Chapter 10: New Demands

After handing over the two Origin Qi Scholars over to the Origin Bureau, Su Chen returned to his residence.

He had just arrived when Li Shu came to greet him. “We’ve found the corpses of those stillbirths.”

“Oh?” Su Chen’s interest was piqued. “Let’s go and take a look.”

Soon, Su Chen was standing in front of an earthen pit. They were in a desolate area of land outside of Clear River City.

Inside the pit were a number of tiny corpses, along with the corpses of two adults. Those had probably belonged to the mothers.

Because they hadn’t been dead for long, their flesh hadn’t fully decomposed yet. Maggots had infested the rotting flesh; paired with the deathly stench, the scene made people want to vomit.

Su Chen seemed to be completely unaware of it, however. He picked up a bone from one of the stillbirths using his hand, which he had wrapped in a protective cloth, and began to closely inspect it.

To the others, Su Chen was spacing out facing a bone. However, Su Chen’s Origin Energy Eye was already analyzing the composition of the bone. Every fine detail was laid out clearly before him.

Even though on the surface this bone seemed identical to that of a normal human, Su Chen found upon closer inspection that there was something strange about it.

The more he inspected the bone, the more shocked he was.

“Young Master, this bone......” Li Shu asked as he leaned in.

Su Chen, however, didn’t reply. He only said, “Clean up all of the bones. Don’t leave any behind. Keep the adults and the infants separate from each other.”

“Yes sir.”

“And those mothers that have not died yet - find them and bring them back to the Su residence. Right, the ‘demons sending babies’ incident lasted nearly half a year, right? So there should be some women who are still pregnant, right?”

“This...... there might be some, but I’m not clear about the details.”

“Old Second Cheng!” Su Chen raised his voice.

“Little one is here.” The Tortoiseshell Camp’s former second-in-command, Old Second Cheng, appeared nearby.

“Go to the Li Clan and find all of women who are about to give birth. If possible, bring them back here. In addition, see if you can find any other clues while you’re there.”

Old Second Cheng hesitated for a moment, then asked, “What kind of clues should I be looking for?”

“Clues like whether any infants survived!”

“Yes! This little one understands!”

After taking care of those matters, Su Chen returned to the residence.

He had just entered his study when he suddenly knitted his eyebrows and said, “Come on out.”

“Hehe, you’re getting better and better to have discovered me there,” Night Demon laughed from the darkness. She bounced out from her hiding place, a scary mask on her face. It looked like she had been planning on surprising Su Chen, but unfortunately she didn’t succeed.

Su Chen said curtly, “You’re getting softer and softer. Look, do you have any semblance of being an assassin?”

“You don’t feel ashamed saying that? Ever since meeting you, I officially changed from an assassin to a messenger. Pity my dream of becoming the king of assassins!” Night Demon said, aggrieved. “I thought that I could regain my freedom after you left the Hidden Dragon Institute, but who knew that you would call me over to Clear River City too? Hey, do you think that I’m your personal messenger or something? Taking me with you wherever you go?”

“Most people would fight over this job, but you don’t want it. You’re so set on becoming an assassin, do you think that you won’t die?”

“Hmph!” Night Demon turned her head away disdainfully.

“Okay, tell me what you want.” Su Chen sat down in his usual spot.

“Nothing, really. The higher-ups wanted me to discuss with you the matter of the Spirit Sobering Medicines.”

“You want me to make them faster still?” Su Chen asked.

Su Chen and the Immortal Temple had set a rate of two hundred vials a year. Up to this point, Su Chen had already handed over twelve hundred vials of medicine.

In reality, at his current skill level his rate of failure when concocting Spirit Sobering Medicines was basically nonexistent. If he really wanted to, he could quickly finish off the remaining eighteen hundred vials of medicine and repay his debt.

But Su Chen was extremely aware of the benefits of owing someone a debt. As long as he owed the Immortal Temple something, they wouldn’t pressure him unfairly, and they would treat him with much more respect. Naturally, there was no way he was going to try and get out of debt faster on his own.

