Chapter 326: Lucky With The Examiners
Back at Li Mei’s pill refining hut, the herbal fragrance of drying spirit roots and simmering concoctions filled the air. The two of them sat cross-legged at the low stone table in the middle of her courtyard, a kettle of medicinal tea gently steaming between them.
Han Yu had set down the neatly copied version of his test scroll on the table, and Li Mei was already poring over it with a focused frown.
She had been quite curious about what questions Han Yu had been asked. It had been a long while since she had given the test herself, so wanted to see if there had been any changes or if the test was harder than usual.
"So these were the questions, huh?" she murmured as her fingers traced the characters. "Most of it’s pretty standard—herbal property balancing, theoretical flame progression, reaction timing in multi-tiered pills..."
She flipped through the pages slowly, her expression calm and unreadable.
Then she paused.
Her eyes narrowed.
"...Wait. This one."
Her finger tapped the final question—one that had required Han Yu to design an entirely new pill composition using only a random selection of seven ingredients, each with clashing properties. The instructions had explicitly forbidden him from referring to any known formula.
"You weren’t kidding when you said the last question was strange," Li Mei said. "This isn’t standard at all. This is one of those ’how creative can you get before you blow your head off’ type questions."
Han Yu scratched his head. "Yeah. I thought it was a trap at first, so I tried giving them a half-rational answer with stabilizers. But then I figured, what the hell, let’s see what happens if I lean into the chaos."
Li Mei stared at him. "You made a theoretical pill that converts yang-based heat into a self-stabilizing yin-infusion pill. From clashing ingredients. Using a rhythm method usually reserved for mid-tier detoxification pills."