Chapter 359: Pill refining. |
Hong Xia jumped as Haru raised his voice. She then took a few steps back with a look of fear and shock on her face as it was uncharacteristic of him to shout as he had. From their past interactions she had thought that he was very tolerant but from the way he had just acted there was clearly something else on his mind that was more important than her.
"I'm sorry. It's just that you said we would talk after we finished eating. But you have just been sitting there for the last 20 minutes with your eyes closed. Is there something bothering you?" She asked as she looked down at Haru who was still sitting.
"It's nothing for you to be concerned about. I'm glad that you're able to move now. It's perfect timing too. We might need to leave this place later tonight." Haru said as he looked at Hong Xia who had already taken the initiative to dress in her sects clothes as their modern clothes stood out too much.
"What? We have to leave already? But I just recovered and I'm not sure if my cultivation is strong enough to be able to protect myself in this place." Hong Xia exclaimed with a confused expression on her face as Haru walked over to the bed and pulled out the bags that the guards had given to him in the morning before laying them down.
"You will be fine. I'm not going to let any harm come to you." Haru said before looking through the bags to see that they were full to the brim with medicinal plants along with a sheet of paper in each with the measurements needed in order to make the pills that Annabeth wanted.
"If you say so. But what are you doing now? It smells like herbs of some kind. Are you going to make some more pills like the one you gave to me that time in Beijing?" Hong Xia asked as she recalled the power of the pill that Haru had given to her one of the first times they had met. She didn't expect the powers to be as great as they were but the pill benefitted her a lot.
She looked at Haru with a hopeful look in her eyes before he sighed.
"Yeah, I'm making some pills so I'm going to need you to be quiet for a little bit. Are you able to do that?" Haru asked as he was getting a little bit annoyed by her constant questions. But she didn't reply. Instead, Hong Xia sat down in one of the chairs and waited for Haru to start in hopes that she would be able to learn how to refine pills by just watching him.
Haru sat down in the middle of the room and crossed his legs before laying the ingredients out around him in a circle. He then pulled out the list of measurements for each pill and put them in front of him to make it easier for him to read them.
It was as though he had entered a trance as his presence seemed to vanish as his breathing became silent and he looked relaxed before holding out his hand in front of his face.
Suddenly a handful of herbs shot up into the sky before catching fire and burning down into ash as Hong Xia watched.
She had seen older members of her sect refining pills in cauldrons before but she had never seen anyone produce fire from their body and directly burn the herbs with their own power. But she understood that it would require an inhuman amount of control over Qi and a mastery of the flames that he was wielding.
She sat in silence as she continued to watch Haru set herbs on fire. Some of them were burnt to a crisp upon touching the flames and others were slightly charred as Haru processed each herb before picking up a small jade bottle from the floor and throwing it up into the air towards a big ball of processed herbs that were floating within a red flame in front of his face.
A liquid splashed out from the bottle as it doused the fire and the herbs, causing golden light to emerge as a gust of wind shot through the room and blew open the windows.
Hong Xia opened her eyes as the light died down to see fifty small white balls were floating in the air in front of Haru's face before they all dropped to the floor.
"That's those done. That was quite simple for a new recipe… I did lose around 5% of the materials though. Oh well, they don't have anyone better to refine pills anyway. If they have an issue with that I will just take them for myself." Haru muttered to himself as he put the pills into an empty bottle one by one.
Hong Xia was simply too amazed to sit by and she forgot about the fact that she was asked to keep quiet and quickly jumped to her feet before yelling out.
"Was that it!? How in the world did you do that so quickly? Doesn't it usually take hours to form a single pill? How did you manage to make so many in just a few minutes?" She asked as she wanted to know the secret behind Haru's strange pill refining technique. But Haru just looked back with a blank expression as he didn't think what he had done was special.
