A Will Eternal

Seeing the sky obscured by rocks struck fear into Bai Xiaochun’s heart. He dove back into his immortal’s cave and quickly activated the spell formation, looking like he was about to cry. He knew that he had aroused public fury, but truly felt wronged; he hadn’t done it on purpose!

“I guarantee that this is the last time!” he blurted. “I’m absolutely certain!”

After the mob vented some of their anger, Bai Xiaochun continued to offer explanations, and eventually, the people left.

Sighing wistfully, Bai Xiaochun cleared the rubble from his immortal’s cave and then returned to his medicine concocting workstation. There he sat, pondering everything that had occurred. Finally, he gritted his teeth and gingerly produced another pill furnace. Based on his most recent analysis, he once again began to concoct medicine.

This time, he focused heavily on the techniques of mutual augmentation and suppression. A few days later, a fragrant aroma filled the air, and Bai Xiaochun’s eyes brimmed with tears of excitement. He let out a whoop of delight at having finally solved the problem of the exploding pill furnaces. Furthermore, he’d gained a deeper understanding of the variables which can occur because of mutual augmentation and suppression.

“I’m just around the corner from mastering tier-3 spirit medicines!” Spirits soaring, he spent the next several days completely lost in his medicine concocting.

Gradually, the disciples of Fragrant Cloud Peak realized that there were no more explosions. They sighed with relief, and as the days passed, the mountain slowly returned to normal.

And yet... Bai Xiaochun had come to find that although he’d solved the problem of the explosions, his success rate with tier-3 spirit medicine was still fairly low. Furthermore, he ended up concocting quite a few mystery pills.

When such mystery pills emerged from the pill furnace, he would look at them suspiciously. Although he knew that they surely contained wondrous secrets, it was hard to say whether they were as miraculous as his Aphrodisiac Pill.

“I need to test them out to see what they do....” he murmured to himself. Emerging from his immortal’s cave, he headed down to the market and bought some random animals. He even spent some merit points to get some from the sect.

Back in his immortal’s cave, he prepared, for the second time in his life, to perform some animal testing. He even produced a blank jade slip to record the data.

After all the preparations were complete, he took a deep breath and pulled out a rabbit, then selected a black pill from his collection of mystery pills.

The rabbit sniffed it, then gobbled it up. A moment later, it began to tremble. Then its legs twitched, and it flopped over and lay unmoving on the ground.

“Dead?” Bai Xiaochun thought, eyes going wide. After looking closer, he breathed a sigh of relief when he realized that the rabbit wasn’t dead, but rather, had simply fallen unconscious because of the rush of spiritual energy from the powerful medicinal pill.

A few hours later, it woke up. This time, it stood up on two legs, almost like a person, and stared fixedly at Bai Xiaochun.

“Eee?” Bai Xiaochun said. Moments later, the rabbit made the same sound, startling Bai Xiaochun. “You can talk?”

Looking startled, the rabbit said, “You can talk?”

Bai Xiaochun immediately got very excited, and began to walk around the rabbit to examine it. In turn, the rabbit got excited and began to walk around Bai Xiaochun. A strange scene was now playing out in the immortal’s cave.

Finally, Bai Xiaochun began to laugh heartily.

“Hahaha! This medicinal pill is incredible. I, Bai Xiaochun, am clearly super awesome. This rabbit can actually talk!”

The rabbit laughed heartily and repeated the exact same words he had just spoken. A quizzical look on his face, Bai Xiaochun opened the door of one of the side rooms and tossed the rabbit inside.

“Whatever. You’re obviously not intelligent. If you make some cultivation advancement, don’t forget to come back and thank me in the future. I’ll put you in here for now, and in a few days I’ll set you free outside the sect.”

After putting the rabbit in the other room, Bai Xiaochun paid it no further heed as he proceeded with his testing. The next subject was a monkey, for which he selected a yellow medicinal pill. At first, the monkey pretended not to see it, but eventually got interested and grabbed the pill up. After sniffing it, it crushed some of the pill, and then popped the pill and the fragments into its mouth and swallowed it down.

Afterward, nothing much happened except that an odd wind rose up out of nowhere, which quickly faded away. Bai Xiaochun looked curiously at the monkey, which was simply sitting there with a vacant expression on its face. Unsure if anything had occurred, Bai Xiaochun sighed and put the monkey into the same room as the rabbit.

A few days later, one of the tests he performed was on a group of rabbits. After eating the medicinal pills, their eyes turned red, and they began to howl and leap up to nibble Bai Xiaochun’s legs.

