After Crossdressing and Provoking Long AoTian

Night had fallen.

Fire Cauldron Sect had opened a pill dispensary in Nanzhou, but they did not seem particularly concerned with business. It appeared to be nothing more than a place for them to stay.

The group changed into night clothes and lay sprawled atop the wall, watching the movements inside.

Ye Chenyan’s demonic weapon was far too conspicuous, so he had temporarily left it at Pleasure Sect. The group had traveled light and adopted varying degrees of disguise. Unless someone knew them extremely well, it should have been difficult to see through their identities.

Du Heng’s gaze followed the silhouette moving inside the building. “The moment I speak to Sanqi, my identity will be exposed. Pretend you’re Nanzhou cultivators I hired to help me.”

“Will that work?” Yu Qingtang glanced at him from the corner of his eye.

“It’ll be fine.” Only Scholar Xiao’s eyes were visible, but the smile in them was unmistakable. “Pretty Butterfly will make her move alongside him this time. After we leave, you can occasionally cause him trouble and pretend the two of you are still active in Nanzhou.”

“That’ll serve as a diversion. They’ll assume Brother Du is still in Nanzhou and never suspect that he has secretly returned to Fire Cauldron Sect.”

Pretty Butterfly snorted. “I already told you, I want to go too...”

“We’re sneaking in,” Ye Chenyan said, sweeping her a glance. “The fewer people, the better. Why are you joining the commotion?”

“I learned a little pharmacology from Auntie Huan!” Pretty Butterfly glared at him. “I don’t need to steal poison pills. I can poison people all by myself!”

Yu Qingtang asked curiously, “You can poison people, but can you cure them?”

Pretty Butterfly fell silent.

Du Heng sighed. “Had she known how to cure poison, I never would have met any of you.”

Pretty Butterfly immediately flew into an embarrassed rage. “Who learns poison and then learns how to cure it too? If I’m going to become the greatest poison cultivator beneath heaven, then naturally no one should be able to cure my poisons!”

“Shhh—” Scholar Xiao gestured for her to lower her voice. “Keep it down. Don’t let them discover us.”

“Let’s go.” Du Heng took the lead and vaulted into the courtyard.

The others followed one after °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° another and quietly crept beneath a window. Pretty Butterfly tossed two small spheres inside, and billowing poisonous smoke immediately filled the room.

“Cough! What’s that smell?”

Panicked shouts erupted inside. Several Fire Cauldron Sect disciples scrambled over one another as they rushed out.

Ye Chenyan and Yu Qingtang stood guard on either side of the door. Whenever someone emerged, each of them delivered a solid blow to the back of the head and knocked the disciple flat.

Before long, a neat row of Fire Cauldron Sect disciples lay outside the door.

Yu Qingtang looked down at the disciple beside his feet and could not help feeling a little wistful.

Wasn’t this going a little too smoothly?

“Who dares cause trouble in my Pill Origin Hall!”

An angry roar came from the adjoining courtyard. Someone flew over the wall and charged into the yard.

“Do you know that we belong to Fire Cauldron Sect?”

“Fire Cauldron Sect? Then we’ve come to the right place.” Du Heng deliberately made no attempt to conceal his voice as he stared at the arriving pill cultivator. “It’s been a long time, Junior Brother Sanqi.”

The newcomer froze. Narrowing his eyes, he stared at Du Heng in his night clothes and spoke uncertainly.

“Senior Brother Du Heng? You...”

He glanced down at the Fire Cauldron Sect disciples sprawled across the ground, then at the people standing beside Du Heng. With a cold laugh, he said, “It seems you came prepared.”

“As expected of a renegade cast out by his own sect. You can even deal such vicious blows to your former fellow disciples.”

“There are no outsiders here. Why bother putting on an act?” Du Heng regarded him coldly. “You know perfectly well why I was driven out of Fire Cauldron Sect.”

“Sanqi, Master treated you well. You—”

Sanqi suddenly struck first.

He flung out three pills. They exploded with a bang, releasing clouds of smoke into the surrounding area.

“What is that?” Yu Qingtang reflexively pinched his nose, only to remember that they had already plugged their nostrils beforehand to avoid being accidentally poisoned by Pretty Butterfly’s smoke.

