Going through large amounts of information was something I’d mastered even before I transmigrated to this fucked up universe.

Since I preferred to start at the beginning and go in chronological order, I picked up the jade slips that had the descriptions of what the bath used to be like. Apparently, it had felt like swimming in mint with a warm power flowing through the disciple’s meridians. Noxious had helpfully included a note describing the current bath as a mild ghost pepper soup. Considering his weakness to my cleaning technique, that might just be an exaggeration. Still, someone somewhere had fucked up.

Next, I read about the experiments Fangstrike’s predecessors attempted once they realized that their once near-perfect bath had developed worsening side effects.

Since this was anecdotal and not documented by the original observers, I couldn’t say for sure if they fucked up as badly as they thought they had. Frankly, if they were trying to save face, they might have fucked up even worse.

After going through that pile as quickly as I could, I’d developed a headache. Also, the urge to tie up every alchemist here to teach them about the scientific method — specifically, how to document their fucking experiments. Sadly, I had to work with what I was given.

It seemed like most of Noxious Fangstrike’s predecessors had focused on solutions involving poisons rather than regular medicinal plants, and instead of removing possible problematic ingredients, the poison-obsessed lunatics had added in more just with opposing effects to counteract the sequelae. Obviously, their experiments yielded little effect.

That said… the direction of some of their ideas was brilliant. If they’d actually worked.

Next, I went over Noxious Fangstrike’s documentation. I could forgive the fact that he hadn’t organized it by date since he couldn’t remember exactly when he’d done each experiment, but he could have listed them by ingredients tested.

Whatever. I’d gone over what I was expecting, and this wasn’t as bad as the previous batch. But I would still sit him down and go over some things. For example, what the fuck did he mean when he said he added a goddamn 1000-year-old spiritual ginseng just because he felt like it would help nurture the body and prevent some side effects? This was on top of changing the Silver Ice Grass for the costly Platinum Ice Grass.

One simply did not add 1000-year-old ginseng to a bath when experimenting.

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Especially not at the prices he found them on this backwater continent. No wonder this fucker didn’t want to shell out for expensive ingredients now. If he couldn’t sell his poisons and pills for an obscene amount, I’d believe that he was broke.

I turned to him as he took the leaves off a spiritual plant he was prepping. I glared. He looked back at me, very confused.

Ha!

I moved on to the poisons that shared multiple ingredients with the baths. While I would have to make these later I could still visualize how each ingredient affected the pill.

“Wait a second.”

“What?” Noxious asked from across the room.

“Shhhh!”

I mentally went through the ancient poison manual I’d memorized back when I was in the outer sect. It had one of the same pills on the list Noxious gave me, but they were different! The old one called for 10 Five Flames Pepper. This version only needed one.

I originally thought this pill had errors purposefully added to confuse anyone who got their hands on the manual who wasn’t in the sect. But I’d seen this same difference in the number of stalks for every poison that used Five Flames Pepper.

That told me that there was something deeper going on here. I’d have to talk it over with Noxious soon.

Before I did that, there was another inconsistency I had to look into. Which made sense because if the issue with the bath was with only one plant, all of these poison masters would have figured it out before I got here.

Shockingly, these guys weren’t the usual incompetent assholes I often ran into in this fucked up universe.

There was a flower native to this region called the Irrepressible Blood Chrysanthemum. It had no application outside of this contract bath. That meant that there was no reason to export it to my continent. Actually, by the time I explored more of the world in my past life, this sect, the only place that used it, had already been destroyed. It likely wouldn’t have even been listed as a medicinal plant. Which explained why I’d never heard of it before.

Although I hadn’t worked with it, I could tell that there was something fucking weird going on. The clues were all coming together.

“Senior!”

“What?” Noxious Fangstrike practically flew over and hovered above my shoulder.

”Irrepressible Blood Chrysanthemum. Let me see one.”

With a grabbing motion, he pulled over a jade box from his ingredient shelves and opened it to reveal a beautiful blood red chrysanthemum with a hint of yellow gold in the center. It was now obvious where the colors from the sect’s robes originated.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

I examined the flower using divine sense and frowned. Nothing was out of place but…

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“There is definitely something off about it.”

He scowled. “There isn’t! I’ve been using these for hundreds of years. Unless you’re saying it causes side effects because it’s mixed with another ingredient.”

“A senior from one of those anecdotes you gathered mentioned that he used two chrysanthemums because the new flower was weak. What happened to the old version?”

”Oh… that.”

This fucker.

I stood up and clasped my hands behind my back. “Yes, that.”

”As far as I know, that plant was almost entirely wiped out a thousand years ago. They managed to grow more with seeds they had in storage, but…”

“They looked the same, but had half the potency?”

“Exactly!”

“My seniors discovered that if they doubled the amount and added a Sublime Mint Leaf, it worked the same, with only very minor impurities added to the bath.”

That… was not something I’d have recommended doing, but it had seemed to work fine. “I’m guessing that it also added a few side effects.”

”They weren’t anything a Blood Cleansing Pill couldn’t take care of.”

”Until the issues with the Five Flames Pepper intensified the problem.”

”What are you talking about?”

“The people who tried to fix this bath did their best, but they went about it the wrong way.”

”Junior Linlin. Please, just get to the point.”