Night Demon said, “That’s not the issue. You also know that in these past six years, you’ve concocted a total of twelve hundred Spirit Sobering Medicines. Twelve hundred! These are rare-tier medicines. The Immortal Temple doesn’t know what to do with so much all at once.”

“You can sell them if you don’t know what to use them for.”

“You say that, but don’t you think that using a legendary-tier ingredient to make rare-tier medicines is somewhat of a waste? Of course, the number of medicines you can concoct will increase, so the total profit won’t change much. But there are some things that have a price yet can’t be bought.”

Su Chen understood what she was getting at. He laughed, “It seems like your higher-ups have some new ideas and requests. So there’s too many Spirit Sobering Medicines. What, are you all getting tired of drinking them?”

“That’s pretty normal.” Night Demon plopped herself onto Su Chen’s table. “If we keep making them at two hundred vials a year, we’ll have enough rare-tier medicines for each person in the organization to have one. You should have noticed these past few years that the Immortal Temple has given up on tormenting humans a long time ago. Everyone just wants to live a good life.”

“Mm,” Su Chen murmured, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with her.

After the incident with Ma Renzen, he was exceptionally clear that the Immortal Temple wasn’t unified. There were those in the organization who just wanted to live good lives, and there were also those who were cruel, vicious, and merciless.

“So the higher-ups want me to make a deal with you and have you concoct some different medicines. We won’t ask you to make any medicines that can do large-scale damage, but we do want some medicines befitting the rarity of an ingredient like the Corpse Spirit Flower.”

“Only Master Alchemists can concoct those.”

“Talented Distinguished Alchemists can also do it. And based on our investigations, you should have reached that level already, right? You just haven’t gone to take the official test yet,” Night Demon said with a smile.

Su Chen harrumphed. “What investigation, you just discovered the two vials of high-tier Frenzy Medicine that I sold recently.”

High-tier Frenzy Medicine could only be made by Distinguished Alchemists, and it took a different path than the Spirit Sobering Medicine. If Su Chen could concoct that, then he had definitely reached the skill level of a Distinguished Alchemist. No matter how blind the Immortal Temple was, they would at least have to recognize this point.

Night Demon giggled. “So you never planned on keeping it secret. Perhaps even my appearance here is all within your calculations.”

“Oh? Your intelligence seems to have gone up.” Su Chen was shocked.

Night Demon’s smile immediately disappeared. “Shut up! We’re brothers, so just tell me if you’re going to do it or not.”

“What do you want?”

“High-tier Blood Withering Medicine, Chaotic Soul Medicine, and Clear Spirit Medicine.”

Su Chen knitted his eyebrows. “Blood Withering Medicine is poison.”

“But it can’t do any large-scale damage.” Night Demon seemed to have been prepared for this. “You can’t expect the Immortal Temple to always be the good guy. We still need to have some offensive measures. High-tier Blood Withering Medicine’s unique point is that it restricts a person’s bloodline power, but it won’t kill them. Blood Withering Medicine made with Corpse Spirit Flowers is just a little more potent, so it will be more effective against high-level targets.”

“But to you guys, a person with suppressed bloodline power is a dead person.”

“Using the Spirit Sobering Medicine to strengthen oneself is also a way to kill an opponent,” Night Demon quickly replied.

“It seems like you’ve been prepared for all of this. You have an answer to every one of my concerns.”

Night Demon giggled. “We’ve swapped out for a much smarter leader.”

This sentence exposed her true nature.

“Then what about the Chaotic Soul Medicine? You can use that to control your target’s consciousness. What do you want that for? Are you planning on targeting a high-ranking imperial official, waiting for an opportunity to revolt?”

“We just have a very particular target we want to deal with, but it definitely won’t be to throw the human race into disorder. It’s so we can get some benefits, just like before. If you don’t trust us, you can join us in this endeavor,” Night Demon replied.

Upon hearing this, Su Chen was dazed.

It seemed like the Immortal Temple really had picked someone with a brain to lead the troops this time.