Chapter 276

Chapter 276: The Blood Pill Made From You Is Extra Nourishing
Bai Mei blurted out without thinking: “No.”

Gui Lao said coldly: “Then there is nothing to talk about.”

Hua Tu was panting hard, the Third Eye in the center of his brows twitching restlessly.

Before he could attack, he suddenly felt a warm little ball land on his back.

Ah Chun foolishly clutched the leopard fur Yu Zhao had given it, eyes full of wonder.

It was sitting on Hua Tu’s back!

[The other little ones are going to be so jealous when we get back!]

Hua Tu twisted in discomfort. Only after Yu Zhao gave him a sharp slap did he force himself to hold back the urge to fling the little fox off.

Yu Zhao looked at Gui Lao and said, “I’ll trade myself for them.”

“Yu Zhao!”

Bai Mei’s face was full of disapproval.

Yu Zhao shook her head at her, telling her with her eyes that she knew what she was doing.

Gui Lao said in a mocking, sing-song tone: “You really are easy to talk to. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were one of them.”

Her sneer meant nothing to Yu Zhao, who had already been through plenty of malice.

Yu Zhao said calmly, “I go over, and you give the Spirit Beast Pouch to Bai Mei.”

“Fine.”

Yu Zhao started walking toward Gui Lao, one step at a time.

Hua Tu clicked his tongue as he watched Yu Zhao’s back, not sure what he was feeling.

Where Yu Zhao had slapped him was starting to itch, and the itch was slowly spreading.

He sensed something was wrong and twisted his head around, only to see Ah Chun taking the chance to yank out his fur. He almost got angry enough to laugh.

By now, Yu Zhao was less than ten zhang away from Gui Lao. She could clearly see the undisguised malice in Gui Lao’s eyes.

Gui Lao stretched out her withered hand. A powerful pulling force grabbed Yu Zhao’s body and dragged her forward.

Yu Zhao did not resist. When she was about to reach her, she used her spirit power to grab the Spirit Beast Pouch in Gui Lao’s hand.

At the same time that Gui Lao’s fingers clamped around Yu Zhao’s throat, the Spirit Beast Pouch fell into Bai Mei’s hand.

Gui Lao sneered: “You really are not afraid of death.”

Yu Zhao lowered her eyes slightly.

Bai Mei opened the Spirit Beast Pouch. After checking that the younglings inside were safe, she lifted her left hand. The light curtain in the air vanished at once.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!

Dozens of figures shot up into the air and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

Only Gui Lao, Yu Zhao, Hua Tu, Bai Mei, and the naive Ah Chun were left on the field.

Bai Mei said to Gui Lao, “I did what I promised you. Let her go.”

Gui Lao grinned ferociously: “She ruined my plans and still wants to leave alive?”

As soon as she spoke, thick black smoke gushed out all around them. Yu Zhao’s and Gui Lao’s figures were swallowed up at once, and a foul stench spread through the air.

Bai Mei covered her mouth and nose. At some point a beautiful long whip had appeared in her right hand.

Crack!

The long whip lashed out, tearing through the air. Space rippled where it passed.

But as soon as the whip touched the black smoke, it was like it had fallen into sticky mud. It was hard to pull free.

Bai Mei’s brows drew together. She plucked a feather-shaped hair ornament from the ends of her hair and flicked it into the air.

The feather caught fire without any spark and shot straight toward the black smoke. At once, the air filled with crackling sounds, like water droplets falling onto red-hot iron.

A large part of the black smoke was burned away.

But when Bai Mei looked closely, Yu Zhao and Gui Lao were already gone.

…

“Heh-heh, Yu Zhao, you never thought you would end up in my hands, did you?”

Yu Zhao’s hands were bound by a rope woven from spirit power. Thick iron chains were fastened around both her ankles.

She acted as if she had not heard Gui Lao at all, calmly looking around.

She was in a dark stone cave with no light. In the center stood a huge furnace cauldron.

The cauldron was stained all over with old blood. It gave off a chilling, eerie aura that made one’s skin crawl with just a glance.

On the ground lay bloody fur, broken bones, and even fingernails with bits of flesh still attached.

All of this showed that this place was Gui Lao’s cultivation lair.

Gui Lao said, “You are still so calm when death is at your door. This really is the bearing of a sect disciple.”

Not seeing the fear she wanted on Yu Zhao’s face, Gui Lao mocked her again.

Yu Zhao asked, “You dragged me here. Are you not afraid the Five Elements Dao Sect will avenge me?”

Gui Lao let out a cold laugh. “So what if it’s the Five Elements Dao Sect? If I worried about everything before I acted, I would have been dead long ago. I would not have what I have today.”

Gui Lao thought Yu Zhao would keep talking, maybe threaten her or beg for mercy. But after that one question, Yu Zhao fell silent. That only made Gui Lao angrier.

“You ruined my plan. You have to pay the price. Do you see this furnace? In a while I will throw you into it, then burn you for eighty-one days. Your primal yin is still intact. The Blood Pill refined from you will definitely be extra nourishing.”

Yu Zhao asked, “You grabbed those younglings to use them for alchemy too?”

“Yes.”

“Why were those other Nascent Soul old fiends willing to follow your orders?”

Gui Lao said proudly, “The Blood Pills I refine are famous in our circle. They helped for a share of the profits, of course.”

Yu Zhao understood.

She had wondered why those Nascent Soul old fiends took Gui Lao as their leader. So there was another reason.

A Blood Pill was a kind of pill that could quickly raise the user’s cultivation level. There was no fixed formula. The ingredients changed depending on the pill’s effects, and taking it would cause some side effects.

But compared to the power of a Blood Pill, the side effects were almost nothing. So this kind of pill was very popular among heretic cultivators with crooked hearts.

You could tell how cruel the refining process was just from the name “Blood Pill.” No one knew how many cultivators and demonic beasts had died in Gui Lao’s furnace.

After answering, Gui Lao also felt she had said too much.

But when she thought about how a shining star of the cultivation world was about to fall in her hands, she could not hold back the joy in her heart.

As she grew older, she started to hate all young, lively things.

When she gathered ingredients for her Blood Pills, she always chose young boys and girls or very young demonic beasts on purpose.

Every time she swallowed a Blood Pill made from them, she felt as if she had become young again. That feeling made her only more obsessed with alchemy.

Many years ago, she had forced information about the Dragon Pool Mountains out of some demon beast cubs. From then on, she had been planning this raid on the Dragon Pool Mountains to snatch the younglings there.

She knew she would only get one chance. So she used Blood Pills as bait and invited many Nascent Soul old fiends who were interested in them to join her.

At first, everything went very smoothly. If Yu Zhao had not interfered, their group would have already shaken off the main Demon Race army and run far away.

As the main culprit, Yu Zhao took all of Gui Lao’s hatred.

Especially now that Gui Lao saw Yu Zhao was a young, beautiful Nascent Soul cultivator with a bright future.

All that hatred turned into her obsession with the furnace.

She was willing to risk being hunted by the Five Elements Dao Sect if it meant killing Yu Zhao.

In short, it came down to one sentence:

Yu Zhao had to die.

Gui Lao stopped paying attention to Yu Zhao. She lit a fire under the furnace and began throwing in the materials she needed for alchemy.

Yu Zhao watched quietly from the side, her expression focused, as if the furnace had not been prepared especially for her.

Gui Lao had made full preparations for this round of alchemy. She tossed more than a hundred kinds of spirit herbs into the furnace alone.

Some of the spirit herbs were very rare, ones even Yu Zhao had never seen before.

Before long, a thick medicinal scent spread through the closed space.

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