Heretic Apothecary Genius

Chapter 28: Mysterious Person?

Translator: Atlas Studios

Editor: Atlas Studios

Tie Ta trained with Tong Qiang while Gao Ren went to the apothecary room. The first thing Ren Jie did was to start the third level of his Jade Emperor Refinement Technique to get the six Vigor chains comprised of 144 Vigor rings in his body moving.

Even though he was already prepared for it, the sensation of having more than 10 times the normal weight pressing on every inch of his body in an instant was still something that not everyone could withstand.

Ren Jie quickly maneuvered the Jade Emperor Refinement Technique fervently as he felt his body moving along and getting used to the sensation. It took a whole night for the feeling to become more bearable and the next day, Ren Jie started meeting the other members of the personal guards apart from Tong Qiang.

The first person he met was called Mole Rat, and he was a small leader under Tong Qiang. While he was not as fat as Gao Ren, he was not slim either, and the first thought Ren Jie had when he met him was: How did he fit into the armor? With the armor, almost all of them looked dashing and majestic, but this Mole Rat was barely 1.6 meters in height.

As he had never seen these people without their armor and he had never been to their living quarters in the past, it was like getting to know them again for Ren Jie.

Mole Rat dragged himself in tiredly, but the moment he entered he thought he had walked into the wrong place.

What, they had been training so harshly before Ren Jie entered, but why did he look more tired than them. What had happened?

Just then, he saw Ren Jie sizing him up and, before Ren Jie asked anything, Mole Rat’s fat started moving as his bones started to lengthen, making him much taller than before. The fat on his body also started gathering together to form lumps of muscles, and even his appearance had changed.

Yet, as he employed his cultivation technique, there was no more questions in Ren Jie’s eyes even though Mole Rat was also at level-8 of the True Qi Realm.

“The cultivation technique you use is very special, and perhaps you might even be able to move your organs around in the future, but it doesn’t look complete. You seem to have a few mistakes in some areas. Do you often feel panicked, and do your veins expand so much that they hurt? So much so that you have to use ice to suppress it even in the winter?” Ren Jie took one look and realized the problems in Mole Rat’s cultivation technique.

“Ah…” Mole Rat was taken aback before he reacted. “I see that Captain has told you about me, family head.”

This was something that only happened in the past few years, even his teammates were not aware of it. It was only during one very serious incident that Tong Qiang discovered it and helped him to control the effects.

“When you cultivate in the future you need to look out for certain points, especially the meridians. It should be like this…” Ren Jie felt like he was in a different world from everybody else as there seemed to be another source of gravity within his body. He slowly picked up a pen and slowly wrote down some things for Mole Rat. He only tweaked certain cultivating routes for him before giving him some targeted training techniques.

This change had to occur gradually, and he believed that with these alterations it would help Mole Rat reach the Divine Power Realm. As for other improvements, that would have to wait.

Ren Jie barely wrote a hundred words before he felt completely exhausted, utterly drenched in sweat and his face had darkened. After he finished writing, he did not even have the strength to speak and merely pointed at the paper for Mole Rat to take before he took some medicine that Gao Ren had prescribed for him to regain his strength. He rested for half an hour before he called the next person.

Birdy was another leader under Tong Qiang, and he was as skinny as a 13-year-old malnourished boy, making others take him in pity. There were actually all kinds of people in the personal guards’ troop, but with armor on they all looked dashing and thus, it was completely different from now.

Ren Jie did not ask anything either and just let Birdy perform his cultivation technique. Birdy did so with no intention to die, but Ren Jie merely looked for a while before he realized something was wrong…

“Is this cultivation technique used by humans?”

Birdy’s expression changed when he heard that. He had never expected Ren Jie to ask something like that as even the old family head, Ren Tianxing, had not realized it…

He was brought up by avian demon beasts and was captured by humans along with them. In the end, he was saved by Ren Tianxing while he was at a war and the demon beasts he had grown up with had already become his spiritual beasts, or more accurately, his family. They were a part of him. Hence, he was given the nickname Birdy when he joined the personal guards. However, nobody knew the details of what happened and nobody knew about his cultivation technique as well.

How… how did he know? Birdy had already been in the personal guards for over 10 years and had always been a cheerful person, which was evident in the way he spoke to Mole Rat after Ren Jie lectured them. Yet, he did not know what to say now and merely stood there, stunned.

His mind was a blank…

“The difficulty is not high, and you should have done all this according to your natural abilities. The demon beast that taught you must have been pretty special too since it is not possible for a normal human to learn a demon beast’s cultivation technique. If you continue doing it this way, you won’t get past three years, and you’re probably already barely holding up now. Here, you’ll receive three Inferior-grade Body Refinement Panacea every month from now on to strengthen your body. At the same time, you need to stop deliberately limiting yourself and start eating more than others. Start from three times more and we’ll see how it goes from there.

“You can’t start over from now and can only continue, but you must work towards reaching the Divine Power Realm as your ultimate goal, or else you’ll have to become a demon in order to preserve your life. This cultivation technique requires your body and meridians to be like gushing rivers, but humans have bodies and meridians that are like streams. Hence, no matter how much you cultivate it will never fill up the way it should. I’ll help you make some changes, so it shouldn’t take you long to reach the Divine Power Realm. We can talk about the rest next time since it’s not something detrimental to you. Alright, call the next person in half an hour later,” Ren Jie said as he wrote, wiping his sweat after he was done, before asking Birdy to take the piece of paper.

