Chapter 55: The Medicine Boy's Secret: The Ambition of Automated Alchemy

When Shen Yan carried Pei Yue out of the cold pond, the sky had just begun to lighten with the first hint of dawn. She leaned against his shoulder, breathing steadily, her complexion having regained a touch of color. The Star-Shattering Token Imitation behind her right ear was no longer burning hot, as if it had completed the authentication of some ancient contract. The sensation of his fingertips pressed against her chest still lingered—it wasn’t a Data Stream that could be explained by Code, but an indescribable resonance.

But he had no time to dwell on it.

As he turned a corner and passed by the Medicine Hut of Medicine Valley, he heard a chaotic cacophony of clattering and banging from inside, mixed with the frantic stomping of an old man: “The heat! The heat is off again! If this batch of hundred-year Vitality Nourishing Pills explodes, even if all my work points for the month are deducted, I still won’t be able to afford the loss!”

Shen Yan looked up and saw a gray-haired, deeply wrinkled old Medicine Boy rushing frantically between twenty Pill Furnaces, adjusting the spiritual flames one moment and flipping through medicinal texts the next, gripping his medicine pestle so tightly it seemed about to spark. Each furnace operated at a different temperature—some emitted black smoke, others spewed white steam—and the pill formation rate was visibly abysmal.

Just as he frowned, the System Interface in his mind automatically popped up:

【Detected inefficient alchemy process】

【Recommend adopting a microservices architecture, with independent temperature control for each furnace and unified resource scheduling】

【Generate automated alchemy script?】

Shen Yan was taken aback for a moment, then chuckled. “Wow, you even want to manage alchemy?”

He glanced down at the person in his arms and whispered, “Do you think I should give it a try? After all… you’re the one who said, ‘You’ll write Code that won’t crash.’”

Pei Yue didn’t open her eyes, but her eyelashes fluttered slightly, as if nodding in her dream.

Shen Yan handed her over to a passing Medical Cultivator Disciple and turned to enter the Medicine Hut.

“Old brother, lend me a blank Jade Slip.”

The Medicine Boy looked up and saw a young man in a soaked Grid Shirt who didn’t look like any expert. He waved dismissively. “Go away, go away! We’re very busy here. Don’t cause trouble.”

Shen Yan wasn’t annoyed. He simply took out his phone, tapped twice in the air, and a beam of golden light shot into the Jade Slip.

“Starting now, these twenty furnaces are under my control.”

Before the words had fully left his mouth, the flames in all the Pill Furnaces shuddered in unison, as if recalibrated by an invisible hand. The previously wild and erratic flames instantly became gentle and uniform.

The Medicine Boy’s eyes widened, and the pestle in his hand clattered to the ground.

“You… you tampered with the Formation? Impossible! This furnace cluster doesn’t have any interconnected Formation Patterns!”

“It’s not a Formation.” Shen Yan inserted the Jade Slip into the central groove of the furnace platform. “It’s a Program.”

He sat cross-legged, his fingertips sliding rapidly across the phone Screen, muttering under his breath: “Main control Module Initiate, Spiritual Energy supply allocated by Priority; Subsystem A, independent PID temperature control for each furnace, error margin within three degrees; Subsystem B, medicinal ingredients sorted by aging year, first-in-first-out Queue loading… Safety mechanism activated, automatic flame reduction upon overheating, real-time Anomaly alerts.”

With his declaration of “Compile complete,” the entire row of Pill Furnaces hummed simultaneously. Faint green smoke seeped from the gaps between the lids, all in the same steady rhythm, like breathing.

The Medicine Boy stood with his mouth agape, unable to close it for a long while. “This… this isn’t Alchemy… This is… taming fire?”

“It’s called automated production.” Shen Yan grinned. “From now on, you Medicine Boys won’t have to stay up all night watching the furnaces. You can collect pills even while lying in bed.”

That night, Shen Yan stayed in the Medicine Hut to debug the System. The Medicine Boy initially refused to believe it was possible and secretly disconnected one of the furnaces. Yet, in less than half an hour, the furnace reignited on its own, and a line of text appeared on the Jade Slip:

【Warning: Illegal disconnection of temperature control node】

【Self-healing protocol triggered, forced restart of heating program】

The old man dropped to his knees on the spot.

“Immortal! This Jade Slip of yours must be alive!”

“More precise than alive,” Shen Yan tapped away at the Code. “It learns.”

But problems soon arose.

Early the next morning, Furnace Three suddenly began shaking violently, fine cracks appearing on its walls as purple energy leaked out.

“Signs of an explosion!” The Medicine Boy rushed over to lift the lid but was stopped by Shen Yan.

“Don’t move! Let me check the Logs.”

