Starting as a stray dog, I embarked on a journey of cultivation.

Faced with Gou An's explanation, Master Wenxu frowned slightly.

"So that's how it is!" He nodded, it was unclear whether he believed it or not.

Gou An nodded. Since the other party wasn't asking anymore, there was no obligation to continue answering.

Master Xu was indeed very curious about this matter. He picked up his wine cup, thought for a while, and then asked, "Fellow Daoist Gou, do you know exactly where this snow mountain containing the ancient pagoda is located in the snowy region?"

"I don't know about that!" Gou An shook his head. "On my way back, I encountered a blizzard and lost my way. I barely managed to leave the snowy region, and I can't tell which way is which. I have no idea where I am."

"And what about Lord Crimson Flame Mountain?" Master Wenxu asked again, "He's dead. Do you know what happened?"

"How would I know that?" Gou An replied with a prepared explanation: "When I came out of the tower, there was no one outside anymore. Later, when I got to the outside of the snowy region, I realized that I had been trapped in the tower for decades, while only five months had passed in the outside world."

"I see!" Master Wenxu nodded slowly after hearing this. "If that's the case, then you really don't know about the death of Lord Chiyan Mountain."

"Why?" Gou An asked deliberately.

Master Wenxu smiled and said, "Because I heard that when the Crimson Flame Mountain Lord's life lamp went out, only half a month had passed since you left. At that time, you were still in the tower, how could you have known?"

"That's true!" Gou An nodded with a smile, but then asked curiously, "What exactly is the Life Lamp?"

"It requires a type of innate spiritual jade to be refined, and it can store a trace of a cultivator's primordial life force within it!" Master Wenxu explained. "If the cultivator's physical body dies, the primordial life force within the spiritual jade will also quickly extinguish, thus revealing whether the person is alive or dead!"

At this point, Master Wenxu took the initiative to introduce himself again.

"Many major sects set up life lamps for their core disciples who travel outside the sect to ensure their safety."

"It's a pity that the production cost of this life lamp is quite high, and most sects or forces can only make it for a few of their most important people."

After listening to the explanation, Gou An nodded: "I see."

Then the human and the demon started talking about other topics. It was Gou An who took the initiative and deliberately shifted the focus of the conversation to Wenxu Zhenren.

Fueled by the alcohol, Master Xu began to recount his past and stories.

Gou An was somewhat surprised by this.

The Venerable Wenxu was originally a core disciple of the Hanhai Sect, one of the Four Great Heavenly Sects!

The Hanhai Sect is located at the southernmost point of the continent, right next to the sea.

The reason he left the sect and ended up in the City of Ten Thousand Demons was actually out of necessity.

Although the sect is one of the Heavenly Sects, its upper echelons have long been solidified, and the relationships between them are intricate and complex, divided into several factions.

Although the sect leader was at the peak of the Nascent Soul stage, he was already old.

In order to transcend tribulation and ascend to immortality, he has been in seclusion for many years and has long since stopped caring about sect affairs.

As a result, all affairs of the sect, large and small, were handed over to the elders for management.

These elders knew that if the sect leader successfully transcended the tribulation, the position of sect leader would be vacant.

If one fails to transcend the tribulation, one's soul will be severely damaged, and one will naturally relinquish the position of sect leader, leaving it vacant.

They all wanted to become the next sect leader and were trying to win over disciples to their side.

It was in this environment that Master Wenxu was ostracized and, after failing to achieve his ambitions, left the sect and became a wandering cultivator.

More than a hundred years ago, Master Wenxu came to the Monster Mountain Range to collect herbs. He unexpectedly encountered the recruitment of demon cultivators by the City of Ten Thousand Demons, so he followed them into the City of Ten Thousand Demons.

Only then did he gain a foothold in the City of Ten Thousand Demons by relying on his alchemy skills, eventually establishing the Hall of Ten Thousand Pills and recruiting several cultivators, including the Nine Furnaces True Man.

After drinking to their hearts' content, Gou An made an excuse to leave.

Back in his courtyard, Gou An immediately took out a hangover pill and swallowed it, and the hazy drunkenness slowly subsided.

After closing the door, Gou An immediately took out the Palm Heaven Map, opened it, and took a look.

At this moment, in the small world of the Palm Heaven Map, the largest spiritual field was planted with spiritual tobacco, which Gou An needed.

It seems that this thing has only just sprouted. Even with a spirit-gathering array set up in the spirit field, it will take several years for it to grow into a mature plant.

Gou An didn't want to wait that long, so he poured spiritual energy into it to speed up the flow of time in the small world.

Feeling the depletion of his spiritual energy, Gou An took out another bag of spirit stones to accelerate the power supply of the Heavenly Palm Diagram.

As time accelerated, Gou An could see with his naked eye that the spirit tobacco in the spirit field in the picture was growing rapidly.

After accelerating for several hours, Gou An saw that the spirit tobacco in the spirit field was growing well, so he stopped accelerating.

Gou An was very satisfied with the result.

He then placed the opened Heavenly Palm Diagram into the wardrobe, and with a swift movement, transformed into a stream of light and entered the diagram. At the same time, the wardrobe door closed automatically.

When the dazzling white light before Gou An's eyes dissipated, he had already appeared in the world of the Palm Heaven Map, standing right at the edge of the entire spiritual tobacco field.

Looking at the entire field of tobacco, Gou An was so happy he couldn't stop smiling.

