Thoroughly Spicy

“That’s right~” Xun Xue smiled like a fox that had stolen honey. “This thing, on some wolf cubs… has an effect roughly equivalent to…”

She leaned closer to her daughter and said mysteriously, “…a little kitten encountering catnip~”

“But~!” Xun Xue’s tone changed, with a hint of showing off. “But most of the little wolves are immune to this thing, they don’t feel anything when they touch it. Little Qiancha, you’re very lucky.”

“Lucky? Really?”

Lu Qiancha’s eyelids twitched.

What kind of luck was this?

Wasn’t this purely adding a weakness to herself? If the enemy knew about this and sprinkled some Dendrobium and Pearl Orchid on her, wouldn’t she be completely done for?

What if she was in the middle of a fight with someone…

And the enemy suddenly took out a handful of ground Dendrobium and Pearl Orchid powder and threw it at her head!

And then, under the watchful eyes of everyone, she suddenly ran into the other’s arms, “whimpering” and acting cute, rolling around and burrowing…

Tsk, that would probably be the end of her life.

“Yes, very lucky. Most of the children don’t have this experience.”

Xun Xue said with a smile.

“…I’d rather not have this kind of luck.”

Lu Qiancha pouted. She pushed herself up with her two paws and sat down on a chair to the side. She said with a blank expression, “So how do those little wolves who aren’t immune to Dendrobium and Pearl Orchid gain the ability to be immune to it?”

“Simple!” Xun Xue smiled, as if she were talking about a trivial matter. “Desensitization therapy. Eat more, eat it repeatedly, until your body is numb! Until it’s ineffective against you! A quantitative change leads to a qualitative change~”

“Oh.”

Lu Qiancha nodded, while her mind was constantly calculating. She would keep some Dendrobium and Pearl Orchid in her storage bag in the future, and then eat it secretly alone. As long as no one found out when she was eating… it should be fine, right?

She shook her head, temporarily putting these things aside.

Lu Qiancha’s peripheral vision quickly swept over Xun Xue, who was daydreaming on the side.

A good opportunity!

A cold light flashed from her paw tips.

“Swish!”

The Shapeshifting Pill ingredients and the bamboo scroll with the pill recipe on the table were instantly swept into her storage bag.

“Whoosh!”

The small figure had already launched itself into a sprint.

So fast that only a blurry blue shadow was left behind.

She rushed out of the room, and the Mirage Art was activated at the same time.

Swish!

Outside the room, she transformed into a handsome young man in a white shirt.

Without looking back, she rushed towards the alchemy room on the opposite side.

“Hey? I brought some snacks. Aren’t you going to eat them, Little Qiancha?”

Xun Xue shouted loudly towards the outside of the room.

“No!”

A clear, cold young man’s voice, like an arrow piercing the air, shot back. Then, the sound of footsteps disappeared at the end of the corridor.

“This child…”

Xun Xue looked at the exquisite storage bag in her hand, which contained all kinds of snacks, and shook her head with a helpless smile. She placed a small storage bag with food on the table, and then stepped out of the room.

Stepping into the familiar alchemy room, she activated the protective array.

“Phew…”

Lu Qiancha let out a long sigh of relief. She was really afraid that Xun Xue would give her some other strange food.

Calming herself down, Lu Qiancha took out her storage ring and poured out all the ingredients from the storage bag, arranging them neatly on the small table.

Then.

“Click!”

The bamboo scroll containing the Shapeshifting Pill recipe was solemnly unrolled.

She held her breath and concentrated, her paw tips tapping on the bamboo slips, and began to record the recipe, word by word.

“Mist Dew Flower, take its clear pistil, Nether Abyssal Stone, remove the fire spots…”

“Hm?”

Lu Qiancha was stunned when she saw the middle part of the recipe. Mist Dew Flower, a water-elemental treasure of the utmost yin and cold; Nether Abyssal Stone, a fire-elemental strange stone containing pure earth fire.

Water and fire clash, which is against the laws of nature.

According to common sense, when these two are combined, a powerful wood-elemental spirit herb must be added in advance to harmonize and slow down the clash.

But the first half of this recipe—was completely clean, with not even a shadow of a wood-elemental spirit herb…

Lu Qiancha was filled with doubts, and her gaze continued to move downwards.

