Nine Star Hegemon Body Art

Long Chen was surprised and confused. Which woman did he mean?

“That girl that fought with you at the beginning,” Yun Qi said solemnly.

“What? Does she have a problem?” asked Long Chen in confusion.

Grandmaster Yun Qi hesitated for a moment before saying, “Come with me.”

Long Chen followed grandmaster Yun Qi to the cultivation room they had gone to before. He couldn’t help being curious; she was just at the peak of Qi Condensation, so there was no reason for grandmaster Yun Qi to specifically warn him about her.

They entered the room and closed the door before grandmaster Yun Qi touched his spatial ring and took out a drawing.

Opening the drawing, Long Chen was started to see that it depicted a beautiful, delicate woman refining pills in front of an ancient medicinal cauldron.

What shocked him was that that woman in the drawing was almost exactly like that crazy woman he had encountered.

The only difference was that the woman in the painting was serene and full of peace, giving people a gentle feeling. The feeling which that crazy woman gave off was completely different.

“This is…?” Long Chen probingly asked. That drawing was extremely old. Just why had Yun Qi taken it out?

“The person in this drawing is my wife.” A rarely seen warmth appeared on grandmaster Yun Qi’s solemn face when he looked at the person in the drawing.

Long Chen’s mouth dropped. That was something he had never expected. For a moment he didn’t know what to say.

After a moment, Yun Qi gently put away the drawing and sighed, “My wife passed away a long time ago. When I first saw that woman, I thought I was hallucinating. It took me a long time before I calmed myself down. But as soon as that woman said she wanted to be my apprentice, I immediately felt my guard go up.”

“What? Does she have some kind of secret goal?” asked Long Chen.

Yun Qi smiled slightly and didn’t reply to that. “She is also a Pill Apprentice and has an excellent talent. She might even be better than you, so you have to be careful around her.”

Long Chen was somewhat mystified by this, but grandmaster Yun Qi no longer said anything about it. He took Long Chen’s jade tablet and carved his own special engraving on it.

That engraving had a trace of his Spiritual Strength. With it, Long Chen would be able to get quite a few precious medicinal ingredients from the alchemist guild’s medicinal room on credit.

He sent Long Chen out as soon as he finished that engraving. Countless questions bounced around in Long Chen’s head.

Perhaps the arrival of that crazy woman wasn’t a coincidence. If she had done it on purpose, then what was her goal?

Was she there to seduce grandmaster Yun Qi? But with his age, that didn’t seem too likely.

And if that had been the goal, shouldn’t she be a bit more docile? Who would fall in love with such a wild crazy woman?

Did grandmaster Yun Qi have some other secrets? Was it possible that she was some illegitimate daughter of his?

But that also didn’t sound right. If he had had an illegitimate daughter, she wouldn’t have anything to do with his wife, yet they looked so similar.

He got a headache from thinking about it, yet he still couldn’t figure it out. But in any case, grandmaster Yun Qi wouldn’t harm him, so he should just do as he said and be more careful of her.

He went directly to the medicinal ingredient room with his jade tablet. When he showed it off, the assistant’s expression immediately became extremely respectful.

Long Chen asked about the credit procedure. He learned that the first class credit users could borrow five million gold coins worth of medicinal ingredients that were limited to the first tier.

But Long Chen’s second class credit allowed him to borrow thirty million gold coins of first tier medicinal ingredients, as well as five sets of second tier medicinal ingredients.

This kind of result made this trip well worth it. With such a credit limit he would no longer need to be worried about not being able to afford medicinal ingredients.

Normally, if an alchemist could succeed in refining one out of five times, then he would end up breaking even. If he could succeed an extra time then he would make a great profit.

As for Long Chen with his Pill God memories, his chance of failure when refining a first tier medicinal pill was zero percent. If his Pill Flame wasn’t so weak, his efficiency in the number of pills per furnace would increase even more.

But when he thought about refining second tier medicinal pills, Long Chen decided not to try it. With his current Pill Flame’s strength, refining a second tier pill would tire him to death.

For the moment, he should continue focusing on condensing his FengFu Star. The current initial success of his FengFu Star still had an extremely great room for improvement. He wanted to condense his FengFu Star to its perfect state.

Long Chen wanted to spend all of his money to buy the FengFu Pill’s ingredients, but he was disappointed to find that the guild didn’t have that kind of quantity in stock.

Without any other choice, he bought fifty sets of the ingredients as well as a couple of other first tier medicinal ingredients. Once he refined them into medicinal pills, he could sell them to the guild and make money that way.

Martial arts were prevalent within the Phoenix Cry Empire, and with so many people and adventurers, medicinal pills were always in high demand and were in a situation where the supply could never meet the demand. 

Fortunately, the alchemist guild had a conscience and didn’t evilly increase the price; otherwise, the guild would definitely start making money hand over fist.

Long Chen was planning on going straight to his room after leaving the guild. But before he got home, he suddenly heard a bunch of shouts and curses, so he hastily walked over to look.

He saw ten servants were currently beating someone. There was a very round, fat, middle-aged man pointing at that person while cursing.

“What’s going on here?” he asked of a man watching the chaos.

“Hehe, you’ll laugh to death once you hear it. Do you see that chimney that’s over two hundred meters tall? It was built by that kid. The boss came to do an inspection today, and when he saw it, he almost died of anger. That idiot read the blueprints upside down. He was actually supposed to be building a well, hahaha….”

Long Chen also choked on his laughter when he heard that. Did people like that really exist in this world? Seeing that person being beaten on the ground, his heart shook slightly.

