“It’s a pity, ‘Refining Essence into Qi’ is essentially a technique. There’s a limit to how much spiritual material I can refine at high speed each day. With my current strength, three and a half roots of ginseng should be considered ‘full.’ Too much is as bad as too little. Three roots is enough.”

“Any more, and it’s like a potent medicine with seven parts poison. It wouldn’t be beneficial and would disrupt the circulation of spiritual energy in my body, leading to qi deviation.”

Having tasted the sweetness of Refining Essence into Qi, Su Zhou pondered, looking at the two remaining mountain ginsengs beside him. “If I have this kind of spiritual material to assist me every day, entering the peak of Awakening, which is the realm of Grandmaster in this world, will probably only take a dozen days – later, I’ll ask the rebel army what spiritual objects they plan to provide as a reward. If I don’t really need them, I might as well exchange them all for these natural treasures.”

Su Zhou cultivated, and the Baijia rebel army also prepared to forge divine weapons and scout the surrounding situation. Soon, it was time for dinner again.

The Taibai Mountain Fortress was built by the Baijia rebel army over several years, using the strength of martial artists to transport materials and gradually construct it. Most of the food was dried rations that could be stored for a long time. Although there were also dried fruits, vegetables, and cured meats, as well as some alcohol, the quantity was limited, and everyone had a fixed allowance, mainly to maintain the martial artists' blood energy.

But today, to celebrate Su Zhou joining as a new Grandmaster, the material allowance was doubled, so everyone could have a good feast.

“Refining Essence into Qi is one thing, eating is another.”

In response to Yala’s complaint, "Can you still eat?" Su Zhou, like other Grandmasters, occupied a table by himself and righteously said, “Eating natural treasures and eating food don’t use the same stomach, there’s no conflict.”

In the rare cheerful atmosphere, Su Zhou closed his eyes, smelling the aroma of food coming from the nearby kitchen, and was also delighted – it was preserved meat rice (a large pot of 7100 calories)!

Although the taste of the food on the mountain couldn’t compare to well-prepared restaurants or modern eateries, there was a certain pleasure in eating the food of the ancients in ancient times. As someone who enjoyed exploring the unknown and experiencing all kinds of things, Su Zhou believed that good food should be eaten, and even bad food should be tried, to be considered complete.

Moreover, how bad could preserved meat rice be?

But in this anticipation, Su Zhou suddenly smelled a very faint, refreshing sweetness that he would never have detected if he didn’t have the Perfect Body, with a naturally superior sense of smell.

“This smell… it’s like flowers… no, it’s the scent of xiangye leaves!”

— *Pa!*

Slapping the table hard, making a loud bang, Su Zhou stood up and strode towards a chef who was walking out with a jar of wine, looking equally surprised, under everyone's astonished gaze.

He politely asked the chef for the jar of wine, then looked around at everyone present and said loudly, “This wine is poisoned.”

“Everyone, those who aren’t strong enough, stay away.”

After saying that, after a few seconds, when the martial artists and cooks around him had retreated several steps, Su Zhou's eyes narrowed, and through his flamboyant action, he confirmed something in the crowd. He smiled and broke the seal, activating the spiritual energy in his hand.

*Whoosh!*

In an instant, a faint blue poisonous mist was forced out of the wine jar by the spiritual energy—

Then, Su Zhou, who was prepared, inhaled it in one gulp!

“Hmm, the taste isn’t bad, with a refreshing sweetness like peppermint candy… If the quantity wasn’t too small, the purity of this mouthful of spiritual poison would be comparable to a fiend crystal! A bit too much.”

‘Refining Essence into Qi’ worked fiercely, converting this rare spiritual poison into spiritual energy.

Su Zhou, who ate both nutrients and poison, exhaled a long breath, then casually pointed to a martial artist at the back of the crowd who was secretly retreating, seemingly about to run away.

“The poisoner is him.”

Hearing this voice, the martial artist immediately made no pretense and ran towards the border with all his might!

“What a monster! He can smell the Blue Cangye Spiritual Poison sealed in the wine jar from several tables away. This isn’t a human’s sense of smell at all!”

“A demon, he really is a demon!”

Rushing under the moonlight, the martial artist, while fleeing, felt extremely bewildered, in addition to the panic of failing the mission: “Ordinary Grandmasters would only notice something was wrong after drinking this wine, but by then, the spiritual poison would have already mixed into their internal energy circulation. Even if they forced it out in time, they wouldn’t be able to recover their full strength for a month or two… Ah!”

*Boom—Crack!*

Along with a loud bang and the sound of rocks being crushed, a shrill whistling sound suddenly rang out and rapidly approached the fleeing martial artist!

The fleeing martial artist was extremely fast, apparently having practiced some kind of qinggong (light body technique), but as the violent whistling sound, brought by pure spiritual energy without any pattern, approached rapidly from behind, he could feel a hand reaching out from his back like iron tongs!

Impossible, didn’t they say he didn’t know qinggong? How could he be so fast… Could it be that having a lot of internal energy means you can do whatever you want, even without using qinggong!?

—But sorry, with enough strength you can smash anything. With enough spiritual energy, you can do whatever you want!

With no time to think, the fleeing martial artist bit down hard on his back teeth. He immediately turned around, gathering all his strength in his palms and striking out directly. A masculine and upright internal energy, but one that burned away the life force of both enemies and allies, surged out like an overwhelming force!

This strike, ‘Burning Body Splitting Monument Palm,’ was a famous domineering palm technique, and also a famous perilous palm technique. In the instant of ‘crisis burning the body, heart fire rising spontaneously,’ even an ordinary acquired martial artist could crack a table-sized boulder on the spot, and the point of impact would be shattered into powder by the palm force, penetrating a foot!

