Yao Laotou had lived his entire life and claimed to have seen big winds and waves, but he had never witnessed the technique of boiling water turning into ice.

From the beam, the crow watched from afar for a long time, finally unable to resist flying down to examine the counter. Heiyun wanted to pounce on it, but the crow lightly and casually waved its wing and pushed it away.

Yao Laotou looked up at Chen Ji: “What is the principle behind this?”

Chen Ji felt embarrassed. When a saturated solution’s temperature drops, its solubility decreases, causing precipitation and crystallization. This was a very simple sentence to him, but explaining it to someone in the Ning Dynasty would probably require starting from a very distant place.

Yao Laotou fiddled with the small crystal. How could a bowl of water boil and boil, and finally turn into ice? But it wasn’t cold to the touch.

“Boy, what is this thing?” Yao Laotou asked doubtfully.

Chen Ji smiled: “It’s exactly what you just said, something just, tough, and domineering.”

Yao Laotou was even more confused: “Where did you learn this alchemy method? Huang Shan or Lao Jun Shan? But those Taoists don’t transmit this kind of thing externally… Could it be Wu Ji Shan and Tai Ji Shan?”

Chen Ji was silent; he couldn’t explain where he had learned it from.

Yao Laotou scoffed: “Alright, if you don’t want to say, then don’t… I’ll just ask you, how powerful is this thing?”

Chen Ji thought for a moment, then said conservatively: “…It’s not finished yet. If it is finished, destroying a building shouldn’t be a problem, right?”

Yao Laotou stroked his beard, seemingly weighing his words, and advised: “Although our school is also called ‘Yan Long,’ we must plan slowly and not act rashly. Wait until you master medical skills, and a crowd of officials will invite you to their homes when they are dying. You must not seek quick success and instant benefit; you must know that the more you grasp, the more you will lose.”

Chen Ji understood. His master was worried that he would lose his mind and use this thing to murder Ning Dynasty officials to gain Bing Liu… He hurriedly said: “Master, I am not doing this to speed up my cultivation; I am doing it for self-protection.”

“Oh…” Yao Laotou nodded and lay back on the bamboo chair: “Then that’s good, you continue.”

In the main hall, the elderly man leisurely reclined in a lounge chair, the young man rolled up his sleeves and worked, and the crow and cat played and chased each other. It was peaceful and quiet.

Chen Ji suddenly said: “Master, thank you.”

“Thank me?” Yao Laotou raised an eyebrow: “Did receiving six taels of silver make you stupid? You better not go crazy in the middle of the night. Money that comes into my hand will not be returned; don’t play emotional games.”

Chen Ji smiled and asked: “Master, ‘Chaos is born from heaven, softness begins interaction, difficulty arises, danger is in motion, water and thunder Kun.’ How exactly should this hexagram be interpreted?”

This was the hexagram Yao Laotou had divined before Chen Ji went to the late star garden.

Yao Laotou lay on the bamboo chair, swaying and closing his eyes. After a long time, he said: “In an absolute situation, new opportunities are born. When you get this hexagram, you are heading towards death and new life.”

Chen Ji nodded: “So, going to the late star garden that evening wasn’t because you feared danger, but because you divined that the trip would yield Bing Liu.”

Yao Laotou didn’t answer.

Chen Ji continued: “You said not to approach danger, but that night at Zhou Cheng Yi’s mansion, you still came to save me.”

Furthermore, this master was cold on the outside but warm on the inside. If he truly didn’t care about others, why would he allow Liang Dog’er to live in the medical hall and teach himself knife skills?

The medical hall was quiet and peaceful. The crow quietly watched Chen Ji, its eyes seeming to hold approval.

But Yao Laotou opened his mouth and said: “This is all your own blind guessing. Don’t have wild thoughts all day at such a young age.”

Chen Ji said seriously: “No matter what you say, I still thank you.”

“What are you thanking me for? Just don’t hate me later,” Yao Laotou said with a sigh.

“Hate you?”

