Chapter 751: Blood Coral
This naturally referred to the Cinnabar Pill.
The people in the room were somewhat confused. The Cinnabar Pill could heal the dead and regrow bones; no matter how severe the injury, it could be cured, so it was naturally equivalent to one human life. But why did Seventeenth Master Tang say it was two lives? If something as important as the Cinnabar Pill was worth any number of deaths, then it should have been described as many lives.
"This pill can save one life, and to obtain this pill, our Tang family also traded one life for it."
Seventeenth Master Tang thought of the corpse that had already been burned to ashes, and his expression grew even darker.
That deceased person was an agent the Tang family had cultivated in the Great Zhou military over many years, with great potential. He was already a deputy general whose name was known in the Black Mountain Military Prefecture. If the Tang family had helped him develop well, no one could say whether he might have become a divine general decades later. But now, he had died for this pill.
It had been nine full months since they obtained the authority to distribute Cinnabar Pills from the Hall of Brilliance. The Tang family could no longer suppress their innate greed, attempting to gain greater benefits and figure out the pill's composition. To keep it secret from the mysterious supplier, they acted with extreme caution.
After very careful calculations, the Tang family confirmed that the deputy general was qualified to receive one Cinnabar Pill, so they had him severely wounded on the battlefield.
The Black Mountain Military Prefecture indeed allocated one Cinnabar Pill to this deputy general. According to protocol, the deputy general took the pill without any delay, under the watch of many onlookers. Yet... he did not survive, because his luck was truly terrible.
The moment the Cinnabar Pill entered his throat, he breathed his last.
Many who witnessed this scene felt great regret. A few regretted the deputy general's bad luck, but the vast majority regretted that since the deputy general was dead, why waste a Cinnabar Pill? Everyone knew that the Cinnabar Pill dissolved instantly upon contact with water, its medicinal properties dissipating completely. Once it entered the deputy general's stomach, it could never be recovered.
Precisely because this was confirmed, people had no further thoughts beyond sighs and even curses.
Only the Wenshui Tang family knew that a fine pouch made of unknown material had long been placed inside the deputy general's body. After he took the Cinnabar Pill, whether he was willing to sever his own meridians and die or not, he was doomed to perish, because two old Tang family retainers had been watching him from beside his sickbed.
The deputy general was buried according to the customs of his hometown, but that very night, the fresh grave was dug up.
Today, his corpse, along with the Cinnabar Pill, was delivered to the Song Mountain Military Prefecture, before Seventeenth Master Tang.
Seventeenth Master Tang said nothing more, but everyone in the room could feel his mood, and their expressions grew even more solemn.
The Heavenly Mechanism Pavilion retainer took a silver spoon, crushed the crimson pill in a fine porcelain mortar, ground it slowly into powder, and then divided it into five portions.
Each medical expert took a portion of the powder, bringing out their rarely revealed techniques, skills, and oddly shaped tools, and began their research.
Analyzing the medicine and identifying its ingredients was a necessary process for reverse-engineering a pill, extremely tedious, and thus felt especially long.
Seventeenth Master Tang remained in the secret chamber the entire time, never leaving.
No one knew how much time passed before red light seeped in through the ventilation hole on the west wall—it was already deep dusk. The work was finally done. People raised their heads, dripping medicinal eye drops into bloodshot eyes or twisting their necks to relieve their aching bodies.
But beneath the seemingly relaxed and calm atmosphere, a tense mood lingered, and no one spoke.
Seventeenth Master Tang's expression grew even darker, like the shadowed wall untouched by the twilight from the western sky.
This situation could not be allowed to continue indefinitely.
The old physician from Wenshui coughed wearily a couple of times and wrote down the medicinal ingredients he had identified on paper.
The other medical experts also recorded the ingredients they had determined.
Seventeenth Master Tang's brows were still furrowed, but his expression relaxed slightly, because he could see clearly that the names and proportions of the medicinal ingredients written down by the several people were basically consistent.
"It is indeed an unprecedented pill formula, very remarkable. It appears simple and unadorned, but actually contains profound principles. It should be very effective for stopping bleeding and cleansing the stars."
The old physician from Wenshui shook his head and said, "But... it absolutely cannot achieve what the rumors claim."
Seventeenth Master Tang did not speak, knowing there must be more to come, or an explanation.
"There is one medicinal ingredient that I have analyzed for a long time but cannot confirm what it is."
The old physician from Wenshui, Mr. Yang, glanced at the Heavenly Mechanism Pavilion retainer and the two physicians from Fengyang County, and said, "I think everyone else is the same."
The three medical experts nodded, looking somewhat bewildered.
Mr. Yang continued, "There is simply no medicinal ingredient in this world that the four of us cannot identify... so it can only mean that this is not a medicinal ingredient, at least not before that person refined the Cinnabar Pill. As it stands now, the miraculous nature of the Cinnabar Pill... should be attributed to this substance."
Seventeenth Master Tang stepped forward, took the magnifying glass handed to him by the Heavenly Mechanism Pavilion retainer, and carefully looked at a small round dish on the table.
The small dish contained the residual pill that had already been separated, dissolved in water, and then boiled down. To the naked eye, it looked like ordinary dregs. Even in the eyes of Seventeenth Master Tang, who was of extremely high cultivation, it was just finer powder. But beneath the magnifying glass produced by the Heavenly Mechanism Pavilion, these powders finally revealed their true form.
—A vast Gobi desert scattered with square stones, along with some red crystalline fragments. Compared to the desert-like dregs, their quantity was extremely scarce.
If observed more closely, one could see that these red crystals were formed by countless threads drawn from glass, twisted together, giving a visual impression of extreme toughness, impossible to break. If one stared at these red crystals long enough, one could even feel the terrifying light energy contained within them.
Those red crystals were the reason the Cinnabar Pill was so crimson, and also the answer that had stumped all the medical experts.
After an unknown amount of time, Seventeenth Master Tang raised his head and asked the crowd, "What is this? Or... what could it be?"
The divine priest, who had remained silent since entering the room, finally spoke.
"It looks somewhat like... Blood Coral."
Hearing the words "Blood Coral," the several medical experts showed expressions of shock, then fell into thought.
Seventeenth Master Tang was also very surprised, but after a moment, he said decisively, "That's impossible!"
This divine priest had once been a chief instructor at the Hall of Brilliance. He had narrowly escaped with his life during the purge led by Mao Qiuyu and the King of Linghai, but was expelled from the Imperial Palace. He had been in charge of alchemy at the Hall of Brilliance and had previously come into contact with the Cinnabar Pill, so logically, his judgment was trustworthy. But it could not convince Seventeenth Master Tang.
Because Seventeenth Master Tang happened to know that the only surviving piece of Blood Coral in the world was in the old residence of the Wenshui Tang family.
...
...
(Hello everyone, I've already asked the editor, and then... there's no way around it. So let's do some precise calculations. The Chuangshi side doesn't need to worry. According to Qidian's current rules, 2,300 words should cost 6.9 Qidian coins. Rounding down the fraction, it costs 6, so each chapter can save 0.9 Qidian coins. Since the repeated update chapter seemed to charge 6 Qidian coins, I will update seven chapters of 2,300 words each from now on... If there are any details wrong, we'll talk about it then. Alright, that's enough for now. I'm sure many friends will say I'm not being carefree or anything... Well, I can't be carefree. I don't want to be criticized over a few cents, like these past few days. It's very headache-inducing. Also, the chapter title is from an author I really like. I recommend his book for everyone to read.)