Chapter 5
[Baby Jiaolong: I left my cave abode, and there was another cave abode inside.]
「Picture attached」
-I left my cave abode and found another one inside. But is any of this stuff any good?
I pretended not to know and asked, and the replies came rushing in, already bristling with excitement.
└Yao Immortal (178.1): I don't know, just sell more Purple Heart Grass Fruit... ?? What the hell is that? All that stuff was in the cave where you were born??
└Yao Immortal (333.3): Good heavens, how much is all that worth?
└LotsaTails: Isn't that a Yang-Void Cauldron? You just have one sitting in your cave abode...!?
└Baby Jiaolong: What's that, you nerd.
└Black Wind: A Yang-Void Cauldron. It's one of the exceedingly rare alchemy furnaces, a Fleshly Alchemy Furnace.
Fleshly Alchemy Furnace (肉身丹爐).
[Baby Jiaolong: What's a Fleshly Alchemy Furnace...?]
I did a quick search, and apparently a Fleshly Alchemy Furnace wasn't just a simple pot; it was an alchemy furnace woven together from various materials using spiritual sense.
Simply put, it was an alchemy furnace you accepted as part of your body and used as such.
So, what's different about it?
If you asked that, the difference was obvious.
With ordinary alchemy, you lit a fire under a furnace, added medicinal ingredients, and refined them.
But with a Fleshly Alchemy Furnace, you shove it into your mouth and refine things inside your body!!
[Baby Jiaolong: Why would anyone do something like that...?]
In novels and games, alchemy furnaces blew up every now and then, didn't they? If you put one in your belly, wouldn't you die if something went wrong?
[Yao Immortal (124.1): If that's really one of the Yang-Void Cauldrons, it won't explode just because you fail at alchemy. One reason Fleshly Alchemy Furnaces exist in the first place is that there's no risk of an explosion even if you fail, and the medicinal effects accumulate just the same.]
One of the yao immortals seemed to know a fair bit about alchemy and answered my question.
Even among Fleshly Alchemy Furnaces, the one called a Yang-Void Cauldron seemed rare and renowned for its stability.
[LotsaTails: It's a rankless furnace, so it grows along with the yao immortal's cultivation. The more effort you put into it, the more it grows with you, so once you advance your realm, refining even high-grade pills won't be difficult.]
└Yao Immortal (66.66): A furnace made for a yao immortal, through and through. You could name any price for it.
[SunshineIsThisWorld: That's not a treasure you can buy just because you have money. I'm curious about Baby Jiaolong's background. Purple Heart Grass Fruit and now a Fleshly Alchemy Furnace like that.]
└Yao Immortal (789.56): I'm so jealous of that rich kid. I don't even have a Fleshly Alchemy Furnace. I just chew on whatever medicinal herbs I find and try to refine them inside my body with Samadhi True Fire, and usually burn them all to ash.
└Yao Immortal (566.5): Yao immortals from poor backgrounds usually have to make do with their bodies... Baby's situation is really special.
└Yao Immortal (178.1): Die, rich kid ㅠㅠ
“Heehee.”
I couldn't help grinning because I was in such a good mood. I didn't know much about it, but it was really good, right?
I hadn't known, but most yao immortals refined things inside their stomachs, which they called an Inner Alchemy Furnace (內丹爐).
But apparently that wasn't good, since turbid qi could build up. Those with uncertain origins or no powerful backers had no choice but to use their Inner Alchemy Furnace and refine things inside their bodies, even if they hated it.
Still, it wasn't all bad, since it was a quick and easy way to draw out the medicinal properties, so a lot of yao immortals preferred it.
“I see. Since they're yao beasts, their alchemy is different from that of human cultivators, too.”
Even though it was a method that would make a human recoil, it didn't seem to bother yao immortals much.
Well, their bodies were just built differently from humans in terms of durability.
“Anyway, a Fleshly Alchemy Furnace. Does that mean I have to eat this if I want to refine pills?”
Come to think of it, I vaguely remembered seeing old monsters in xianxia pull a cauldron out of their mouths and attack with it.
I thought it was pretty bizarre at the time, but maybe it was actually quite efficient.
“So I refine the furnace to shrink it, put it in my belly, and kindle a fire with Samadhi True Fire. Right, right. Since it's inside the body, I can do everything with spiritual sense. I guess even yao beasts who haven't taken human form can refine pills this way.”
It might be a more traditional method for yao beasts than I thought.
There were yao immortals who hadn't taken human form, after all.
On top of that, a Fleshly Alchemy Furnace was a custom-made furnace designed with stability as its top priority!
There was no particular danger, and no risk of turbid qi building up in my body.
Now that I knew about Fleshly Alchemy Furnaces, it was time to look up the Yang-Void Cauldron, a rankless grade among them.
I searched and, as expected of a famous treasure, found all sorts of posts.
“Yang-Void Cauldron... Just refining it into my body can purify turbid qi. It also boosts yang energy. It's a real treasure, isn't it? How much could I get if I sold it??”
Apparently, making one was so difficult that you could name your price.
And on top of that, it was rankless.
Once refined, it grew alongside its owner, so its value was limitless depending on how one cultivated it.
“I was joking, but am I really a rich kid?”
Maybe I was.
But another kind of unease began to rise in a corner of my mind.
‘Could this be some True Immortal's scheme to raise me up and eat me?’
It was a plot that sometimes came up in xianxia.
A True Immortal would make arrangements so some rare yao beast in the Lower Realm could grow on its own, then show up when the fruit was ripe and gulp it down!
