Primordial Era: I've become a cheat code by taking Yang Jian as my disciple?

The shopkeeper closed his mouth and moved aside.

Yang Chan chuckled, slipped under the counter, and ran towards the back room.

The back room is more than three times more spacious than the outside.

All four walls were lined with medicine cabinets, stretching from the floor to the roof beams. Each drawer had a yellowed paper label with neat but faded handwriting.

Old Xu sat on a low stool, with medicinal herbs spread out in front of him. He was pruning the roots of a vine with a small pair of scissors.

His movements were extremely slow; he would pause for two or three breaths after each cut, as if he were consulting with the vine.

"sit."

Old Xu didn't even look up, but nodded his chin at a wooden stump next to him.

Yang Chan moved a wooden stool and sat down, craning her neck to stare at the vine in Old Xu's hand.

"What is this?"

"Purple-rooted blood-activating vine. It grows in damp and shady places, with deep roots. Its medicinal properties travel through the meridians and it is mainly used to treat stagnation of qi and blood."

"Oh... I have this for 100,000—"

Yang Chan stopped herself from speaking and changed her words, "I've seen similar ones in the mountains, but they're a darker color than this."

Old Xu paused with his scissors, then looked up at her.

That glance was brief, but Yang Chan always felt that the old man's gaze was like a knife—not a knife for cutting people, but the kind of knife used to dissect medicinal herbs, fast and accurate, capable of slicing a person into thin slices from the inside out.

"In the mountains? Which mountain?"

"……Far."

"How far?"

"It's very far."

Old Xu didn't ask any further questions and continued pruning with his head down.

"Girl, there's one ingredient in the recipe for that pill you made last time that I didn't recognize. What is it?"

Yang Chan hesitated for a moment.

Zhong Lingyun's voice rang in her mind—not through direct transmission, but through Yang Jian's relay.

"You can just say the name of the medicine, but don't mention the place of origin."

"Soul-Shattering Grass," Yang Chan answered honestly.

Old Xu stopped scissors.

"Soul-Shattering Grass..."

He chewed on those three words twice, his brows furrowing into a deep frown. "In my sixty years of medical practice, I've searched through the pharmacopoeias of eight hundred feudal lords, and I've never seen this name before."

Yang Chan shrank her neck guiltily.

Soul-Shattering Grass grows deep in the Hundred Thousand Mountains and is a medicinal herb exclusively for the demon race. It was recorded in the fragment of the demon race's pharmacopoeia that Bai Ze gave her.

It's perfectly normal that it's not in the human pharmacopoeia.

"However—" Old Xu changed the subject, stood up, and took out a palm-sized wooden box from the medicine cabinet behind him.

When you open it, you'll find a withered herbaceous plant inside, with dark purple leaves.

"Take a look at this."

Yang Chan took it, smelled it, and then rubbed the leaves.

With that rubbing motion, a faint trace of spiritual energy seeped out from the leaf.

"This is..." Yang Chan's eyes lit up, "It's from the same family as the Soul-Shattering Grass! Its medicinal properties are similar, but its potency is much lower—well, quite a bit lower."

"If the only difference is intensity, can the compatibility be improved?"

Yang Chan was stunned for a moment.

Subconsciously, she began to recall the demon race's pharmacopoeia given to her by Bai Ze and the alchemy theories taught by Zhong Lingyun from Doupo, the two systems colliding in her mind—

"If we add a Soul-Stabilizing Flower as a medicinal guide and lower the furnace temperature by 20% to slow down the rate at which the medicinal liquid is extracted, theoretically... it's possible."

"I have the Soul-Stabilizing Flower."

Old Xu took a dried bouquet of flowers from another compartment of the medicine cabinet and tossed it in front of Yang Chan.

"Give it a try."

Yang Chan stared at the Soul-Stabilizing Flower, then looked at the dark purple substitute in her hand, and the formula in her mind began to work on its own.

