Many children, many blessings: Stealing the offspring of powerful figures to cultivate immortality.

Dancheng.

It's less a city and more a steel jungle made up of countless enormous alchemical furnaces.

There is no ground here; all the buildings are suspended beneath a massive floating meteorite by thousands of thick chains.

The earth's core fire veins are guided by the array and transported upwards along these chains, providing a continuous source of energy for the alchemy rooms throughout the city.

A strange smell filled the air—the fragrance of high-grade spiritual herbs mixed with the acrid smell of sulfur and the burnt smell of an oven.

"Is this Dan City?"

Jiang Yining stood at the exit of the teleportation array, stunned by the scene before her.

The streets were filled with cultivators hurrying about, each wearing a robe with flame patterns, carrying either a jade box or a medicine hoe.

The shops lining both sides of the street were dazzling with goods, ranging from first-grade hemostatic pills to ninth-grade tribulation-crossing pills.

Of course, the price is equally impressive.

"Heavenly-grade Life-Extending Pill... Starting bid: 50 million mid-grade Star Essence Stones."

Jiang Yining stood in front of a shop called "Baicaoge" and looked at the suffocating price tag, her lips twitching slightly.

She turned to look at Mo Xie beside her.

The boy stared intently at the counter, his Adam's apple bobbing.

"..."

Mo Xie expressionlessly put the bag away, crossed his arms, and raised his chin at a 45-degree angle. "What are you looking at? If it weren't for saving you, why would I be short of so much money?"

"Yes, yes, young master is too good to me."

Jiang Yining rubbed her forehead.

Even a hero can be brought down by a penny. In this city where every inch of land is precious, you can't even afford a breath of warm air without money.

We need to find a way to make money.

Jiang Yining's eyes were sharp as she began scanning the streets.

Robbery is out of the question; Dan City has a semi-saint realm expert in charge.

Just then, a deafening explosion came from ahead.

boom!

Immediately following was a thick plume of black smoke, accompanied by a burnt smell and a piercing scream.

"My Nine-Turn Heart-Cleansing Pill! Only the final step of extinguishing the fire remains!"

Jiang Yining and Mo Xie exchanged a glance and moved closer.

There was a middle-aged alchemist with his hair singed, kneeling in front of a shattered alchemy furnace, beating his chest and stamping his feet in frustration.

The alchemy furnace clearly couldn't withstand the sudden fluctuations of the earth fire and exploded in two.

Those around them were used to it and shook their heads.

"How many times has this happened, Old Li? It's exploded three times this month, hasn't it?"

"There's no way around it. Although the earth fire in Dan City is fierce, it's unstable. Especially around noon, when the earth fire tide comes in, if you're even a fraction of a second slow in controlling the fire, the furnace will be destroyed and the pills will be lost."

"Ah, if only there were a stove that could automatically adjust the heat."

"Dream on! Controlling fire is a basic skill for alchemists, relying entirely on divine sense. If your divine sense isn't strong enough, you can only leave it to fate."

Listening to the discussions around her, Jiang Yining's eyes gradually brightened.

Automatic adjustment? Temperature control?

She knows this question by heart!

Before the apocalypse, even a rice cooker costing only a few dozen yuan had a PID temperature control algorithm, so the rice wouldn't burn at the bottom.

How come in this world of cultivation, so-called alchemy masters are still using such primitive manual transmissions?

She pulled Mo Xie, who was examining the shattered fragments of the alchemy furnace, over.

"Young master, why did the stove explode?"

Mo Xie picked up a fragment, curled his lip in disgust, and said, "Trash material, uneven heat conduction. Plus, this old man's spiritual sense reacted too slowly. He only started using hand seals to cool it down when the subterranean fire surged up. This kind of trash deserved to explode."

"Can you solve this?" Jiang Yining stared intently at him.

"Solve what?" Mo Xie looked at her like she was an idiot. "Strengthen this old man's spiritual consciousness? He'll need to take a Soul Nourishing Pill."

"I mean, fix the furnace." Jiang Yining pointed to the still-smoking scrap metal, "If we add a device to this furnace that can sense temperature changes and then automatically adjust the valve at the fire inlet... just like your Divine Machine Box automatically targets enemies."

Mo Xie was taken aback.

A thoughtful glint flashed in his golden pupils.

"You mean... to inscribe the array on the furnace wall, use the heat from the earth's fire to drive the sensing array, and once the temperature exceeds a set value, trigger the mechanical structure to close the damper?"

"Right!" Jiang Yining snapped her fingers. "It would be best to add a display screen... uh, a developing array, to show the furnace temperature in real time. Foolproof operation, one-click pill refining!"

Mo Xie's eyes changed.

That's the fervor of a tech geek when they encounter a new challenge.

He didn't mind that the ground was dirty, so he squatted down, picked up a twig, and quickly started drawing on the ground.

"We can use cold iron as a sensor here... based on the principle of thermal expansion and contraction... the transmission rod can be made of star steel... no, that's too expensive. Red copper will do... the array circuit needs to be modified, the spirit-gathering array needs to be reversed..."

He muttered incantations while his hands moved with incredible speed and precision.

In less than the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, a complex structural diagram appeared on the ground.

Although Jiang Yining couldn't understand the complex array patterns, its round shape looked exactly like a... pressure cooker.

"Can you do it?" she asked.

Mo Xie tossed aside the branch, stood up, dusted off his hands, and a wild, arrogant smile curled at the corner of his mouth.

"I could make a hundred of these kinds of children's toys with my eyes closed."

"However..." he changed the subject, spreading his hands, "I don't have the ingredients. Even a skilled cook can't cook without rice."

Jiang Yining had expected this long ago.

She took out the "pay-to-win short sword" that Mo Xie had given her from her sleeve, and then pointed to the Divine Machine Box on Mo Xie's back.

"Take the star essence stones from this sword as seed money. As for the metal materials..." She pointed to the old alchemist next to her who was still wailing, "that pile of scrap metal, are we selling it by weight?"

One hour later.

In a secluded alley in Dancheng, the clanging sound of blacksmithing echoed.

Mo Xie was shirtless, revealing a lean yet well-defined physique, and wielding a hydraulic hammer transformed from the Divine Machine Box.

Boom!Boom!Boom!

Sparks flew everywhere.

Jiang Yining squatted to the side, acting as a human blower, while secretly absorbing some earth fire with the branches of the Myriad Spirits Divine Tree to help purify the metal.

"Tighten that valve on the left a bit more!"

"The display screen... no, the display array needs to be brighter! I want that vibrant, multicolored brightness!"

"Add a voice prompt! An alarm will sound three seconds before an explosion!"

Under Jiang Yining's various outlandish demands, Mo Xie revised the plan while grumbling and cursing.

"You stupid woman! What kind of weird color is 'multicolored'?!"

"Call the police? And you want to add a loudspeaker? Do you think this is a theatrical performance?!"

Despite the cursing, he didn't stop working at all.

Finally, as night fell.

The first groundbreaking "intelligent fire-controlled alchemy furnace" was born amidst a cloud of steam.

It is entirely black, with a rounded shape, and a palm-sized crystal screen inlaid on its belly. There are also several knobs engraved with the words "simmering," "heating," and "reducing the sauce."

The most outrageous thing is that there's an antenna-shaped sensor stuck on top of the stove.

"This is the rice cooker you wanted...?" Mo Xie looked at the ugly thing with disdain.

Jiang Yining looked at it as if it were a gold ingot, and reached out to touch its cold metal casing.

"No, young master," she smiled like a cunning fox, "this is our money-printing machine."