Chapter 22: Portable Automatic Alchemy Furnace

Ding Ling stuffed the portable automatic alchemy furnace into her sparkling pink bag and walked past the teaching building, carrying a pile of clothes.

Through the corridor glass, she saw Chen Dahai standing outside the A Class classroom door with several people in uniform.

Some of them held mirrors, shining them along the corridor all the way to the A Class classroom door. Others held square white plastic boxes with extended antennas, as if picking up some kind of signal.

Another person was crouched on the ground, drawing an array with spirit stone powder.

Ding Ling glanced over, knowing Chen Li had not told the truth.

If he had said where his hand had been pricked, these people would be searching Greenhouse No. 1 instead.

Chen Dahai turned his head and spotted a suspicious figure in black clothes, black pants, and a baseball cap standing outside the teaching building. “You! What class are you from?”

It was the weekend, and with today’s special circumstances, the security guard should not have let anyone wander onto campus.

Ding Ling was holding her things with one hand while the other was still charred, leaving only a single free finger to lift the brim of her cap.

Chen Dahai had already rushed out of the building. When he saw it was Ding Ling, he stopped in his tracks, somewhat surprised. “Ding Ling? You went off campus?” Why is she dressed like a boy?

“Mm.”

Between implementing the school’s new points system and dealing with a student being cursed on campus, Chen Dahai was busy off his feet. He had originally arranged for a dorm supervisor to look after Ding Ling’s daily needs.

But Ding Ling was an independent kid who would not make demands even with a supervisor around, so it was fine for her to look after herself.

Assuming Ding Ling had just gone to the commercial street outside the school gates, Chen Dahai wanted to ask a few more questions.

Right then, his phone rang. It was Vice Principal Gao, pressing him, “Director Chen, how is the investigation going? The Ye family sent someone to ask again.”

“We’re in the middle of it. This sort of thing is tricky to track down, and the machines aren’t that sensitive.” They were trying both traditional and modern methods.

First, using a dharma mirror to illuminate residual traces of the curse. Second, using machines to detect fluctuations in the curse’s spiritual energy.

Neither had yielded anything; the search area was simply too broad.

“Vice Principal Gao, does Student Chen have an exact location? If we keep searching like this, it’ll take more than two days to cover everything.”

“If he could speak, we would’ve asked him already! Hurry up, we have to find the source of that curse!” Vice Principal Gao hung up right after saying that.

It was not that Chen Li did not want to speak; he simply could not anymore.

After being rushed to Jiangcheng First Cultivation General Hospital, a full-body examination still failed to identify why his wound would not stop festering with pus. A healing array could only temporarily relieve the symptoms without easing his agony. While still inside the array, he had already passed out from the pain.

Chen Li’s father begged the Ye family for help. The Ye family sent someone to examine him, and after taking a look, that person concluded Chen Li had been cursed.

“A curse is a broad concept. An ordinary person hurling foul-mouthed hexes is a form of cursing. If someone with stronger spiritual energy does it, the cursed party is likely to fall on hard times and suffer a bit of bad luck.”

“However, your son’s condition is no ordinary curse. Someone has written a curse slip.”

Since even a healing array proved useless, that person must have written Chen Li’s name on the curse slip, which was why his condition kept worsening.

“If…”

Chen Li’s father’s heart leaped into his throat. “If what?”

“If the other party also weighed down the curse slip and curse array with a cursed object, meaning something personal from your son, like hair or fingernails, it will be even harder to resolve. Still, every curse comes with a condition to break it.”

“What kind of condition?”

“For instance, once a certain task is fulfilled, the curse is lifted.”

This was a tradition passed down since ancient times in both East and West. The West’s most famous witch’s curse was from that fairy tale: a prince turned into a beast, and only by finding someone who truly loved him before the rose withered could the curse be broken.

That was the condition.

As for how to track it down, that person had also provided a method: locate the place with lingering hex energy.

Chen Li’s father never imagined anyone would dare curse his son right at school. He went straight to Secretary Liu. “If they dare curse my son today, they’ll dare curse the young master tomorrow…”

Secretary Liu smiled faintly. “Oh? That is impossible.” He knew what Chen Dashan was trying to do with this roundabout talk; he wanted to borrow the Ye family’s influence to drag that person out.

Chen Da wanted to press further, but Secretary Liu cut in, “However, danger must always be eliminated.”

Whether it was done by a teacher or a student, it was a potential danger, and his purpose was to eliminate these potential dangers for the young master.

With Chen Li unconscious and unable to speak, several students from A Class were questioned.

They recalled, one after another, “Didn’t Chen Li’s hand get cut by a piece of paper?”

Ever since then, the wound on his hand had grown worse and worse until it began to reek. Sitting in class with him, the stench was enough to make anyone gag.

That made things troublesome; the cut could have come from any piece of paper.

The people hired by the Ye family claimed to be specialized in tracking curses, but the school was too large and had too many students, so technical tracking would take far too long.

Taking advantage of the empty campus, they wanted to find the curse site first.

