Chapter 1555 - Emperor Refinement Cauldron

Killing one person achieved exactly the deterrence they wanted. After the black-clad men delivered everyone, they departed at once, leaving the group entirely under Black Tiger's control.

Black Tiger asked as he led them into a stone hall where the temperature dropped sharply, "Who here knows how to sort out spiritual herbs?"

"Understood!"

Most of the people present were alchemists, yet few could recognize every spiritual herb at a glance.

Sorting spiritual herbs was a brutal, meticulous process. They had to separate a chaotic pile, classify each herb by age and type, then mark and label everything correctly. Without enough knowledge, the task became both impossible and miserable.

If someone sorted the herbs incorrectly, the mild outcome meant ruining an entire batch. In the worst case, it could trigger the cauldron to explode and kill every alchemist involved.

Liu Wuxie kept quiet. Sorting sounded like lighter work, yet it would trap him in the warehouse, and he refused to accept that outcome. He needed to investigate how this underground workshop actually functioned.

Black Tiger selected thirty-five people and assigned them to sort the spiritual herbs.

Then he ordered, pointing at twenty people in a row, "You step out."

Liu Wuxie was among these twenty people.

"You people will be responsible for moving the spiritual herbs out of the warehouse daily and pouring them into the designated locations. If anyone makes a mistake, don't blame me for being ruthless," Black Tiger said, glaring at the group. His stare made everyone, aside from Liu Wuxie, shiver.

Liu Wuxie deliberately put on the same frightened expression.

"The rest of you will keep adding fire to the cauldron. If the fire isn't strong enough, I'll throw all of you in," Black Tiger said, pointing at the remaining seventy-odd people. Their only job was to ensure the flame inside the cauldron never died.

Several black-clad men emerged from another doorway and began leading each group to its assigned area. Liu Wuxie blended into his group and activated Ghost Eye. What he saw through it left him stunned. This underground workshop stretched far beyond anything he had imagined.

"I can't believe that they built such a massive underground workshop," he murmured.

The most captivating presence was the massive, mysterious cauldron, rumbling endlessly as it dispensed pills without pause. Yet Liu Wuxie didn't dare to probe it recklessly. With a quasi-immortal present, even curiosity could become fatal.

He couldn't afford to reveal the slightest flaw, because spiritual arrays sealed the entire underground world. Aside from the single entrance they'd used, there were no other exits. That mysterious gateway was array-controlled, and even an expert at the pinnacle of the Heaven Gaze Realm would struggle to escape through it.

The groups split further and further apart as Liu Wuxie's team of twenty followed a black-clad man upward. Someone had hollowed the underground world into a vast chasm, and countless chain bridges crisscrossed overhead. They walked across those hanging bridges for about fifteen minutes, high enough to overlook nearly the entire subterranean expanse.

"The Emperor Refinement Cauldron," Liu Wuxie murmured, the name surfacing the instant his eyes landed on the enormous cauldron below.

He had read about the Emperor Refinement Cauldron in ancient records. It had appeared in the world before, only to vanish without a trace. Somehow, it had ended up here in the Spirit Martial Astral Domain.

In many ways, the Emperor Refinement Cauldron resembled the Universal Gourd. The Universal Gourd was more profound, with functions beyond pill refinement, while the Emperor Refinement Cauldron existed for a single purpose of refining pills. Rumors claimed it contained 9,999 spiritual arrays that could operate simultaneously, each being an independent world.

That meant the Emperor Refinement Cauldron could refine 9,999 pills in one batch. It was no wonder it could churn out thirty thousand pills in a single day.

After they crossed the bridges, they arrived at a massive hall where spiritual herbs piled like mountains. A big group of alchemists worked inside, busy sorting through the endless supply.

"Old Lai, I've brought people over for you. Use them well. It's not easy to recruit them," the black-clad man said as he delivered Liu Wuxie's group. An old man waited inside the main hall, his body covered in warts and pus. One glance at him made everyone's stomach turn.

Old Lai had likely been tricked into this place as well, but his high cultivation had let him secure the position of a deacon, mainly overseeing the transport of spiritual herbs.

"All of you come on in," Old Lai replied with a nod. The pus covering him reeked, and the heat made the stench even more unbearable.

When Liu Wuxie and the others entered, the sheer quantity of herbs stunned them so badly that they nearly forgot where they were.

"These are the sorted herbs. Each of you will have to make fifty trips daily, delivering the herbs to the designated location. Don't blame me for not warning you about the dire consequences if you dump them in the wrong place," Old Lai said, offering a grim warning.

Someone had tricked everyone into coming here, and he spoke like a man who had seen more deaths than he could count.

"Senior, thank you for telling us." With no options left, they could only accept their fate and cling to the faint hope of leaving someday.

"Let's start now. Dump these spiritual herbs into the cauldron," Old Lai said, pointing at the prepared stacks and ordering them to move.

Liu Wuxie stepped to a cart loaded with hundreds of spiritual herbs and gripped the handle. He pushed it forward with ease and rolled it onto the bridge, slowly heading toward the Emperor Refinement Cauldron.

The others followed close behind. The bridge was narrow, and pushing a cart across it demanded care with every step.

