Chapter 84 – The Insect-Refining Daoist
by spirapiraChapter 84 – The Insect-Refining Daoist
The ruins of the Cloud-Water Celestial Palace were incomprehensibly vast. Even in his previous life, after over a decade of relentless exploration by Layered Cloud Sea cultivators, its full extent had never been completely mapped.
Let alone now, when every corner of the Cloud-Water Celestial Palace was shrouded in dense fog.
The cultivators who had awakened before the Qin Tang statue quickly split into several different factions.
Some felt that the Cloud-Water Celestial Palace was simply too perilous. Surviving Qin Tang’s assault had already been an extraordinary stroke of luck. If they continued exploring, death would be all but certain.
They believed they had already memorized several cultivation techniques, and as long as they could make it out alive, they would have profited enormously. So they decisively chose to leave the Cloud-Water Celestial Palace immediately.
Those who chose to leave comprised the majority. The remaining cultivators, however, reasoned that if a mere stone statue at the entrance to the ruins could yield such fortune, then what unimaginable opportunities might await inside the Cloud-Water Celestial Palace—in the legendary pill-refining chambers, the Dharma Transmission Hall, and the sect treasury that every ancient sect was sure to possess?
Once greed took root, it swelled rapidly within their hearts, impossible to suppress.
And so, as if possessed, these cultivators vanished one after another into the fog.
By the time Li Fan caught up from behind, he found that every trace of the cultivators had already disappeared. Had Formless Killing Intent not already locked onto Si Kongyi and his companion beforehand, he might well have lost them entirely.
Strangely, however, Si Kongyi and Baili Chen seemed extraordinarily familiar with the layout of the Cloud-Water Celestial Palace.
Time and again, they managed to find passageways through what appeared to be dead-end gaps in the fog. With clear purpose, they continuously bypassed fog-shrouded buildings one after another, pressing ever deeper inside.
Was this the reason Si Kongyi had been able to seize 《The Cloud-Water Chart》 in the previous life?
Li Fan himself only knew the various secrets of the Cloud-Water Celestial Palace because of his simulated experiences from his past life.
But how did Si Kongyi know?
A deep curiosity surged within Li Fan’s heart.
At the same time, his wariness grew. These two clearly harbored significant secrets.
Concealing his presence and aura even further, Li Fan followed closely behind them.
Suddenly, the two stopped moving.
After pausing briefly in place, Si Kongyi and Baili Chen split up, racing off in two opposite directions.
“A divide-and-conquer tactic? Have they noticed me?” Li Fan narrowed his eyes. After a moment’s hesitation, he chose to pursue in the direction Si Kongyi had gone.
Plunging deeper into the fog, he eventually arrived at a tower-like structure.
Si Kongyi suddenly halted at the base of the tower, turned back toward Li Fan’s position, and flashed a provocative smile.
Then he ducked inside the tower.
“Interesting—so he’s trying to use one of the Cloud-Water Celestial Palace’s death zones to kill me?” Li Fan gazed at the towering structure that loomed half-visible in the white mist, emanating a sinister aura, as memories from his previous life surfaced unbidden in his mind.
The Demon-Refining Tower—one of the most dangerous areas in all of the Cloud-Water Celestial Palace.
In the first ten years after the Cloud-Water Celestial Palace opened, not a single cultivator had ever returned alive from the Demon-Refining Tower. It was once regarded by Layered Cloud Sea cultivators as an absolute death zone within the palace, a place that must never be explored under any circumstances.
It was not until Anchor Year 21 in his previous life that a master alchemist had risked his life to enter, finally cracking the bizarre rules governing its interior.
“If that’s your plan, I’m afraid you’re in for a disappointment.” Li Fan let out a cold laugh and followed Si Kongyi into the Demon-Refining Tower.
The moment he stepped inside, gusts of sinister wind assailed him, accompanied by a wave of putrid, rotting stench.