A Class, B Class, C Class, and D Class were all searched once. By the time they arrived at the door of Class F, more than two hours had passed, and those people were dripping with sweat.

“I say we can skip Class F, can’t we?” the person holding the mirror said. “The students in Class F wouldn’t have the ability to do this, right?” Chen Li’s wound was so severe; how could a Class F student possibly manage it?

Chen Dahai, in the spirit of fairness and openness, had actually wanted to inspect Class F as well.

But those people added, “We still have so many places left to check. Any later and the sun will go down.” They hadn’t even checked the sports field or the greenhouse yet. With a place this huge, relying on a single mirror and one curse receiver, when would they ever finish?

Ding Ling had spent two hours in her dorm studying the portable alchemy furnace.

The dorm matron had initially thought some boy was trying to barge into the girls’ dormitory. Before she could speak up to stop him, she saw that charred hand. “Oh, it’s Ding Ling…”

Seeing what she was carrying, the matron also assumed she had gone shopping at the commercial street next to the school. Why did this young girl buy boys’ clothes?

“The main cafeteria is closed on weekends, and high-power appliances aren’t allowed in the dorms. Go eat at the faculty cafeteria.”

Ding Ling nodded, went back inside, closed the door, and took a portable alchemy furnace out of her small bag.

This shouldn’t count as a high-power appliance, right?

In the past, alchemy required burning talismans when setting up the altar, inserting precious swords and ancient mirrors into the cauldron, and picking an auspicious day to begin. Now, all of that had been simplified: talismans were engraved directly inside the furnace, while the sword and mirror were embedded into the lid.

Ding Ling had examined it closely. In terms of shape, this second-hand alchemy furnace looked identical to the second-hand rice cookers being sold alongside it, though the rice cookers actually looked a bit sleeker.

Gold, copper, silver, spirit stones, mica…

About twenty small glass vials were laid out on the desk as Ding Ling flipped through the simple instruction manual.

She wanted to refine the most basic pill: a Great Restoration Pill.

It was an entry-level pill that replenished energy and stamina. She had even bought one from the black market. While it was genuine medicine, its efficacy was quite poor. She could refine a much better one to sell to Sister Hong.

As Ding Ling went about her preparations, the cluster of soul fire in her chest flickered gently, like a curious child watching her intently.

“The library is closed on weekends. Once Monday comes, I’ll go look up how Taiyi Zhenren^[1] used lotus roots to craft a human body.” Once she crafted a body of her own, she would return this one to “her.”

The soul fire remained completely still. Even “she” had long given up hope.

Yet everything Ding Ling did brought “her” satisfaction. “She” wanted to stay; “she” still wanted to see Grandfather one more time.

Ding Ling placed the ingredients for the Great Restoration Pill into the rice-cooker-shaped alchemy furnace one by one, set the time and temperature, and prepared to press the switch.

The dorm matron knocked on the door. “Ding Ling, time for dinner! The faculty cafeteria is only open for an hour, so don’t miss it.”

An alchemy furnace couldn’t be left unattended during refinement, so Ding Ling hid the furnace in the wardrobe, put on a baseball cap, and headed to the cafeteria.

The people investigating the curse earlier were also eating in the cafeteria. The one holding the dharma mirror fiddled with his mirror. “The energy is too chaotic. There’s no way to pin anything down.”

A school was hardly a pure, flawless sanctuary. Whatever emotions ordinary humans experienced, these students harbored as well.

In fact, because the environment was relatively enclosed, the colorful auras appeared even denser in the dharma mirror.

After bustling about for half the day, they couldn’t detect a thing. Nothing at all!

Ding Ling happened to walk past carrying her large stainless-copper bowl. Master Wang was working overtime, and the moment he saw her, he cheerfully scooped a generous spoonful of stir-fried pork into her bowl.

The image of her holding her bowl was reflected in the dharma mirror, and the man holding it trembled. “Th-This person…” Was it because she was dressed in all black? Wafts of black energy were seeping from her body, far thicker than what had been on Chen Li!

Not only the man with the dharma mirror, but the antenna on the white box held by the other man also spun frantically, beeping non-stop.

Chen Dahai glanced over. “Oh, her. Before the semester started, a few students broke into a secret realm and accidentally triggered a formation.”

Spell formations shared similarities with curses, punishing whoever triggered them. Ding Ling’s arm had not healed yet and her spiritual root was ruined, so of course she would carry the lingering aura of a curse.

The two men exchanged a look. With a ruined spiritual root and a crippled arm, how could she possibly write a curse slip?

With a tsk, they put away their instruments.

“Well, surviving all that couldn’t have been easy for her.”

Ding Ling quickly wolfed down her stir-fried pork over rice and returned to the dorm, locking the door tight before plugging in the automatic alchemy furnace.

She pressed the switch.

As she watched over the furnace, she thought, Chen Li should be coming clean soon, shouldn’t he? No matter who he tells, as long as he genuinely reflects on his actions once, the curse will lift.