"Old man?"

He poked his head around the door of the third floor. He wanted to call said "old man" something else, but didn't dare to do so.

​​

"Come in."

He then walked inside.

"It's really cool in here," was the first thing that came to mind when he walked inside the third floor. It felt completely different from the scorching hot day outside after the rain. The room was so cool that he felt like he was in an air-conditioned room.

He looked up.

That was a huge red pearl embedded on the top of the third floor. It could also be seen from the outside.

It was only then that he understood that the pearl was meant for absorbing heat. The very reason why the third floor was so cool was due to that pearl's presence.

The coolness in the air had a faint fragrance to it.

He refocused his sight and saw that there was a super-sized bathtub in the very center of the third floor. It had a very polished exterior and was so big that it could easily accommodate ten people inside of it.

It was also so tall that he figured that he wasn't even half as tall as the tub. A bad feeling washed all over him as he looked at the tub.

He wanted very much to just turn around and run, yet he didn't dare to do so.

It was due to his Sense that he saw that Elder Sang was actually sitting cross-legged and hovering midair on the other side of the tub.

He scratched his head. What was the old man doing?

It was then that he saw the old man pick up a bunch of fauna with high spiritual content and dump them all into the tub.

Yeah, over a dozen berries or whatnot as well, with the branches still attached and all.

Crackle, crackle.

He heard this very familiar sound.

Infernal Heavenly Flames? He seemed to realize something.

It was only after he did his best to Sense it that he was just barely able to make out the silhouette of a massive bonfire right beneath the bathtub.

"Just what kind of Infernal Heavenly Flames is this?" he thought. "Why couldn't I immediately detect its presence? Gosh, this is horrifying.

"But, well, the fire is just cooking the bathtub without any water in it, so it couldn't be used for bathing, right?

"The old man is still dumping ingredients into it. Just what is he trying to do here?"

"Elder Sang?" He called.

"Shut up and just watch." Elder Sang's eyes remained closed, and he was very focused.

Xu Xiaoshou couldn't help but carefully observe what he was doing. He wondered if this was a test of some kind and if he would be quizzed at the end of it.

The possibility was high!

Bosses love doing weird stuff just to scare people, after all.

He was very experienced with such ways of doing things, as he did the exact same thing to scare Su Qianqian.

"But, um…" he thought.

"Why does something feel wrong about all this?"

He was able to Sense that all of the fauna was immediately cooked and burned to nothing by the super high temperatures of the Infernal Heavenly Flames as soon as the old man dumped them inside, yet several drops of extracts of some kind remained behind nonetheless.

Just how precise did one's control have to be to be able to do such a thing?

Someone could actually extract such condensed energies when using flames as unforgiving as the Infernal Heavenly Flames?

Xu Xiaoshou figured that if he were in Elder Sang's place, he probably would've burned the entire library building down, let alone extract the essence of those things.

As more and more fauna were dumped into the tub, the amount of extracts accumulating in the tub increased, yet they remained separated.

The space inside was so huge that they would never get clumped together.

Hold on!

The extracts were actually beginning to fuse. Such a huge blob of liquid…

Xu Xiaoshou's eyes flew open. He found the situation to be both wrong yet somewhat familiar.

Boooom!

A rumble was heard as the bathtub trembled. The blob of liquid, which was somewhat bigger than a head, instantly solidified, turning into a greyish black ball.

Crack!

The black ball cracked, and a thick herbal fragrance filled the room. He instantly shuddered and almost failed to shut it out and suck all of it in.

He covered his nose and mouth, as well as shut all of his pores, right away.

Brrooooom.

Pills started to pour all over the bathtub and roll over to an opening at the bottom, getting inside a huge bottle that had been attached beforehand.

From the sound of it, there were more than ten of them.

Xu Xiaoshou was shocked to the core.

Alchemy at work here?

He looked at the super-sized tub and then at the three legs below the tub, and his jaw almost dropped to the floor as realization dawned on him.

A-an alchemy cauldron?