But the person chasing him was Su Zhou.

The heavy palms, each weighing a thousand jun (a unit of weight), only made a rather ridiculous ‘slap slap’ sound when they struck Su Zhou's raised arm. It was like exerting force against a mountain peak. With a retracting and shaking motion, he neutralized all the force.

Immediately afterward, Su Zhou extended his other hand, directly bending his finger and feigning a flick at the fleeing martial artist’s chin, wanting to knock him unconscious to prevent him from committing suicide and make it easier to interrogate him later.

But Su Zhou didn’t expect that the other party had already bitten down on a protrusion in his back teeth at the moment he struck out those two palms, or even before. By the time he blocked the other party's counterattack, the person had already lost his breath and fallen limply to the ground.

“…Inexperience, I thought this counterattack was a last-ditch effort, but it was to ensure he could commit suicide successfully.”

Holding the dead man’s collar, Su Zhou clicked his tongue, quite annoyed.

At this time, the other three Grandmasters, as well as Zhou Buyi and other experts, had also arrived one after another. They saw the fleeing martial artist’s powerful counterattack strike Su Zhou like a dragonfly hitting a tree, and they also saw the person lose his breath immediately after the counterattack. They immediately understood.

“This is normal. Even a Grand Grandmaster probably couldn’t stop the other party from committing suicide in this way – he had already bitten through the poison sac the moment you caught up. The counterattack was already a final burst of energy.”

The bald Grandmaster Wei, who had been fighting demon soldiers for many years, was experienced. He approached and knew the routine: “It’s Burning Heart Fire Poison – a suicide poison commonly used by our rebel army, to prevent our bodies from being absorbed by the enemy as nutrients after being defeated in battle against demon soldiers.”

“But this poison is extremely precious, and can also be used to kill demon soldiers. Suicide poison sacs are generally only distributed to masters who have broken through the second stage of the acquired realm, or even Grandmasters above that level – where did Zeng Xi get it from?”

A good question, but no one could answer it. Grandmaster Han, who had squatted down and examined the corpse in detail, pondered for a moment, then said, “There are no traces of undying roots or divine tree bloodline – he is a normal human.”

“So there really are spies. Are they anxious after seeing that there are four Grandmasters here, thinking that they probably won’t be able to take it down, so they want to take a risky move?” Li Daoran couldn’t help but remain silent, then sighed and said, “After careful selection, sand has also been mixed into the trusted team. If we can’t quickly wipe out the Demon Dynasty, the lower levels are still manageable, but the upper-level martial artists will probably be completely eroded by the other side’s power of immortality.”

“Thank you, Grandmaster Su, for detecting the evil deeds of the villains!”

“It’s nothing, it was for my own sake.”

Without much more to say, the crowd thanked Su Zhou after the spy incident, and they all marveled at Su Zhou’s ability to swallow spiritual poison – the poison of Blue Cangye is fierce, but it has a slight sweetness, making it relatively easy to detect. However, if mixed in wine, especially strong liquor, it can easily be masked.

Su Zhou’s ability to detect this poison could be said to have saved the lives of many wine lovers.

The scene of Su Zhou digesting this spiritual poison was also taken as powerful proof that he was a Western descendant of the suspected ‘Kunlun Jianmu lineage,’ because even the Demon Dynasty lineage itself had no way to resolve this poison, let alone digest it and turn it into its own spiritual energy.

This must be a Kunlun secret art!

With such an incident, the celebration naturally couldn’t continue. Apart from Su Zhou, who still didn’t care much and ate a pot of preserved meat rice by himself, most people found the food tasteless, and drank little wine.

“People’s hearts are a bit scattered.” Su Zhou was eating on the side, but he saw that many people who were usually close to Zeng Xi were being called away by Zhou Buyi and Fang Hui to be questioned, trying to find more spies.

As soon as this investigation began, two more people committed suicide on the spot, including even a craftsman!

This instantly made the Grand Artisan furious and alarmed, and he hurriedly went back to check the possible hidden dangers and potential damage of the True Qi forging furnace… The result should be okay, because before those people committed suicide, Su Zhou vaguely felt the entanglement in their expressions and hearts, so they probably weren’t wholeheartedly devoted to that An Dynasty Demon Emperor, but were coerced in some way.

For a time, the entire camp began a major investigation, leaving Su Zhou alone in place.

—Alone on the snowy Taibai Mountain, drinking the evening wind against the vast snowy night sky, it does have a certain artistic conception.

“An Dynasty Demon Emperor… Alas, why do so many people pursue immortality, Yala?”

Sitting in the chair, looking at the snow clouds in the sky that seemed to be tumbling right in front of him, although he was asking Yala, Su Zhou was essentially asking himself. He shook his head and said softly, “Anyone can pursue immortality, but if they pursue it by cruelly killing countless humans and harming countless lives, then being targeted and hunted down by people like me is also a repayment, right?”

“Su Zhou, only a chuunibyou (a Japanese term for someone who exhibits delusional behavior, especially during early adolescence) would compare themselves to ‘retribution.’”

“I haven’t even graduated from middle school yet—and I will work hard to make this idea a reality, so that it is no longer chuunibyou.”

After eating and drinking his fill, Su Zhou returned to his tent alone, lay down on the air mattress, and closed his eyes to sleep.

The next day, not long after waking up, before Su Zhou could do anything, a craftsman wearing a yellow hat found him.

“Grandmaster Su, the Grand Artisan is preparing to reforge your weapon.”