Xiao Lu was feeling crabby.

Not only did he have to take various poisons for Xin Mei, but he even had to acquire more powerful poisons on his own? Wasn’t this simply the act of digging one's own grave?

Xiao Lu looked behind him at where Xin Mei was surreptitiously watching him, her body half hidden behind a sign post. He wanted to give her puppy dog eyes or whine like a cute and pitiful animal, but alas, he was a spider. So, he just stared at her and silently exuded reluctance.

Xin Mei made a shooing motion with her hand, as if to say, “Go on. This is happening.”

Hesitantly, Xiao Lu rotated his body and took several more steps toward the opulent abode of the Third Elder. Xiao Lu did not want to go inside. After all, he was only at the third stage of Qi refining. If the Elder caught him sneaking in, the best outcome was that he would be refined into a pill! Despite this, Xiao Lu only turned to quietly beg Xin Mei to let him off two to three more times before boldly resigning himself to his fate. Her shooing motions had grown increasingly violent, to the point that he dared not protest further.

After slipping into the manse through an open window, Xiao Lu’s chemoreceptors were quickly overwhelmed by the many strange smells present in an alchemist's home. He was stunned for a moment, before shaking himself and moving to a corner to skulk in the shadows. Then he made his way deeper into the abode, following the scent trail toward its source.

As Xiao Lu scuttled through richly adorned hallways and rooms, he marveled at the use of medium and even high-grade spirit stones in mere decoration. Truly, alchemists had it good. Soon, Xiao Lu’s jealousy began boiling over into anger. Wasn’t this vase too gaudy? Weren’t these curtains too soft and silky? Xiao Lu grumbled to himself and once again bemoaned his body’s limitations. Xiao Lu wanted to be a filthy rich alchemist, too!

Xiao Lu took a moment to meditate in a quiet corner until he was calm, and then continued on while directly ignoring the wealth that surrounded him. Finally, Xiao Lu found himself in the alchemist’s workshop.

Like a common criminal, Xiao Lu began rummaging through the herbs and other ingredients looking for a high-quality poison. Unfortunately, Xiao Lu realized belatedly that he was not a poison expert. He had venom, but he cultivated Primordial Qi, not Poison Qi. Yes, Primordial Qi was the ancestor of Poison Qi as much as any other kind of Qi, but he couldn’t use its resonance to discern the most suitable poison for Xin Mei’s cultivation.

Xiao Lu rubbed his forelimbs together nervously as he turned to glance between various herbs and elixirs without really comprehending anything. Xiao Lu chastised himself for not properly preparing for this mission. Why hadn’t he learned how to read before now! He would also take some skull-and-bones iconography.

Wait, Xiao Lu thought, am I, perhaps … an idiot!? System, what is my Int score?

… System!?

The system failed to reassure his wavering self-confidence, but there was one thing it could do to help him in this situation. If he had been a cute anime girl he would have tapped his head with his knuckles and said “tee-hee” for not thinking of it sooner.

Alas, Xiao Lu was something quite different, so he simply turned to the nearest semi-transparent jade box, focused on the spiritual herb stored inside, and pulled up a status window in a matter-of-fact fashion. No one had been there to see him forget he had this ability. No one needed to know.

—Status—

Name: Aconite

Titles: Monkshood, Wolfsbane

Age: 200

Species: Aconitum napellus

Cultivation Base: 3rd Realm of Foundation Establishment (Dormant)

Description: Aconite is a species of highly toxic flowering plants in the genus Aconitum of the family Ranunculaceae, native and endemic to western and central Lao Guo. This specimen cultivated for 180 years and attained rudimentary self-awareness before being harvested by a human cultivator and eventually sold in a Silver Moon Palace auction to an external elder of the Silent Shadow Sect.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Xiao Lu reared back from the blue window in surprise. Since when was the system so generous with its information? There was even a backstory! And did his luck score increase? The first thing he checked was a poison! Maybe, since he was working on behalf of Xin Mei, her good fortune as a favored daughter of heaven was rubbing off on him.

Xiao Lu scuttled forward and attempted to open the jade box, but it was tightly sealed. After struggling for a moment with all his strength and trying a few different positions, Xiao Lu gave up on the brute force method.

Waving his legs in frustration, Xiao Lu looked around the room and wracked his brains for a solution. His eyes lingered on a pile of wooden rods around the length and thickness of Xin Mei’s forearm.