Ha!

In the three lines after the Nether Abyssal Stone was added, three wood-elemental spirit herbs were listed.

What was this? Mending the fold after the sheep have been lost?

Lu Qiancha’s eyes twitched as she looked at it.

The more she looked at this recipe, the stronger the sense of incongruity became.

There were many counter-intuitive operations in this pill recipe.

Several fixed combinations of monarch, minister, assistant, and envoy, which had been verified by countless alchemy predecessors and recorded in the classics, were forcibly reversed in this pill recipe, with the master and servant roles reversed.

Even the core main ingredient, the Shapeshifting Stone, was placed at the very last step, after all the supplementary ingredients.

This was simply… unheard of.

“Hiss…”

Lu Qiancha stared at the bamboo scroll, her fingertips unconsciously tapping on the table, and fell into deep thought.

Why was it done in reverse?

What kind of mystery was hidden in adding the ingredients in reverse order?

She deduced dozens of possibilities in her mind. The principles of alchemy? The principles of medicine? The flow of spiritual energy?

After thinking for a long time, she still had no results.

“…Forget it, I won’t think about it anymore!”

Lu Qiancha simply gave up on thinking. Who cares, she would just refine it first. Since the pill recipe was written this way, there must be a reason for it.

Open the furnace, light the fire!

Buzz—

A spiritual fire rose from the bottom of the heavy, ancient golden alchemy furnace.

Fiery runes began to nimbly climb and spread along the furnace wall.

Lu Qiancha concentrated her mind and precisely controlled the fire and spiritual power.

Strictly following the instructions of the pill recipe, she accurately threw the ingredients into the alchemy furnace one by one.

Time ticked by…

“Woooo—buzz!!”

The moment the last step, the iridescent Shapeshifting Stone, was pushed into the furnace by her paws.

A sudden change occurred.

The inside of the alchemy furnace, which had been running smoothly like a Tai Chi wheel just now, was like a pot of boiling hot oil into which a bowl of water had been thrown.

The pill was about to form.

Lu Qiancha was overjoyed, and the expression on her face gradually relaxed.

The next moment.

“Boom!”

A deafening explosion rumbled in the furnace belly, and a huge wave of air, mixed with a pungent smell of smoke, burst out from the cracks of the alchemy furnace.

Not good!

Lu Qiancha’s pupils shrank, and her reaction was as fast as lightning, almost at the same moment.

“Buzz!”

A very solid spiritual power shield instantly opened in front of her. The violent wave of air slammed into the spiritual energy shield, making a loud sound like metal striking stone.

“Cough, cough, cough.”

She waved her hand to disperse the thick smoke in front of her, and her paws formed a seal to guide it.

“Bang! Bang! Bang!”

The three windows of the alchemy room opened in response, and the mountain wind whistled in, carrying the thick smoke and fleeing in a sorry state.

The pungent smell of burnt in the air was instantly dispersed.

“Hiss,”

Lu Qiancha looked at the blackened alchemy furnace in front of her and sucked in a breath of cold air as if she had a toothache. “Could it be that this damned pill is really harder to refine than the Soul-Returning Pill?”

If it weren’t for the good quality of the alchemy furnace that Aunt Xuan Mo brought, Lu Qiancha would probably only be seeing a floor full of alchemy furnace fragments now.

She squinted her eyes, and in the lingering smell of soot, she quickly reviewed every detail of what had just happened—fire control, timing of adding ingredients, spiritual power output…

Meticulous, without any error.

Then, the problem could only be in one place. There was a problem with the pill recipe.

Lu Qiancha pursed her lips, and looking at the pill recipe, an indescribable coldness and disappointment instantly gripped her heart.

“Why…” Her throat tightened, and her fingertips were clenched so tightly that her knuckles turned white.

Why did Xun Xue give her a faulty pill recipe?

If she didn’t want to see her paws turn back into human hands, she could have just not given it to her.

Could it be that she just wanted to play this kind of… game of giving hope and then pushing you off a cliff at the peak?!

If that was the case…

“Heh…” A cold arc formed on Lu Qiancha’s lips, and a look of disgust flashed in her eyes. “This kind of personality… is really terrible.”