The sun hung high in the sky. It was already noon.

 

Huang Ziqi had been playing computer games for the entire time. She hadn’t slept at all ever since the call with her friend. Personally she believes sleep isn’t required at all, however, her body signaled that yes, she did need to sleep.

 

Huang Ziqi yawned, and closed the current game window she had open.

 

She then opened up the Nine Provinces (1) Group chat window and had a quick look through the history.

 

“Huh, so it was actually an accidental invite.” Huang Ziqi half whispered, half craoked. She bent down under the table for her bottle, then remembered that it’s contents had long been emptied.

 

It didn’t really matter much whether it was an accidental invite or not. To Huang Ziqi, anything that provided just mildly interesting content is already acceptable.

 

She got up from her chair and walked to the small kitchen attached to the apartment room. She opened the fridge, and took out a plastic bottle of water. She opened it, and began quenching her thirst. She then grabbed the kettle on the stove, and poured out the water inside, it was already a day old. She then poured some tap water into the kettle, and turned on the stove, and left the kettle to sit there.

 

She then reached up into the cupboard, and took out an unopened bar of chocolate. She snapped off a square, and popped it into her mouth, and sat back into her chair while waiting for the whistle of the kettle.

 

She sat there looking at the screen, for a few minutes, her mind hazy. She then turned off her computer, and decided to just wait beside the kettle. There wasn’t anything else to do anyway.

 

She wrapped up the bar of chocolate with some plastic wrapping, and put it back into the cupboard. She then turned off the stove and took the whistling kettle off of the stove. She then walked to her bed, and drained the remaining contents in the plastic bottle she was holding, and left it on the bedside table. She got in her bed, and laid there quietly.

 

Despite the unhealthy living conditions, Huang Ziqi was mostly satisfied. She could be on her computer for however long she wanted too without anybody there to scold her.

 

Though, it would be nice if something would happen, she hadn’t seen the sun in weeks…

 

＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊

 

It has been ten days since. The date was June 2nd. Nothing out of the ordinary has happened. A few calls with her online friends. Other than her monthly call with her cousin, her schedule was basically empty.

 

Today was supposed to be some holiday, but Huang Ziqi didn’t really care. It didn’t matter whether a day was a holiday or not. So it didn't matter if she missed one or not.

 

For the past four waking hours, all she had been doing was aimlessly opening and closing windows on her computer. She was undecided on what to do, as there wasn’t anything particularly interesting. The call with her cousin would probably be coming in half an hour to an hour.

 

She decided that for the remaining hour leading up to the call, she would be lurking in the Nine Provinces (1) Group chat. She opened the window, and scrolled through the chat history. 

 

She noticed something in the chat from a member called Medicine Master. It was posted only about an hour ago, at 3AM. 

 

“Simplified Pill Recipe for Body Tempering Liquid: Ginseng 3 liang, Goji Berries 4 liang 3 qian; Morning Dew Mysterious Grass; Rising Sun Stone 3 liang, Maiden’s Fragrance 1 liang 3 qian….. Fresh Overlord Branch 1 liang, thinly sliced Nine-Yang Scarlet Flame Bamboo 4 liang…..”

 

[E: 1 liang = 50g; 1 qian = 5g]

 

This was one of the longest messages from the Medicine Master, so Huang Ziqi paid more mind to the message. It seemed to be some kind of recipe.

 

It listed 45 types of medicinal ingredients in succession, amongst them, were familiar sounding ingredients like Ginseng and Goji Berries, but there were also the rarely heard ingredient Rising Sun Stone and the unheard-before ingredients, Morning Dew Mysterious Grass, Fresh Overlord Branches, the Nine-Yang Scarlet Flame Bamboo and such.

 

“Follow the proportion of the recipe and put them one by one into the pill furnace, simmer it for five minutes, insert the next herb, then simmer for five minutes, insert next herb and repeat. Pay attention to the fire’s temperature! By using this process, the medicinal liquid would turn into a paste. A successfully completed Body Tempering Liquid should be black in colour, transparent, and with a strong smell..”

 

“...” Huang Ziqi was impressed and speechless. There were some seriously dedicated XianXia lovers, who actually took their time to write this.

 

Simple to understand, clearly some thought was gone into the formatting.