That person didn’t seem to be that old; he probably wasn’t even older than Long Chen. But his body was exceptionally long and strong. He was just lying on the ground and letting those people hit him without retaliating.

What shocked Long Chen was that whenever those people’s punches or kicks landed on his body, an indescribable energy came out of his body and deflected them away. 

Without Long Chen’s shocking Spiritual Strength, it would be impossible to notice that faint ripple. But as for that youth, there were no spiritual energy fluctuations from him and so he definitely wasn’t a cultivator.

That youth simply lay there for a long time without reaction, and the result was that the people beating him eventually got tired, their hands and feet starting to ache.

“Damn, he really angers me to death. Just how much money is this idiot going to cost me? Beat him to death!”

That fat boss became angrier whenever he looked at the huge chimney in front of him. He repeatedly cursed and went over to kick him a couple of times.

“Stop.” 

“Damnit, who do you think you are?” That boss was so angry he didn’t even look at who was speaking before cursing. Only then did he look for the speaker.

As soon as he did, he immediately started to sweat and stuttered, “Young… master….”

“Just stop. Here are a hundred gold coins, enough to tear down the chimney and build a new well.” Long Chen was too lazy to argue or haggle with such a person, so he just directly threw a bag of gold coins to him. If he could resolve a problem with just a little money, then he was disinclined to take further action.

The others all saw this and quickly stopped. The fat boss quickly said, “Young master, this…”

“Take it and get out of here.” Long Chen frowned and his voice became cold.

When he looked at that man’s face, Long Chen knew that he was an idiot who would try to form some kind of good relation with him. So he directly ordered him away; this kind of person would make him lose face.

“Yes, yes, I’ll leave right away.”

He quickly brought everyone away dejectedly. 

“Little brother, please get up,” said Long Chen to the youth who was still just lying on the ground.

The youth seemed as if he was sleeping. Only when Long Chen called out did he blankly raise his head and realize that the people beating him had gone.

“Are you the person who saved me?” he asked confusedly.

“Get up and then we’ll talk,” smiled Long Chen. That youth seemed to be one hundred percent honest and kind, giving people a good impression.

When he stood up, the people who had been watching the fuss all let out shocked cries. While he had been lying on the ground, they had only realized that he was a bit big, but now that he stood up, he completely shocked everyone.

He was approximately three meters tall. He was practically a giant, and he gave people an extremely pressuring feeling.

“How tall.” Long Chen was also surprised. In front of him, everyone else there had become children in comparison.

“Why didn’t you fight back when they were beating you?” Seeing how strong-bodied he was and the fact that the people attacking him weren’t martial artists, Long Chen believed he could have easily knocked them all down.

“They said I did something bad, so I couldn’t fight back when they hit me,” he simple-mindedly replied.

Long Chen shook his head. This huge fellow might be strong, but it seemed his intelligence was still at the level of a child. No wonder he was so honest and naïve. But to mistake a well in the blueprints and end up building a huge chimney, that kind of intelligence was definitely worrying.

“Where’s your house?”

“I have no house. Does your house need any hard labor? I’m very big, and I don’t need a salary as long I get some food. I’m very hungry,” he implored.

Just as he was about to reply, someone reminded him, “Young master, don’t be fooled. This fellow can easily eat a whole bull in an instant. Taking him in isn’t profitable.”

“No, as long as there’s rice it’s fine. I don’t need meat,” he somewhat urgently said.

“Fine, come with me. What’s your name?” asked Long Chen.

“I’m called Wild Bull. Thank you, big bro,” Wild Bull happily said.

“Hm, I’ll call you Wilde in the future. You can just call me brother Long.” Long Chen nodded.^[1]

“Okay brother Long.” Wilde straightforwardly nodded his head.

The people in the crowd left behind by Long Chen and Wilde all became jealous. They were jealous of that idiot who had become favored by a noble heir. Stupid people really did have stupid luck.

On the road, Long Chen asked Wilde about his past. Wilde said that he had been picked up by some nice people, but once he turned five, an epidemic took the lives of everyone in his village except for him.

He had managed to roam around all the way to the imperial capital. He was able to get food from people by trading labor, but because his appetite was too big, he was quickly turned away, so his everyday life was extremely bitter.

“Wilde, you can follow me in the future. I won’t let you be hungry again.” Sympathy arose in Long Chen’s heart.

As the saying went, arrogant people end up with arrogant people, while sufferers end up with other sufferers. Although the two of them had different statuses, they had both gone through much pain. They weren’t that different except that Long Chen had managed to turn his luck around just recently.

As they walked, they ended up in a wide road when suddenly startled shouts rang out and a massive silhouette shot past them.

That was a luxurious carriage being pulled by a Scarlet Yak, a first rank Magical Beast. Its wild pulling took over half the entire road, not taking the surrounding people into any consideration.

A five-year-old girl was playing on the road when she suddenly saw the giant Scarlet Yak and was immediately scared stiff. She was petrified, unable to even dodge. At any second, it would run her over.

Long Chen coldly snorted, stepping forward explosively, causing several of the sturdy floor tiles beneath his feet to shatter. He was like a bolt of lightning, immediately reaching and grabbing the girl, hastily pulling her to the side.

The carriage shot past the two of them just as he stabilized himself. Long Chen thought that that would be it, but an angry cry rang out.

“What lowly slave dares block my path? You’re asking for death!”

Along with this cold shout, a long whip whistled through the air, shooting towards Long Chen.

^[1] Wild Bull is translated from Man Niu 蛮牛. The Man can also mean Barbarian. Long Chen says he’ll call him 阿蛮, A’Man. The A’ is used to signify kinship. 

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