Yao Laotou chuckled: “Do you think the cultivation path I gave you is a good thing? Everyone at a young age thinks that as long as they have extraordinary abilities, they can become a great hero in the Jianghu. But what do you think the cultivation path is? It’s a curse and a cage that traps the officials of this world.”

Chen Ji remained silent.

Yao Laotou sighed: “After having a cultivation path, masters must guard their apprentices, fathers must guard their sons, brothers must guard their brothers. A perfectly good family is torn apart. Do you think Liang Dog’er is happy? If he were happy, he wouldn’t need to drink… Moreover, what you should be worried about now is what to do if you encounter other officials who cultivate the ‘Shan Zhu’ path.”

Chen Ji muttered in a low voice: “You also didn’t say you’d kill them all and then pass it on to me; you still left some after-effects…”

Yao Laotou glared: “This is still blaming me? What do you want to do? Give me one hundred thousand taels of silver now, and I’ll kill him for you!”

Chen Ji changed the subject: “How many Shan Zhu do you think are still outside?”

Yao Laotou seemed thoughtful: “How many furnaces can you ignite with one ginseng now?”

“Two.”

Yao Laotou closed his eyes on the lounge chair and said softly: “This is very easy to calculate. Before you became a Shan Zhu, I could ignite three furnaces with one ginseng… So, there should only be one Shan Zhu left outside. After I die, you can ignite three furnaces with one ginseng; if you kill the other Shan Zhu as well, you can ignite six furnaces with one ginseng. Does that tempt you?”

So, the increase and decrease in the number of Shan Zhu had such an intuitive influence on cultivation.

Thinking of this, Yao Laotou slowly sat up, looking at Chen Ji with shock and doubt: “You made this just, tough, and domineering thing, not to deal with me, right?!”

Chen Ji didn’t know whether to laugh or cry: “What are you thinking? I definitely won’t stab you in the back, don’t worry.”

Yao Laotou didn’t comment: “Human hearts are separated by the belly. Only you know what you are thinking in your heart.”

Chen Ji leaned against the counter, refining saltpeter while thinking that his master was actually far from as cold as he appeared on the surface. However, no matter who wanted to approach, the other person would actively push them away.

“Master, did you personally…” Chen Ji stopped mid-sentence, because he didn’t know if he could ask.

He heard Yao Laotou say calmly: “You want to ask me if I personally killed my own son? Yes. You’ve held this question in your heart for a long time, haven’t you? Finally, you couldn’t help but ask me.”

“Why did you kill him?”

Yao Laotou laughed coldly: “Because I disliked him delaying my cultivation progress. Although imperial physicians don’t rely on salary to live, they can receive several hundred taels of silver in consultation fees from high-ranking officials every year, but how can that compare to the money burned by the Shan Zhu path? With one less fellow practitioner, naturally, less money is spent. So, I just killed him myself.”

At this point, Chen Ji had finished refining all the saltpeter. He picked up a cloth to wipe his hands and casually threw it on the counter: “You don’t need to scare me either. If you were that kind of person, you wouldn’t have passed on the inheritance to him so early.”

……

……

Yao Laotou closed his eyes and was silent for a long time: “I have no wife, no son, no daughter in this life. In the twelfth month of the fourteenth year of Zhengde, I was going home from duty at the Imperial Hospital. Just as I was walking on the road, there was heavy snow. I saw a small beggar frozen and fallen under the eaves. At that time, I was still kind-hearted, so I boiled a bowl of hot ginger soup at home and brought it to him.”

“The small beggar woke up and begged me to take him in, so I asked him how he became a beggar. He said his parents died in the corvée and he was driven out of his home by his uncle and aunt.”

“I wasn’t married at the time. What was it to take in a beggar? So I hesitated. At that time, I had just learned divination. I divined ten times, and they were all the worst results, but I thought it was probably because my skill wasn’t refined, so I didn’t believe it. Finally, I decided to gamble on fate and asked for his birth date.”

“‘Born in the fourteenth year of Zhengde, in the twelfth month, on the twelfth day, in the third quarter of the Ugly Hour at night’,” Yao Laotou seemed to sigh: “It just so happened to be the time for the inheritance of the Shan Zhu path. At that time, I thought this was probably a destiny granted by heaven, so I raised him as my son.”

