Chapter 64
News of the expulsion of Nalan Lan, the female genius of the Nalan Clan, from the Imperial Academy had spread like wildfire across the entire capital. A single stone causing a thousand waves, every single street was discussing this.
Nalan Clan.
In the hall, the Head of the Nalan Clan sat on his seat with two elders sitting at each side. Everyone else sat at either side.
In the middle of the house, Nalan Lan was clad in blue as she sat on the ground with her head lowered. Her long hair cascaded down her back, covering her cheek.
Nalan Qi also knelt at a side, looking at the rising tension that locked them in a stalemate, he said, “Father, you cannot blame Elder Sister for this. It’s all because of Sima You Yue. If not for him, Elder Sister would not have been expelled from school!”
“You still dare to speak!” Nalan slammed the teacup in his hand on the table and looked at Nalan Lan and Nalan Qi, who were kneeling, and berated, “You knew that this kind of things were not allowed in the premises of the Academy but you just had to do it. Now that you’ve been expelled, you’ve thrown away the face of the entire Nalan Clan!”
Nalan Lan lowered her head, not daring to utter a single word.
“Clan Head, Lan’er never thought that things would become like this. She thought that that trash would die simple, but who would have thought that he would survive and come back.” An elder at the side said, “Lan’er just wanted to strike at that old coot Sima Lie. Didn’t you see, when that waste went missing, we were really able to sieze the opportunity to strike at that Sima Clan.”
“That’s right, Clan Head, Lan’er is such a gifted child, just because we don’t have the Academy, does it mean that the Nalan Clan will be unable to train the younger generation?” Yet another elder helped speak on behalf of Nalan Lan.
“But this matter of being expelled by the school has caused how much embarrassment to our clan?! We can’t let this go unpunished, you are now confined to the family ancestral hall to devote yourself to repentance for 3 months. You better reflect on your actions thoroughly!” After listening to the two elders absolve his own daughter of guilt, Nalan Lan was more relaxed and gave Nalan Lan a very superficial punishment.
Nalan Lan bowed slightly before standing up to leave. From the beginning to the end, she did not utter a single word. Everyone thought that she was in shock by the situation, however, her eyes revealed hatred and malice. Once she was released from the ancestral hall, she would definitely take the life of that useless trash!
After Nalan Lan left, the elder waved his hand to dismiss the younger generation since they had no need to participate in the later conversation.
“Clan Head, this time, the Sima Clan is directly shedding all pretense of cordiality!” The Second Elder said.
“This time, that Sima Clan has caused us great disgrace. We definitely have to take revenge on them!” Nalan gritted his teeth and said, “It just so happens that when we went to visit the old ancestor, he also said that we should quickly cause their family to fall. Since that’s the case, we should quickly make use of all our networks.”
After understanding what the old ancestor meant, the First and Second elder nodded simultaneously.
The Sima Clan had always wanted to suppress the Nalan Clan. This time, they would definitely need to take the Sima Clan down.
As a result, the feud between these two clans and moved from the shadows, and started to be displayed on stage for all to see. Regardless of the domain, the two clans would always fight as if it was a you-live-I-die kind of situation.
With regards to their unrestrained battles, even while in school, Sima You Yue knew of a few. However, Sima Lie had ordered her to stay in school and did not allow her to come out so she could only stay in school to work hard and become stronger.
For a month after that, Sima You Yue remained inside the Spirit Pearl to practice pill refinement.
Before, she had already almost mastered pill purification. After practicing for a new more days, she set her sights on the second stage, fusion.
This time, during fusion, Sima You Yue chose the easiest pill to practice, the Coagulation Pill.
This Coagulation Pill only need four kinds of ingredients. Furthermore, they were relatively milder ingredients and the chances of exploding would be relatively smaller with higher chances of success. It was an introductory pill that was generally used by Alchemists.
After letting Little Spirit finish preparing the Spirit Ingredients, Sima You Yue went to look over the steps of refining the pill once again to make sure she had memorised it all before she began to purify the ingredients.
The most important step of pill refinement was purification and she was already extremely familiar with this step so she very quickly finished purifying all four ingredients. She separated the purified ingredients according to type before placing two into the pill furnace. After a while, she placed yet another type inside.
Thinking back on how things exploded the last time, Sima You Yue had some lingering fear when she put the pill ingredients in. She was extremely nervous that putting the ingredients in would cause the same occurrence as the last time.
However, the pill ingredients this time could be said to have given her more face as nothing like an explosion occurred, allowing her heave a huge sigh of relief.
Following the directions from the book, she controlled the intensity of the flame. At this moment, she realised that not having your own flame was really a troublesome thing for pill concoction.
After a few more minutes, Sima You Yue finally added in the last most important pill ingredient and it was still good, this time, nothing like an explosion occurred.
However, just when she thought that she was successful, a grunting sound came from inside the furnace, followed by a puff. A pasty smell leaked out from the hole in the pill furnace cover, declaring her failed attempt at fusion.
Sima You Yue put out the fire before opening the cover of the pill furnace. As she expected, she saw a dark black pasty sludge and could not help but to heave a sigh of disappointment.
“Yue Yue, do not be disappointed. This is merely your first time, failure is extremely normal. You just need more experience. Little Roar appeared beside her and comforted her.
“I’m not disappointed.” Sima You Yue shook her head and said, “I was just thinking that refining pills was really not an easy task.”
“Of course.” Little Spirit also appeared in the air and said, “My previous owner told me before that just looking at the steps to refining pills was not easy, but there is a reason why it has obstructed so many thousands of Spirit Masters. When refining pills, every single minute of heat control and every single step of control needs to be precious. Further, its requirement on Spirit Power can be said to be to be found only one in a thousand.”
“It looks like I can’t do without instruction from a teacher.” Sima You Yue touched her chin and began to think of who she should choose to teach her, however, she had gone through the list of Pill Masters in her brain without managing to find anyone suitable.
“They’re all so repulsive, I wouldn’t be able to learn much from them.” Thinking of how all those Pill Masters always had their nose in the air, Sima You Yue had rejected all of them.
If those Pill Masters knew that they were treated by someone with such disdain, who knew whether or not they would be hopping about in anger!
“Forget it, I might as well try to practice on my own first. When that time comes that I meet a good Pill Master, then I’ll think about how to hail him as a Master.” Sima You Yue finished speaking before she took yet another pill ingredient to begin practicing once again.
Three days later, she finally managed to fuse her first liquid pill.
“Now it’s time for the last step, binding!” Sima You Yue let out a long breath before putting her hand before the pill furnace, condensing her Spirit Power and sending it gently into the pill furnace.
“Bang-”
Once the Spirit Power came into contact with the liquid pill, it resulted in a huge explosion. The pill furnace directly exploded, sending splinters flying about everywhere. Sima You Yue had also been sent flying by the explosion.
“Damn it! It exploded again!”
Before she fainted, in her daze she saw a faintly discernible red silhouette appear by her side, as well as a pair of complicated eyes stare directly at her.