In Gou An's eyes, these were not spiritual plants, but spiritual stones, living spiritual stones.

Just then, as if they had discovered someone entering from outside the map, Liu Dayong and Pig Old Nine led a group of lesser demons to surround them.

Upon seeing that it was Gou An who had entered the picture, Liu Dayong immediately stepped forward: "Dao Master, what brings you here today?"

Gou An smiled and said to Liu Dayong, "I came in because the spirit tobacco has matured, and I just happened to have a new task for you."

Liu Dayong and Zhu Laojiu exchanged a glance, clearly unaware of what Gou An meant by the new mission.

Gou An didn't explain much, but simply took out the last two spirit cigarettes and handed them to Liu Dayong and Zhu Laojiu, lit them for them, and told them the correct way to use them.

Liu Dayong and Zhu Laojiu tried the spirit smoke somewhat awkwardly, and their eyes widened in surprise, as if they had discovered a new world.

The other lesser demons around them were all excited when they smelled the spiritual smoke.

"This spirit smoke is made from this spirit tobacco!" Gou An said to the crowd, "I've come here to teach you how to make it!"

In the following period, Gou An silently controlled the Heavenly Diagram within the world depicted in the diagram, making the flow of time within it slower than that outside.

They then began to personally teach Liu Dayong and Zhu Laojiu, the core members, each step of the process of making spirit smoke.

Fearing they wouldn't learn it all at once, I deliberately had different people learn different steps to speed things up.

Luo Meng, who had been brought in earlier, was also in the group. Now that he knew Gou An's true identity, he was somewhat restrained.

Although he was just an ordinary person, he lived a fairly good life after entering the picture.

The main reason was that Gou An had specifically instructed Liu Dayong to take special care of him, so he didn't need to do any hard or tiring work every day, and his life was simpler than outside.

He also developed a deep interest in cultivation, but due to his advanced age and depleted spiritual roots, he made little progress.

Xuan Kongzi, however, remained in seclusion, and there was no news of him whatsoever.

Gou An didn't intend to bother him, since he didn't need him right now.

After teaching everyone in the Heavenly Palm Diagram for seven or eight days, and once they had fully mastered the method of making spiritual smoke, Gou An left the world within the diagram.

Once the wardrobe door in Gou An's room reopened, Gou An flew out of the diagram and landed steadily, immediately storing the Palm Heaven Diagram into his palm space.

At this time, only a little over an hour had passed since Gou An entered the Palm Heaven Diagram.

Even with the replenishment of spirit stones, which accelerated and slowed down the flow of time in the small world, Gou An was still exhausted and eventually fell asleep on the bed.

Gou An slept soundly until noon the next day before going out.

When Gou An came out, the several demon servants in the courtyard stood respectfully on both sides, waiting for Gou An's orders.

"It's nothing, go find a cool place to rest!" Gou An waved to them and walked out of the courtyard.

After strolling around the main alchemy hall area, Gou An noticed that many alchemists were gathered in twos and threes, chatting and laughing.

Since everyone here is an alchemist, they naturally have many things in common to talk about.

However, Gou An noticed that there was still some distance between human alchemists and demon alchemists.

Basically, it was a gathering of demon cultivators and human cultivators.

There are no alchemy tasks at the moment, so everyone is mainly talking about refining the ancient alchemy recipe fragments they received yesterday.

Gou An overheard a conversation between several alchemists, and found that the contents of the fragments they received were different for each of them.

Many people even started exchanging pill formulas with each other, since each alchemist is good at different types of pills, and exchanging a formula that one is better at will naturally increase the success rate.

Inside the General Alchemy Hall, all alchemy materials can be obtained from the warehouse.

The person in charge of the Pill Hall warehouse is True Man Xuanding, who is also the old cat.

Under the old fox's arrangement, the three elders were each responsible for different tasks.

Master Wenxu is in charge of distributing pill-making tasks and coordinating the Pill Hall, Master Xuanding is in charge of retrieving materials from the Pill Hall warehouse, and Master Heijiao is in charge of inspecting finished pills.

Although Master Wenxu appears to be the head of the three elders, in reality, Xuanding and Heijiao are more trusted by the old fox.

Because the warehouse with the most lucrative profits and the final inspection of the finished pills would not pass through his hands.

After all, they were all demon cultivators, while only True Person Wenxu was a human cultivator.

So although the old fox seemed to value human cultivation more, he actually still had some prejudices.

It's just that people nowadays have better alchemy skills than alchemists, so we must make good use of them.

It's probably impossible for humans and demons to truly be free of barriers and prejudices.

When Gou An passed by Long Youzi's courtyard, he didn't go out to discuss alchemy with others. Instead, he was studying alchemy formulas by himself in the courtyard, extremely focused.

Furthermore, they have already applied for a considerable amount of spiritual materials and seem to have an idea in mind, preparing to begin refining a batch.

Gou An smiled slightly. This Long Youzi was indeed capable, but he was too flamboyant and greedy.

He started preparing to refine the ancient pill early in the morning, clearly wanting to prove that he was better than everyone else.

Unfortunately, such a personality makes it very dangerous for him to cultivate alone in the City of Ten Thousand Demons, which is full of monsters.

Just then, Long Youzi suddenly looked up at Gou An, and the two of them locked eyes.

"Fellow Daoist, it's rather boring to just watch from outside. Why don't you come in and take a closer look?"