“Oh… Oh!” Birdy did not say anything in the end and merely nodded his head as he took the piece of paper away with his mind adrift.

Even after he left he still had not come back to his senses. This was a secret only he knew, how could he tell at just a glance?

How could he just change his cultivation technique like this just by taking a look? What a joke, they were talking about changing cultivation techniques! Even those in the Divine Power Realm, not even those who had managed to condense their Yin spirit or even their Yang spirit could say that they were able to change someone’s cultivation technique.

With this piece of paper alone he would be able to reach… reach the Divine Power Realm?

But what happened earlier did not feel like a joke to Birdy. Why did he feel as though this new family head was harder to see through than the old family head?

“What? You didn’t say anything? How can that be?” He heard Mole Rat’s surprised exclamation from the yard as soon as he left. Mole Rat then grabbed Tong Qiang and continued to bombard him with questions in disbelief before Tong Qiang got annoyed with him and pushed him aside.

Tong Qiang was even more confused than them, as everyone else who went into the family head’s room either came out with a ton of questions like Mole Rat, asking him if he had disclosed their secret, or came out in a daze like Birdy.

There were even two fellows who emerged from Ren Jie’s room shouting in excitement. They had been stuck at level-9 of the Body Refinement Realm for a few years and they managed to take the crucial first step towards a perfected Body Refinement Realm just by going into the room for a while.

Once it was perfected, then it was only a matter of time before they entered the True Qi Realm.

Ren Jie did not rest at all the next day as besides Mole Rat and Birdy, who took a little more time, the rest were easily settled as they only needed a few pointers from Ren Jie to correct some mistakes in their cultivation techniques or only had some questions. Being in different realms was like the difference between an adult and a child, as the adult may not have met with these problems, but all they needed to do was to listen to them talk about their problems for a while before they knew what needed to be corrected.

Only now did Ren Jie finally gain a new understanding of what he had taken away from his immersion in the Sage’s preachings. It only made him yearn even more to go back there. He realized that no matter what it was beneath the Divine Power Realm, he was able to understand it all at a glance as he had with Mole Rat and Birdy’s problems in their cultivation. However, he was not able to do the same with Tong Qiang and thus, he did not seek out Tong Qiang for the time being.

Not just Tong Qiang but Tie Ta too. He did not say anything to him and instead asked Tong Qiang to guide him instead. This was because Ren Jie realized that Tong Qiang and Tie Ta used the same cultivation technique and he was quite complete in his cultivation too, or at least Ren Jie was only able to see through to such extent at his current cultivation level. He could only help them after his own cultivation level increased.

As for those in the average levels of the Body Refinement Realm, Ren Jie was able to give them a few pointers with just a glance and thus it became much faster.

Some of their problems could be resolved quickly, but some others could not be observed in such a short time. However, they had lifted whatever doubt they had in the family head just like Mole Rat and Birdy, who were stunned by Ren Jie.

Initially, they followed Ren Jie’s orders because he was Ren Tianxing’s son, but in just less than two days they began to take every training order from Ren Jie seriously and not just because of Ren Tianxing. They were no fools, either. They had thought that Ren Jie was trying to play a fool, but now they realized that something was not quite right.

They could tell that Ren Jie was using a very unusual method to train, and he was doing so while handling all his daily matters.

This allowed the personal guards to feel an unexplainable sense of trust because Ren Jie did not hide from them. They also realized that Ren Jie was putting on an act before, and since he trusted them so much now, they all decided that they would help him keep this a secret…

Ren Jie realized that he could tell everything at a glance as long as they were beneath the Divine Power Realm and thus, he helped come up with cultivating plans for everyone while giving them pointers. Everyone’s intense training came as an unexpected surprise following that, and after a day and a night had passed, Ren Jie finally became more used to it.

After dinner, he took quite a bit of medicine before he recovered slightly. Gao Ren had returned in between and snuck quite a bit of medicine for him. After all the work Ren Jie felt exhausted. After all, even those in the Divine Power Realm still needed to eat and sleep, albeit less than what an average person required. Only after reaching the Yin Yang Realm did they not need to eat and sleep, but there were few like that in the Jade Capital.

After he gradually got used to the immense pressure brought about by the 144 Vigor rings of the third level of the Jade Emperor Refinement Technique, Ren Jie decided to take proper rest. He would train with Tong Qiang and the rest for the next few days, and when Fang Tianen could not take it and come to him, he would then have his first sum of money and then he could consider doing other things.

He would start that video again and then try to earn more money. After all, now he was…

As he thought about it he fell asleep, but these thoughts remained in his mind as Ren Jie started feeling as though he was floating. He felt like he was flying and that he had left his house in the blink of an eye. That’s strange, there was an array formation and restriction where he lived and he had already activated it. Could it be because he was dreaming…

Suddenly, Ren Jie realized that something was not quite right and he immediately opened his eyes, only to realize that he was in mid-air, and he could distinctly feel a hand on his shoulder. He did not have the time to turn around to look before he started falling from the sky at an incredibly fast speed.

This was not falling, this was being hurled downwards.

F*ck. Ren Jie only had one thought in mind as he looked at the ground that was getting nearer to him by the second. Even those at level-5 of the True Qi Realm would not survive a fall like that, much less him.