It was just the normal way that he made them and the way that Li Jun had instructed him to do so. He didn't realise just how special it was and thought nothing of it. But in Hong Xia's it was nothing short of incredible. But just as she was about to ask him more questions as to where and how he learned to refine pills the way that he did there was a knock at the door.
Hong Xia turned and began to walk towards the door but Haru suddenly shot up from where he was sitting and grabbed her arm before pointing pushing her aside so that she wouldn't be visible from the door.
She looked at him for a moment with confusion but as she looked at his expression she realised that there might be something going on that he didn't want to tell her. She took a few steps back and watched as Haru opened the door a little before poking his head out.
"Sorry to disturb you. I have come to give you the monster beast cores from all feathered rabbits." One of the workers at the inn said as Haru opened the door to see the familiar sight of the woman that had doubted him earlier in the morning. She was holding a small leather bag out in her hand that contained the forty or so monster beast cores that they owed him.
"Oh, thank you. I was expecting something else…" Haru said as he was sure that when he heard the knock on the door he felt the presence of multiple people.
"Oh? Is that so? Did something happen? Or are you expecting visitors?" The woman asked with a weird facial expression. Haru wasn't sure what was going on but as the woman was talking she looked like something was bothering her. But as he watched her eyes he noticed that she kept trying to make eye contact with him before shifting her gaze to the left side of her to indicate something to Haru.
Haru nodded his head slowly as he understood what she meant before opening the door all the way and reaching out to the left side of the woman to find a man was standing to the side of the door, just out of sight from the way the room was positioned.
But before he could make a move, Haru grabbed him by the throat and lifted him up into the air to find that he was holding a dagger by his side which he soon dropped as he brought both his hands up to his neck to try to stop himself from being choked.
But it was no use. Haru's had gripped his neck tightly to the point where resisting was hopeless. He would have had more luck by trying to slash Haru with his knife as soon as he reached out. But it seemed as though he wasn't used to killing people or there would have been more of a fight.
Haru looked back down at the woman who gasped for breath as she sighed in relief as the look of worry had faded from her face now that she no longer had anything to fear but Haru wasn't done.
He then slammed the man down onto the floor before kicking the dagger away from his reach and then placed his foot against his chest to hold him down on the floor as he looked down into his eyes.
"Who are you?" Haru asked. But there was no response as the man tried his best to push Haru's foot away from him but he wasn't strong enough to move it even an inch.
"Fine, I don't care about you much. So tell me who sent you." Haru said as he demanded an explanation from the man but he just kept struggling before Haru looked at the woman with a questioning look.
"Fuck you! I'm not telling you shit!" The man shouted as Haru pressed down a little harder causing him to lose his breath a little.
"Do you have a company policy on what to do in situations like this?" Haru asked as he could see that the woman looked a little bit concerned.
"Well, this first thing would be to notify the guards. Then it is down to them whatever happens. But given that he threatened me on the staircase and described me before threatening to kill me if I didn't take him to you I think they would be likely to interrogate him before deciding his fate." The woman explained as Haru had an idea.
"Would you mind holding off on telling the guards for a few minutes? I would like to ask him a few questions for myself." Haru said with a smile as he looked down at the man who was still struggling.
"You want to interrogate him yourself? I mean I don't mind. But try not to hurt him on our property. It will leave a bad taste in our customer's mouths if they find out that someone was tortured here." The woman said with a hesitant look in her eyes.
She clearly didn't like the idea of Haru questioning the man but she conflicted as she didn't want to offend the person who had just brought a lot more business to their inn by catching a rare delicacy for them.
"I'm not going to torture him, that would get too messy and I don't want you guys to be cleaning blood out of your floors for a month. I have other ways to make him talk. And don't worry I will keep it down. No one will hear a single scream I promise." Haru said with a smile before sliding his foot backwards and kicking the man into the room that he was staying in.
"It won't take long," Haru said before closing the door behind him.
There was a loud bang from within for a moment before it went completely silent and the bartender outside could no longer hear even the sound of talking as Haru acted out his interrogation within the room.