Cultivators had long since surpassed ordinary mortals and could hold their breath for quite some time, but Yu Qingtang still had not fully adjusted and often forgot.

“He’s trying to run!”

Pretty Butterfly carried a poison-repelling pearl and had nothing to fear from the smoke. Keeping her eyes fixed on Sanqi, she chased after him before anyone else could move.

She flicked three silver needles at him.

Sanqi dodged two, but the third silently buried itself in his back.

He felt a fleeting sting behind him, but nothing else seemed to happen.

Just as he gathered his spiritual power to flee again, a wave of dizziness struck him. His body tilted, and he collapsed to the ground.

“Oh? So this is an inner disciple of Fire Cauldron Sect, the greatest pill-cultivating sect beneath heaven?”

Pretty Butterfly sauntered over to him, swaying from side to side. Several silver needles were pinched between her fingers.

Under Sanqi’s terrified gaze, she drove one straight into his forehead.

Du Heng waved away the smoke and approached her. “What does that one do?”

“It saves him.” Pretty Butterfly chuckled. “It stops the poison from reaching his brain. Otherwise, he’ll turn into an idiot.”

Only her eyes were visible, but they still gleamed with lively cunning.

“You’d better not move around. If you accidentally shake that needle loose, not even an immortal will be able to save you.”

Sanqi’s eyes widened in terror. He went completely rigid, not daring to move a muscle.

Du Heng sighed.

“You have questions for him, don’t you?” A tiny black insect crawled from Pretty Butterfly’s sleeve and quietly landed on Sanqi.

His entire body shuddered. He looked as though he desperately wanted to leap up and slap every inch of himself.

“I’ve raised this little darling for ages.” Pretty Butterfly smiled proudly. “It absolutely hates liars. The moment someone tells a lie, it takes a bite, then burrows through the flesh and—”

Yu Qingtang rubbed his arms. “Stop, stop!”

“Don’t say any more, my dear grandaunt. That move hits allies and enemies alike. The collateral damage is too great.”

“Fine.” Pretty Butterfly shrugged, then jabbed a vicious finger at Sanqi. “You’d better behave!”

Du Heng merely looked down at him.

“Senior Brother...” Sanqi cautiously opened his mouth and discovered that he could still speak. His voice immediately took on a tearful note. “Senior Brother, get that insect off me! Save me, Senior Brother!”

Du Heng sighed. “I remember you’ve been afraid of insects since you were little.”

“What a coincidence!” Pretty Butterfly laughed maliciously. “I’ve loved insects since I was little. Nanzhou has all kinds of them too. Once I introduce him to every last one, I’m sure he’ll find a little bug he likes.”

Trembling, Sanqi reached toward Du Heng. “Senior Brother...”

“We were fellow disciples. I never meant to take your life!”

“You said Master treated me well, but I treated him well too! I stayed with you and watched over him in Fire Cauldron Sect for five years. Five whole years!”

“I had no one to teach me. Every day, I was terrified I would open my eyes and discover Master had passed away, and that those snobbish disciples would climb right over our heads...”

He made himself sound so pitiful that tears nearly fell from his eyes.

“Senior Brother, you had already reached the Nascent Soul stage, and you were the youngest third-tier pill cultivator. Even without Master, they would still respect you.”

“But I was different. I had only just entered the sect. The only reason they respected me was because I was the Pill King’s disciple!”

“Master entered seclusion, and Martial Uncle took over as acting sect master. His faction held all the power. With only the two of us, how could we possibly have protected Master?”

“So you obeyed Martial Uncle, worked with him from within, pinned fabricated charges on me, and drove me out of Fire Cauldron Sect.” Du Heng looked down at him, his eyes filled with disappointment. “That plan was riddled with holes. You only succeeded because I never guarded against you.”

He crouched down and asked gently, “Junior Brother, now that you’ve joined Martial Uncle, has your life become any more glorious than before?”

Delight crossed Sanqi’s face. “Senior Brother...”

“But I still have one question.” Du Heng stared into his eyes. “What exactly is the Tianyuan Pill King searching for on Master? And what does he want from me?”

Sanqi’s gaze darted about. Just as he began to hem and haw, pain suddenly shot through his body, and he screamed.

