformed into the Skinning Forbidden Mystic, these incense ashes are actually made by the strange 'wild people' of the frozen plain, used to worship various mystic objects in the frozen plain, to bless them, or to bestow power."

"That branch of wild people can survive tenaciously on the 【Ten Thousand Mystic Frozen Plain】, naturally they have racial secrets they can rely on."

With these thoughts, Li Yu stepped forward.

Initially, he just didn't want to be slaughtered, so he used the bargaining skills of his previous 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 touched them on the frozen plain on my way into the city. Every piece is worth a city, and for practitioners like us, it is even more so."

"Maybe some mystic object contains the inheritance of godhood?"

These words had no value in the ears of others.

But for Li Yu, who was determined to escape Wanfu City, he captured some information.

His eyes moved, and he stepped forward and said:

"Let's not talk about the deal first. This old man grew up in this Wanfu City since I was a child and is very curious about the outside world."

"Which nation did 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.

Li Yu asked, and he immediately smiled and began to prevaricate.

Seeing this, Li Yu understood in a second.

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

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

In the end, he spent two hundred taels to buy the stone urn filled with incense ash, which could be considered a not-so-small leak.

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

Of course, it still needed multi-party verification.

An hour later, Li Yu mixed in the crowd and slowly walked out of the mystic market that was ending. His old face was full of smiles, and he got on a night monster bus heading to the Tianji Workshop.

Tonight, his luck was exceptionally good.

The pill materials needed to refine the 【Skinning Mystic Pill】, such as wild people's incense ash, frozen meat of ancient mystic objects, broken bones, as well as bronze shards completely submerged and contaminated by mystic infusion, mysterious mystic blood... and so on, were all bought by him.

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

That is to say, if Li Yu could refine it successfully, then the "Skinning Mystic Pill," whose power was far greater than any spirit pill in the past, had the lowest raw material cost.

Of course, this is on the premise of excluding that mass of Mystic-Infused Sacrificial Meat. If added, the cost would skyrocket more than ten times.

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

One is the eighth Truth Bubble, charging more than half again.

The second is some special information.

Most of these mystic object pill materials were bought from those refugee city residents. Every time, Li Yu would turn into a chatterbox old man and fish for words from their mouths.

In the end, he had a vague guess about the answers to questions like how Wanfu City recruited refugees and how refugees entered the city:

"These so-called 'refugees' are actually villains, marginal figures, or people with other pursuits from the Qian, Li, and Jing nations."

"They were passively or actively in contact with people sent by the Wanfu City City Lord's Mansion and the overlords of the four districts. They went to the borders of the three nations. There must be more than one extremely mature smuggling route here."

"Afterward, they passed through the forbidden areas. The four districts seemed to have divided up all the refugees in advance, and then used various methods to transport them into the city."

"For example, the fallen Buddhism in the West District seems to be through an extremely secret and fast path on the Ten Thousand Mystic Frozen Plain. During the journey, all the refugees' ear, nose, and mouth orifices will be closed, and high-sequence powerhouses will carry them collectively. Afterward, they will clear the relevant memories in their minds... Only a few practitioners will remember some vague fragments, and the lucky ones can even touch some things on the way."

"And the South District is even simpler and more brutal. It is giant mechanical slave-trading ships, beautifully named 【Fu-Selling Ships】, transporting them to the camp outside the city, and afterward, they will also clear their memories."

"The City Lord's Mansion might also participate in the sharing, but might not look down on ordinary refugees, only eyeing high-level powerhouses or geniuses with potential."

When thinking through these, thoughts couldn't help but emerge in Li Yu's heart.

Since there are so many safe paths?

Then there must be quite a few ways to leave the city. I didn't know before, it's just that I was at the bottom and couldn't reach them.

Tomorrow, it's better to ask those six people sideways to see if there is a faster and safer method.

Leave this ghost place one day earlier, try to leave one day earlier. Long nights have many dreams, long stays lead to changes.

Once the idea was set, Li Yu returned to the residence.

Pushing the door open, it was still that beautiful scene: Hongdou, who had been waiting for a long time, held the electric eel lamp, illuminating the gloomy and dark small courtyard, calling out welcome home master.

"Hongdou!"

"Go, open the furnace to refine pills."

Inside the pill refining room, Li Yu looked at the pile of gloomy things from the Ten Thousand Mystic Frozen Plain, including the Mystic-Infused Sacrificial Meat, turned his head to look at Hongdou, and felt a bit uneasy:

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

"Hongdou must raise the temperature to the highest the first time Master enters the pill furnace... No matter what changes happen in the process, Master's body is not allowed to leave the pill refining room. If necessary, extreme measures can be taken... If Master enters a special state, Hongdou can light the mystic candle to stop it... If the above methods all fail, Hongdou can contact the City Lord's Mansion through the Wanfu Badge to handle it."

"Very good!"

Li Yu nodded with satisfaction, then walked toward a pile of pill materials.

The reason why he set so many commands was naturally because the 【Skinning Mystic Pill】 he created this time was extremely dangerous.

Even if he felt that his pill apprentice skills were already entering the room, even if he really failed, it wouldn't cause any serious consequences.

But everything is afraid of "what if." Being prepared is always right.

In Li Yu's speculation, the most serious consequence of refining this pill was likely that he would directly fall and mutate into a new "Skinning Forbidden Mystic," and overnight he could slaughter all the city residents below Sequence 7 on this old street, or even neighboring streets.

Of course, after he had perfect preparations, this kind of thing would not happen again.

With these thoughts, Li Yu began.

For the sake of stability, this time it was still internal and external refining.

