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

"Transformation Pill?"

Gou An's gaze fell on the pill in the palm of Daoist Wenxu, and his brows furrowed slightly.

"This is it."

Master Wenxu smiled slightly, handed the pill to Gou An, and slowly explained, "The various humanoid demon cultivators in the City of Ten Thousand Demons did not all shed their beast forms through their own arduous cultivation."

"Nearly 60% of the demons in the city are low-level demon beasts that have forcibly condensed into human form by consuming transformation pills."

Gou An was greatly shocked. He held the pill and examined it for a long time. Then he brought it to his nose and smelled it carefully. The medicinal ingredients inside the pill were complex and varied, with the aroma of dozens of spiritual materials intertwined.

He couldn't help but exclaim, "If I had known there was such a shortcut in the world, who would still bury themselves in hard work and cultivate their spiritual realm?"

Master Wenxu shook his head slightly, his tone solemn: "Fellow Daoist, please do not take it so simply. Although this pill can help low-level demon beasts quickly take human form, it hides an irreversible and fatal side effect."

Gou An immediately looked up and asked, "What side effects?"

"Once ingested, one's cultivation will stagnate completely for the rest of their life." Master Wenxu explained the underlying reason: "The essence of the Transformation Pill is to overdraw the entire cultivation potential of a demon beast and forcibly generate the power of transformation."

"Once all potential is exhausted, further cultivation becomes extremely difficult, with almost no possibility of breakthrough. Once a demon beast consumes a pill, its cultivation level will be permanently fixed at a certain level for the rest of its life."

"I see." Gou An nodded in realization.

Master Wenxu continued, "Now, the City of Ten Thousand Demons is not only lacking alchemists in the Pill Hall, but also in all walks of life within the city."

"The demon race's reproduction rate is far slower than that of the human race, making it difficult to expand the population through natural reproduction. They can only rely on transformation pills to modify wild beasts and fill the labor shortage at the bottom."

"If the city were full of high-level demons who had cultivated themselves to human form, without these low-level demons to handle the miscellaneous tasks, the Ten Thousand Demon City would not be able to maintain its current stable and orderly state."

Gou An, intrigued by this, asked, "What kind of pills will I mainly refine after joining the Pill Hall?"

"This is the Transformation Pill." Master Wenxu smiled gently and set the rules: "The minimum daily output is twenty pills. As long as you meet the quota, you can use all the remaining time as you see fit. You can refine pills, cultivate, or travel as you please."

After saying that, he took out a jade slip with the formula for the pill and handed it to Gou An.

"I will give you seven days to familiarize yourself with the pill formula and practice refining it. After seven days, someone will come to collect the pills on time every day. Fellow Daoist, you have outstanding talent. I have high hopes for you if you cultivate the Dao of Alchemy diligently."

As soon as he finished speaking, Master Wenxu patted Gou An on the shoulder, turned around and walked out of the private alchemy room.

Gou An channeled a wisp of demonic power into the jade slip through his fingertips, and the complete method for making the Transformation Pill was fully displayed in his mind. There were a total of thirty-six auxiliary and main medicinal materials, and the process of combining them was extremely complicated.

He had never refined this kind of elixir before, so he could only learn by trial and error from scratch.

Fortunately, Master Wenxu assigned him six medicine slaves, all of whom had received specialized training and were familiar with all kinds of alchemical materials. As long as Gou An reported the names of the medicinal materials, they would quickly go to the storage shelf to retrieve them and prepare them.

For three consecutive days, Gou An refined more than ten batches of Transformation Pills.

Initially, due to difficulty in controlling the furnace temperature, several batches were scrapped in a row. After mastering the entire refining process, the success rate steadily increased.

The entire process of preparing materials, opening the furnace, and condensing the pills takes at most four hours to refine twenty Transformation Pills.

Most of the work of watching over the fire and sorting the medicinal herbs was done by the servants, so the job was relatively easy.

However, after producing a large batch of pills, Gou An had doubts and was unsure whether the pills were effective enough, so he urgently needed a test subject.

However, all six drug slaves had swallowed the Transformation Pill in their early years, so taking it again would have no effect.

After much thought, he caught a wild mouse that had sneaked into the alchemy room to steal spiritual herbs, forcibly stuffed a Transformation Pill into its mouth, and locked it in an iron cage to quietly observe its effects.

The medicine slowly spread, and the fist-sized rat's body rapidly swelled, its skin and flesh stretched, and limbs resembling those of a human were visibly growing.

Just as Gou An thought the drug trial was a success, the half-transformed rat's body suddenly exploded, splattering blood and flesh everywhere.

Gou An couldn't dodge in time and was covered in splattered.

He raised his hand to wipe the bloodstains from his face, utterly bewildered.

I strictly followed the recipe on the jade slip, carefully controlling the heat. The color and aroma of the finished pill were exactly as recorded. Where did I go wrong?

At this moment, a medicine slave timidly spoke up: "Master, beasts that have not yet condensed their demon cores cannot withstand the medicinal power of the Transformation Pill."

Gou An looked in the direction of the voice and saw that the little demon who was speaking had a pair of small cow horns on its head, and its voice clearly belonged to a little cow.

"How did you know about this?" Gou An asked.

The bull demon quickly bowed and replied, "Master Wenxu mentioned it casually before, and I've kept it in mind."

"Tell me everything else he said," Gou An pressed.

The bull demon dared not conceal the truth and replied truthfully: "The master said that the full medicinal power of the Transformation Pill must be stored in the demon core. If there is no demon core in the body to bear the immense medicinal power, the physical body will not be able to withstand the impact of the medicinal power and will directly explode and die."

Looking at the little bull demon, Gou An became somewhat interested and asked, "What level have you reached in your cultivation?"

"Master, when I reached the second rank, I was fortunate enough to obtain a Transformation Pill, which allowed me to transform into human form," the little ox replied respectfully.

"Swallowing this pill will lock your cultivation ceiling, and you'll most likely be stuck at the second tier for life, forever destined to be a lowly demon. Do you have any regrets?"

Little Niu shook his head, his tone calm and composed: "I have no regrets. The Monster Mountain Range has always been a place where the strong prey on the weak, and weak monsters live in constant fear. If I hadn't taken the Transformation Pill back then, I'm afraid I would have long since become food for other monsters, leaving no trace of my remains."

"Although I am just a lowly servant demon now, I can eat my fill and stay warm without having to hide all day and live in fear of being killed. Compared to that, my current life is better than ever."

Gou Anduo became increasingly curious about the calf in front of him, so he asked, "What's your name?"

"Replying to my master!" the calf replied respectfully, "I have no name; you simply call me 'Second Three'!"

"Your number?" Gou An asked.

"Yes!" the calf answered truthfully, "The others are called 24, 25, 26, 27, and 28!"

Gou An glanced at the other five medicine slaves; they were clearly not as intelligent as the calf in front of him.

Then he said, "From now on, you'll be the leader of these drug slaves!"

"Team leader?" Little Niu was clearly hearing this title for the first time.

"I'm the leader!" Gou An explained, "In this alchemy room, I'm the highest-ranking, you're second, and they're third!"

"Do you understand?"

After listening for a moment, the calf nodded and said, "I understand."

"Furthermore!" Gou An added, "I'll give you a nicer name!"

"Thank you, Master!" the calf exclaimed joyfully.

Gou An thought for a moment, then finally said, "I've decided, your name will be Niu Cuihua from now on!"