Chapter 52
Sima You Yue was still figuring out how did the explosion of the furnace occur and she totally ignored Little Roar and company who had burst into the room.
After she heard Little Spirit wallowing in pity, she glared at him and asked: “Who said that it this explosion occurred at the purifying stage?
Little Spirit understood her meaning immediately and in a flash, he appeared beside her. His eyes were excited and sparkling when he looked at her and asked: “If it didn’t explode at the purifying stage, you mean to say that it was at the fusion stage?”
“Yeah!” She touched her own face, but this had actually made the only clean spot on her black now.
“How could it be? You’ve only just started pill refining just a few days back. How could you possibly advance to the next stage so quickly?” Little Spirit continued on, “I remembered my Alchemist Master once said that the average person takes one month to get the bare basics of purifying, being able to be an apprentice is already a blessing on its own. It also took twenty over talents to finally advance to the stage after they had practiced non stop. You took such a short time… how could you…”
“Others take such a long time?” Sima You Yue was shocked when she heard Little Spirit’s explanation. “How could they take such a long time? It’s so easy, I took only two days.”
“Two days?!” All the Spirit Beasts in the room all cried out in shock.
She took only two days while the average person took a month. This difference was too heaven defying and everyone looked at her as if she were a monster.
“Yeah, after I came in, I took two days to extract the essence and I spent the remaining days practicing it over and over as a revision. Afterwards, I studied the pill recipes and realized that I just had the ingredients for a certain pill and decided to try my hand at it. It was fine in the beginning, however when I tried to mix the two essences together, it suddenly exploded.”
At this point of time, Little Spirit was too excited to speak and was trembling and holding tightly onto Sima You Yue’s shoulder. Only after a long while did he speak. “Initially, I thought that you were a complete waste in Alchemy. Hah! It turns out that you are a genius! No! A devil more like it! Ha ha ha ha ha! Yay! I finally have Candy Drops to eat! This is really great!”
Sima You Yue was speechless, how did this guy give her the feeling that she was a candy dispenser?
“Alright, I’m going to head off to shower first, I will come back later to clean up and analyze the reason for the explosion.” She said.
“There’s no need, no need!” Little Spirit broke out into a smile as he spoke to her in a flattering tone. “You just go and take a good bath and analyze what went wrong, leave the cleaning up to me!”
Since someone had offered to help, she was definitely more than willing to take up on the offer. Little Spirit went off to prepare the bath for her and she happily went to take a bath.
“In the end, where did I go wrong?” In the wooden bath tub, she was leaning her head against the edge of the tub and staring at the ceiling as she retraced the steps she did during the refinement process in her mind.
Her steps were definitely right, the order in which she added the essences in were also correct… These two points, she was very sure so it meant that the problem did not lie in these two places.
“If that’s the case, it should have been the purity of the essences and the temperature control.” She murmured to herself. “It seems that I need to practice more on the purifying and my flame control.”
After the bath, Sima You Yue went to the alchemy room and saw that it had been cleaned up nicely. She couldn’t help but praise Little Spirit’s actions and devotion.
But she also forgot that in here, it was the Spirit Pearl and all Little Spirit needed to do was to just use a single thought to have the room back to what it was before.
This time round, she did not start refining immediately but instead went to pick up a book on alchemy and started to make references to what she did previously and only after ensuring that there was no mistakes in the steps and tweaking some parts did she try her hand again and started extracting the essences from the herbs.
After she had calmed her heart and concentrated on extracting all the various essences, she found that there was a huge improvement in the purity of the extracted essences.
“Master, there’s movement outside.” Little Spirit suddenly appeared beside Sima You Yue and informed her.
“Is Grandfather out of his closed door cultivation?” She asked.
To prevent any accidents, during this time she was practicing her alchemy, she had Little Spirit keep track of the outside.
“It should be, I feel that there’s a fluctuation on the Spirit Energies outside. It feels like someone has just advanced in rank.”
Once she heard that, Sima You Yue immediately put everything down and with a thought, she was back in her room.
When she opened the door, she saw her two maids guarding her door. “Why are two of you here?”
“Back to Young Master, we have waited many days and you did not come out. Hence, we thought that you may be cultivating inside so we’ve been guarding the door, lest someone disturbs you.”
Sima You Yue did not think that they were so diligent and smiled warmly: “Thank you, I’m out now so go on and rest.”
She proceeded on and headed over to her grandfather’s study and found the entrance to the tunnel and groped her way down to the hidden room.
Once she was outside the hidden room, she stood outside, waiting for her grandfather.
Ever since she had undergone that baptism with Crimson Flame’s fire, her perception to the spirit fluctuations in the air was overly sensitive. Other people might not have sensed the changes in the spirit fluctuations, but she was able to determine the increase in Fire Spiritual Qi in the hidden room.
After half an hour passed, Sima You Yue felt the Fire Spiritual Qi began to stabilize and knew that the advancement was over.
Sure enough, the doors to the hidden room opened and Sima Lie stepped out.
“Grandfather!” Sima You Yue went up to him and smiled. “Congratulations on advancing a rank!”
“Hahaha! This was possible all thanks to the two advancement pills you gave me.” Sima Lie was surprised that Sima You Yue was outside waiting for him and he froze a moment before he laughed out heartily. “How did you know that I was coming out?”
I could sense the Spiritual Qi fluctuations in the air and guessed that Grandfather had successfully advanced, so I came to welcome you!” She said as she smiled sweetly, beaming with pride.
“You can actually sense the Spiritual Qi fluctuations from my rank advancement?” He was very surprised when he heard that.
If it was someone else who had sensed it, he wouldn’t be able to hide his own rank.
“Grandfather, you can rest assured that other people would not be able to sense it.” She reassured him, “Before I came in, I had Little Roar surround whole area with a barrier so no one would be able to sense it.”
“Little Roar?”
“That’s me, Grandfather!” Little Roar flew in and strutted in front of Sima Lie as if boasting on his own appearance.
Sima Lie was inwardly shocked when heard that. What kind of Spirit Beast was this? Not only could it talk, it could even set up barriers? Before, when he saw Sima You Yue carry it, he thought that it was a spirit beast that she had purchased from outside to keep as a mere pet.
“Although Little Roar has no fighting abilities, he’s top notch when it comes to setting up barriers.” Sima You Yue continued introducing Little Roar to her Grandfather, “So you can rest assured, grandfather.”
She had ensured that Little Roar set up a barrier so that no one could detect the Spiritual Qi fluctuations. She had thought it through, in her previous life, she had climbed so high with her own powers and yet that had brought about the jealousy of others. If she had remained low-key, then she wouldn’t have gained the jealousy of the second in charge and even died from that.
“Alright, let’s go out and show my brothers your achievement! When they know that you have advanced in rank, they will be so happy!” Sima You Yue grabbed his arms and led him out cheerfully.
However, back in the Imperial Academy’s office, despite Little Roar’s barrier, a silhouette was sitting by the window and looked in the direction of the General’s Residence and faintly said: “Was this the thing you said that you had to settle? Since the matter is already resolved, when will you come back…?”