"Why don't we use interspatial pouches instead of such a primitive way?" a man behind Liu Wuxie grumbled. He couldn't understand why they couldn't store the herbs in an interspatial pouch and dump them straight into the cauldron.

"There's an order to dump the spiritual herbs in. If you toss everything in at once, you can't refine a pill," an older man said.

Many people nodded. Feeding herbs required strict sequencing; it was never as simple as dumping everything in and walking away.

"ARGH!"

A scream erupted from below as an alchemist fed the fire carelessly and got incinerated into ash by the flame.

The flames around the Emperor Refinement Cauldron burned even fiercer than the True Samadhi Fire. Even cultivators at the pinnacle of the Earth Immortal Realm couldn't endure that heat at close range.

After crossing the long bridge, Liu Wuxie finally reached the Emperor Refinement Cauldron's region.

"Feed the spiritual herbs into the cauldron in order," a voice echoed into everyone's ears, leaving them no choice but to comply.

The herbs on the cart had already been sorted and labeled, so they only had to dump them in the given sequence.

Liu Wuxie approached the Emperor Refinement Cauldron, and the heat surged so violently that even stepping closer became difficult. He deliberately acted strained, as showing too much ease would only invite suspicion.

Tongues of flame lashed out from the cauldron's mouth. The cauldron itself was massive, at fifty feet tall and thirty meters in diameter, and it clearly contained an independent world within. Whoever controlled such a thing couldn't be ordinary. At the bare minimum, it had to be a quasi-immortal.

Liu Wuxie tossed spiritual herbs into the cauldron one by one, following the proper order for several minutes before he finished. Then the second person stepped up and repeated the same process. Like Liu Wuxie, they followed the instructions and threw their herbs in as well.

However, when the fifth person took their turn, a single misstep proved fatal. The flames surged violently and swallowed him whole.

That person vanished without leaving a trace, likely refined together with the pill.

The sudden disappearance left others terrified.

The mysterious voice echoed again. "What are you all waiting for? Courting death?"

A single death meant nothing to it; only pill refinement mattered. If production slowed, everyone here would die.

Liu Wuxie hurried forward and dumped the remaining herbs into the Emperor Refinement Cauldron. One after another, the rest followed until the last person finished their share.

They returned to the main hall only to haul more herbs without rest. No one knew how much time had passed, and how could they? Everyone had lost their interspatial rings the moment they had entered this place.

Liu Wuxie had stored everything inside the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron beforehand, leaving only an ordinary interspatial ring with a few thousand astral crystals inside.

They ran back and forth thirty-odd times before someone finally allowed them to rest. Old Lai assigned them a room in the main hall to recover. The instant they entered, a wave of foul stench hit them so hard they instinctively covered their noses.

Several corpses lay inside, abandoned without care. Liu Wuxie released flame and burned the corpses into ash, and only then did the stench ease slightly.

"Damn it! We were all tricked!" someone hissed. Once the door shut and sealed them inside, fury finally erupted.

"This won't do! We have to find a way out!"

More than ten people gathered together and began discussing desperate solutions.

Liu Wuxie sat with his eyes closed, quietly recovering his true essence while surveying the underground environment. He didn't dare to use divine sense. One touch would alert the quasi-immortal, and so he relied solely on Ghost Pupil.

His Ghost Pupil pierced through layers, revealing the underground world piece by piece. The Heavenly Dao Book also stirred, forming a complete three-dimensional map inside Liu Wuxie's soul sea.

Besides this group, nearly a thousand alchemists had fallen for the same trick and ended up there, and their captors forced them into grueling labor every day.

"The Quasi-Immortal Realm!" Liu Wuxie's gaze locked onto a stone wall even Ghost Pupil couldn't pierce. A terrifying aura seeped from behind it, heavy enough to press against his mind.

Rattling sounds echoed as Liu Wuxie shifted Ghost Pupil back to the Emperor Refinement Cauldron. Thirty thousand Soul Pills poured out, and someone immediately rushed forward to pack them into interspatial rings. At midnight, the mysterious gate would transport those pills out.

After examining everything he could, Liu Wuxie finally withdrew Ghost Pupil.

Liu Wuxie's eyes snapped open with a realization.

I can only leave this place by toppling the Emperor Refinement Cauldron.

With his current strength, forcing his way out would remain impossible.

Besides the Quasi-Immortal Realm, countless experts at the pinnacle of the Heaven Gaze Realm guarded this place.

After they rested for about fifteen minutes, Old Lai walked in and ordered everyone back to work. They complained under their breath, but resignation weighed heavier than anger, and they pushed carts toward the Emperor Refinement Cauldron again.

The relentless labor stretched everyone's nerves to the breaking point.

Flames lashed out, and the slightest misstep meant death.

The alchemist behind Liu Wuxie stepped forward and carefully tipped in the required herbs. At that moment, a terrifying tongue of flame shot out, and the man didn't even have time to react.

In less than a thousandth of a second, Liu Wuxie reached out, yanked him backward, barely pulling him out of the flame's path. If that flame had touched him, he would've died instantly.

The man bowed in gratitude. "Thank you!"

If not for Liu Wuxie’s swift action, he would have already been consumed by the flames.