Chapter 7: Qingfeng Temple

Chapter 7: Qingfeng Temple

Li Huowang lay on the bed in a hospital restraint suit, silently staring at the IV hook above his head, as if waiting for something.

With a creak, the ward door opened. "Ah, Xiao Li, weren't you recovering quite well before? What happened this time?"

Li Huowang's attending physician walked in, looking at him with a face full of disappointment.

Hearing this, Li Huowang, his head wrapped in white gauze, grew anxious and quickly explained, "Doctor, they attacked Yang Na first! I only fought back to protect her!"

The doctor pushed his glasses up with a bent index finger. "You call that fighting back? That was a counter-kill! Liu Jianye is still in the ICU, and that kick of yours nearly sent him straight to the grave. You've been here long enough to know everyone's situation. Didn't you consider Master Liu's condition before acting? I thought you were a sensible boy."

Thinking of Yang Na, terrified and weeping like a pear blossom in the rain, Li Huowang looked somewhat defiant. "So what if he's mentally ill? Does that give him the right to do whatever he wants? If I had to choose between Yang Na getting hurt and going to prison, I'd choose the latter."

"You—" The attending physician was left speechless by Li Huowang's retort.

He finally sighed and shook his head. "Forget it, forget it. The director has already called both families. You don't need to worry about these things anymore."

Hearing this, Li Huowang curled up slightly and turned to face the empty side of the bed, mentally calculating whether the jade pendant worth four hundred thousand would be enough to cover the compensation.

Yet he wasn't panicked at all. After seeing that the elixir truly worked, Li Huowang suddenly realized his life had opened up to many new choices.

Sensing his young patient's low spirits, the doctor spoke up to comfort him. "Xiao Li, don't worry. You won't go to prison. The hospital can issue a certificate for you. Stop thinking about this, focus on recovering, and we'll handle the rest."

Li Huowang sensed the genuine concern in the doctor's words. "Thank you, Doctor."

"No need to thank me. I am your attending physician, after all. And you're so young, so of course you need a little extra care." Li Huowang felt the doctor's hand pat his shoulder.

"But Xiao Li, tell me the truth. How did you manage to injure them so badly? That's not something an ordinary person could do. Were you in a normal state, or did you fall into some new stress-induced hallucination?"

Hearing this, Li Huowang's heart tightened, his attention instantly shifting to his shirt pocket. "Well... I..."

"I'm a psychologist, and I have quite a bit of experience in this field. Don't try to hide your condition. You'd better think carefully before answering. I despise it when my patients lie to me."

Although the doctor's tone was mild and amiable, Li Huowang felt an invisible pressure filling the room. What should I do? I can't let him know about the elixir.

Just as Li Huowang anxiously searched for a way out, everything around him began to destabilize, and the doctor's voice grew increasingly hazy.

Within seconds, he found himself slipping into a hallucination once more, lying on the stone bed in Xuan Yang's solitary cave chamber.

Clutching his head as he sat up, Li Huowang looked at the sparse furnishings around him and chuckled. "Hehe, no matter what, this is a solution."

He didn't plan to return too quickly this time, just in case the doctor was still standing by his bedside.

Stepping out of the room, Li Huowang watched his fellow disciples bustling in and out of the cave tunnels, beginning to calculate his next moves.

Since those elixirs were real, he couldn't be as careless as before. He had to manage this place properly to squeeze out every last bit of benefit.

Fortunately, his status was no longer that of a medicinal ingredient in the material room, but a registered disciple of the bald master, granting him much more freedom of movement.

Spotting a bearded Taoist priest in similar robes walking past, Li Huowang's eyes lit up, and he hurried after him. "Senior Brother, Senior Brother!"

The bearded priest turned to see Li Huowang speaking to him, his attitude indifferent. "Junior Brother Xuan Yang, what is it?"

Mimicking their manner of speech, Li Huowang replied, "I have just become our master's disciple. Please enlighten me, Senior Brother. What should I do next?"

"Don't blame me for speaking bluntly. Although Master took you in personally, you have the least seniority. For now, you can only run errands within the Qingfeng Temple."

"If you want Master to teach you the Taoist arts of immortality, that is a privilege reserved for his closed-door disciples. You are not yet qualified. For now, come with me and wait outside the alchemy room."

"Immortality...?" Li Huowang murmured to himself. He had never heard of any deity achieving immortality by refining humans into elixirs.

"Can Master truly achieve immortality?"

A hint of smugness appeared on the bearded priest's face. "Of course. Master possesses great divine powers. Just serve him well."

From this senior brother named Xuan Yin, Li Huowang learned the entire personnel structure of the cave temple. There were five registered disciples, one direct disciple, and the temple master, Dan Yangzi.

Aside from them, the rest were peripheral staff, such as the cooks, the medicinal ingredients in the material room, and the Taoist boys doing menial chores. Altogether, there were about eighty to a hundred people.

This was Li Huowang's first comprehensive understanding of the temple. The number of people was quite small, and it could even be called rudimentary, especially after a large batch of them died not long ago.

As they conversed, the oppressive alchemy furnace appeared before Li Huowang once again, with wisps of white smoke drifting from within, as if something was being refined.

This time, besides Dan Yangzi, his closed-door disciple, a gloomy-looking young man, was also by the furnace.

After waiting beside Xuan Yin for a while, Li Huowang received his assignment: taking the ingredient list to the material room to check the supplies, exactly the same task Xuan Yang used to do.

When Li Huowang arrived at the material room holding a white fly whisk, everyone working there looked over, their nervous eyes laced with a trace of fear.

The albino girl pressed her lips together and eagerly took two steps forward, but ultimately said nothing and slowly retreated in fear.

His identity had now shifted from the oppressed to the oppressor.

Looking at them, Li Huowang's mind began to race. The dynamic between them had changed, and perhaps he could reap some benefits from this.

"Um, do any of you have money on you?" Everyone froze at his words. "Money, don't you understand? Silver, gold, or jade pendants will do."

Truth be told, Li Huowang really needed money right now. He didn't know how much Old Liu's compensation would be. His family was just an ordinary household, and if the sum was large, his mother would probably have to sell their house. He needed it urgently.

"You can't spend it here anyway, so you might as well give it all to me. Consider it protection money. From now on, I've got your backs."

Spoken so bluntly, the others understood. The people in the material room began patting down their clothes. They didn't expect Li Huowang to protect them; they just hoped that after handing over their belongings, he wouldn't bully them.

Half a piece of blackened crushed silver the size of a thumb, a copper hairpin, and forty-some round copper coins with square holes—that was his entire harvest.

Staring at these items, Li Huowang sighed heavily. He seemed to have miscalculated. How could these guys have any real money? The cash these trinkets could fetch was probably less than the balance on his medical insurance card.

(End of Chapter)