I was leaning toward the former explanation, but I couldn't rule out the latter.
“Well, it's not like there's anything I can do about it.”
Whether this was a setup or a kindness, I just had to make good use of it.
I decided to call this room the Arts Room.
As the fire in the Yang-Void Cauldron burned lower, another post appeared.
[HumansSuck: I tried to figure out Baby Jiaolong's background.]
-Given that there's a variety of skill-related treasures, including a Yang-Void Cauldron and a Dao-Bone Scripture, Baby Jiaolong is probably from an ancient Jiaolong clan. I hear certain bloodline-inheriting races have a tradition of sending their young to the Lower Realm to grow on their own, and [Baby Jiaolong]'s circumstances fit that exactly.
└Black Wind: I've heard of that, too. In most cases, it's probably a clan tradition to avoid internal conflict among a race with intense succession struggles.
└LotsaTails: So does that mean [Baby Jiaolong] is descended from a Spirit Realm Venerable?
└Abracadabra: That's likely, not certain. But considering someone prepared a cave abode like that, there's no way they're from an ordinary bloodline.
Not an ordinary bloodline.
Just being a jiaolong meant I belonged to a race with an extraordinary bloodline.
Even among yao beasts, jiaolong were considered top-tier.
└Yao Immortal (178.1): Or maybe a True Immortal prepared all this to eat a jiaolong.
└Baby Jiaolong: No jinxing, please!
└SunshineIsThisWorld: That's not impossible.
└Yao Immortal (333.3): Beings from the Upper Realm do sometimes do things that make no sense. We of the Lower Realm can't even begin to fathom them.
As expected, their reactions weren't much different from what I'd imagined.
Of course, there were also quite a few yao immortals interested in something else.
[Yao Immortal (124.1): That Dao-Bone Scripture [HumansSuck] mentioned... Could it be that one?]
└HumansSuck: I don't know what you mean by that, but it's the one that's generally known. The Yang-Void Cauldron is surprising, but it was the Dao-Bone Scripture that tipped me toward thinking [Baby Jiaolong] has an extraordinary background.
Dao-Bone Scripture?
What was that?
[Baby Jiaolong: What's that?]
Dao-Bone Scripture? What is it?
└Yao Immortal (66.66): It's a pretty famous magical treasure. A book that records the state of your essence, qi, and spirit when you pour in a drop of blood and some energy.
└Yao Immortal (12.12): I hear the heavenly prodigies of the great sects regularly use a Dao-Bone Scripture to check whether there's anything wrong with their cultivation.
From what I gathered...
“So basically, it's a treasure like a status screen?”
Dao-Bone Scripture (道骨新書).
The book was indeed labeled that way.
I thought it was just a martial arts manual left in the training hall, but who knew it was such a treasure?
[Black Wind: There are different grades of Dao-Bone Scriptures. Imitations modeled after the original are scattered all over the world, so there's nothing surprising about it.]
└LotsaTails: I've heard there are lots of fake Dao-Bone Scriptures, too. Even the fakes have different grades, and I hear how much they help depends on their quality.
└TurtleTurtle: Fakes don't mean much anyway. But if it's one of the fragments that broke off the genuine article, that alone would be an unparalleled fortuitous encounter. [HumansSuck] probably thinks it's one of the genuine fragments.
└HumansSuck: That's quite possible, considering whoever prepared that cave abode.
The conversation was getting pretty serious.
They were getting so serious that I was starting to feel a little scared!
[Baby Jiaolong: How can you tell if it's genuine or fake?]
-Anyone willing to tell me?
└Yao Immortal (178.1): For free? Sell one more Purple Heart Grass Fruit and I'll tell you right away.
└Yao Immortal (444.44): Where's the naked girl?
└Yao Immortal (124.1): Why are you always looking for naked girls, Yao Immortal (444.44)?
└Yao Immortal (444.44): Because there's a naked girl there.
└Yao Immortal (777.54): Damn! What insight!
After a string of slow and filthy replies, useful answers from some well-known users began to appear.
└White-Haired Yoma: You'll know as soon as you drop some blood on it.
This was a username I hadn't seen before.
But then I realized I'd seen that name while looking at things in the Yao Mirror Pavilion.
“Drop some blood on it?”
I bit my thumb with a fang and let a drop of blood fall.
Then, thoom—.
With a humming sound, the Dao-Bone Scripture unfurled with a rustle! and began to glow softly.
“Ooh.”
As I watched in amazement, the light grew brighter, then gathered into a single point and pierced through my body in an instant.
“Ugh!”
I was startled, but it didn't hurt.
When I observed it with my spiritual sense, it seemed to have entered my belly.
Without even going through refinement, the process of taming a magical treasure, it had entered me as if it had become part of my body.
“W-what...”
I observed my body, then prodded the Dao-Bone Scripture a little with my spiritual sense, and part of the book appeared in my mind.
The first characters that came to mind were just two.
Gyo Ran (蛟瀾).
The first character meant jiaolong, and the second meant waves.
Those characters imprinted themselves in my mind.
Right after that, all kinds of words rained down inside my head.
But the name Gyo Ran wouldn't leave my mind.
Because...
“It's my name.”
The Ran in Gyo Ran.
Instinctively, I felt that Gyo Ran was my name. Those two characters alone stirred something deep inside me.
“Gyo Ran.”
A hundred years since I was born.
I'd long since forgotten the name I'd had before.
Somehow, being given a name again made me feel as though all the loneliness I'd endured had been repaid.