The fourth morning brought a tension to Old Cauldron Workshop that was colder than the autumn fog.
On the long pine table sat a lacquered wooden box lined with dry raw silk. Inside lay three bundles of Spirit-Refining Grass. Unlike the coarse swamp roots gathered by the mud dredgers, these stalks were slender, semi-clear as green horn, each leaf veined with faint azure threads that shone under the lantern light.
Old Monster Gui stood over the box, his hickory cane planted into the seam between two dark rock floor slabs. His breathing was tight, punctuated by short, nervous wheezes.
“Spirit-Refining Grass,” Gui said, his yellowed eyes fixing on the green leaves with greedy respect. “Cost: eighteen low-grade spirit stones for these three bundles. Half of my emergency reserve. If this batch succeeds, it yields eight crude Qi-Gathering Pills worth twenty-four spirit stones. If it fails, we eat boiled tree bark for the next two months.”
Gui lifted one bundle with bone-tipped tweezers.
“Every novice potion-maker fears the Spirit-Refining Grass. Why? Because the sap contains volatile spirit oil. When the oil reaches its vaporization point, it doesn’t evaporate smoothly like water. It undergoes a heat chain reaction. The heat inside the cooking pot surges by fifty degrees in the span of two breaths. The slurry expands into violent foam, climbs the walls, blows the bronze lid off the rim, and spits thirty pounds of scalding broth into your face.”