Wait, Xiao Lu thought, am I, perhaps … a genius!?

He hurriedly set about gathering the rods and spinning web to hang them horizontally above the jade box. He also put some webbing on the box itself to seal the bottom to the table top. Finally, Xiao Lu looped a thread of non-sticky webbing around and through his gauntlet of makeshift pulleys and started pulling.

*Clink*

Success! Xiao Lu took back everything bad he’d ever said about himself!

Xiao Lu quickly gathered a generous portion of aconite and then started searching around the room for something that looked vaguely similar that was in a less conspicuous place. In the back of a small cupboard he found another plant with similar yellow flowers that was thankfully less carefully sealed, and replaced what he had taken with it. The status screen informed him that it was called Senna and that it was a natural laxative.

Xiao Lu finished hiding the traces of his heist and was walking out the door of the Alchemy workshop with his prize wrapped securely in a web backpack when he heard footsteps approaching down the hall. Xiao Lu frantically backpedaled and squeezed into the first crack he could find. Moments later, he watched from the shadows as the Third Elder entered the workshop and began refining.

S#17! Thought Xiao Lu as his heart pumped frantically in his abdomen. F#$%!!

However, the Elder continued to calmly refine his spiritual materials, and did not even glance in Xiao Lu’s direction. While at first he was afraid, Xiao Lu eventually calmed down. He watched the alchemist with interest, hoping to glean some secret techniques, but much of what the Elder did was lost on him. His heart almost stopped when the Elder’s hand dipped into the Aconite vessel and introduced its contents into his alchemy cauldron, but the Elder’s mind was obviously on other things. He did not thoroughly check his ingredients, or he would have noticed that the Aconite had been replaced. Eventually, Xiao Lu grew bored and at one point even fell asleep.

He was awoken an unknown time later by the sound of voices.

“Master, you wanted to see me?” A voice asked. Xiao Lu recognized it as belonging to that white-robed sword cultivator Xin Mei had dealt with the other day, Bai Hao. Why did an alchemist take on a disciple cultivating Sword Path?

“Hao’er, perfect timing. I’ve just finished this batch of Heart Restoring Pills. Take them to the Sect Leader.”

“Yes, Master,” Bai Hao said, accepting the jar of pills without hesitation. He turned to go, but the Third Elder stopped him.

“Hao’er, a small girl has been loitering around this place all day. Make sure to keep your admirers from disturbing me in the future.”

Bai Hao’s pale skin flushed red, and he quickly apologized and promised to take care of it.

Xiao Lu scratched his head awkwardly, and decided not to tell Xin Mei that she had been dismissed as a mere stalker. The misconception was another stroke of luck, but she would probably protest and blow their cover.

Thankfully, Xiao Lu didn’t have to wait much longer before his chance to escape finally arrived. The Elder had finished the refining he’d set out to do that day and left the workshop while continuing to converse with Bai Hao, and Xiao Lu stealthily crawled away shortly after.

He met Xin Mei a short distance down the street from the Third Elder’s abode. She seemed quite frustrated, and stomped her feet when he arrived.

“Finally! Do you know how long I’ve been waiting here? What took so long?”

Xiao Lu held up his forelimbs in a shrugging gesture, and Xin Mei huffed and put out her hand instead of pressing for details. Xiao Lu deposited the Aconite he’d collected into her palm, and she quickly tucked it away in a jade case. Xin Mei was not a Young Mistress for nothing. Naturally, she’d had some jade containers lying around when the idea to go pilfering an alchemist's workshop struck her.

“Well, at least you succeeded. Let’s go use this to refine your venom further.”

Xiao Lu froze, and then quickly looked for an escape route. He’d forgotten where this was all going.

“Oh, don’t be such a baby,” Xin Mei said, and scooped him up while rolling her eyes.

— — —

[Several hours later, near the Misty Mountain Sect Master’s Villa]

A mortal servant by the name of Han Bo whipped the sweat from his brow as he finished lugging the last clay pot from the Sect Master’s Villa. He dumped the contents, a noxious black sludge, from the pot and watched in mild alarm as the nearby plant-life seemed to wilt and wither.

“Nine Hells, this is the seventh pot. To eject so much impurity from his body … the Sect Master must have finally achieved his breakthrough.”