Chapter 73: Automated Alchemy: An Unexpected Windfall

The moment Shen Yan pushed open the door, a wave of heat rushed toward him, nearly knocking him off his feet.

It wasn’t fire—it was the spiritual pressure convection generated by three hundred Pill Furnaces operating simultaneously.

The spatial ring that had just appeared on his right ring finger was still hot, flashing with a blue light reminiscent of a low-battery warning on a phone. The Terminal Interface floated before his eyes:

【System Load: 97%】

【Warning: Cooling Protocol Latency 0.3 seconds, risk of overload】

【Suggestion: Immediately shut down at least forty-seven non-core alchemy units】

“Shut down my ass,” he wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Shutting down furnaces now is like slapping a sign on my face saying ‘No silver buried here.’”

The Medicine Boy came sprinting from the end of the corridor, clutching an abacus, his hair sticking up like a bird’s nest. As he ran, he shouted, “Ancestor! Furnace No. 18 is experiencing Spiritual Energy backflow! No. 23 has alchemical qi surging to the top! No. 51… it’s started singing a Children’s Rhyme on its own!”

Shen Yan’s eyelids twitched.

Singing a Children’s Rhyme? That was never a good sign. The last time this happened was when Xie Wujiu was up to his tricks, and the entire alchemy chamber nearly got flipped over by the resonance of Inner Demon sound waves.

His fingers slid rapidly through the air, pulling up the System Underlayer monitoring panel. Sure enough, the Spiritual Power Frequencies of all the Pill Furnaces were being subtly equalized by some hidden Algorithm—a classic “precursor to collective resonance.” Once they all synchronized, forget alchemy—the entire Medicine Hut would be blasted sky-high.

“Need to add dynamic shunting,” he gritted his teeth, Code flying from his fingertips. “Break down the high-level Spirit Gathering demands into fragments, randomly assign them to idle furnaces, then insert a cooling delay Function…”

Before he could finish, the Terminal suddenly popped up a golden Notice:

【Congratulations on achieving the “Richest in the Cultivation Realm” accomplishment!】

【Reward: Spatial Ring ×1 (with built-in thousand-cubic storage space, includes basic classification and retrieval functions)】

The next moment, a ring shimmering with a deep blue glow materialized out of thin air and settled snugly onto his right ring finger.

Shen Yan froze for a second, then grinned. “Not bad, the System even gives out year-end bonuses?”

But before his smile could fade, the ring’s light suddenly flickered, and a green-clad figure stepped out from within the blue glow—

Pei Yue brushed some medicinal powder from her sleeve, standing calmly before him as if she had just returned from gathering herbs in the back mountains. “I pre-written the backup Key you gave me into it and set up a nine-discount coupon Trigger inside.”

Shen Yan stared wide-eyed. “When did you get in there? And you can come out?”

“Of course,” she smiled faintly, lightly pressing the back of his hand with her fingertip. “I’m not a Data entity. I just borrowed the temporary anchor point of the spatial coordinates.”

The Medicine Boy immediately dropped to his knees, his abacus clattering to the floor. “Ancestor… your wife came out of the ring?!”

“Shut up,” Shen Yan’s ears flushed slightly red. “She’s not my wife.”

“Oh?” Pei Yue raised an eyebrow. “Then who were you calling ‘Sister Yue, save me’ over and over last night when you burned out three Terminals?”

“That was… an emergency call code!”

Pei Yue chuckled softly and stopped teasing him, turning her gaze to the chaotic Pill Furnaces spinning around the room. “The Load is too high. You won’t last half an hour like this.”

“I know,” Shen Yan put away his playful expression, his face turning serious. “But we’ve already accepted three thousand seven hundred orders. Canceling even one means compensating with ten Low-Grade Spirit Stones, and right now I’m so broke I have to moan meals from the Medicine Valley cafeteria.”

“So you hooked up the automated alchemy program to ‘Immortal Treasure Pavilion’?”

“What else?” He shrugged. “We can’t let Medicine Valley go bankrupt over Xie Wujiu’s mess, can we? Besides, who still does manual alchemy these days? That’s as dumb as using an abacus to write code.”

Pei Yue shook her head. “You sure dare to dream. But what about the platform review? They’re most wary of unattended, fully automated processes, afraid someone might use puppet arrays to batch-farm orders.”

