Transmigrated into a Grandpa, Embracing the Laid-Back Life

Su Ming's face was pale, his lips bitten to the point of bleeding. He frantically poured the last bit of his *Like Water Art* spiritual energy into the fragment. "Hold on for me!"

Each breath stretched into an eternity.

After an entire incense stick's time, the blue-green cold flame finally exhausted its medicinal power and dissipated into a wisp of green smoke. The pulse of the earth fire, under Qingyang's pacification, returned to a relatively regular rhythm. The immediate crisis was temporarily resolved.

Su Ming's hands hung limply. The Star Pattern Steel was dim and lusterless, its surface marked by three deep cracks that had nearly severed the fragment. He carefully tucked it back into his storage pouch.

Qingyang sat cross-legged in place. He did not wipe the blood from his face, nor did he turn to look at Su Ming. But the hand seals he flicked to control the fire had subtly changed their rhythm—each infusion of spiritual energy now carried a faint pause imitating the constant nature of starlight. He was silently absorbing Su Ming's methods.

Lin Yu let out a weary sigh. "This old man is truly a mad alchemist. He's already incorporated your technique into his system in no time."

The pill room fell back into a dull, oppressive silence. Shadow poked her head out from Su Ming's sleeve, letting out a faint, weak *cheep*.

But Lin Yu's voice turned deep and ominous. "Don't celebrate too early. The Chi Yang Root going wild on the sixth day was just a minor tantrum from the earth fire. When the ninth day comes and the Heaven-Mending Pill truly takes shape, the Pill Fiend sent down by the laws of heaven and earth won't care about some starlight."

His voice carried a rare hint of awe. "That's the true deadlock."

Dried blood and sweat mixed on Qingyang's forehead. With each flick of his cracked fingers, he subtly mimicked the constant rhythm of starlight. But this state consumed an absolutely terrifying amount of divine sense—the hundred-year-sealed furnace grandmaster was now breathing heavily, his back hunched, like a puppet on the verge of collapse.

Su Ming was in even worse shape. The *Like Water Art* could no longer circulate properly. The lake in his Dantian was nearly dry, and his meridians ached from the prolonged squeezing of spiritual energy. Shadow shrank in his sleeve, unable to even let out a weak *cheep*.

The eighth day. The last batch of auxiliary ingredients was thrown into the furnace. The emerald-green pill liquid inside began to contract violently, gathering toward the center. A strange fragrance penetrated the thick outer wall of the furnace, spreading throughout the pill room.

Just a single whiff of this scent, and Su Ming's parched Dantian showed a faint sign of recovery.

Lin Yu's soul body flickered intensely within the ring. "Nascent laws!" His voice was filled with barely restrained excitement. "The Heaven-Mending Pill is already beginning to condense nascent laws! What can repair a shattered Dao foundation isn't the medicinal power itself—it's that wisp of Heaven-Mending law gathering within the pill liquid!"

Su Ming did not reply. His gaze was fixed above the furnace, where a mass of gray-black fog had condensed without warning. The fog churned silently, emitting a heart-stopping aura of destruction.

Lin Yu's excitement vanished in an instant. "That's... a nascent Pill Fiend cloud. The pill isn't even formed yet, and the laws of heaven and earth have already locked onto this place. When the pill takes shape on the ninth day and the Pill Fiend descends, that will be the true moment of life and death."

Qingyang also saw the mass of gray fog. His gaunt face showed no expression. He only made his fire-controlling hand seals even more precise, even more frantic.

The ninth day.

Without any warning, the furnace began to tremble violently.

"Clang! Clang! Clang!"

Muffled sounds of metal striking metal came from within the furnace, as if something was furiously battering its walls. The emerald-green pill liquid spun at a maddening speed inside, and each collision sent visible shockwaves of spiritual energy radiating outward from the entire furnace.

Su Ming's meditation cushion was pushed back half a foot by the shockwave. He clutched the green jade pendant on his knee—the life-saving artifact gifted by Xuanheng.

"Here it comes," Lin Yu said, his voice sinking to its lowest point.

Above the pill room's roof, the gray-black fog expanded in the span of a few breaths to cover the entire courtyard. An indescribable sense of pressure pierced through the thick mountain rock, seeping into every inch of space within the pill room. This was not a magical power's pressure, nor a soul's assault. It was the rejection of the laws of heaven and earth themselves against a transgressor.

The essence of the Pill Fiend was the intolerance of heaven and earth.

The Heaven-Mending Pill could repair a cultivator's Dao foundation—a power far too domineering. The Heavenly Dao would not allow such a thing to exist easily. The Pill Fiend would destroy the pill, and it would also kill everyone attempting to protect it.

"Focus your mind!"

Qingyang let out a hoarse roar. Both hands pressed down violently, and a beam of reddish-golden light shot from his palms, slamming heavily into the fire eye beneath the furnace.

"Boom!"

The earth fire erupting from the eight fire eyes swelled threefold in an instant. The entire pill room was illuminated like the inside of a forge. The greenstone walls on all sides began to soften under the extreme heat, viscous magma flowing down their surfaces.