Elder Sang opened his eyes and looked at the young man before him, who was inexplicably covering his nose. Then he took out a pill and smelled it.

"It doesn't stink. What are you covering your nose for?"

"Oh, well, that's nothing." Xu Xiaoshou put his hands down and adjusted his posture.

"Luckily I didn't suck it all in," he thought. "Just an impulse and all those 30 or so pills would have..."

He shuddered at the thought.

Elder Sang packed up the pills and asked, "So, what did you learn?"

Xu Xiaoshou took a deep breath. His tone was full of nothing but disbelief as he asked, "You're doing alchemy here?"

Elder Sang stopped what he was doing, then gave the young man a disbelieving look. "You stood there watching for so long and that's all you were able to tell?" he asked in shock.

"I was asking you about the method of alchemy, man!" he thought. "What were you looking at all this time, old man?"

"That's not all, of course!" he quickly added.

That one line from Xu Xiaoshou made the old man wearing a conical hat somewhat relieved.

He then looked at Xu Xiaoshou with anticipation.

The way he saw it, that young man before his eyes was talented, resilient, so excellent in all aspects that he could even be deemed exceptional.

While his talents weren't exceedingly rare, they were nonetheless still very, very rare.

Someone who was capable of developing Innate Sword Will couldn't fail to see what he was doing here.

However, Xu Xiaoshou just went on to point at that cauldron before his eyes and declared loudly, "This is actually an alchemy cauldron!"

Thump!

Clangggg.

Elder Sang was caught off-guard and dropped to the ground, knocking over several smaller bottles on the ground and causing the pills to spill all over.

"Are you blind? What else could it be but an alchemy cauldron!?" Elder Sang yelled.

Xu Xiaoshou immediately shirked back. "But how would anyone be able to tell that just by looking at it?" he thought. "Do such ginormous and weird alchemy cauldrons even exist in the first place?

"It's so tall and so big…

"Forget, I just take it that you have special preferences and you like these types.

"But just take a look at the outside of the cauldron. So white, so smooth…

"Where did you buy such a cauldron in the first place? What made you buy such a thing?

"There isn't even a single carving on this thing! This is but a super bathtub with three legs on it, okay? Gosh, this is hilarious!

Despite his ill thoughts about the cauldron, he didn't dare to say anything out loud, nonetheless. He simply replied weakly, "I initially thought that this was a bathtub…"

"A bathtub?"

Elder Sang was already fuming by this point.

"You good-for-nothing of a student!" he thought. "Are you trying to p*ss me off to death on the very first day of your lessons?"

He suppressed his anger and took a look at the cauldron. The more he looked at it, the more he found the kid's description to be apt.

Ptuih!

"This is the special cauldron required for us of the Infernal lineage to perform alchemy. We cast away all the unnecessary flamboyance and crafted it using the most heat-resistant rocks."

"You should've realized the power of the Infernal Heavenly Flames by now. Not even the Spirit Crystals were able to last for a second under its might. If this cauldron had been made out of anything else, it would have melted before the pills were completed.

"By the way, the cauldron may be ugly, yet it would cost over 10 times the price of a cauldron of similar sizes." Elder Sang felt rather exhausted as he explained.

Xu Xiaoshou's eyes lit up. "That awesome, huh?"

"Of course!" Pride was heard in Elder Sang's tone again.

Xu Xiaoshou then touched the wall of the cauldron, feeling impressed that despite the session having ended mere moments ago, its temperatures had completely returned to normal.

He then knocked on the cauldron. The clangs were thick and sturdy—a sign that the cauldron was indeed sturdy.

He was still wearing an awed expression when he turned around and asked, "I guess

dropping such a sturdy cauldron on someone would hurt like h*ll, right?"

Elder Sang was baffled.

He stared at the young man in puzzlement briefly, before the vein in his forehead started to bulge out.

"Xu Xiaoshou!"

"Shut the f**k up!"

"…"

Xu Xiaoshou was shocked, and he wondered why the old man was so riled up.

Andropause?

Requested, Passive Points +1.