=9+Shu_Ba

He saw him open his mouth and began to gorge on pill materials, like a starving ghost, stuffing a stone urn of incense ash into his mouth, until the last mass of icy, sticky Mystic-Infused Sacrificial Meat slid down his throat.

He himself, once again, experienced the terrifying feeling of being stripped of his clothes, skinned, and buried in permafrost.

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

If it were in the past, the moment he entered the pill furnace, the clothes on his body would be burned to ashes.

But this time, it didn't.

Accompanied by the sound of "chi chi chi," the terrifying cold air surging from Li Yu's body actually resisted the high temperature of the pill furnace, and wisps of icy, fishy, and smelly steam sprayed out, looking exactly like the stench from a distant era after the permafrost melted.

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

Even though the pill furnace temperature was at its highest, it still extinguished after a dozen breaths.

The pill furnace that could refine even refined iron into molten iron was frozen stiff by the cold air in Li Yu's body, and in the next moment, it exploded directly. It revealed Li Yu's ghost-blue body inside, which was no different from a "frozen cold corpse," and its color was still deepening, gradually changing toward a void state.

And don't know what Li Yu's heart and soul were encountering?

His shell, at this time, floated up automatically, wanting to go outside the pill refining room. It seemed that the instinct to skin was triggered.

It was just that as soon as he got up, he heard a "bang."

The delicate maid flashed in front of him and kicked him back with one foot.

It was also thanks to Li Yu not being awake at this moment, otherwise he would definitely suspect: is this maid taking revenge on him for rejecting the Spirit Replenishment Great Method?

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

Suddenly, clusters of flames were born from nothing in his body, and forcibly pulled him back to a realistic state.

And so, what followed was a cycle of the above scenes.

Every time Li Yu's shell was about to turn into a void and go skin the neighbors, he would be kicked back by Hongdou, and the color of his flesh and blood would be pulled back by the pill fire.

After repeating many times!

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

The void ghost-blue faded away bit by bit.

When the last trace of "fishy cold air" overflowed from the top of Li Yu's head, an extremely strange and horrifying scene followed:

Li Yu!

He began to shed his skin.

As if there were invisible hands in the void, grabbing Li Yu's scalp and pulling it upward. In the blink of an eye, a whole "human skin" was pulled out.

But underneath was not exposed scarlet flesh and blood, but a tender, pink new Li Yu.

The human skin rolled up automatically, and in the flickering of ghost-blue brilliance, slowly condensed into a spirit pill, which was received by Hongdou, who had been prepared on the side, with a jade box.

This, also didn't end.

Only a breath passed, and 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 pills with excellent appearance, like ghost-blue ice pills.

After all, they were refined by himself. Just by smelling the pill aura, he knew the complete effect.

"Three? It's done!"

"Skinning Mystic Pill, stole the cold mystic infusion on the Ten Thousand Mystic Frozen Plain, as well as part of the rule power of that Forbidden Mystic."

"After taking it, I will possess 【Void Mystic Body】, 【Skinning Strange Power】, and practitioners below Sequence 7, or other creatures, will find it very difficult to resist me, even the Sorrow-Corpse sequence is the same, because I am not a Forbidden Mystic truly from the Ten Thousand Mystic Frozen Plain, and that strange state of Sorrow-Corpse cannot deceive me."

"As for side effects? Afterward, I will continue to be afraid of the cold for a period of time, and have a slight impulse to skin people. It's not a big deal."

"This pill is simply perfect."

As soon as Li Yu said this, the next moment Hongdou followed his command in advance and replayed the whole process of him "shedding skin into a pill" in front of him.

Every detail was clearly visible.

Hongdou, this mechanical maid, naturally had no feeling.

But Li Yu, at this time, felt a bit uncomfortable.

His face turned pale, and he complained and comforted himself with difficulty:

"Actually... it's also okay, after all, the inspiration for this pill, as well as the main material, came from the Skinning Forbidden Mystic."

"Besides, many people have the eccentricity of biting their nails, and taking this pill is essentially no different."

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

"It's the Spirit Venerable pathway itself that has a problem. It doesn't look like the Evil God camp, but I'm afraid it's not a very proper god either."

"Of course, it may also be that the Sequence 8 pill apprentice is like this. The next Sequence 7 【Alchemist】, the name sounds very imposing, and the painting style should improve a lot..."

Although the way the Skinning Mystic Pill was produced was a bit disgusting, he quickly persuaded himself and adapted.

With these three spirit pills, Li Yu's combat power soared straight up.

For the same Sequence 8, unless it is some extremely special sequence, he no longer takes it into his eyes.

The next day, Li Yu, in new clothes and carrying a pass token, looked like a real Wanfu City office worker, and one with an establishment.

He got on a monster bus and arrived in the complex and majestic building complex of City Lord Street in a few stops.

Nodding to other "colleagues" passing by along the way, he quickly took the steam elevator and appeared in the camp of the Ninth Exploration Team.

He hadn't seen the six teammates and colleagues: Zhan Kui, Luo Sheng, Sang Zhu, Zhu Wugou, Shu Fu, and Mi Wuniang.

What he saw first was a large amount of pill materials, mystic objects, rare ingredients, etc., neatly placed in front of him.

In Li Yu's eyes, greed and possessiveness emerged almost instinctively.

And he also truly possessed the right to dispose of these things. Thoughts of corruption and lining his own pockets surged directly, and he settled them without any guilt.

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

"Zhan Kui, this exploration team captain, also encouraged me to report wear and tear... Then I naturally have no reason not to take it, hehe."

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

(End of chapter)