On the far side of the smoke, searing heat blasted out of the furnace. Hui blocked his face with his hands, peering through his fingers at the crack in the furnace.
Inside, flames danced over a glowing ball about the size of two fists put together. As the flames burned, the glowing ball turned from a brilliant, scintillating pill into a lump of charcoal. Black char crawled behind the flames, leaving nothing of the medicinal value of the pill. The black smoke billowed out from the flames.
Hui waved his hand, calling the pill toward him. It isn’t completely destroyed. Maybe I can still…
The pill trembled, then began to vibrate urgently. Faster and faster, fiercer and fiercer. The flames burned brighter. Vibrations emanated from the pill, and began to resonate with the walls of the pill furnace.
Whoops. Er… time to get out of here! Hui stopped calling out to the pill and spun, flying as fast as he could into a corner. He put as many pill furnaces as he could between himself and the exploding furnace and hunkered down, curling up tight. I could flee outside, but I don’t know what’s out there! In this mysterious realm hidden beyond the limits of the Underworld, I need to exercise extreme caution! I shouldn’t do anything rash, like bursting outside blindly or… or reaching for random pills…
Ahem. Anyways. It’s never too late to realize your mistakes, after all!
Across the room, the pill furnace began to whistle fiercely. It trembled so hard that it began to rumble and grumble aloud. Waves of energy burst through the air, slamming into the other pill furnaces. They wobbled in place, tipping up on two of their feet, then smashing back down. Heavy pressure bore down on Hui, and then the wave of energy struck him. It lifted him up bodily and slammed him into the wall.
For a moment, he hung there, stunned. Slowly, he fell out of the him-shaped hole in the wall toward the ground. Inches from the earth, the stun broke.
Hui’s eyes widened. Running away isn’t enough! I need more protection! As he fell, he curled up into a crouch, and struck the ground as a small, hunched-up version of himself. Reaching out, he scrawled talismans all around himself shuffling around in a slow circle as he went. Flicking his wrist, he activated the Hundred and Eight Layers, the gold walls tight around him.
The overloaded furnace emanated bright light. Its walls began to glow, the bronze red-hot from the intense heat. It rocked back and forth, jumping in place, then burst all at once, hurtling molten bronze across the room.
The explosion threw all the other room-sized furnaces into the air. It slammed into Hui, throwing him and his barrier into the wall once more. The second it struck him, the first layer shattered. The second layer barely had time to form before Hui struck the wall. As the explosion continued, layer after layer shattered. Molten bronze splashed into the barrier, threatening to melt into his body if it struck him. He balled up tighter, already drawing a smaller, tighter version even closer to himself where he was pressed against the wall. Fuck! It’s going to burst through to me. I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die!
Before the fiftieth layer snapped, the explosion ended. Hui dropped down from the wall. Cautiously, he leaned to the side, peering around the other furnaces at the exploded one.
Only the four legs and the very bottom of the furnace remained. Waves of thick black smoke rolled out from the little that remained, seemingly as endless as the ocean. In moments, the black smoke blanketed the floor of the pill furnace workshop. Bits of molten bronze dripped down the walls of the workshop and of all the surrounding furnaces. Some had been flung with enough force to pit the walls of the nearest furnaces, despite their toughened exteriors.
Hui let out a low breath. He shook his head at himself. Those who do not seek death, won’t die. I should know that, and yet I still recklessly touched a pill furnace. Pill furnaces are full of danger, utterly full of it! Accidentally brewing poison instead of elixir by some tiny mistake, exploding at the slightest mishap, creating pills full of impurities that block your future… no, no! This small Hui knows better than to touch one. And yet, I still reached for that pill!
Eh, come to think of it… why did I reach for that pill? It’s not like me. It’s not even like I often use pills or elixirs. I used to use them to heal, but I haven’t even done that in a long time, now that I have my crystal and plant body cultivation techniques. As for using them to advance, Master would scoff at me from the Heavens if I dared so much as think that! So why reach for the pill?
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Unless it was a trap from the beginning. A deliberately beguiling pill that calls out to any cultivator on a subconscious level to get them to reach for it, only to explode in the face of whoever dares try!
Dangerous, dangerous. I must be more alert! Traps can come from all directions and all sources. Even an inanimate object can pose deadly danger to me on its own! After all, a talisman doesn’t need visible human intervention to attack. Careful, Hui. Take caution!
Nearly as soon as Hui heard it, a door creaked open on the far side of the room. His heart leapt in his chest. He searched around. Somewhere to hide, somewhere to—
Black smoke covered the floor, nearly knee-height.