The tower’s ground floor consisted of rows of prison cells.
But it seemed that too much time had passed—all that remained in the cells were heaps of grotesquely shaped demonic bones.
Li Fan continued upward. The second floor was the same.
He climbed all the way to the top of the tower.
From a distance, he could already hear someone muttering incessantly.
“All the senior brothers and sisters are fighting on the front lines, and I’m the only one who can’t help.”
“I must refine more pills—that’s the only way to boost their strength as much as possible.”
“Every additional pill I successfully refine increases the chances of my senior brothers surviving.”
“But the demons in the Demon-Refining Tower have all died off. Without pill ingredients, what am I supposed to do?”
A man with wildly disheveled hair, wearing an oversized blue Daoist robe, stood there sighing and fretting, completely at a loss.
Beside him, three figures hung suspended in midair, bound by invisible ropes.
One of them was Si Kongyi.
The other two were cultivators who had also entered the Cloud-Water Celestial Palace this time, though how they had ended up here was a mystery.
These two were deathly pale, their lips moving ceaselessly. It was impossible to make out what they were saying.
Before Li Fan could react in any way, he felt his hands and feet suddenly seized by invisible bindings, rendering him completely immobile.
He was then hoisted into the air and fixed in place, just like the other three.
Having anticipated this outcome, Li Fan showed no signs of panic.
Only now could he clearly hear what the other two captives were muttering to themselves.
“How can this be happening? I clearly chose to leave this place! How did I end up tied up here the moment I blinked…”
“I’m done for, I’m done for. I had clearly already left the Cloud-Water Celestial Palace, yet I was still dragged back…”
…
“Oh dear, it’s time to refine pills!” Just then, the robed man suddenly snapped out of his mumbling.
“Refine pills, refine pills…” The man reached into his oversized Daoist robe and rummaged around for a moment before producing two black pills.
“The pills are ready, but I have no idea how potent they turned out this time.” The man scratched his messy hair, looking somewhat troubled.
Then he suddenly slapped his thigh. “That’s right—didn’t I just catch a few insects? Perfect for testing the medicine!”
With that, he turned his gaze toward Li Fan and the others suspended in the air, his eyes shifting from one to the next. “Which insect should I pick?”
Under the man’s scrutiny, an inexplicable chill ran through all of them.
None dared to move a muscle, holding their breath and staying perfectly still.
“This one will do.” After studying them for a while, the robed man’s gaze settled on one of the captives. He immediately reached out and grabbed.
The chosen cultivator could no longer maintain his composure.
But his struggles were clearly futile—no sound could escape his lips.
His body flew toward the robed man, shrinking as it went.
In the end, he truly transformed into a tiny flying insect, landing in the robed man’s palm.
The insect’s head still faintly resembled a human face, its expression one of sheer terror.
Pinched gently between the robed man’s fingers, the human-faced insect frantically buzzed its wings.
But it was all in vain. The robed man held the insect in one hand and a black pill in the other.
The pill was many times larger than the insect itself, yet it was forced inside all the same.
The human-faced insect writhed in agony as the pill was crammed down its gullet.
Its abdomen swelled to many times its original size, becoming a grotesquely oversized sphere.
The insect’s life force gradually faded, but its suffering had only just begun.
After the pill entered its stomach and appeared to be digested, the swelling began to subside.
But then a buzzing sound like a swarm of mosquitoes suddenly erupted.
The human-faced insect’s body began convulsing uncontrollably.
Tiny black specks bored out of its abdomen one after another in an endless stream.
Upon closer inspection, each of those specks was unmistakably a newly born insect.
After emerging from the body, the newborn insects did not scatter and fly away. Instead, they settled on the human-faced insect and began devouring it greedily.
In no time at all, the human-faced insect had been gnawed down to nothing—not even a scrap remained.
The robed man shook his head with a look of regret.
“It seems the test was a failure. The potency must have been too strong.”
