Mei Hua's friends were completely focused on their preparations. Both Sun Liao and Cao Yun had shared all they knew about the Soul Weaving Cyrtophoras and the Burrowing Deadly Typha. As it took some time, it allowed Ren Chao to calm down a little.

However, he was now fully aware of the fact that they really had to run back then. If they had stayed, they would have been captured or killed and Mei Hua would have been next anyway. Since they were free and safe, they had a chance of saving her. But he still had the same problem. The more he listened to his friends, the more he realized how useless he was in these preparations.

"Brother Sun. I need Sister Mei's alchemy tools."

Frowning, Sun Liao was a bit perplexed by Cao Yun's idea.

"Are you sure you can do something about the Burrowing Deadly Typha's poison? We don't have the ingredients to create a pill against it, unless I'm mistaken."

"No, you're right. But..." Cao Yun showed the stalks he had retrieved, still oozing with a greenish substance. "I never tried it before, but there's a recipe to not eliminate but greatly reduce the effects of the poison. As long as we don't have to fight within the tunnels, it should allow us to walk through without being attacked by the Burrowing Deadly Typha."

"What do you mean?"

Ren Chao interrupted the conversation and Sun Liao answered first.

"Brother Ren, this traitorous plant only attacks when it feels threatened. And it's just a plant, it only reacts to vibration, a bit like the Soul Weaving Cyrtophoras in a sense. The sprouts probably got active when Sister Mei sent the both of us away with a double palm. And then, when you exerted all your strength to pull her away, it must have felt threatened.

"Usually, it stays underground and just waits for its preys to fall victim to its poison. Most of its victims die without even knowing what happened. As long as we're light on our feet, it shouldn't be aggressive. Well, it could be a problem with you in our midst of course..."

"I see... So it was my fault..."

All of Ren Chao's anger had dissipated and only frustration remained. Sun Liao had spoken with his usual snarky tone. Usually, both of them liked to tease each other, but Ren Chao was not in the mood. Paradoxically, Sun Liao liked him better when he was angry. Now there was a heavy atmosphere around the three of them that added to the worry they had about Mei Hua. As much as they trusted her, she was still alone in a nest infested with 3-core demonic beasts. Even though they probably couldn't best her in mind techniques, they could tear her apart. She wasn't even armed after all.

In order to change the mood, Cao Yun spoke.

"Instructor Meng told me about a method called 'Ocean FLowing Back to the Summits'. It consists in separating the medicinal essences of a pill in order to forge another one using similar ingredients."

"I've heard of it! This is a technique reserved to Spirit Warriors. Without spiritual senses, it's impossible to see what's going on in your cauldron. In these circumstances, how could you separate medicinal essences you don't even see or feel?"

"... I'm not too sure, but I developed a technique that allows me to... guess what's going on in the cauldron."

"'guess'?!" Thinking about it, Sun Liao ended up sighing. "Well, I guess there's no other choice. If you fail, I may be able to come up with something. But I'm not too optimistic about it. I'll take the alchemical tools out."

Once again, Sun Liao activated the array formation on top of the spatial pouch. As a powerful light left the plate, in a great circle on the ground, all they had put inside got out. There were alchemical tools such as an old cauldron and an old furnace. But there were also more than twenty corpses of 2-core demonic beasts. During their trip down the mountains, they had killed several demonic beasts, among which many were 1-core demonic beasts. But as the space within the spatial pouch was very limited, they only retrieved the corpses from the 2-core demonic beasts.

However, they still had some elements from a few 1-core demonic beasts that they had deemed valuable. Immediately, Cao Yun took what he needed and set up an improvised alchemical study in a corner of the cave.

Then, Sun Liao turned toward Ren Chao.

"And I'll need your help, Brother. While Brother Chen works on the countermeasure for the poison, we'll work on both our attack plan and our escape route. As we said, the Burrowing Deadly Typha should be easy to pass now that we know what we're dealing with. We just have to be careful. But when we'll leave, I'm pretty sure we'll be forced to run. We won't be able to take care of both the Burrowing Deadly Typha trying to skewer us and the Soul Weaving Cyrtophoras chasing us."