She squatted down, spread the materials on the ground, and muttered something under her breath.

"Hey, wait a minute, that stove..."

Yang Chan looked up and around – this was the back room of the pharmacy, she couldn’t very well take out the Condensing Abyss Flame to refine pills in front of Old Man Xu, could she?

Old Xu pointed to a small iron medicine stove in the corner.

Use this.

Yang Chan walked over and lifted the furnace lid—the furnace was pitch black, with no residual heat at all.

"This... there's no fire."

"Don't you have one?"

Yang Chan's hand froze.

She looked up at Old Man Xu.

The old man's face was expressionless, his gaunt face covered in wrinkles, but his eyes—

It was clearly a smile on its face.

Zhong Lingyun's voice rang out from Yang Jian's side, his tone more serious than usual.

"Yang Jian".

"Um."

Yang Jian was sitting by the window of the inn, pretending to drink tea—but actually practicing the difficult subject of "remaining relaxed in a human environment."

"That old man Xu, could you go and take a look for me?"

"What are you looking at?"

"Watch him! Use your third eye."

Yang Jian put down his teacup, a slight twitch appearing between his brows.

The moment the Heavenly Eye was activated, its vision pierced through three streets and alleys, landing on the gaunt old man in the back room of the pharmacy.

Yang Jian's pupils suddenly contracted.

Under the watchful eye, an extremely restrained and profound aura flowed through Old Xu's body.

That power was compressed into a small space, like a stagnant pool.

But Yang Jian could sense that once this pool of water was stirred up, the waves it would create would be no less than those of Bai Ze!

"Teacher, this old man... he's a quasi-saint!"

"I know."

Yang Jian withdrew his Heavenly Eye and picked up his teacup again.

"You figured it out a long time ago?"

"I could tell the first time Yang Chan went to his shop."

"Then why didn't you say so?"

"You'll get nervous if I tell you, and when you get nervous you'll want to hit someone."

Yang Jian's lips twitched; he couldn't refute it.

"A quasi-saint level cultivator, holed up in a mortal realm running a pharmacy and training employees. What do you think this person is after?"

Yang Jian thought for a moment: "Secluded cultivation?"

"Then why did he open a pharmacy? Wouldn't it be faster to close it down and practice Qi cultivation?"

Yang Jian thought for a moment longer: "...You like medicine?"

"We're getting closer."

Zhong Lingyun paused for a moment, "This person's cultivation level reached Quasi-Saint and then couldn't go any higher; he was stuck at a bottleneck. His choice to open a medicine shop in the mortal world is less about seclusion and more about seeking enlightenment in another way."

"The way of medicine is also the way of the great path."

Yang Jian was stunned for a moment after saying those words.

"Okay, you've finally figured it out."

"..."

Yang Chan has already started making her move.

Since she had been seen through, she boldly activated the dark blue flames in her palm.

The abyssal flames danced in the iron furnace, their cold, eerie blue light reflecting off Old Man Xu's face.

The old man stared at the ball of fire, the light in his eyes even brighter than the flames of Ningyuan.

"Water-attribute beast fire..." He sighed, his voice almost a soliloquy, "and its rank isn't low either. Girl, what martial arts style did you follow?"

"It's an ancestral recipe!" Yang Chan didn't even look up, focusing all her attention on the medicinal liquid in the furnace.

Old Xu snorted and said nothing more.

The words "family tradition" are meaningless to someone with his experience—but since the other person is unwilling to reveal the truth, he won't press for details.

The medicinal liquid was released very slowly under the low-temperature flame, and the dark purple substitute and the essence of the Soul-Stabilizing Flower blended together layer by layer.

Yang Chan's divine sense, like a wisp of silk, penetrated into the furnace, guiding the two strands of medicinal power to converge along her unique spiral trajectory—

"Wrong."

Yang Chan was taken aback, and almost lost control of the flame in her hand.