Elder Mu slid to a stop on his knees, leaving two smoking black streaks across Austin’s clean courtyard.
A heartbeat later, his bronze cauldron fell from the sky. It landed beyond the fence with a ground-shaking THOOM, driving its three feet deep into the rock. Dirt and stone chips flew in every direction.
The old alchemist ignored it. He ignored his smoking knees and the small sparks in his beard too.
He stared at the stone oven.
Then he stared at the young man beside it, holding a pair of bamboo tongs.
Austin had a golden roasted radish halfway to his mouth. Sweet amber syrup dripped from its tip.
He looked back at the wild old man who had just used his courtyard as a landing strip.
Austin breathed out slowly through his nose. It was the same slow breath he used when a careless driver backed a truck over fresh concrete.
“Another one.” His left eyelid twitched as he studied the skid marks. “First the kid headbutts my floor. Then three idiots attack the fence. Now a homeless man in burned pajamas crash-lands next to my lunch. Doesn’t anyone respect a meal break?”
He pulled the plate closer.
“Look, gramps.” His voice was as flat as an unplaned two-by-four. “The kitchen’s closed. I dug up these roots, built the oven, and cooked them myself. Go down the hill and buy your own rations.”
Elder Mu stopped breathing.
Gramps? Buy my own rations?
For three hundred years, patriarchs, generals, and princes had knelt outside the Medicine Pavilion, offering spirit jade for a single meeting with him. No one had spoken to him with such open contempt in living memory.
Then his spiritual sense touched the fire inside Austin’s body.
His pride vanished.
Behind the patched hemp shirt burned a perfect little star. Elder Mu’s own Earth-Core flame cowered in his dantian like a beaten dog.
What is he? Elder Mu thought. That fire is older and stronger than anything in our records. And those roots...
He looked at the plate.
They were not mountain radishes. Not to him. Three hundred years of alchemy told him they were Sun-Refined Nirvana Marrow Roots, and the syrup was the legendary Nine-Solar Grand Dao Nectar. Such a medicine could rebuild ruined spirit veins and extend an immortal’s life.
“Senior... Grand Ancestor...” Tears ran through the soot on his face. He dropped forward and struck his forehead against the courtyard. “This worthless junior begs for one crumb! I have been trapped at Early Golden Core for a hundred and twenty years. My core is poisoned by pill waste, and I have less than thirty years left. Grant me one breath of your holy flame!”
Austin blinked.
“A single breath? Is this a fetch quest? Do I give up my lunch to unlock his shop?”
He examined the plate. Three radishes had cooked to a perfect gold. The fourth had rolled against the back of the oven, where the heat was strongest. Its skin had burned black and curled away from the flesh.
Austin lifted a strip of the burnt peel with his chopsticks.
“Garbage.” Austin clicked the chopsticks together. “The heat’s uneven at the back. I need another layer of firebrick before the next batch.”
Elder Mu was shaking so hard that his teeth rattled.
“I’m not giving you my lunch,” Austin said. “Take the burnt scrap. Eat it or throw it away, but stop banging your head on my floor.”
He flicked the peel toward the old man.
To Austin, it was compost.
To Elder Mu, the heavens had opened.
THE ANCESTOR HAS GIVEN ME A SACRED SUN-REFINED PEEL!
He lunged forward and caught the black flake on his tongue before it touched the ground. Then he swallowed.
BOOM!
The trace of star-fire woke inside his stomach.
For a hundred and twenty years, waste from failed pills had coated Elder Mu’s Golden Core and blocked his energy channels. Layers of metal salts and burnt residue had built up like scale inside an old pipe. They had slowly strangled his cultivation and shortened his life.
The solar fire burned all of it away.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
Inside his body, it sounded like chains breaking.
Color returned to his skin. His wrinkles smoothed. Black hair spread across his scalp, replacing the brittle white. His bent spine straightened, his cheeks filled out, and his weak chest expanded with each deep breath.
Above Sunset Peak, the sunlight dimmed.
A spiritual vortex more than two miles wide opened in the clouds. Violet lightning flashed around it as qi rushed in from seven neighboring peaks.
Elder Mu’s Golden Core swelled from a dried walnut to a blazing ball of green fire.
Middle Golden Core—broken through.
Late Golden Core—broken through.
Peak Golden Core reached.
He floated six feet above the courtyard, wrapped in green fire. Tears washed clean lines through the soot on his young face. Then he dropped to his knees and bowed until his forehead touched Austin’s sandals.
“MU CHEN THANKS THE ANCESTRAL SOVEREIGN! MY BODY, MY LIFE, AND EVERY FLAME OF THE MEDICINE PAVILION BELONG TO SUNSET PEAK!”
A chime sounded.
Austin slowly lowered his chopsticks. He looked at the muscular, black-haired man kneeling at his feet, then at the reward screen.
“A hundred experience and maximum reputation for a piece of burnt peel? Who balanced this game?”
He shrugged and picked up the third radish.
“Free experience is free experience. At least now I can buy materials without a markup.”
***
Down the trail, Bai Chen and Senior Brother Shen lay flat in the mud.
Shen’s sword had slipped from his hand. He gasped like a fish on a riverbank.
“Elder Mu...” Bai Chen clawed at his collar. “He ate garbage from Chu Yuan’s hand and broke through two realms.”
He stared at the Heaven-Suppressing Spirit Net tangled in the weeds.
“Drop it,” he whispered. “Drop everything. We are leaving. Crawl. Don’t stand up. Don’t make a sound until we’re past the trees.”