"I don't think I can really help you with anything..."

"Come on. You're a blacksmith, right? I need your talents for this."

"Fine. I'll give you a hand. What do you want?" Seeing Ren Chao with so little life and energy was truly painful for Sun Liao.

"We don't have many spirit stones and I still need them to activate my array formations. However, I can replace them with demonic cores. First, I need your help to take them out from the corpses..."

"Humph! That's all I'm good for, manual labor..."

Still victim of his natural arrogance, Sun Liao wasn't able to say what he wanted. But seeing this big fellow completely disheartened was more than he could endure. However, he still couldn't say what he wanted and got to work beside him.

-

Cao Yun had taken out almost thirty Three Knowledges Detoxifying pills. These had been prepared by Mei Hua and him when they got ready to leave the Wubei Sect. These were 4-star Earth pills and Mei Hua had done most of the work to ensure that they were all Pure grades. A few of them were even True Essence pills. As the name suggested, they were mainly used to detoxify poisons. They could be effective against poisons attacking the body, the mind and the Qi. Unfortunately, they weren't powerful enough to do anything against the Burrowing Deadly Typha's poison.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

However, within their ingredients, Cao Yun had found everything he needed to make a more powerful pill. By adding the sap from the Burrowing Deadly Typha itself, he was sure he could come up with a pill to reduce the effects of the poison. As his friends and he were middle Mortals, they couldn't hold their breath for too long. But they could slow down their heart and thus slow down the spread of the poison in their system. Cao Yun even had the 'Locking the Seven and Stopping the Waves' technique. With it he could almost erase his presence by slowing down his metabolism.

By consuming the pill he had in mind and using a watered-down version of 'Locking the Seven', he was sure that they could walk through the tunnels without being affected by the poison. For their escape, he wasn't too sure, but Sun Liao's idea could work.

The pill he had in mind was the Purifying Muddy Source pill, a 5-star Earth pill. In fact, he knew better pills than that, but he simply couldn't refine them. Even the simplest of the Human pills required the ability to manipulate one's Qi outside of his body. Unless he suddenly became a Mortal Warrior, Cao Yun couldn't do that.

In theory, he could refine this pill without any problem. The trick was that he didn't have the ingredients. However, he had the Three Knowledges Detoxifying pills which contained all of their medicinal essences. There came the 'Ocean Flowing Back to the Summits' technique. Instructor Meng had talked about it in passing and Cao Yun had read a bit about it. He wasn't particularly interested in it, but he thought that since this was a Spiritual Warrior technique, it could help him upgrade his 'Shen Visualization'.

In the end, it hadn't helped him much. But today, it would come in handy. The main problem was that he had never actually used it and he wasn't sure whether or not he could master it enough to create even a single successful pill. The idea behind the technique was simple. As an alchemy pill was the amalgamation of many medicinal essences from the ingredients, it should be possible to revert the process and extract the medicinal essences directly from the pill. The first step was thus to break down the pill and separate the medicinal essences. Then, it was necessary to either add or subtract what you needed and reform another pill.

In theory, since Cao Yun could not control his Qi, he couldn't really control the medicinal essences. Luckily, he had worked on toxins minimization and had learned how to promote or stop accumulation of essences within the pill. He didn't have to control the essences per se. In fact, in a heated cauldron, the essences and toxins would always move and become more or less active due to the heat. He just had to wait for the right essences to be active to promote absorption into the pill.

Of course, it really wasn't an easy process at all. Even with his 'Shen Visualization', he had no certainty as to whether he would succeed and how much he would.

For more than five hours, he refined again and again. Just to adjust his 'Shen Visualization' which was really an educated guessing game, he destroyed seventeen pills. But after that, he obtained the first results. Four more pills got wasted for failed products. But finally, he was able to produce his first Purifying Muddy Source pill. Under this tension, Cao Yun's alchemy reached new heights. In fact, he wouldn't have tried such a process if it wasn't for the situation.