Qingyang was burning his essence blood.

He was using the most violent power of the earth fire to force the Heaven-Mending Pill to complete its final condensation—before the Pill Fiend fully descended.

The hum within the furnace reached its peak. The emerald-green pill liquid began to contract madly under the extreme heat. A terrifying aura of life exploded from within the furnace, clashing violently with the gray-black killing intent from the ceiling.

In that exact instant.

The Pill Fiend descended.

The gray-black fog pierced through dozens of feet of mountain rock, ignoring all the defensive formations in the pill room. Like tangible tentacles, it surged in from all directions. The moment the fog touched the greenstone walls, the greenstone silently turned to dust.

Countless gray-black tentacles rushed madly toward the furnace. Everything they touched had the air torn apart, and space twisted into visible ripples.

Su Ming pressed his left hand on the green jade pendant and clutched Shadow tightly to his chest with his right.

Qingyang let out a low roar that hardly sounded human. His withered body shot to its feet, his hands forming seals frantically in front of his chest. One reddish-golden pill-protecting spirit seal after another was struck toward the furnace. Each seal collided with the Pill Fiend's tentacles, producing a sharp, sizzling sound like cold water thrown into boiling oil.

But this only slowed it down. It could not stop it.

Qingyang's pill-protecting spirit seals, fueled by his burning essence blood, were like a mantis trying to stop a chariot against the endless flood of the Pill Fiend. Within ten breaths, Qingyang's face had turned the color of death. Both arms trembled violently, and the bones of his fingers creaked under the unbearable strain.

Su Ming watched the Pill Fiend's tentacles closing in madly. The destructive force within that gray-black fog made his soul tremble.

But at the same time, he noticed something else—although the Pill Fiend was terrifying, those tentacles, as they surged toward the furnace, were not attacking completely randomly. They were following a certain trajectory, following the path of the formation lines on the furnace's surface, following the thread of phase difference between the pill liquid and the earth fire's pulse.

A crazy idea exploded in Su Ming's Consciousness Sea.

"Master, will the Pill Fiend corrode divine sense?"

Lin Yu's soul body trembled. "No! The Pill Fiend is a force of law, it only targets the pill itself! It won't actively attack divine sense!"

"That's enough."

Su Ming's head snapped up. A flash of determination lit his eyes. He released Shadow from his embrace and began rapidly tracing in the air with his hands.

Not defense. Not attack.

He was using his divine sense to mark the trajectory of that Pill Fiend tentacle, then guide it, precisely, into the bottom of the furnace.

"You've gone mad!" Lin Yu cried out in shock.

Su Ming was not mad. He was an array master. He was using *Observation Micro State* to analyze the movement patterns of the Pill Fiend's tentacles, then guiding them with his divine sense, following the thread of phase difference between the pill liquid and the earth fire's pulse, cutting into the furnace bottom, layer by layer, wrapping around it.

He was using the Pill Fiend as a substitute for Star Pattern Steel.

"That thread of phase difference is the gap created by the pill liquid and the earth fire's pulse being out of sync. The Pill Fiend is a law, it's purer than starlight. If I can guide it into that gap, it can act as an even stronger cushion than starlight."

Su Ming's words were incredibly fast, and his hands moved even faster.

Countless fine threads of divine sense shot out from his Consciousness Sea, guiding the Pill Fiend's tentacles, precisely following the cracks of the phase difference, covering the furnace bottom layer by layer. The moment the gray-black fog touched the furnace, it eerily stopped its rampaging, instead wrapping around the furnace bottom like a dense membrane.

The phase difference was now isolated by the Pill Fiend itself.

The fatal misalignment between the pill liquid and the earth fire's pulse was perfectly filled by the Pill Fiend's law. The balance on the verge of collapse inside the furnace stabilized completely in that instant.

Qingyang was stunned.

His bloodshot eyes were locked onto that gray-black membrane at the furnace's bottom. His dry lips moved futilely, opening and closing without a single word.

This kid had actually used the Pill Fiend to refine a Heaven-Mending Pill.

But the cost was also terrifying. While the Pill Fiend would not actively attack divine sense, it was the existence of law itself. Even close contact alone was enough to fatally crush divine sense.

Blood flowed from Su Ming's nostrils, the corners of his eyes, and his ears. Seven orifices bleeding.

That was a sign that his Consciousness Sea was on the verge of collapse. His divine sense guiding threads were being snapped inch by inch under the crushing force of the Pill Fiend's law. Each thread that broke was like another tear in his soul.

Su Ming clenched his teeth, holding on to the last few critical guiding threads.

Shadow crawled out from his sleeve, letting out a piercing, mournful cry. She spread her charred black wings without hesitation and flew down onto Su Ming's head. The blood contract between them managed to take on a sliver of the Pill Fiend's crushing pressure for him.

Just as Su Ming's consciousness began to blur, as he was about to sink into the darkness of that final moment...

Within the furnace, a surge of emerald-green light exploded forth.