Chapter Eighty-Six: The Heavenly Demon Pill and the Deficiency-Repairing Pill

“What, this little beggar in front of us? Brother Xie, you are not making a fool of me, are you?” Li Muqiu could not help showing his displeasure. He had clearly examined the boy just now; aside from two tattered books, there was nothing on him at all resembling the Deficiency-Mending Pill. Xie Changfeng had gone too far. He was the dignified master of a great sword sect, and yet this man dared toy with him.

“No, no, how would I dare joke with Master Li?” Xie Changfeng hurriedly explained with a smile when he saw Li Muqiu’s expression darken slightly. “What I mean is, the Deficiency-Mending Pill is in the little beggar’s stomach.”

“In his stomach? He swallowed the Deficiency-Mending Pill? But this... how could that be possible?” Xie Changfeng’s words gave Li Muqiu a violent start. Even with the composure proper to the head of a sect, his face turned grim.

“No, no, no, Master Li, you misunderstand. The little beggar swallowed it together with the Silver-Seal Box, so the Deficiency-Mending Pill is still lying intact inside his belly... as long as we cut open his stomach, we can take the pill out whole.” As he spoke, Xie Changfeng made a splitting gesture with his hand.

“I see... Brother Xie, you have truly worked hard escorting the Deficiency-Mending Pill for my humble sect all this way... What?” Before Li Muqiu could finish, his expression changed sharply. He had been secretly observing the little beggar’s condition all along, and now he could distinctly sense waves of spiritual pressure unique to the Deficiency-Mending Pill coming from within him. At some unknown moment, the Silver-Seal Box had already been opened, and the pill had plainly emerged.

Seeing Li Muqiu so unsettled, utterly bereft of the calm dignity expected of a sect master, the others were deeply astonished. What could have occurred to make even an expert of Li Muqiu’s caliber lose color? They hurriedly followed his gaze and saw Che Wuyou seated cross-legged in a rigid posture. His brows were tightly knit, his teeth bared in a grimace, as though he were enduring unbearable agony.

Inside Che Wuyou’s body, as the green medicinal force continued to whirl, the Silver-Seal Box at last could bear no more. Under such terrifying crushing power, it finally collapsed completely.

The instant the Deficiency-Mending Pill broke free from the Silver-Seal Box, it encountered that overbearing green medicinal force. As if meeting a mortal enemy, it began spinning rapidly. With every turn, waves of incomparably powerful spiritual pressure spread outward from it.

Both the Deficiency-Mending Pill and the Heavenly Demon Pill stood among the highest of earth-grade elixirs. Though the Heavenly Demon Pill ranked several levels above the Deficiency-Mending Pill, the latter existed to remedy flaws and fill what was lacking, to purge all harmful impurities from the body and allow the user’s constitution to break through its limits into an exceptionally perfect state. Thus, when the Deficiency-Mending Pill suddenly encountered the Heavenly Demon Pill, it did not flee, but instead attempted to drive the Heavenly Demon Pill out of Che Wuyou’s body.

The Heavenly Demon Pill, a legendary earth-grade elixir, had already been famous ten thousand years ago. Because it was supremely evil, unsealed through slaughter and proving its Dao through slaughter, wherever it appeared, boundless calamity of bloodshed followed. Anyone who consumed it would become a public enemy of the immortal path.

Yet the power of the Heavenly Demon Pill admitted no doubt. Whoever consumed it, so long as they did not die midway and their comprehension was not pitifully poor, without exception would step onto a path of overwhelming strength. But the Heavenly Demon Pill belonged to darkness. One who took it could harbor no distracting thoughts; if they wished to attain the Great Dao, they had to sever all bonds of cause and affection, cut away all feeling and nature, and pass their entire life amid slaughter.

Ten thousand years ago, during that ancient war between immortals and demons, Yao Ming, the Demon Emperor and master of the eight branches of the Demon Sect, sought to utterly shatter the immortal path and dominate the whole of the Southern Continent. With tyrannical means unmatched beneath heaven, he opened the Demon Cauldron and gathered the world’s medicinal treasures to refine one hundred Heavenly Demon Pills. It was said that on the day the pills were completed, demonic clouds blotted out the sun above the Demon Sect’s main altar, while heavenly thunder rolled without end.

Though the Demon Emperor had made the fullest preparations for the birth of those hundred Heavenly Demon Pills, he was still struck down by their lightning tribulation and left gravely wounded, at the brink of death. Of the Eight Great Bright Kings of the Demon Sect’s eight branches, three perished beneath that roaring tribulation. Even the sect’s sacred demonic artifact was utterly destroyed by the devilish lightning. The Demon Sect was gravely weakened, but the hundred Heavenly Demon Pills had nevertheless come into the world.

In the two hundred years that followed, as the immortal and demonic paths battled for supremacy, Demon Emperor Yao Ming used those hundred Heavenly Demon Pills he had refined to forge a great host of demonic experts, stirring up endless slaughter across the vast Southern Continent. It was said that every person who consumed a Heavenly Demon Pill became a machine of killing. They were born for slaughter, lived for slaughter, and proved their Dao through slaughter. For the sake of the path in their hearts, they exterminated their humanity, butchered kin, slew friends, and became true fiends of massacre.

To oppose those bloodthirsty devils and crush the Demon Sect’s ambition of ruling the Southern Continent alone, the immortal path ultimately paid an agonizing price.

Several peerless sects whose inheritances stretched back to antiquity were reduced to ashes in that great war, and countless cultivation arts, secret manuals, pills, and weapons were lost as well. That long and protracted conflict was in fact the fundamental reason for the rise of the Ten Great Ancient Clans ten thousand years ago.

