God-Level Special Forces Soldier

Chapter 929: Chapter 925: Is There a Problem with the Prescription?

Of course, Xiao Tian wasn’t trying to take advantage of the late night to do something to Xiang Yiting and Adison Claire, but planned to use this quiet hour to quickly prepare the antidote for Ghost Face, so he could return to Huaxia as soon as possible.

Once he had the idea, Xiao Tian packed up all the medicinal herbs and other items he needed, then went to the kitchen and took out an earthenware pot used for boiling soup. After scrubbing it clean, he brought it out. The pot was a bit old and worn, but for now he could only make do with it.

With his previous experience of diluting the energy drawn from the Confucian Spring, Xiao Tian followed the same method again: on one side he took out a little of the highly condensed energy into a bowl of water, and on the other he lit the firewood he had found, setting up a simple rack to place the earthenware pot on.

Drawing clear water from the water vat, Xiao Tian began to dilute the energy. When he felt it was about right, he poured it all into the earthenware pot at once, then strictly followed the proportions on the prescription, weighing each herb one by one and adding them in.

What he had to do next was only to wait patiently. Xiao Tian tended the fire by the side, his eyes fixed unblinking on the various herbs gathered together in the pot. His gaze seemed able to pierce the dense steam and take in everything hidden within.

In truth, Xiao Tian wasn’t entirely confident that the decoction would ultimately succeed, because a few of the herbs on the prescription were widely recognized as mutually conflicting ingredients; anyone with a bit of common sense could see that.

But in the situation back then, Xiao Tian had no other way. He could only follow the prescription recorded in the ancient text and start compounding the medicine. As for whether it could succeed, that was still an unknown.

Time passed second by second, and soon a strong medicinal odor filled the little courtyard. Though it wasn’t choking, it was certainly quite unpleasant.

However, this was something he couldn’t help. It wasn’t that Xiao Tian hadn’t considered using True Qi to create a relatively isolated space around the pot; in that case the smell wouldn’t spread everywhere. But whether that would affect the chance of the medicine successfully forming was another issue he couldn’t ignore.

Thus, for the sake of safety, knowing he couldn’t have it both ways, Xiao Tian could only choose to give up part of his considerations.

The bubbling sound in his ears grew ever clearer, and the white steam rising from the mouth of the pot became richer and thicker. Xiao Tian knew the critical moment was at hand. Whether he could succeed or not depended on what the situation would be after the small fire under the pot went out.

...

After a while, the fire under the pot had burned down to a bed of glowing embers, and most of the white steam above the earthenware pot had dissipated, revealing the scene inside.

But when Xiao Tian looked over, he couldn’t help knitting his brows, his expression turning extremely ugly.

What met his eyes was a thick layer of white bubbles covering the surface of the medicinal decoction, looking as if it was mixed with a large amount of arsenic.

At this moment, the white bubbles on the surface were still churning incessantly, much like slaked lime doused with water. No matter how one looked at it, it didn’t resemble an antidote; instead it looked even more like a poison.

Taking a small silver spoon, Xiao Tian slowly scraped off the surface layer, revealing the pitch-black decoction beneath. As for the herbs, they were stuck to the bottom of the pot, making it impossible to see exactly what condition they were in.

It could be said that Xiao Tian had never encountered, nor even heard of, such a situation. To determine specifically where the problem lay was all the more difficult, because he didn’t have that many chances to experiment and fail.

To be conservative, the herbs in front of him in the earthenware pot were worth at least five million, and that was without factoring in the malicious price hikes under conditions of stock shortages. Calculated properly, five million was the minimum.

Of course, Xiao Tian wasn’t fussing over the money. The key was that once some things were wasted, it was no longer a matter of price. Having money but being unable to buy them was what really gave him a headache.

Although he had never placed too much hope on succeeding in one try, the problem was that failure itself wasn’t frightening; what was truly terrifying was failing and being unable to find the cause.

If he couldn’t summarize the lessons from this failure, then the next outcome would certainly still be failure. At that point, Xiao Tian would have no choice but to pack up and go home.

Casually flicking the white bubbles from the spoon onto the ground, Xiao Tian, a bit speechless, picked up the earthenware pot, poured out the black decoction inside, then dumped out the herbal dregs and began examining them piece by piece.

However, half an hour later, even after Xiao Tian carefully inspected the last bit of herbal residue, he still found nothing unusual.

Helpless, Xiao Tian could only give the courtyard a simple tidy-up for the time being, then return to his room.

...

Lying on the bed, Xiao Tian’s mind kept replaying the herbs listed on the prescription, and he grew increasingly uneasy.

Setting aside the guiding medium, just the mutual clashes between the various herbs alone allowed him to identify as many as three points of direct conflict, and each reaction was anything but trivial, far from something as simple as the diarrhea side effect he’d caused while studying potions.

Yet just as Xiao Tian became more and more convinced that the problem lay in the prescription itself, he suddenly sensed an abnormal signal returned by his Perception Power.

In fact, Xiao Tian could easily cover a radius of a hundred meters, or even the entire village, within his perception, but doing so would be far too ostentatious and would easily invite trouble.

So, in order to balance his own safety, Xiao Tian had only spread his Perception Power to cover the entire small courtyard and the house where Xiang Yiting and Adison Claire were staying, so that he could respond at the first sign of any incident.

At this moment, within Xiao Tian’s perception, someone was sneaking through the little courtyard, tiptoeing closer and closer to the house.

Not long after, following a soft click, that person went straight toward the side room where Xiang Yiting and Adison Claire were. Though the movements were very light, Xiao Tian still judged that the intruder was an ordinary person.

Because if it had been an expert at work, there would never have been such a racket, and especially going straight for Xiang Yiting and Adison Claire’s room the moment he entered—it was hard not to suspect some improper intent.

...

A very light sleeper, Xiang Yiting had just been about to doze off when a sound startled her awake. She opened her eyes and carefully listened to the noises around her to confirm whether what she’d just heard had been her imagination.

With the bright moonlight streaming into the room, Xiang Yiting casually turned over as if by chance and looked toward the door, but immediately couldn’t help covering her mouth, her gaze filled with terror.

Because on the glass at the top of the wooden door there was a black silhouette about the size of a basketball, looking just like a human head.

Her heart pounding like a drum, Xiang Yiting forced herself to press down her inner tension while she began shaking the sleeping Adison Claire beside her.

A moment later, Adison Claire frowned slightly and was just about to say something when she suddenly felt a hand clamp over her mouth. Her eyes flew open, and any trace of drowsiness vanished instantly.