 

Most of these ingredients, Huang Ziqi has never heard off, and the other portion of ingredients wasn’t something she was particularly familiar with. Curiously, she went to look them up. 

 

Most of the ingredients were things that could be found in chinese medicine stores, but some of these ingredients weren’t findable online.

 

“These people have sunk into the delusion of this world quite far, they’ve even come up with medicinal formulas! Well, it’s not like they would actually use this formula and create a medicine with it for consumption… right?” Huang Ziqi wondered with slight concern.

 

She was slightly concerned, because even though you could mix and match different kinds of rice with no worry of danger, you couldn’t do that with medicine.

 

Wouldn’t eating such a medicine damage their body, or make them sick?

 

If someone actually died from eating such a medicine, she wouldn’t be at ease, as she could’ve prevented such a death.

 

Continuing on, upon checking the new messages, she realized that some people had already followed the instructions!

 

It turns out that it was the one that seemed the most normal in the chat, Spiritual Butterfly Island’s Soft Feather, that responded at around 2 in the morning.

 

Spiritual Butterfly Island’s Soft Feather: “Compared to the old formula, this one is lacking in alot of rare medicinal ingredients. The process is also simplified by a lot. Medicine Master, what temperature should the fire be? I just tried, but the result was it had failed midway. Also, how much of the medicinal effectiveness is decreased in comparison to the original?”

 

“Effect 2:1.” Said Medicine Master.

 

Medicine effectiveness was only half from before, after all, many precious herbs were removed from the formula. However with only the remaining ingredient, to still be able to form a Body Tempering Liquid would be a profit.

 

“The temperature and specific timings has to be grasped yourself, it cannot be explained.” Medicine Master once again sent a rare long line of words, only when it came to questions about pill concoctions would he clench his teeth and enter a few more words, “Also, if your fire control arts aren’t good enough, I recommend you utilize a treasure for fire control.”

 

“Thank you senior, I will try again.” Spiritual Butterfly Island’s Soft Feather sent a smiley, then returned to lurking.

 

Spiritual Butterfly Island’s Soft Feather’s final message was at 2:30AM in the morning, if she went to concoct pills after that, judging from the time she should already have concocted another batch of medicine, right?

 

It would do serious harm, right? From the start, this bunch of chuunibyous were already very silly, if they ate the wrong medicine, wouldn’t they become super silly? Originally, they could might’ve been capable of being saved, but right now if they ate that medicine, then there would truly be no hope for rescue at all!

 

Her conscience finally took over, and she couldn’t help but enter into the chat window, “Medicine cannot be randomly taken!”

 

Right as she was about to knock on the Enter key, and send her first sentence in this group……The chat window vibrated.

 

A large smiley popped out from the group chat’s avatar.

 

It was a moderator who hadn’t appeared when Huang Ziqi entered the chat group

Seven Path’s Respected Sage, “This recipe is great, I just tried simultaneously concocting it in seven furnaces, and all of them easily succeeded. The success rate is very high. I’ve tried some and the effectiveness of the medicine is slightly more than half of the old version of Body Tempering Liquid. But the cost of manufacturing this recipe is only a tenth of the old recipe.”

 

The Body Tempering Liquid may be the lowest level of medicine, but as of today, the spiritual Qi in this realm is becoming thinner and thinner. To us for whom expensive medicines and herbs are rare, this truly is a good thing. Medicine Master, continue to work hard. If you can improve pill recipes of level three and above, then your contributions and efforts will truly be invaluable.”

 

“To add-on: What’s most important is, the concocting difficulty has been greatly reduced, this can even be passed on to medicinal students to concoct.”

 

Seven Path’s Respected Sage was a famous senior in the group, and in terms of strength he was even one level higher than Mt. Yellow’s True Monarch. He also had high attainments in terms of pill concoction. In this group, he could be said to be of the highest seniority in terms of pill concocting, his praises naturally let a junior like Medicine Master feel extremely elated.

 

“Thank you senior, I will work hard!” Medicine Master excitedly entered these many words in a single sentence, moreover with high speed.

 

“...” Huang Ziqi’s mouth started twitching, there was actually someone who had already concocted and taken that ‘body tempering liquid’?