Beyond the Timescape

Chapter 651: Cultivating the Taboo God Poison Gaze (part 1)

As Xu Qing was enthusiastically pursuing his train of thought, the Captain was on another lake. He was dressed in a black robe and had his hands clasped behind his back as he looked out into the void. His expression was wistful, as if he were simply enjoying the sights and thinking about the past. Shortly after, he sighed, a sound filled with mixed emotions as it drifted out in all directions.

“The heaven and earth here,” the Captain murmured. “The plants and vegetation. Everything. It’s all so familiar.”

“Are you blind?” a cold voice said before the sound of the Captain’s voice even faded into nothing. “There’s no heaven or earth here. There are no plants or vegetation. The Imperial Sovereign created this location. It’s a void from beginning to end.”

The Captain blinked a few times. His facial expression didn’t change, and he didn’t betray even a hint of embarrassment at having been seen through. Inside, he was thinking, You crappy little spirit automaton. I was uttering an enchantment, you idiot.

The enchantment was complete, so the Captain suddenly looked up and said, “I’ve already decided about my ambition for the trial!”

The water rippled beneath his feet as the old man in white looked at him coldly. “State your ambition.”

Looking very haughty, the Captain said, “My ambition is to rescue all living beings in the Moonrite Region from the sea of bitterness. I will lead them to fight back against the red moon. And then, just like the Imperial Sovereign of old, I will execute Crimson Mother, devour hēr, unite everyone, and found a new world!”

The old man in the mirror didn’t react in any way. He seemed unmoved. However, a frigid energy spread out from his feet, filling the lake. “How will you do that?”

“That’s simple. First I’m going to become the Archbishop of Moonrebel. And then I have a whole series of steps to go through. By the way, I have a second ambition. I’m going to change the name of the Moonrite Region. It will be... the Heavenly Ox Region!”

The Captain’s eyes shone with dedication, and his voice echoed with pride.

The white-robed old man said nothing, and the frigid energy grew stronger as it slowly surrounded the Captain.

The Captain was pleased to see that, yet was also thinking that he hadn’t laid it on thick enough. After all, that frigid energy was spreading too slowly.

“I’m not finished!” he said loudly. “I have a third ambition. Ultimately, I’m going to eradicate that broken face in the dome of heaven. Then I’ll become the newest Ancient Emperor in Revered Ancient, and I’ll conquer the entire mainland! I’ll smash the holy lands with my fists and crush Brilliant Heaven with my feet. Countless species will bow to me, and the many heavens will prostrate to me.”

At this point, the Captain was so excited that he threw his head back and laughed heartily.

As he laughed, the frigid energy exploded, rushing toward him and surrounding him in the blink of an eye. It only took a moment for him... to turn into an ice sculpture. As a sculpture, he still maintained the laughing posture. He looked truly mad. Then he slowly sank down into the lake, ultimately disappearing into the void....

Clearly, the Moonrebel Congregation’s spirit automaton took his ambitions to be a scam, and thus sealed him as a punishment.

Back at the other lake, Xu Qing was getting very excited.

After some thought, he couldn’t come up with any reason not to experiment with his taboo poison. His only concern was whether or not the spirit automaton would realize what he was up to. After all, it would be a case of using the trial to achieve a personal desire. In order to forestall any misunderstandings, Xu Qing decided that the best thing would be to start by working on the cursequelling lozenge, then use that as a cover to do additional work. That way, if he were called out, he would at least have a way to explain things away.

With that, he waved his hand, causing a massive amount of medicinal plants to fly into his hands. He prepared each plant differently. He extracted sap from some, deveined others, catalyzed some, and grafted yet others.

The foundational pills he started working with were the cursequelling lozenge he had concocted on the outside. Those pills could reduce the curse by about ten percent, and he had concocted quite a few of them in his spare time recently.

As he started working with them again, he found that by adding the medicinal plants from the trial, the transformations that would occur were partly real and partly illusory. However, the lake itself ensured that whatever ingredients were added to a pill would fuse perfectly with it.

Most importantly of all, each medicinal plant was perfect in every way, which made the concocting process go a lot more smoothly.

If he needed something, he just asked for it, and it would appear instantly. If a given ingredient wasn’t old enough, he could just add age to it. If the medicinal effect wasn’t right, he could simply switch it out for another ingredient. All of the theoretical knowledge he had built up was now being employed all at the same time. He was even able to summon medicinal plants that he had never even laid eyes on before. Thanks to that, his skill in plants and vegetation advanced by leaps and bounds.

