Inside the quiet Goddess Alchemy Palace, the disciples who had woken early were already hard at work on their morning duties. Some were cleaning. Some were lighting the fires beneath the alchemy furnaces. Others were taking stock, checking what inventory remained.
It had only been a single day of this, but every one of them hoped this simple, ordinary routine could go on for as long as possible.
But then—
"Senior Sister, something's wrong! There's a huge crowd gathered outside the Palace gate!"
Su Lin, who had been walking the grounds with a large ledger in hand checking that everything was in order, turned at the sound of the young junior disciple's voice. The little girl doing cleanup duty near the courtyard had good reason to look startled when she glanced outside. The area around the Goddess Alchemy Palace was now packed with a crowd, cultivators and ordinary people alike, all drawn by the commotion that was about to unfold.
"Hm? Customers? The Palace hasn't even opened yet..."
Su Lin frowned and checked the time. Maybe yesterday's events had spread the Palace's reputation far enough that people had decided to come wait from this early in the morning.
"It doesn't look like it, Senior Sister..."
The girl hesitated, her expression uncertain. It had only been a brief glance, but she was fairly certain none of the "customers" waiting outside looked to be in a good mood.
"Not customers... then what are they here for..."
"Open the gate. Let them in."
Before Su Lin could even finish speaking, Luo Qingyan appeared without a sound. Her expression stayed composed, but a trace of worry lingered beneath it. What Mu Xia had come back to report to her had troubled her enough that she had not slept.
It was not the rumor itself that worried her much. In the end, these people showing up to make trouble at the Palace was exactly what she had expected. A day later than she had guessed, maybe, but expected all the same.
But what truly frightened her was that Bai Fanxian still had not come back since yesterday!
Even with her own strength now at the Ancient Sage level, if Lady Bai did not want to be found, it would not matter how far she pushed her Heaven Sense searching — it would come to nothing!
...all she could do was hope Bai Fanxian was not off doing something too far beyond anyone's expectations.
Thud!
The moment the gate opened, hundreds of cultivators surged forward, packing the courtyard full. Sensing the faint hostility radiating off the newcomers' qi, the Palace's female disciples spread out and readied themselves, prepared to activate the Border's defenses at any moment.
Little Red, who had only just woken up, narrowed her eyes down at the people below as well. She would not make a move — not unless they crossed a line.
"Ancient Sage Luo. It's been a while."
The man who stepped forward was burly, his presence carrying a fierce edge. He stood at the final stage of Grandmaster, just one step away from crossing into the world of a Sage's Intent.
Luo Qingyan gave a small nod in acknowledgment. She caught the deliberate weight he had put on the words "Ancient Sage" when he said them, but she returned the greeting properly all the same.
"What business could all of you have with our Palace?"
If they were going to show hostility, she saw no reason to hold back out of courtesy either.
In this moment, she stood as the Alchemy Empress, confronted by people who had come to pick a fight right at her doorstep. Her bearing carried the full weight of that station — regal, and pressing down with tremendous force. Anyone whose cultivation fell short of hers felt as though they were being crushed beneath it the entire time.
"...!"
The memory of what she had done in the middle of the city, when she wiped out the Virtue Sword Sect, came rushing back. Burly men ranging from Martial Masters all the way up to Sages — elders among them, and even Sect Head Huang Zhailong himself — had all been drained dry by those ancient roots until their bodies withered to nothing. Everyone who had been there that day shuddered in unison the instant they felt something stirring beneath the ground.
"D-Don't be scared! She's just trying to intimidate us with a show of strength!"
"Th-That's right! She wouldn't dare murder a thousand innocent people here!"
Many in the crowd tried to fight down their fear while rallying the people beside them. Looking around, this gathering was not the work of one single sect or faction. It had pulled together from many different powers who happened to share the same grievance. Most were fighters and mercenaries who believed they had been personally wronged by the Goddess Alchemy Palace's actions, and that conviction made them confident Luo Qingyan would not dare turn violent so easily.
"Luo Qingyan! Don't push this too far!"
One of the old men in the crowd called out. He was nothing more than an ordinary person, not a cultivator at all. His presence there made Luo Qingyan frown.
Her Heaven Sense swept outward, and what it found was that three in every ten of the people gathered here were ordinary, without a trace of cultivation!
"...Your business, then?"
The young woman let the pressure dissipate. Dragging uninvolved ordinary folk into cultivator business was not something she was willing to do.
Still, she kept her qi circulating as a warning. The moment any of them did anything suspicious, she was ready to act — even if it was not her usual way.
"We're here to condemn your selfishness!"
The instant that line rang out from the crowd, an uproar broke out. Everyone shouted over each other, competing to be heard, until almost nothing anyone said could be made out.
"Condemn my selfishness?"
Luo Qingyan frowned. She had already heard about this yesterday, but she still had not expected these people to actually come after her over it.
Was this not a little strange?
"Yes, you hoarded huge amounts of high-grade medicine in secret while the war was raging, and because of it, no small number of our brave soldiers lost their lives on the battlefield!"
"That's right! If my brother had just had one more pill to restore his strength..."
"If my son had been stronger..."
"What you did, as a citizen of Moondrift City — it's truly shameful!"