“Heh.” Shen Yan pulled out his phone and waved it. “I decompiled their judgment rules and found that as long as you produce perfect pills ten times in a row, it gets flagged as non-human operation.”

“So you wrote an interference algorithm?”

“Smart.” He grinned. “For every furnace, I make the pills half a shade yellower and fluctuate the spiritual energy purity by 0.5%, making them look like they were refined by a shaky hand. Full of human traces, and the review just lets it pass.”

Pei Yue couldn’t help but laugh. “You really… treat cultivation like a project.”

“Of course.” He raised an eyebrow proudly. “I call this ‘technology revitalizing cultivation.'”

As soon as he finished speaking, the terminal alarm sounded again:

【Warning: External device attempting to access spatial ring】

【Source: Unknown】

【Connection request content: Query ‘10% discount coupon’ usage records】

Shen Yan frowned. “Who’s checking promotional data?”

But Pei Yue remained calm. “It’s a background monitor I set up; only I can trigger this log.”

“Then why the theatrics of coming out from the ring?”

“Because you refuse to rest.” She looked him straight in the eye. “After synchronizing Ye Shi’er’s memories last night, your Consciousness Sea still has residual tremors. If you keep pushing like this, you won’t need anyone else to take you down—you’ll blow up your own furnace first.”

Shen Yan opened his mouth to argue but was cut off by her words.

The Medicine Boy listened in confusion, feeling the atmosphere grow increasingly awkward, and quickly lowered his head to pick up the abacus. “Um… Ancestor, Furnace No. 23’s flames have started doing square dancing…”

Shen Yan snapped back to attention and immediately switched to the system interface. Sure enough, the flames in that furnace were rhythmically swaying left and right, as if keeping time.

“Again?” He sneered. “Think changing the frequency will bypass my load balancing?”

His fingers flew across the screen, injecting a new piece of code into the main control program:

“Since you want to dance, dance to your heart’s content—initiate ‘reverse harmonic frequency interference,’ overlay a negative-phase oscillation on all anomalous furnace bodies.”

In an instant, all the furnaces that had been tending toward synchronization trembled simultaneously. The flames contracted sharply before stabilizing again.

The terminal notice refreshed:

【System load reduced to 61%】

【Cooling protocol restored to normal】

【Suggestion: Maintain current scheduling strategy】

Shen Yan let out a long sigh of relief and leaned against the wall, wiping his sweat.

Pei Yue handed him a cup of warm water and said calmly, “What’s your plan next? Orders will only keep increasing.”

“Simple.” He took a sip of water, his eyes lighting up. “Since we’re already doing this, why not go big—tomorrow, launch a ‘membership subscription system.’ Pay a monthly spirit stone fee, guarantee over 90% pill success rate.”

“Aren’t you afraid of being reported?”

“Reported?” He laughed. “By the time they trace the source, I’ll have monopolized the entire cultivation realm’s pill market.”

The Medicine Boy’s eyes sparkled. “Ancestor, you’re awesome! I want to be the first member!”

“Get lost.” Shen Yan kicked him lightly. “Your monthly allowance isn’t even enough to buy a single Qi-Replenishing Pill.”

Pei Yue looked at him and suddenly asked, “What if the Mystic Gate comes knocking? Automation on this scale can’t possibly go unnoticed.”

“Let them notice.” Shen Yan tucked his phone back into his pocket and flexed his wrist. “I haven’t stolen or robbed anyone. I’m earning money with my skills. Anyone who disagrees can come argue.”

Before his words had fully faded, a figure in a dark robe was seen stepping on clouds toward the distant mountain gate, a jade pendant at his waist engraved with the words “Mystic Mechanism Academy.”

Shen Yan narrowed his eyes to look but didn’t move.

Pei Yue whispered softly, “They’re here.”

“Hmm.” He nodded. “Perfect timing. I happen to need a free tester.”

The Medicine Boy nervously clutched his abacus. “Ancestor, should we… shut down a few furnaces first?”

“Shut down what?” Shen Yan raised his right hand, rubbing the ring that shimmered with blue light, a faint smile curling at the corner of his lips. “Now, I’m a man with assets.”

(End of Chapter)