Chapter 96

Chapter 96: Master!

By afternoon, Rong Shu went into the pill room to wait for the customers who had placed orders that morning.

After confirming the pills to be refined, she quoted each person the going price on the black market.

Because it was their first time trading with Rong Shu, all seven customers kept their orders small. The largest was only four furnaces; some asked for just one or two furnaces, and all of them were first?grade pills.

Rong Shu was not yet truly a second?grade alchemist, hovering somewhere between first and second grade. The reason she had put “second?grade alchemist” on the notice board was to attract cultivators to place second?grade orders so she could get practice.

As for whether she could succeed or not, she had written clearly on the notice that her success rate was only forty percent; it was not guaranteed. If she failed, the black market rules applied and no blame would fall on her.

Once the seven orders were set, Rong Shu shut the pill room, ground the herbs, and lit the furnace to refine.

They were all first?grade pills, and the quantities were not large. One leisurely afternoon was enough to finish them.

Her yields per furnace were generous. Some furnaces produced nine or even ten pills. Such frighteningly high yields could not be exposed. For safety’s sake, Rong Shu steeled herself to keep back a pill or two and controlled each furnace’s reported yield to six or eight. [It is not like I want to do this. I have no choice.]

After she finished refining, she still had time to stroll the black market.

There were indeed many things she had never seen before. But she only looked and did not spend spirit stones.

First, she could not tell whether those things were genuine and worried about getting swindled. Second, there were good items for sure, but nothing she urgently needed, and the prices were steep. If she suddenly pulled out too many spirit stones, she would slip back into those bitter, scraping days.

In the end, she only bought five pill furnaces. Once the orders grew, one pill furnace would not be enough. Buying a few more and refining in parallel would save a lot of time.

Near dusk, Rong Shu received a message from Lin Dao asking her to meet up.

When she saw Lin Dao, Rong Shu asked: “Senior Brother, are we going back to the sect?”

Lin Dao shook his head and said: “No need. We will stay in the black market tonight. Going back and forth wastes time. I have already found lodging.”

“Alright then.”

Rong Shu had nothing pressing at the sect; the only thing worth minding was the rent on the training room. If she did not use it that night, the rent could roll over to the next night without loss.

The next day, Rong Shu delivered the pills to the seven customers, then set up her stall and took five new orders.

In a room at an inn in the black market, a man stared at a bottle of pills on the table, hesitated for a long time, then swallowed one.

Had Rong Shu been present, she would have recognized him as one of the seven who had ordered from her the day before. His name was Gu Da Zhuang, a mercenary.

He had long lived with his tongue on the blade’s edge, and after decades of jobs he had made companions he believed would stake their lives for him. Yet just recently, with a mission nearly complete, he was betrayed by a companion and almost lost his life.

Heaven favored him, and he escaped, but he suffered serious injuries. For someone in his line of work, death was not the scariest thing. Injury was. A mercenary naturally accumulated enemies, and the people around him were not entirely trustworthy. If word of his injuries spread, countless assassins might come for him the very next day.

After swallowing the pill, Gu Da Zhuang was ready to force himself to vomit it up at the first sign of trouble.

Very soon, the pill took effect. None of the side effects or dangers he feared appeared. On the contrary, the medicine began repairing his injuries.

Gu Da Zhuang was overjoyed. The potency of this pill was so good, at least thirty percent stronger than the ones he had bought before. The yields per furnace were high as well, and most importantly, this alchemist was not a fraud.

Thinking this, Gu Da Zhuang left the inn at once. When he reached the pill room he had visited earlier, it was already locked. He rushed to Rong Shu’s former stall, but she was not there either.

“…She should come again tomorrow, right?” he muttered, then had no choice but to head back and check again the next day. The fresh pills in his hand would last him for two days.

The next day, when Rong Shu returned to set up her stall, she found the people who had bought from her yesterday already waiting at that spot.

Although Rong Shu was confident in her alchemy, she still observed their expressions just in case. They did not look like people coming to seek revenge.

So she walked over.

As soon as she approached, several of them recognized her figure and called out in delight: “Master, I want to place an order! Ten furnaces! No, twenty!”

“Master, me too, me too!”

“And me, and me…”

Rong Shu had been confident that after one night, the cultivators who had purchased from her would leave good reviews and become repeat customers. She had not expected such an enthusiastic welcome.

She let out a quiet breath. On the way over she had entertained an unlikely suspicion that they had come to cause trouble. Her right hand had been clenched around the Nine Palace Mirror. If anything turned sour, she would have invited them to “take a look” in the mirror.

Fortunately, all was well. At that moment, Gu Da Zhuang and the others suddenly felt a chill at their necks… probably a false alarm.