Yun Ruoyan shut her eyes and glanced over the ingredients in her pocket dimension once more, so she could take them out in a single instant during the refining process.

“I’m ready.”

She lit the furnace and tossed in the herbs following Qiuqiu’s previous ingredients, then modulated her flame and cycled it between red, orange, and yellow.

“Alright, now put in the extra ingredients I had you set aside earlier while making the soul-stealing pill. Honestly, the antidotes for low-grade poisons are the most troublesome to make.”

Yun Ruoyan didn’t understand why Qiuqiu had previously instructed her to set some ingredients aside, but everything made sense now: in certain cases, the ingredients used to make poison could serve as a primer to stimulate the antidote and enhance its effects.

“Mistress, if you can turn your spirit flame green now, you’ll be able to obtain a mid-grade antidote!”

Yun Ruoyan stared intensely at the flames roaring in the furnace and pushed her output of spiritual energy to its extremes.

In the furnace, the yellow frame burned incandescent, glowing brighter and brighter until it was a luminous white. From that whiteness came flecks of green, slowly spreading over the entirety of the flame until its color stabilized.

“You’ve done it, Mistress!”

Yun Ruoyan glanced at the green flame roaring in the furnace, murmuring, “I’ve broken through, I’m a fourth-rank pillmaster…”

Although Yun Ruoyan was already displaying signs of advancement, she still seemed as though she could hardly believe her accomplishment. She would truly have a fighting chance against Wang Meng in their pillmaking contest two years later.

Yun Ruoyan recovered the completed antidote, which Qiuqiu judged to be a regular mid-grade antidote. For Yun Ruoyan’s first attempt, this was no mean feat.

The next day, Yun Ruoyan and Yun Moxiao went to the Lin estate to visit Zhuo Yinfeng and Zhuo Lin’er. Yun Moxiao told his sister that Zhuo Lin’er had mostly recovered under Lin Qingchen’s care, and she and her sister were staying in a little cottage right by Lin Qingchen’s bamboo garden.

When Yun Ruoyan arrived at the garden, Zhuo Lin’er was getting ready to leave the cottage and head toward the bamboo garden to help take care of Lin Qingchen’s magical beasts.

“Why’re you heading to the garden too? Where’s your brother?”

Although Zhuo Lin’er’s complexion was much improved, her body was still rail-thin. She wore a pale green dress and looked just like a leaf, one could be blown away by the wind. Yun Ruoyan couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.

“Qingxue’s here, and my brother’s teaching her the way of the sword,” Zhuo Lin’er replied.

Zhuo Lin’er addressed Yun Ruoyan and Lin Qingchen as ‘Sister’, but Lin Qingxue as ‘Qingxue’. Although Lin Qingxue was slightly older than Zhuo Lin’er, the two of them bickered so constantly that Zhuo Lin’er had called her by her full name from the very beginning. Now that they had gotten close to each other, she dropped her surname as well.

Yun Ruoyan pulled on Zhuo Lin’er’s hand as she walked into the cottage’s backyard.

“Brother, Qingxue, Sister Ruoyan’s here,” Zhuo Lin’er shouted to the duo still brandishing their swords in the garden.

Lin Qingxue and Zhuo Yifeng both turned to them. Zhuo Yifeng had been teaching Lin Qingxue the appropriate posture for shooting a bow, but Lin Qingxue couldn’t seem to get it right. As a result, her arrows curved all over the place.

Exasperated, Zhuo Yifeng could only correct her posture from her back, half-hugging her as he taught her how to correctly pull on a bow and release an arrow. To someone looking on from afar, however, they would have looked unusually intimate.

Yun Ruoyan smiled at the two of them.

Faced with Yun Ruoyan’s knowing stare, even the usually thick-skinned Lin Qingxue began to blush. Zhuo Yifeng hastily let go of Lin Qingxue when he reacted, standing to the side with his bow.

His hemp garments had been replaced by a forest-green robe, giving him a refreshing look. With his bright, expressive eyes, it wasn’t a surprise that Lin Qingxue would be interested in him. Despite her usual distaste for gossip, Yun Ruoyan quite wanted to discuss the matter with Lin Qingchen at the moment.

Lin Qingxue blushed even harder when she saw Yun Ruoyan’s smile. “Sister Ruoyan, it’s been so long since you’ve come to visit! I was bored, so I had Brother Zhuo teach me how to use a bow.”

“That’s very good,” Yun Ruoyan replied, pinching Lin Qingxue’s rosy cheeks. “I’ll give you a bow if you do well in your studies.”

“Great!” Lin Qingxue was so happy that she jumped up and hollered, “Brother Zhuo, let’s keep practicing!”

Zhuo Yifeng handed the bow to Lin Qingxue. “Why don’t you practice on your own for a little? I need to head to your sister’s bamboo garden to help take care of her magical beasts. She told me that she would be heading to the apothecary early today, so…”

As soon as Zhuo Yifeng brought up the bamboo garden, Lin Qingxue’s face immediately turned brittle. Of the entire Lin mansion, the only place she was afraid of was her sister’s bamboo garden. Thinking about all the… strange creatures that her sister kept as pets was enough to make the hairs on the back of Lin Qingxue’s neck rise.

