Chapter 4

Yu Xiudan didn't come out after closing the door, and apart from being sure that he wasn't dead, nothing else was known about his situation.

Lu Yaohang continued to take care of the alchemy room. Suddenly, she realized she hadn't seen Lu Xiaodeng for three days. She didn't bother to look for him; that guy wouldn't go far. At most, he would realize he had done something bad and find a place to cry.

The only public furnace room of Yunjian Sect was built by cutting half of the mountain peak of Zhishang Peak and digging a cave into the mountain wall. The cave was connected to the underground fire, and nine levels of alchemy furnace pits were constructed along the rock wall.

It was like a large kitchen, with alchemy furnaces placed in the furnace pits. One only needed to check the fire and the alchemy situation. Each sect refined low-grade elixirs this way, which greatly increased the number of elixirs produced.

The disciples of Zhichu Hall had to take turns to work here every day, with each person working for only one hour, making it very easy.

Lu Yaohang calculated the time and thought that two batches of elixirs were almost ready, so she planned to wait and collect them. When she walked to the corner of the eighth row of furnace pits, she suddenly noticed something was wrong. The alchemy furnace on the far-right furnace pit was particularly large, not the usual size.

She stared at the alchemy furnace, which had been placed there for a long time, with the lower part burned red. The more she looked, the more familiar it seemed. Wasn't this the furnace that Xiaodeng always carried around? Why was it here!

No, Xiaodeng never left his furnace. Now it was placed on the furnace pit and had been burning for so long. Could it be that she...

Looking at the tightly sealed lid, Lu Yaohang stood there, feeling a bit confused. She didn't dare to imagine that Lu Xiaodeng would put herself in the furnace and burn herself alive after eating the spiritual herbs given by her master!

Could it be that she thought she could refine elixirs by putting herself in the furnace after eating the spiritual herbs, so she did such a foolish thing? No one would do that, how could she refine elixirs this way!

Lu Yaohang took a step back, suddenly realizing that while others might not do such a thing, Lu Xiaodeng might. That guy only had one soul and two spirits, a complete idiot!

This was too hard to accept. Her junior sister actually committed suicide in the furnace, and the method was so bizarre. She looked around in a daze. Only ten disciples of Zhichu Hall were helping in the cave, and no one was looking at her. If this got out, people would say that the disciples of Wuyao Hall were extremely foolish, and her master would be blamed for forcing the medicine child to death. Xiaodeng really couldn't let anyone rest even in death.

Suddenly, the lid of the furnace was pushed up, and Lu Xiaodeng's head appeared. She leaned on the edge of the furnace and shouted, "It's so hot, I never noticed it was this hot here before!"

Lu Yaohang looked at her in shock, then reacted and grabbed her burning ear, shouting, "You idiot, what are you doing!"

"Senior Sister, my ear hurts, don't pull it," Lu Xiaodeng cried, quickly covering her ear. When she touched Lu Yaohang's hand, it burned her, making her sister pull back her hand.

"Get out of there quickly, are you trying to die? I've never seen anyone like you, thinking that carrying a furnace makes you an alchemy furnace? Running into the furnace to refine, do you want to refine yourself into an elixir!" Lu Yaohang scolded her, almost dying of anger.

Lu Xiaodeng pouted, unable to explain herself, and was scolded harshly. She could only crawl out of the furnace and realized that her clothes had been burned to ashes, leaving her completely naked.

"You want to scare me to death, why didn't you burn into a scalded dog!" Lu Yaohang quickly took out a piece of clothing and put it on her. As soon as the clothes were draped over her, a hissing sound was heard, and smoke started to rise.

This was too hot!

Seeing the danger, Lu Yaohang ignored the burning and carried Lu Xiaodeng, jumping down from the eighth level of the furnace pit. She hadn't practiced, so she fell to the ground, breaking both legs, and Lu Xiaodeng rolled off her.

"Senior Sister, what are you doing!" Lu Xiaodeng was terrified, seeing Lu Yaohang's hands and shoulders burned and her legs twisted from the fall. She wanted to help her but remembered she was still burning, so she ran to the water barrels in the corner.

But now she was far from the furnace, and her body suddenly weakened. She was smoking and swaying, barely able to walk, and could fall at any moment.

The ten disciples of Zhichu Hall watched in shock, completely confused. In the blink of an eye, one of the medicine children from Wuyao Hall was injured, and the other was burned by the fire.

Just as they were about to rush over to help, Lu Yaohang, who seemed to be dead on the ground, suddenly jumped up, leaping like a carp and colliding heavily with Lu Xiaodeng. With a bang, Lu Xiaodeng was thrown into a water barrel, breaking it and drenching herself in water.

A hissing sound was heard as a large cloud of steam rose from her body, extinguishing the burning heat.

"Senior Sister! Don't scare me!" Lu Xiaodeng crawled out of the broken barrel, rushing to Lu Yaohang's side and hugging her, crying loudly.