”Does our sect have a horticulture department or do we gather all of our ingredients from outside?”

He smirked arrogantly. “Of course, we have our own disciples dedicated to raising spiritual plants. The whole east side of this peak is saved for growing the best quality herbs.”

”Does that include a team committed to breeding plants to be more potent?”

He paused, then glared so intensely that he practically strangled my neck with his gaze. ”How did you know about that?”

“I figured it out myself. It wasn’t that hard.” Especially since I’d heard about something similar in my past-past life.

While I was in college, I talked with a fellow biology major who was a little too interested in plant breeding. Specifically, where it affected marijuana. Thanks to highly questionable politics, MJ became illegal in my country. But the dealers still wanted to sell it and the buyers still wanted to purchase it. So, just like the alcohol distilleries during prohibition, the dealers had to find a way to distribute it and not get caught.

They thought to sell it in very small portions so it would be easy to smuggle. But the original plant didn’t have a very high THC count, the thing that caused the effect the buyers wanted. That led to the growers breeding the weed with the highest amount of THC to each other until they had extremely effective strains.

If this sect did something similar only with their poisonous plants, then…

”You idiots did this to yourselves.”

Noxious frowned.

“After hundreds of years of breeding highly toxic peppers, you acquired a beast blood contract bath that poisons your own disciples.”

”Impossible. We always cut back on the amount we use of that pepper.”

”Your breeders increased the poisonous properties. But what do you think happened to the beneficial properties?”

“It stayed the same.”

“Or even decreased.”

He paled.

“Even if the volume of poison they get is the same, the parts of the pepper that helped make the bath work were reduced. Do you see how this is a problem? Especially when the original amount of peppers used was ten?”

“I can see that. But… we don’t have any of the original peppers. And even if we did have them, we’d have to grow them on opposite sides of the sect.”

Did this guy not know any horticulture? “Are you saying that because, your pollinators might accidentally breed the two strains making the original peppers extra spicy.”

“Exactly! Wait. You meant extra poisonous, right?”

”That’s ridiculous. Just build an isolation formation if you don’t already have one. Your disciples are probably hand-pollinating them anyway.”

He frowned. “That’s for the horticulturists to figure out. I’m not responsible for them.”

Was he serious? ”You’re a master in the Nascent Soul realm! Even if you aren’t caring for the plants yourself, you should investigate how that department is growing the herbs you use every day. You’re irresponsible if you don’t.”

His cheeks turned bright red. “I do not need a lecture from my junior.”

I crossed my arms and glared at him. “Dread Lotus.”

He winced.

Now that he’d been properly embarrassed, I continued, “Locate a senior from the horticulturists who has the original seeds. And if you can’t do that, then send a disciple out to the farthest corner of this continent to search for it. Either way, we need the least toxic variant as soon as possible.”

“Alright,” he said, then paused. “What if we can’t find the original Five Flames Pepper?”

”Then we’ll have to do things the hard and long way.”

He frowned and paused for a second as if talking with others through a secret sound transmission. Within a few moments, several Golden Core disciples entered Noxious Fangstrike’s alchemy room and bowed deeply. He threw a bag at the one with the highest cultivation. “Take this and hurry to the teleportation platform.”

“Yes, senior. We’ll take this secret to our graves.”

Then the group vanished.

“That was a little extreme, but I approve.”

He scowled.

“With the demonic sect messing with the sect’s poison body cultivators, there is no telling how badly they’d want to prevent us from getting the right ingredients.”

“This only takes care of one plant. You mentioned the Irrepressible Blood Chrysanthemum. Are you planning to fix the issue with that?”

”I can’t fix the plant in such a short period. But I have an idea on how to resolve its side effects. It will just take some trial and error.”

He nodded.

“But before I start on the chrysanthemum, we need to see how much the original pepper strain reduces the sequelae. We have to take this slowly or we’ll mess everything up.”

“I… understand.” He frowned. “Are you sure it is only these two ingredients that are creating these awful side effects?”

”One step at a time, senior. Once we’ve solved these two. If there are more plants responsible for harming our sect’s disciples, then I’ll figure it out later.”

He stared off into space while looking a little melancholy. “I can’t understand how I didn’t see this before. It seems so obvious now.”

Fuck. I needed him on his game and not wallowing in his and his sect’s mistakes. ”It’s not that you aren’t brilliant, senior. It’s just that I’m an actual once-in-a-billion-years genius.”

He coughed and looked at me like he couldn’t believe I’d said that.

”Don’t feel too bad. I still have plenty of things I need to learn from you about poisons.”

”For some reason, I suddenly don’t feel like teaching you.”

”Well, you don’t have to. But I’m not confident about creating a perfect cure if you don’t teach me. And Dread Lotus might yell at you.”

His brow furrowed and he rubbed his temples with one hand. “I can’t win against you.”

Of course not! Who did he think I was?

Then, as if realizing something wonderful, he smiled. “But I can put you through a hellish training regime.”

He chuckled sadistically.

This fucker… That was what I usually did to Little Spring! How dare someone use my own punishments against me?

He pulled out several jade slips. “We’ll start with these. I expect you to have made every poison on here by the time you go back to your band members.”

This sneaky motherfucker… How did he know I wanted to learn this shit quickly?! This wasn’t hell training. It was speed learning. Muahahaha!