It was clear that Zhuo Yifeng knew about this weakness of hers, and he handed her the bow in his hands while hiding a smile. Then, he waved at Yun Ruoyan and Yun Moxiao, and all three headed to the bamboo garden to the side of the cottage.

“Ah, ah, wait for me!” Lin Qingxue caught up to the party before she was left behind.

The others stood in place as Yun Ruoyan turned to her cousin. “Are you planning on going to the bamboo garden with us? Aren’t you afraid of the little critters inside?”

“I’m not scared!” Lin Qingxue put her hands on her hips, refusing to admit the truth. “I just, I just don’t like how ugly they look!”

The others grinned.

“I’m fine with my sister taking care of pets, but she always chooses the weirdest ones!” Lin Qingxue frowned as she complained, “When I was little, I would frequently play with my sister in her garden. One day, I noticed that a carp had appeared in the little pond in her garden out of nowhere, and I curiously knelt down by the side of the pond to look at it. Suddenly, laughter bubbled out of the pond, and I was so frightened that I almost fell inside!”

She sighed dramatically before continuing, “And she even keeps this large, hairy centipede, so large it could coil around my entire body twice over!”

Their short trek to the bamboo garden was peppered by Lin Qingxue’s anecdotes.

When they entered the garden, they found Lin Qingchen sitting by the pond, feeding little Whitey. Hearing their footsteps, she turned around and waved at them.

Whitey’s head was sticking out of the pond as it chewed on the meat that Lin Qingxue had prepared for it. Not only had its wounds completely healed, it even seemed to have grown larger.

Lin Qingchen was dressed in pure white, and in front of her was Whitey’s white, bulbous head.

“My goodness!” Lin Qingxue squawked. “Sis, when did you get such a large, white snake?”

Lin Qingxue never ventured into the bamboo garden if she could help it, and Lin Qingchen didn’t usually discuss her beasts with her. She only knew that her sister had brought back quite a few mutated snake eggs from the imperial territory.

“It’s Whitey, and it hatched from one of the eggs we brought back,” Yun Ruoyan explained, before walking over to the pond.

Yun Moxiao and the Zhuo siblings followed suit, leaving only Lin Qingxue behind, standing near the entrance to the garden. Whitey glanced at them for the barest of moments before turning back to its food, as if they were strangers.

“Eh, this little fellow dares look down on me?” Yun Moxiao laughed. If not for Lin Qingchen stopping him, he wouldn’t have relented until Whitey formed a contract with him. At the time, he’d left quite a number of wounds on its little body.

Yun Moxiao had expected that Whitey would either be vengeful or deathly afraid, but it had simply disregarded him.

“Just be happy that it’s not harboring a grudge toward you,” Yun Ruoyan commented.

Whitey was enjoying its meal so much that the other beasts in the cages and forest also began calling out for food.

“Don’t worry, there’s plenty of food for all of you,” Zhuo Lin’er announced, before beginning to distribute it with her brother.

“I can’t believe you take care of so many beasts!” This was the first time that Yun Ruoyan had realized the extent of Lin Qingchen’s labor.

“Luckily, I have the Zhuo siblings here to help me,” Lin Qingchen replied with a smile. “Otherwise, it would take me four hours daily to feed them all.”

After Whitey finished its food and Lin Qingchen patted its brain, it slipped back into the water contentedly. Lin Qingchen turned and headed back to her quarters, with Yun Ruoyan and Yun Moxiao following behind.

“How long are you planning on standing there for?” As they neared her rooms, Lin Qingchen turned around and smiled at Lin Qingxue.

She was just about to follow her sister and cousins when Whitey suddenly did a flip-flop in the pond, revealing the entirety of its snake-like body.

Shocked by the sudden sight, Lin Qingxue’s foot froze in mid-air.

Whitey landed in the pond with a big splash. Along with the water came the dreadful laughter of the catfish that Lin Qingxue had feared, followed by the howls and chatters and clicks of the beasts that hadn’t yet been fed.

“I, I, I think I’ll just wait outside.” Lin Qingxue’s face turned green as she ran off in fright.

Lin Qingchen and Yun Ruoyan glanced at each other as they tried to hide their laughter.

“Sister Ruoyan, Cousin Moxiao,” Back in her rooms, Lin Qingchen turned to face them before stating solemnly, “There’ve been quite a few strange people lurking near the mansion and the apothecary these days. Could they be men dispatched by the Farsighted King?”

Yun Ruoyan and Yun Moxiao turned to each other.

“It’s very likely,” Yun Ruoyan concluded.

“Shall we catch one to interrogate?” Lin Qingchen asked.

“No, we’d better not. If we inadvertently alert them, the Farsighted King will surely send some experts over,” Yun Moxiao advised.

“In that case, what would you suggest?” Both girls looked to Yun Moxiao.