From a distance, it was possible to see Xu Qing seated crosslegged, his hands dancing back and forth as masses of medicinal plants swirled around him. As the various medicinal plants were catalyzed, the pill’s ability to reduce the curse increased. In fact, it was already getting close to the twenty percent point.

Seeing that got Xu Qing very enthused. Now he was sure that his previous research direction had been correct.

The main theory behind using plants and vegetation to reduce the curse effects was the principle of fighting poison with poison.

For one thing, the pills already contained some of Xu Qing’s violet moon power as their foundation, or you could say, the source of their power. Another factor was that the plants and vegetation had all come to exist within the invasion of the broken face of the god. As a result, they all had very unique medicinal properties. Those medicinal effects all contained certain levels of mutagen.

By using the dao of plants and vegetation imparted by Grandmaster Bai, he could use the technique of fighting poison with poison to suppress Crimson Mother’s curse.

Of course, that was easy to say. But to actually pull it off required a lot of experience and flexibility. And outside of this trial, it would have been very difficult for Xu Qing to do this using his own power alone. The most difficult aspect would have been the ingredients. There just weren’t enough precious materials for him to experiment with and eventually narrow down the correct formula. But here, that wasn’t a problem.

Xu Qing’s eyes shone brightly.

“Plants really are the key to opening the path to godhood,” he murmured. Of course, Torchlight had come to the same conclusion.[1]

In that manner, time passed.

Seven days passed in the trial, although on the outside it was only two hours. Most people would have no way of knowing about that. But because of the sundials inside of Xu Qing, and their gnomons, he was able to spot the changes to time.

For every two hours that pass outside, seven days pass in here. In other words, a day on the outside is almost three months in here?

Xu Qing was surprised at how powerful this place was. However, he also got the impression that it wasn’t exactly as the old man had said. There wasn’t unlimited time for the trial. There would definitely be an ending point.

It’s not as if I can just stay in here forever... there’s definitely a time limit.

With that thought in mind, Xu Qing switched pill formulas. Although it looked like he was still doing the same concocting work as before, the reality was that for every seven or eight plants he summoned, he would slip in a poisonous plant.

And when he had enough, he started working on a poison pill.

“Dropmoon crushstar leaf. Ninenether spirit centipede root. Undying zombiehowl blood....”

Xu Qing kept his facial expression under control and suppressed the excitement he felt in his heart. After summoning the various poisonous plants he needed, he started concocting poison pills. They were pills that, despite all of his progress in the dao of poison over the years, he had never been able to experiment with because of lacking the ingredients. As he worked, he felt increasingly relaxed. This place really was a holy land for alchemy cultivators.

Thanks to the work he was doing, his skill with plants and vegetation was increasing. He didn’t limit his practice to rare poisonous plants. He summoned other precious and unique ingredients. After all, everything he could ever want was available at his fingertips. He even attempted to craft some poisonous animals, but sadly, this place couldn’t create living beings. That was a bit disappointing.

However, he still had lots of plants and vegetation to work with. Days began to pass, and Xu Qing concocted more and more types of poison: jadespirit germgrain powder; yin-extinction rouge-crimson pills; three-headed zhen-feather pellets; cry of the thousand-nights deceased souls; heart-breaking soul-shattering serum; flameburn thundersoar powder; quinine suicide poison; halfside month; sevenbreath laughter; yangfire face; nine serenities bridge.

Xu Qing looked down at all of the multi-colored concoctions of various sizes. He wished he could take all of these medicines with him when he left.

With these poisons... my battle prowess would be far, far higher.

In the end, he could only sigh. Obviously, it wasn’t realistic to hope he could take the poisons out of the trial. Finally, he started consuming them to see how they worked.

Instantly, a tremor passed through him as the poison effects erupted. Around then, the surface of the mirror lake rippled, and the old man in white appeared.

1. The connections between plants, gods, Torchlight, and Bai Li were delved into in chapter 355, though there were bits and pieces of clues elsewhere as well. If you follow the footnote links back, you can eventually find the part of the story where Bai Li (who was one of the experimental god bodies) was revealed to be a huge plant, or at least have a plant form. ☜