Oh, right. For the second time in a few minutes, he drew back his qi into his seed core and let his body wither away to nothing. He canceled the barrier technique and laid there in the smoke, letting the layer of thick black smoke obscure his now-tiny body.
Footsteps crossed the workshop. From beneath the smoke, Hui couldn’t see the one walking around, but their footsteps sounded light and airy. A woman, or someone small? …Or any average cultivator who knows the light-body technique.
Is it the phoenix-fire senior? But then… I think from my glimpse of her, she was eternally on fire. I’d see the light of her flames, or feel the heat.
A low, gravelly voice grunted. “Another one? Did it really go off randomly?”
Ah… no, I suppose it isn’t her. Either that, or she’s a chain-smoking whiskey-drinking weathered old lady… but ah, I didn’t get the feeling that Han Qin was into that kind of woman.
“I don’t suppose there’s some mice creeping around in this smoke?” the man grumbled. Wind blasted through the room, scooping up all the smoke and sweeping it out the window. Carefully calculated to only lift the smoke, the wind blast left Hui’s seed behind, a little black blotch on the floor in the corner.
Hui startled, but quickly caught his breath. He drew back his qi into the seed as strongly as he could, playing dead as a seed. I’m just an ordinary seed, nothing to see here. Don’t waste your time on me, Senior! Nothing to see, nothing to see.
A skeletal figure stepped around the corner. Loose flesh hung from pale bones. An eye sagged out of one eye socket, while maggots dripped from the other. Baring teeth at the room because he had no cheeks to do anything else, the rotting corpse scanned the room, lone eyeball dangling.
Wh—wh—what? Is that… does that even count as a death cultivator? It…
Wait. This is the Underworld. Although most ghouls aren’t conscious, isn’t the Underworld exactly where conscious ghouls would appear? All the monsters that lurk in the shadows of the night, all the ghosts and ghouls that cultivate subconsciously or incorrectly and end up deviated and demonic… they’d all find a home in the Underworld.
Or rather… in this alternate realm on the flipside of the Underworld!
The ghoulish pill cultivator peered in one of the smoking pill furnaces, then nodded to himself. “Good, good. It’s almost ready.”
Almost ready? In what world is blackened ash ‘almost ready?’
Well, I guess if you’re a ghoul, and you’re already dead, why not have your pills be dead, too? And what is ash but the ghost of pills? It doesn’t really make sense, but it does… kind of make sense, in an illogical sort of way.
Scanning the room again, the ghoulish pill cultivator halted. He limped over and knelt, then picked up Hui’s seed. Frowning, he turned it over in his hand. “Where did you come from, huh?”
I’m not stupid enough to fall for that trick! I’m dead, I’m dead as a seed can be! Leave me be! Hui thought, pulling his death qi even tighter.
The ghoulish pill cultivator turned the seed over again, then shrugged.
That’s right, Senior. I’m just a seed. There’s no need to—
Experimentally, the pill cultivator bit the seed.
Hui stiffened. He shuddered, utterly disgusted. That sensation. The cold sticky saliva, the gross, clammy tongue, the rotting teeth… That’s it, it’s over. I’ve been tainted. My entire body is contaminated. I’m never going to be clean again.
“Damn. It’s too hard.” Spitting the seed out, the ghoulish cultivator turned and whipped it through an open window.
Wrapped up in a wad of decaying saliva, Hui barely resisted the urge to scream and scrub his entire body. Ugh, ugh, ugh, so gross! I have a high tolerance for disgusting things, but there’s a limit, there’s a limit to everything! Yuck, yuck, yuck. Let me land in a clean river or a babbling brook! Plunge me directly into the waters of the Yellow Springs! I need a pound of soap and a strong scouring brush, right this moment!
He arced through the skies and plopped down into water. Hui let out a sigh of relief, feeling the wad of saliva dissolve away. Phew. So where did I end up?
Lifting the lid of the seed, he peered out and stared directly into a pair of loose, floating eyeballs.
Hui bit back a second screech and recoiled, withdrawing himself into the seed’s shell. His withdraw swung his weight enough that he fell backward into the water and bumped into something else. Hui started to turn, but then stopped himself. No, no. I know this trope. I got startled by something spooky, so when I turn around, I’ll be face to face with something even scarier! The only way to win is not to play. Don’t turn, Hui! Don’t turn!
The thing he bumped into drifted forward, into his range of vision from the crack in the seed’s shell. A severed head with empty eye sockets and a bloated tongue floated into his vision. Blood colored the water pink around its gaping eye sockets and severed neck.
Alright, that’s enough. I’m getting out of here!