As he spoke, he opened his mouth and inhaled the black cloud of insects into his stomach.
Even though Li Fan had long since heard about what transpired within the Demon-Refining Tower and had been thoroughly mentally prepared, his eyelids still twitched involuntarily at the sight.
The scene was simply too horrifying.
The robed man looked at the remaining pill in his hand, appearing somewhat vexed.
“Should I give this one another try?”
He glanced toward Li Fan and the other two.
All three of them stopped breathing at once.
After a long silence, the man in Daoist robes let out a sigh. “Forget it. They came from the same batch — they should be about the same.”
With that, the man opened his mouth and casually tossed the black pill in.
After swallowing the pill, the robed man seemed completely unaffected.
He simply returned to his deranged state.
He began muttering to himself again, rambling about insufficient pill-refining materials, completely ignoring the three people bound suspended in the air.
Of the three survivors, Li Fan remained silent.
Si Kongyi’s face was expressionless.
The remaining person had already collapsed into despair.
“If I’d known, I’d rather have died at Qin Tang’s hands. At least that would’ve been a quick death.”
…
Time seemed to lose all meaning inside the Demon-Refining Tower.
Everyone’s life or death depended entirely on the actions of the robed man.
After an indeterminate amount of time, the man snapped out of his delirium once more.
Again he produced two pills from within his voluminous robes, only this time they were an eerie green.
“Which bug should I test these on?”
The man hesitated for a moment this time, his gaze falling on Si Kongyi.
“This one, then!”
Li Fan immediately perked up. He wanted to see exactly what Si Kongyi was relying on, to have dared lure him into this death trap.
To Li Fan’s utter astonishment, Si Kongyi didn’t put up any resistance whatsoever.
After being transformed into a bug and force-fed the green pill, he simply dissolved into a puddle of green liquid.
Si Kongyi was dead!
“What happened? Where did things go wrong? Could it be that in this life, my tracking altered the course of events from the previous life?”
“No, that can’t be right. Si Kongyi clearly lured me to this Demon-Refining Tower. How could he have died so easily?”
“Did he know this place was a death trap, and brought me here just to trade his life for mine?”
…
Just as Li Fan was drowning in endless doubt, he suddenly sensed something and raised his head.
Outside the Demon-Refining Tower, Baili Chen — locked on by Formless Killing Intent — was slowly approaching.
And beside him, Li Fan could sense that the Formless Killing Intent, which had lost its target, had once again acquired a lock: Si Kongyi.
Si Kongyi, who had clearly died, had just reappeared outside the Demon-Refining Tower.
“A puppet? An external avatar? Neither seems right…”
Li Fan stared at the puddle of green liquid on the ground and couldn’t help but smile.
“It seems the secrets these two carry are even bigger than I imagined.”
“But once I’ve set my sights on someone, secrets don’t stay secret for long.”
In Li Fan’s perception, Si Kongyi and Baili Chen continued pressing deeper into the Cloud-Water Celestial Palace.
“With Formless Killing Intent locked on, there’s no fear of them escaping. But I need to extract myself from this Demon-Refining Tower as soon as possible.”
However, the robed man’s actions followed their own rhythm — something Li Fan couldn’t control. For now, he could only choose to wait patiently.
Soon, the third round of pill-testing arrived.
Once again, Li Fan wasn’t chosen. He found this both amusing and exasperating, unsure whether to count himself lucky or unlucky.
The robed man produced two pink pills and fed them to the human-faced flying insect.
With a bang, the insect exploded into a cloud of pink smoke.
Within the smoke, agonized human faces kept materializing.
As the pink mist drifted, the faces were stretched and distorted, becoming even more grotesque and terrifying.
Watching this from the side, even Li Fan felt goosebumps rise across his skin.
In the end, it was only when the robed man, still muttering to himself, inhaled the smoke into his body that this eternal torment finally ceased.