At this moment, Chen Ji had stopped what he was doing and sat cross-legged on the ground beside the rocking chair, listening quietly. Heiyun was perched on his shoulder.

Yao Laotou continued slowly: “I didn’t intend to seek immortality, so I passed on the Shan Zhu path to him when he was sixteen. I remember he absorbed the first Long Qi from the Supervisor Yang of the Ministry of Works.”

“The child was very smart. He learned everything quickly and learned a good medical skill from me. There were many high-ranking officials in the capital, and I was too busy, so I let him go and diagnose people. But I gradually discovered that the critically ill officials treated by his hands actually weren’t saved. I began to suspect something and went to verify it at night… Censor Liu, the Imperial Historian, suffered from lung emphysema, which could clearly be cured, but he prescribed a poisonous prescription.”

“He was too smart, so smart that he had thoroughly learned the principles of medicine. Even when prescribing conflicting poisonous medicines, other doctors couldn’t discover it. This person, ah, once they are too smart, they tend to take shortcuts…”

“I reprimanded him and punished him to kneel in the snow for three days and three nights. At that time, he knelt and cried and admitted his mistakes. I thought he had sincerely repented, so I didn’t send him to the Supreme Court yamen. But just this one act of softness led to an unforgivable mistake.”

“Within a year afterwards, he acted more covertly, even secretly poisoning my meals. My first crow was poisoned to death by him.”

After speaking, Yao Laotou looked at the crow in the medical hall: “The first one accompanied me for twenty-one years. This is the second one, which has accompanied me for fifty-three years.”

The crow flapped its wings and landed on Yao Laotou’s shoulder, gently helping him comb his white hair with its beak. Heiyun also jumped onto the armrest of the lounge chair and gently patted the back of Yao Laotou’s hand with its fluffy paws.

Chen Ji asked curiously: “What happened later, after you were poisoned?”

Yao Laotou shook his head: “I don’t want to say, I’m tired.”

Yao Laotou didn’t say what happened after he was poisoned, nor did he say exactly how he killed that adopted son. It seemed there were still other secrets hidden.

Chen Ji suddenly recalled that the night he came out of the Zhou mansion, Yao Laotou had divined to avoid a small beggar. It turned out that the heavy snow in the twelfth month of the fourteenth year of Zhengde had chilled the old man’s heart.

The enthusiasm and kindness in this world always seemed to turn into a sigh.

Yao Laotou opened his eyes and looked at Chen Ji. In his deep, calm eyes, he seemed to be looking at someone else through Chen Ji, and also looking at himself once through Chen Ji.

Yao Laotou slowly got up and went back to his room: “Don’t worry, I won’t hinder your matters for too long. You and I don’t need to have master-apprentice affection.”

After Yao Laotou disappeared into the main room doorway, Heiyun meowed: “He’s afraid you’ll be the next small beggar.”

Chen Ji hummed: “I won’t.”

Yao Laotou brought him next to the Jing Wang mansion, carefully arranged for him to collect Bing Liu, and then took in Liang Dog’er to teach him knife skills. No matter what the other person’s attitude was, Chen Ji would not forget what the other person had done for him.

Wait.

Yun Yang said that Yao Laotou had a high reputation in the Imperial Hospital in the capital, but suddenly chose to come to Luo City and live next to the Jing Wang mansion…

Jing Wang mansion?!

Chen Ji suddenly realized something: According to his speculation, Yao Laotou wanted to find another apprentice before he died to pass on the Shan Zhu path.

But how could he make his apprentice grow quickly? He needed to quickly gain Bing Liu.

If it were someone else, they would only rely on luck and wait for high-ranking officials to die.

But Yao Laotou was proficient in divination, so he could naturally calculate accurately where there would be disasters and where he could absorb Bing Liu!

Yao Laotou suddenly resigned and came to Luo City; he must have calculated that there would be a big disaster at the Jing Wang mansion!

……

One chapter for today.