After all, he had wasted twenty-one pills of Pure grades. Obviously, he had decided to preserve the few True Essence pills. Refining a batch of four Purifying Muddy Source pills should take around four or five incense sticks with Cao Yun's level. However, it took him more than two hours. By the time he was done, Cao Yun had produced seven Purifying Muddy Source pills. Only two of them were Pure and the others were Perfect except one. The Pure pills should probably be kept for their escape. On their way in, they should use the less efficient pills. Being an alchemist, Cao Yun could tolerate poison a bit more. As such, he would take the only pill below Perfect grade.

In the end, the day was almost over. This really wasn't a good thing as the Yang was now receding and it was becoming more Yin with the falling sun and the rising moon.

But when Cao Yun was done, so were Sun Liao and Ren Chao. And apparently, they were both more calm.

-

While Cao Yun had been working on his alchemy, Sun Liao and Ren Chao had both been extracting the 2-cores from the corpses of the demonic beasts. Once they were done, Ren Chao was ready to go back in his corner but Sun Liao stopped him.

"Brother, I still need your help. For the array formations I have in mind, I'll need very specific flags." He looked over at the corpses and the materials they had stored in the spatial pouch. "And I'll need your expertise to help me make them."

Thus, they both worked on the flags. They used several tissues from the beasts to forge the array formation flags. Then, Sun Liao asked Ren Chao's help to forge special arrows. Finally, Ren Chao felt really useful. Forging flags and arrows was not that difficult but he was sure to be more competent that Sun Liao, despite his occupation. Even for flags, a blacksmith was better suited to make them. And his arrows were almost perfect. He was convinced that no archer would ever complain about his work.

During the hours they worked on the flags and arrows, Ren Chao ended up chatting with his friend.

"I'm sorry... I completely lost my calm back there. I know you would never have left Sister Mei behind if there had been a way... The truth is..."

"Brother, no need to say anymore. I also felt the same. Despite all my knowledge, I couldn't do a thing but run away in front of vulgar spiders."

"Brother...?" After hearing this, Ren Chao looked at Sun Liao. In his eyes, he saw the same frustration that was in his heart. Yes, he wasn't the only one who felt useless. All of them had had to run from a few demonic beasts and some plant while leaving their friend behind.

"Brother Ren. The truth is that you're essential to our plan. While I set up my array formations, someone will have to protect me. If I were alone, any beast could easily attack and kill me. Brother, not only is your blacksmithing great, but your physical strength is prodigious."

"Brother, did some poison go into your brain? You seem awfully nice."

"Moron." A little embarrassed, Sun Liao went back to his work.

"Don't worry. While you're useless setting up your little drawings, I'll protect you!" With a new life in him, Ren Chao punched his own chest.

Sun Liao raised his head and locked eyes with his friend. After a short silent, both men burst into laughter.

-

"Brothers, I'm done! Are you ready?"

Sitting beside a pile of arrows and flags, Sun Liao and Ren Chao nodded.

"What are we going to do about the darkness in the tunnels? If we go torch blazing, we won't really be discreet..."

"Don't worry, on the way there, just follow me and my compass. When we reach the nest, we won't need any torch. I assure you! However, remember everything I tell you about my array formations. It wouldn't be any bit funny if you got caught in our own traps on the way out." He especially looked at Ren Chao.

"Hey!"

Seeing them tease each other, Cao Yun knew they were back to normal, maybe even friendlier than before.

Then, they only needed to finalize their plans. Cao Yun gave them the pills he had refined and explained the right way to circulate their Qi to both slow down their metabolisms and enhance the effects of the pills. Finally, they had to clearly state their roles in the assault of the nest. They would be faced with several 3-core demonic beasts, at least twelve of them if not more, according to what they knew about Soul Weaving Cyrtophoras.