Pretty Butterfly yawned. “I forgot to mention that my little bug isn’t very patient. It doesn’t just hate lies. It also hates people who waste time.”

“I’ll talk! I’ll talk!” Sanqi writhed frantically on the ground. “Make it leave! Make it leave!”

Pretty Butterfly crooked a finger, and the tiny black insect temporarily returned to the back of her hand.

Sanqi could not stop trembling. “Martial Uncle is searching for a pill formula. He said... he said it was passed down by the Patriarch and concerns immortality.”

“Martial Uncle said the Heavenly Dao is now controlled by another, and the immortal path has been severed. No one can possibly enter the immortal realm through their own power. But the Patriarch once left behind a pill formula. Back then, by using the Esoteric Sect’s sacred artifact, the Heaven-Mending Furnace, he could refine a true immortal pill!”

Sanqi’s eyes burned with greed as he spoke, though he did not dare show too much of it.

Du Heng narrowed his eyes and said with certainty, “He didn’t find it.”

Sanqi nodded awkwardly. “Master must have hidden something that valuable. It wouldn’t be so easy to find.”

“But...”

Sanqi did not dare look up at him. “I remember Master once gave you a pill formula.”

“He gave it to you secretly, behind my back. I saw it...”

Du Heng closed his eyes, then laughed from sheer fury. “Ha. You thought that was the formula for an immortal pill?”

“No wonder those people began searching for me again not long after I left Fire Cauldron Sect. So you remembered that formula.”

“Senior Brother...” Sanqi’s gaze wavered as he looked up at him. “If you truly have the formula, why not give it to Martial Uncle? You may already be a third-tier pill cultivator, but without Fire Cauldron Sect’s support, without its medicinal ingredients and spirit stones, how can you cultivate alone?”

“If Martial Uncle refines the immortal pill, perhaps he might even remember the two of us...”

Du Heng gave a quiet laugh. “I don’t know whether to call you naive or delusional.”

“If you possessed an immortal pill, would you share it with anyone else?”

Sanqi opened his mouth.

Du Heng gently shook his head. “How strange. The ungrateful always expect everyone else to be loyal and righteous.”

He stuffed a pill into Sanqi’s mouth.

“Don’t worry. It won’t kill you. But since you chose to betray Master, you should return everything you learned from him.”

Yu Qingtang eagerly raised a fist. “Can we hit him now? Let me! Let me!”

Du Heng nodded lightly. “Go ahead.”

Yu Qingtang swung his arm and punched Sanqi squarely in the eye.

“Hi-yah!”

Sanqi screamed.

Yu Qingtang blinked. “Why didn’t he pass out?”

“Hit him here.” Ye Chenyan followed up with another punch. “If you want to knock someone unconscious, this spot is more convenient.”

“Oh, oh.” Yu Qingtang had learned something new. He experimentally added another punch. “Like that?”

“That’s right.” Ye Chenyan’s eyes curved with amusement. “You learn quickly.”

“Hehe.” Yu Qingtang stood up proudly, ignoring the human punching bag lying on the ground. “Come on. Let’s see whether they’ve hidden anything they don’t want people to find.”

Du Heng had already entered the Pill Origin Hall’s medicine storeroom. He focused his examination on the ingredients that were to be delivered to Fire Cauldron Sect in Yunzhou.

Scholar Xiao produced a list from somewhere and began checking the inventory against it.

“These are more or less the medicinal herbs they purchased from the Lunar Jade Rabbit clan. There are no ingredients connected to cultivators or ordinary mortals.”

He looked thoughtful. “It’s hard to tell whether there truly is nothing wrong, or whether they’ve simply hidden it too well.”

Du Heng picked up an herb and held it beneath his nose. After smelling it, he said calmly, “There is still something different.”

“Oh?” Scholar Xiao’s interest was immediately piqued. “Brother Du, what did you smell?”

“These aren’t the ingredients Pill Origin Hall usually requests.” Du Heng raised his eyes. “When I was still in Fire Cauldron Sect, I helped Master manage Pill Origin Hall’s affairs. I know every ingredient it normally requires by heart.”

His finger passed over several medicinal herbs, and his expression grew contemplative.

“None of these were commonly used before... What new pill are they refining?”