The morning air outside the Taichu Sanctuary Free Immortal Hospital was crisp, but inside the main alchemy atrium, the temperature felt like an imperial hot spring.
Six-year-old Little Guo’er stood on her three-tiered jade step-stool, holding a candied hawthorn stick in her left hand.
In her right hand, she wielded a four-foot-long golden soup ladle that Master Ou Yezi had forged that morning from refined solar brass. The ladle was almost as tall as she was, but in her small hands, it moved with the effortless grace of a willow branch dancing in the breeze.
“Stir three times to the left,” Little Guo’er hummed softly to herself, kicking her tiny embroidered cloth shoes against the jade step. “Then stir two times to the right. Make it sweet like hawthorn berries, and warm like Grandma’s blanket.”
Inside the three-story bronze belly of the Nine-Dragon Shennong Cauldron, three thousand bundles of thousand-year spirit herbs were tumbling together.
Phoenix-blood ginseng, celestial jade lotus roots, and golden dragon-grass melted into a swirling lake of iridescent, glowing liquid. The white lotus flame licked at the bronze base, completely burning away every trace of plant bitter-slag, dirt, and toxic resin.
Dr. Gu Qinghe stood at the base of the step-stool, holding a silk handkerchief, his hands trembling with nervous reverence.