The robed man sank back into his mumbling.
The fourth round of pill-testing finally arrived.
By now, only Li Fan remained inside the Demon-Refining Tower.
The robed man was about to use Li Fan as his test subject when Li Fan suddenly spoke.
“Junior Brother Bug, I hear you’ve run out of pill-refining materials?”
The Insect-Refining Daoist froze mid-reach, then nodded instinctively. “That’s right, I don’t have enough materials for pill-refining.”
He said with some guilt, “It’s been so long since I’ve managed to refine any new pills…”
The Insect-Refining Daoist’s words faltered. He stared at Li Fan for a moment, taking in the clothes he wore, and suddenly became flustered. “Oh, it’s you, Senior Brother! I thought you were a bug!”
“Senior Brother, I’m so sorry! Let me get you down right away.”
As the Insect-Refining Daoist spoke, Li Fan felt the bindings loosen, and control of his body returned.
The Insect-Refining Daoist clutched his head, unable to face his senior brother.
He could only berate himself: “I’ve messed things up again. It’s always like this. I can’t refine pills properly, my cultivation progress is always slow, I’m dragging everyone down…”
Li Fan stepped forward, placed his hands on the Insect-Refining Daoist’s shoulders, and said gently, “Don’t say that, Junior Brother Bug. The pills you refine work wonderfully. Everyone loves taking them.”
The Insect-Refining Daoist’s head shot up, his eyes brimming with surprise and delight. “Really, Senior Brother? Everyone really likes taking the pills I refine?”
“What, you don’t believe your senior brother?” Li Fan put on a stern face.
The Insect-Refining Daoist shook his head vigorously. “Of course I believe what Senior Brother says.”
Then he hung his head in dejection. “But I’ve run out of pill-refining materials. I can never refine the pills everyone loves again.”
Li Fan patted the Insect-Refining Daoist’s head and said softly, “It’s alright. I’m still here, aren’t I?”
“Refine Senior Brother into a pill. That way, everyone will have pills again.”
“Senior Brother, you…” The Insect-Refining Daoist seemed stunned by Li Fan’s words. He stared wide-eyed at Li Fan.
Li Fan simply let out a long sigh and continued, “Though I entered the sect early, my talent is lacking, and my cultivation has always been low. All our senior brothers and sisters are fighting on the front lines, and I’m the only one who can’t contribute.”
“Every time I think about it, my heart aches. I despise my own incompetence.”
“So, refine me into a pill. That way, I can at least be of some help.”
Li Fan grasped the Insect-Refining Daoist’s hands, his face full of fervent emotion.
The Insect-Refining Daoist stared blankly at Li Fan, visibly moved.
“So Senior Brother feels the same way I do.”
“But Senior Brother is far greater than me — willing to sacrifice himself to help the brothers and sisters on the front lines.”
“While I… I only know how to run away. I just hide in this tower.”
The Insect-Refining Daoist pulled at his own hair in anguish.
“No, I absolutely cannot stand by and watch Senior Brother sacrifice himself.”
As if struck by sudden inspiration, he turned to Li Fan with excitement. “Senior Brother, I can refine pills for you! As long as you take the pills I make, your strength definitely won’t stay low. Then you can go to the front lines and help too!”
The Insect-Refining Daoist seemed to have found his purpose. “Refining pills — I must refine pills!”
He reached a hand into his voluminous Daoist robes, rummaging around.
Before long, he produced two golden pills.
“Here, Senior Brother. Your pills.”
The Insect-Refining Daoist held them out in both hands, beaming with joy as he presented the pills to Li Fan.
Li Fan did not take the pills. Instead, he opened the Insect-Refining Daoist’s robes.
What he saw…
Beneath those voluminous robes, all that remained was a hollow skeleton.
Upon the bones, only the barest traces of flesh still clung, nearly invisible.
The Insect-Refining Daoist had been using his own flesh and blood to refine his pills.