He closed his eyes and connected to the System, quickly tracing back the Data Stream. He discovered that a batch of hundred-year-old poria had a moisture content seven percent higher than the standard, causing the medicinal reaction to occur prematurely.

“So that’s it… unstructured Variables weren’t modeled.”

He immediately added a “dynamic compensation algorithm” to the Program, monitoring the evaporation rate of the medicinal materials in real-time and automatically adjusting the heating curve.

“Try again.”

At dawn on the third day, the area outside the Medicine Hut was eerily quiet.

Suddenly—

All twenty Pill Furnaces trembled almost simultaneously!

Boom!

Purple energy surged into the sky, condensing into a spiral-shaped column of smoke that pierced the clouds and lingered for a long time.

The legendary phenomenon of “Spirit Gathering into Smoke” had appeared!

The Medicine Boy rushed into the room, saw the floor covered in sparkling, translucent three-hundred-year-aged Pills, each as round and lustrous as pearls, brimming with Spiritual Energy. His legs gave way, and he fell to his knees, clutching Shen Yan’s thigh as he wailed:

“Ancestor Master! This isn’t Alchemy! This is turning stone into gold! This old Medicine Boy has lived eighty years and never seen anyone control twenty furnaces and produce purple smoke! This isn’t something a human can do—it’s divine magic! It’s the work of heaven!”

Shen Yan rubbed his forehead with a bitter smile. “Don’t call me Ancestor Master. I haven’t even gotten a marriage certificate yet, how can I be a master?”

But the smile in the corner of his eyes was unmistakable.

He knew this System didn’t just improve efficiency—it shattered the thousand-year ceiling of Alchemy in the Cultivation Realm. From now on, Alchemy would no longer be an esoteric art reliant on experience and luck, but a standardized process that could be replicated, optimized, and iterated.

He stood up and walked to the main control Jade Slip, pulling up the running Log.

【Fully Automated Alchemy Management System v1.0】

【Runtime: Fifty-six hours】

【Total Pill Output: Three hundred twenty-one】

【Average Success Rate: Ninety-seven percent】

【Highest Quality: Three-hundred-year-aged Pills (Seventeen total)】

【System Stability: Stable】

【Emotional Variable Record: 1 entry (Source: Pei Yue · Heart Rate Synchronization Event)】

Shen Yan stared at the last line for two seconds, then silently clicked delete.

“Personal Data shouldn’t be stored in a production environment. That’s basic common sense.”

Just as he was about to close the Interface, a string of unfamiliar Runes suddenly appeared at the edge of the Jade Slip, as if automatically generated from within.

His heart skipped a beat.

This wasn’t Code he had written.

Nor was it the ancient script of Medicine Valley.

It looked more like… some kind of encrypted Command.

He quickly took a screenshot, planning to conduct a Reverse Analysis later. But the moment the capture was complete, the Runes flashed and vanished, as if they had never existed.

The Medicine Boy was still excitedly counting the Pills nearby, completely unaware.

Shen Yan, however, narrowed his eyes.

“Did someone plant a Backdoor in the System?”

He tapped the jade slip lightly with his fingers and murmured to himself, “Interesting. I thought this was just a civilian project… It seems someone doesn’t want alchemy to become an assembly line?”

He looked up toward the depths of the Medicine Hut, where generations of medical texts and discarded jade slips lay piled up, long covered in dust.

“Since you won’t let me write programs in peace… tonight, I’ll go dig into your past.”

Morning light spilled in, the purple smoke not yet dispersed.

Shen Yan sat at the desk, his fingers lightly swiping across the phone screen, creating a new encrypted folder named: “Night Patrol Plan for the Library Pavilion.”

He entered the first line of the command:

“Objective: Find records linking the ‘Heaven’s Secret Holder Bloodline Atlas’ and the ‘First-Generation Source Code Protocol.'”

“Execution Time: The third quarter of the hour of Zi.”

“Prerequisite: Ensure Pei Yue shows no signs of a cold relapse.”

“Note: Bring enough chilled sour plum soup—staying up late is prone to causing internal heat.”

Just as he finished saving the document, footsteps sounded outside the door.

The Medicine Boy entered, carefully carrying a bowl of steaming ginseng soup, which he placed on the table.

“Young Master, have some to replenish your energy. I saw you didn’t sleep a wink last night, and it pains this old man’s heart.”

Shen Yan smiled. “Thank you. By the way, can one enter the Medicine Valley’s Library Pavilion at night?”

The Medicine Boy’s expression changed. “That place… is heavy with yin energy at night, full of Restriction Seals. No one dares to go there. Why do you ask?”

“Nothing much,” Shen Yan blew on the soup. “I just want to look up some information and see if anyone’s been tampering with the configurations in my code.”

(End of Chapter)