Xing Yi paused as he gazed upon the familiar stalk of Brown Calamus. He vividly remembered seeing it dissolve in the boiling water. Yet here it was now, unscathed and somehow back in one piece. He thought it to be some kind of hallucination until he picked it up and intimately felt it. It was definitely real. His mind went through the possibilities as he stood in place and stared. That’s when he glanced down at the cauldron.
“What is happening?” Xing Yi muttered as he shook his head. Was he under some elaborate illusion by an immortal master? Was he dreaming? Had he in fact not even cooked the Brown Calamus in the cauldron yet and had imagined it all.
No.
He clearly remembered seeing the Brown Calamus dissolve into the water and that was a fact. So then what caused the Brown Calamus to return to its original state? And that is when Xing Yi thought of the cryptic, black cauldron that sat before him. Could this thing possibly be the culprit? He had found it at the bottom of a river and had no clue about its origins.
But according to the Brown Calamus test it wasn’t a pill cauldron. Then if it wasn’t the pill cauldron, what could it be? After a few more moments of thinking, Xing Yi still had no idea what was happening. So, instead of further thinking, he decided to boil the Brown Calamus once again.
If it was the same result every time, he would have a problem, but if it properly dissolved into a soggy mess like it should, then he could almost completely forget about it. Grabbing a metal bucket, he jogged up and down the hill a few times, filling the cauldron up with water until it was halfway full.
He once again gathered more firewood, lit a fire under the cauldron and dropped the Brown Calamus inside when the water began boiling. And this time, he vigilantly watched over the water. The Brown Calamus dissolved as a tall fog of steam spiralled into the air, the water levels falling lower and lower.
It was only until the sun had set and the sky turned black, that the water had fully dissipated. Xing Yi looked to the bottom of the cauldron and saw a soggy mess of brown and green. He didn’t know how to react when seeing this. Was he happy? Sad? He didn’t know.
He extinguished the fire and retreated to his room and fell asleep. The next day, be it due to his curiosity or worry, he checked the bottom of the cauldron again. Just to see it it was still a soggy mess of brown and green.
But Xing Yi didn’t see that.
He saw a healthy stalk of Brown Calamus laying at the bottom of the cauldron. At this, Xing Yi took a few steps back, his heart racing.
What is going on?
He glanced at his surroundings, feeling up his body and checking the clarity of his thoughts for the sake of his paranoia. It wasn’t an illusion nor was it some kind of mind control. It was real. Very, very real.
Without hesitating, Xing Yi grabbed his metal bucket and swiftly filled the cauldron back up with water. He lit a fire and immediately put the Brown Calamus, not even waiting for the water to begin boiling. Xing Yi sat in a wooden chair next to the cauldron and carefully began to watch without a single break in his focus.
Something happened between the time he slept and woke up for the Brown Calamus to transform back into its original form! Once the water fully dissipated and all that was left was a soggy brown and green mess, he would continue to wait and see what would happen.
And so he did, several hours later the sun was high in the sky and all the water had dissipated. All that remained was the waste of the Brown Calamus sitting at the bottom of the cauldron. But he
wasn’t leaving anymore. He was going to continue to wait!
He stood over the cauldron, peering inside the cauldron, expecting at every moment for something to occur. Even as nothing happened, he didn’t give up and continued.
Finally, after an hour of waiting, he noticed something. An almost corporeal, black veil had appeared over the hole of the cauldron. Xing Yi didn’t even breathe as he continued to observe. This illusory form slowly solidified into existence. Without a single sound, a black lid had materialised on top of the cauldron.
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Eager to see what was happening, Xing Yi attempted to take the lid off of the cauldron. To his surprise, it was as if it was a part of the cauldron itself and didn’t budge. He tried again a few more times but there was still no give. It was completely sealed on.
At this, Xing Yi’s heart began racing. What was going to happen!?
Another hour passed and the lid slowly became transparent and dissipated out of existence. Laying at the bottom of the cauldron was now a completely fine, healthy stalk of Brown Calamus. With shaking hands, Xing Yi reached inside and grabbed the spiritual herb. He was in awe as he inspected it.
This was no mere cauldron. This was an immortal treasure! Somehow, this mysterious cauldron had turned cooked Brown Calamus slob back into its original state. Upon first thought, it didn’t seem to hold any use for him but he quickly gained a few ideas.
But before he jumped to conclusions, he decided to conduct a few more experiments. Over the course of the rest of the day, he cooked grass, flowers, nuts, wood branches, bark, vines, and more inside the cauldron. He only filled with a small amount of water so that there wasn’t a long waiting time and repeated this process several times.
In the end, what he found was that nothing else, except the Brown Calamus, would be returned back to its original state through its magic. It led him to believe that only spiritual herbs could be returned back to its original form. But he needed to see if it was the same for other spiritual herbs.
Fortunately for him, there were plenty around! Due to the high density of qi within the sect, weak spiritual herbs have grown amongst the mountain range. But the qi they have is so weak and insignificant that not even the most desperate cultivator would blink an eye at them. They are easily overlooked and no one cares about their existence. The only interesting thing about them was that they were quite pretty.
Hiking up a nearby mountain, he plucked several flowers from a small patch at the top of the mountain. Not wanting to waste his time dawdling, he ran back down and immediately cooked one of the flowers inside the cauldron. An hour and a half later, the corporeal lid slowly materialised into existence once again.
It does!
Xing Yi jumped around on his little legs in celebration with a big grin on his face. But he didn’t stop there. An hour later, the lid gave way to the small flower and this time, he did something far
different. He put the small flower and Brown Calamus into the pot at the same time.
This is considered alchemy! If these two spiritual herbs melt under the temperature of the fire, then their energies would collide. If he didn’t use any pill refining technique with his inner qi-which he still couldn’t do as of yet- they would form an alchemical waste that was completely useless.
But that is what he wanted.
And when the two spiritual herbs turned into alchemical waste and Xing Yi saw the beginning of the cauldron lid’s materialisation, he was even more delirious! An hour later, what he found inside the cauldron was the Brown Calamus and spiritual flower. Both were seperate and intact!
There was a brief moment of silence as Xing Yi delegated the meaning of this outcome. When he awoke from this deep contemplation, he began laughing! This extreme situation left him not knowing how to react. In the end, his only response was that of laughter.
Once he finished stumbling around his backyard in delirium, he immediately took action and carried the mysterious black cauldron back inside his house and shoved it inside the tiny closet he had originally put it in.
But an underlying paranoia had taken hold of his mind. He wasn’t satisfied with the current arrangements and filled the closet with so much firewood that it buried the cauldron in it. Once it was fully stacked with firewood, he softly closed the door. And his preparations were just in time as a familiar voice reached his ears from outside the house.
“Xing Yi, I, Mo Zhi have arrived with a message for Junior Martial Brother!”