To this day, the Heavenly Demon Pill had become a pill of legend, and the method of refining it had long since been lost. But since even Demon Emperor Yao Ming had praised it as a tyrannical elixir, how could it allow the Deficiency-Mending Pill to drive it from Che Wuyou’s body?

The moment the two pills met within him, they began resisting each other of their own accord. As the two earth-grade elixirs tested one another again and again, corroding and invading in turn, they found themselves evenly matched for a time, neither able to gain the upper hand. Though the Heavenly Demon Pill ranked several levels higher, the Deficiency-Mending Pill’s medicinal quantity far exceeded its own.

Realizing that devouring and assimilating the other would not be accomplished quickly, and that victory could not be decided in a moment, the two pills became entangled and roamed ceaselessly through Che Wuyou’s body, beginning instead to fight for control of him.

The power of the Deficiency-Mending Pill was vast and gentle; the power of the Heavenly Demon Pill was domineering and wicked. Either one alone was fatal to Che Wuyou. Without the aid of a peerless expert of the Immortal-Inquiry Realm, even if the Deficiency-Mending Pill did not actively attack him, its immense energy would still tear him to pieces alive.

But the Heavenly Demon Pill had dwelt in Che Wuyou’s dantian for years now. It had already adapted to his body and regarded it as its own territory.

And so, when another force suddenly appeared within Che Wuyou, it behaved like a master defending his domain and naturally began protecting Che Wuyou’s body. It held the Deficiency-Mending Pill firmly in check, constantly suppressing its immense energy and giving it no chance at all to erupt.

Under the Heavenly Demon Pill’s restraint, the Deficiency-Mending Pill, which had never intended to attack Che Wuyou in the first place, was likewise checked. Its chief purpose was to remedy and perfect, not to destroy. Thus the two earth-grade elixirs unexpectedly achieved a delicate balance inside Che Wuyou.

The two pills roamed ceaselessly through his body, from meridians to dantian, and from dantian back through every channel in his frame. Che Wuyou’s meridians were left in utter ruin by their turmoil, and even his dantian had been driven to the brink of collapse. That it had come only this far was due solely to their mutual restraint, neither willing to destroy him outright.

Otherwise, with Che Wuyou’s level of cultivation, the only possible end would have been to explode and die. Even so, his body had already suffered injuries beyond imagination.

Che Wuyou endured the agony that felt as though he were being torn apart. Again and again he gathered that pitifully meager true essence in his dantian, using the cultivation method of the Canon of Qihuang to continuously repair his damaged meridians. Though the Canon of Qihuang was a peerless healing art, in the face of such grievous wounds it still seemed powerless.

Che Wuyou knew full well that the situation was nearly hopeless, and that today he would most likely die in the tug-of-war between these two pills. But his nature was resolute. Until the final instant, he would never abandon hope. Even if the matter truly could not be salvaged, with his temperament he would still struggle to the end, let alone now, when despair had not yet fully arrived.

Li Muqiu and the many assembled experts stared blankly at Che Wuyou. At first, only Li Muqiu had been able to sense the faint spiritual pressure leaking from the Deficiency-Mending Pill. But now nearly every expert present could feel the subtle pressure it was releasing. Clearly, the Silver-Seal Box had been unsealed, and the Deficiency-Mending Pill had come into the world. But everyone had come to seize that pill. How were they supposed to fight over it now? Plainly, it had fallen into the little beggar’s stomach.

Could they take it out now?

And even if they could, could it still be taken out?

And even if it truly could be, would it still be the Deficiency-Mending Pill?

“Qiu’er... my poor, ill-fated Qiu’er.” Li Muqiu stared fixedly at Che Wuyou, his eyes faintly reddening. Of all things this boy might have eaten, he had swallowed the Deficiency-Mending Pill meant to save his daughter’s life. The hatred in Li Muqiu’s heart was beyond measure.

The people of the Heavenly Mountain Sword Sect were nothing but a pack of wine sacks and rice bags. Six grand elders had personally escorted the Deficiency-Mending Pill, yet it had somehow ended up swallowed by a child in the Qi Refining Realm. If these six had been elders of the Green Pool Sword Sect, Li Muqiu swore he would have crippled them one by one. They could not even guard a mere Deficiency-Mending Pill. What use was there in keeping such useless trash and wasting the sect’s resources on them?

“Xie Changfeng, did you not say the Deficiency-Mending Pill was in the little beggar’s stomach, and that all one had to do was cut him open to retrieve it intact? Very well. This master wants the Deficiency-Mending Pill now, so why are you not hurrying to bring it to me?” Li Muqiu’s handsome face was dark with menace, and his tone was equally unfriendly.

This was still only because he was showing consideration for Bai Moya of the Heavenly Mountain Sword Sect. Were it not for Bai Moya, he would already have struck at Xie Changfeng. He, the master of a great sect, a figure who could summon wind and rain across the whole Southern Continent, had actually been toyed with by someone like Xie Changfeng, a nobody scarcely worth notice.

“This... this, I fear the Deficiency-Mending Pill has already been unsealed...” Seeing Li Muqiu looking at him with a cold smile, clearly unwilling to hear such words, Xie Changfeng secretly wiped away a sheen of sweat and hurriedly changed his tune. “But in my humble opinion, given the Deficiency-Mending Pill’s spirituality and formidable medicinal force, and without an expert of the Immortal-Inquiry Realm standing guard over it, this little beggar should not be able to damage it... yes, he should not be able to damage it.”