The Dragon Queen, lying silently, watched them with pity in her eyes. Not one of them stopped to consider blaming their own weakness. Every word out of their mouths tried to pin their losses squarely on the Goddess Alchemy Palace, especially the ones who had simply piled on without caring whether any of it was true. Like this one.
"If only my father had broken through to Ancient Sage back then, the same as you!"
It was something utterly impossible. Did these people actually think the sixth realm of cultivation sprouted up as easily as mushrooms after rain?
Luo Qingyan stood listening, cold-faced, as a flood of accusations poured over her — as though she were the very cause of the war itself.
Then she asked back, her voice flat and even.
"You're saying I hid all this medicine away?"
Luo Qingyan flicked her hand, and the doors of the central hall swung open to reveal row upon row of medicine, packed so densely it was dazzling. The eyes of the gathered crowd lit up as if they were looking at a treasure vault that had not been opened in decades.
"Yes! Back then, an order came from the authorities for you to hand over every last bit of your medicine to the army at a fair purchase price. So what does all this medicine sitting here mean!?"
A man who seemed to know a fair amount about the inner workings stepped forward. What he had said was accurate enough, but what he did not know was that the Goddess Alchemy Palace had never received a single piece of gold for the medicine it handed over back then!
"I followed every rule. What I handed over back then was everything the Goddess Alchemy Palace had, all of it."
Luo Qingyan answered.
"Lies!"
"Lies? I should think everyone standing here already knows exactly what state my Palace was in before all this, don't you?"
That line from Luo Qingyan caught several people off guard. Most of them had been born and raised in Moondrift City and had watched the Goddess Alchemy Palace since childhood. There was no denying that over the past few years, the Palace had fallen so far it might as well have been destitute.
In fact, plenty of them had stopped coming here to buy medicine at all, themselves.
"Do you still think I was pretending to have fallen on hard times? And that pitiful state I was in — you think that was a performance too?"
The faint tremor in Luo Qingyan's voice brought a number of them back to their senses. Even though the young woman standing before them now looked magnificent, brimming with the power of an Ancient Sage, the memory of what she had once been — a woman who had looked half-dead, reduced to bowing her head and begging others for help — still lingered vividly in more than a few people's minds.
"B-But then... that medicine there... are you saying you refined all of it after becoming an Ancient Sage?"
"That's right! Even a Tier-6 alchemist couldn't refine thousands upon thousands of pills in such a short time! Not to mention all that high-grade medicine on top of it!"
In the end, they still did not believe her. That Luo Qingyan had refined all the low-grade medicine herself — that much was at least plausible. But if that were true, where would she have found the time to also refine all that Grade-5 and Grade-6 medicine?
"That's..."
Luo Qingyan could not tell them the truth about Bai Fanxian. That brief flash of hesitation was all it took for the crowd to seize the opening and press their attack with words.
"I told you so! If you can't even explain where all that medicine actually came from, then we have every right to be suspicious of you!"
"That's right! If you're really so innocent, just tell us where all these pills came from!"
"..."
"...I refined them myself."
Thud!
At that very moment, dozens of meters above the rooftops, the silhouette of a woman appeared, standing in midair with her arms crossed. Her signature cold expression was there, along with the aura of her fearsome power. Even reined in as much as she could manage, so much of it still spilled out that the air all around trembled. As she carelessly dropped the unconscious bodies of a dozen cloaked men into a heap on the ground, everyone below who looked up swallowed hard. None of them knew her personally, but even so, they could guess just how irritated this young woman was.
"Th-The Battlefield's Lady Heroine?"
Bai Fanxian's face had become known throughout the entire city as the one who had ended the war. But once word got out that she was staying at the Goddess Alchemy Palace, news of her had gradually faded with time. No one had seen her appear anywhere in the city since, until people had all come to assume the same thing — that she might have already left.
No one had expected her to still be here!
Rumble...
But before they could even recover from the shock, the sound of enormous numbers of footsteps rose up outside the Palace gate, accompanied by the rush of countless high-level cultivators, all of whom came to a stop just ahead. No one knew what was happening until the figure of a familiar-looking old man came charging in, his face drained white.
"Sage White-Beard?"
Of course the people living in this city knew this man well. He was both a close confidant of King Jongliean and held the position of Grand Marshal, with full command over Moondrift City's entire army at his discretion.
But it was strange, seeing a man with such power and authority look so unwell. The moment he raised his eyes to look at Bai Fanxian, anyone could see his body was still trembling, completely beyond his control.
Sage White-Beard tried to gather himself. Finally, gritting his teeth, he shouted up at Bai Fanxian, who was pointedly pretending not to see him.
"Lady Heroine! Please, let His Majesty down!"
"..."
"...?"
A sentence nobody understood came out of the old man's mouth. Everyone tilted their heads in confusion, until someone with sharp eyes spotted something floating nearly ten meters above the spot where Bai Fanxian stood.
"W... what..."
"...What am I even looking at...?"
Luo Qingyan lifted a weary hand to her forehead. She had tried to brace herself for this, but now that it was actually happening, she felt like she might faint on the spot.
No one could blame her for it. She was certain that even her own master, or any of the Alchemy Empresses who had come before her, would be standing here reacting exactly the same way if they were in her place.
Because how in the world had King Jongliean ended up floating up there, foaming at the mouth and looking utterly wrecked!