Shocked, he made a notation in his records, then threw them into a side room. There, they started biting each other, although they drew no blood.

There was also a handful of ducks. After consuming the mystery pills, they trembled, and suddenly, their wings grew larger, and they began to fly around inside the immortal’s cave, looking particularly elegant. Bai Xiaochun stared in shock, and at the same time, his excitement regarding his mystery pills grew.

Time flowed by. During the following half month, Bai Xiaochun performed tests with his mystery pills, keeping meticulous records of everything. Occasionally, his wild laughter would ring out from within the immortal’s cave.

A few days later, when he fed some pills to some ordinary chickens, they rapidly grew larger until they were the size of elephants. Bai Xiaochun’s understanding of the Dao of medicine was growing more profound. Shaking with excitement, he continued his experiments.

Gradually, the rooms he had set aside for the animal subjects included quite a variety of strange beasts. There was a group of toads with eyes all over their bodies. Those eyes would all blink every time the toads croaked.

There was a tiger that Bai Xiaochun had bought for a handful of spirit stones. After consuming one of his pills, it grew eight more heads, giving it a total of nine. When it roared with all of its heads, the sound was very impressive.

There was also a group of ordinary pigeons who experienced no major change other than constantly relieving themselves as they flew along....

Time passed, the experiments continued, and the bizarre and extraordinary results of the mystery pills became more evident. There was a group of monkeys who, after eating some strange pills, began to twitch constantly.

There was a bunch of cats who let out burps as loud as thunder. Bai Xiaochun was struck with awe, and couldn’t help but wonder exactly how he had concocted all of these mystery pills. The most exaggerated situation was the flock of geese. After eating the medicinal pills, their eyes turned pure white. Although they looked a bit sickly, they turned out to be extremely loyal, and even took to watching over Bai Xiaochun’s cave as if they were guarding it.

Toward the end, he gave the hot spring fish some pills to eat. They immediately went crazy, struggling with each other to leap out of the water. There, they grew legs and began to walk around the immortal’s cave.

After examining the fish, he threw them into another side room. By this point, the side rooms were filling up, and his immortal’s cave was turning into a bizarre menagerie.

There was a monkey who simply sat in place, chin resting in its palm, apparently lost in thought. There was the group of spasmodically twitching monkeys. The red-eyed rabbits were currently play fighting with the elephant-sized chickens....

Off to the side were the toads who blinked and croaked noisily. Finally, there was the rabbit, who was practicing all sorts of poses. Occasionally it would say, “Eee? You can talk? Hahaha! This medicinal pill is incredible. I, Bai Xiaochun, am clearly super awesome. This rabbit can actually talk!” It was only able to recite those three passages.

Up in the air, ducks flew about gracefully. The pigeons also flapped about, excrement plopping down below them wherever they went.... The nine-headed tiger was covered in it, and roared constantly. Off to the side were the legged fish, who were constantly on the run from the burping cats....

At the door were the large geese, who eyed everything coldly, as though they were guarding against something.

Bai Xiaochun stared around at everything, musing that he had only tested a small portion of his mystery pills. Unfortunately, he had no more animals to test them on.

“The Dao of medicine is truly miraculous...” he murmured. With that, he decided that he definitely had to test out all of his mystery pills. Therefore, he left the immortal’s cave to go purchase more animals to experiment with.

However, almost as soon as he left, his second test subject, the thoughtful monkey who had done nothing except stare off into space, suddenly looked up thoughtfully. Then it turned its gaze to the door in the side room, and its eyes seemed just as intelligent as a person’s! Suddenly, it burst into motion, running over... to open the door!

Next, the main gate of the immortal’s cave... was flung wide open!

The sun shone outside as the thoughtful monkey leaped out into the open. The other animals stared in shock, but a moment later, all of them... made their escape.

By chance, Zhou Xinqi happened to be walking out of her immortal’s cave at that same moment. She saw a flock of quacking ducks flying gracefully out into the open, and her jaw dropped. She had long since mastered all five volumes of spirit creatures, but she had never seen anything like these flying ducks.

“What are those things?” she murmured. Next, she was shocked to see several elephant-sized chickens racing out. Perched atop one of them was a rabbit.

“Eee? You can talk? Hahaha! This medicinal pill is incredible. I, Bai Xiaochun, am clearly super awesome. This rabbit can actually talk!”

Zhou Xinqi stood there blinking in shock, wondering if she was hallucinating.