Lu Yaohang slowly opened her eyes and said fiercely, "If you keep doing this, I won't take care of you anymore!" Then she fainted.

Lu Xiaodeng, terrified, cried even harder, "Senior Sister, I won't do it again. Don't scare me, don't die!"

She clung to Lu Yaohang, refusing to let go. The disciples of Zhichu Hall quickly knocked on Yu Xiudan's door, and after the hall master came out, they took Lu Yaohang from her arms and carried her inside for treatment.

Lu Xiaodeng, wearing her burned and tattered clothes, stood outside Lu Yaohang's door, trembling. Her furnace had been dragged over, or she wouldn't even be able to reach the door.

After a while, her master came out, and she quickly approached, asking anxiously, "Master, how is Senior Sister?"

Yu Xiudan looked at her deeply and sighed, "Xiaodeng, what were you doing?"

"Master, I just wanted to make you happy, to let Senior Sister study at Zhichu Hall. I didn't know it would turn out like this. If I had known, I would have told Senior Sister not to touch me," Lu Xiaodeng lowered her head, afraid to look at her master, and asked fearfully, "Master, is Senior Sister dead?"

"No, her hands and shoulders are burned, and her legs are broken from the fall from the eighth level of the furnace pit. But she's lucky; I've treated her burns and set her legs. She can't walk until her leg bones heal," Yu Xiudan looked at Lu Xiaodeng, speechless.

He remembered when he found the black iron furnace, the lid suddenly being pushed up, and a天真无邪的笑脸露出，眼睛像水晶一样清澈，小声地问了自己一句，“你是来收服我的人吗？”

Now thinking about it, he couldn't subdue her at all!

Looking at the distant mountains, Yu Xiudan said sadly, "Are you sent by heaven to destroy Yunjian Sect?"

"Master, don't say things that are hard to understand. Here, have this," Lu Xiaodeng, ignoring his words, stretched out her palm, raising it high under his chin.

Yu Xiudan was really angry that she wouldn't even listen properly. He slapped the thing out of her hand, but when it passed in front of his eyes, a fragrant smell hit his nose, and he instinctively caught it.

Looking at it, he was stunned. In his hand was a green elixir the size of a longan, with a white cloud pattern, emitting a faint glow and a rich medicinal fragrance. This was a fifth-grade Ascension Pill!

"What! What's going on!" Yu Xiudan stared at the elixir in his hand, first overjoyed, then confused. This was too strange!

Lu Xiaodeng pointed to the distance, "Master, another one was slapped away."

"What!" Yu Xiudan jumped up and rushed in the direction she pointed. He had slapped away an Ascension Pill! With two Ascension Pills, he could definitely advance to the Golden Core stage!

Seeing her master, who had forgotten to use his divine sense, frantically searching the grass for the Ascension Pill, Lu Xiaodeng thought he was acting very strangely. He was usually not like this, calm in any situation, but now he was like a monkey fighting for food.

"Is he that happy?" She muttered, shaking her head, and entered Lu Yaohang's room to check on her.

Lu Yaohang had been treated and taken a healing pill, now sleeping deeply. Lu Xiaodeng gently placed the furnace down and wanted to go over to check on her. Just as she took a few steps, the door was slammed open, and Yu Xiudan rushed in, holding two Ascension Pills.

He grabbed her and asked excitedly, "Xiaodeng, how did you get these two Ascension Pills?"

Yu Xiudan was so excited. When he picked up the strange child, it was because he found her unique. A child with only one soul and two spirits, who wouldn't leave the furnace, was an anomaly. They often went out to find treasures, and even broken items were a kind of luck.

"I refined them," Lu Xiaodeng didn't lie, admitting it honestly.

Yu Xiudan frowned, "How did you refine them?"

"Senior Sister said Master hasn't refined such high-grade elixirs, and his skills and cultivation are not high, so he would likely fail, and he would die in a year. I didn't want Master to die, so I wanted to help him refine the elixir," Lu Xiaodeng said seriously.

Why couldn't Lu Yaohang change her blunt and harsh way of speaking? Yu Xiudan ignored the comment about his low skills and only wanted to know how she refined the elixir.

Lu Xiaodeng smiled and said, "I chewed all the spiritual herbs I could get, mixed them together, and put them in the furnace, then used the underground fire from the furnace pit to refine. The formula said to refine for three days, so today I thought the time was about right. I heard that putting the soul in would make the elixir better, so I jumped in, and it worked."

"Soul?" For some reason, when she said she chewed the herbs, Yu Xiudan felt a bit queasy. But he couldn't think of any place that said to add a soul during refinement.

"It's written here, Master, look." Lu Xiaodeng found a beginner's alchemy book in her sister's cabinet, opened the last page, and pointed to it.

Yu Xiudan looked and saw that it indeed said to add a soul, but it referred to the spirit of the furnace. "A furnace with a spirit soul, the elixir will surely succeed."