"Senior Martial Brother Bo, you are here as well?" Zhao Yunxiao smiled when he saw a familiar face waiting in the building he just entered.
"You too, eh?" the other party revealed a look of surprise when he saw Zhao Yunxiao.
Bo Fei.
This young man had very average facial features, but made up for it with his excellent buffed physique that could hardly be concealed even under his long robes. Even though he had joined the Black Tortoise Sect slightly after Zhao Yunxiao, Zhao Yunxiao still decided to address him as a senior simply because Bo Fei was a year older in terms of actual age.
"Looks like it's going to be a busy day, considering that they recalled three of us," Bo Fei remarked.
"Three of us?" Zhao Yunxiao blinked blankly. "Who else is here?"
"It's me," a female voice came from behind as a lady entered.
"Senior Martial Sister Su?" Zhao Yunxiao exclaimed in surprise. "They activated three of us at once?"
Su Jiemin.
This young lady had a beautifully slim figure, but wasted it by always going around in a sloppily dressed state. Be it due to that reason or not, she was known among the outer disciples for her lazy personality, a trait of hers that she made no attempt to hide.
"Nice! With the two of you here as well, maybe I won't have to do much and can just sit by and watch!" Su Jiemin could not hold in her excitement.
"That's really not cute, Senior Martial Sister Su. It's no wonder you have no suitors," Bo Fei sighed. "Can you at least pretend that you are not thinking of pushing all the work to us, or at least say so behind our backs instead? That said, they usually only recall two of us at most. If they bothered to activate three of us here to support the rostered disciples, it means there is definitely more than enough work to go around. You can forget about escaping work today."
"You don't know that for sure! Where there is life, there is hope!" Su Jiemin frowned. "Wait, what did you say before that?"
"Busy or not, we will know soon enough," Zhao Yunxiao interjected. "Let's go. It's about time."
In the Black Tortoise Sect, all inner and outer disciples were required to contribute to the sect by taking on sect jobs. By working on these jobs that spanned across a variety of fields, disciples would be able to earn sect points, which could in turn be used to exchange for resources within the sect.
In this regard, Zhao Yunxiao, along with Bo Fei and Su Jiemin, had signed up for Alchemy Chamber duties. Not only did they have to report for work according to their assigned rosters, they could also be recalled on their off days to supplement the rostered disciples whenever necessary.
Today was an example of the latter, where the trio were reporting to the Alchemy Chamber after being activated outside of their assigned roster.
Zhao Yunxiao led the way further into the Alchemy Chamber, heading straight for the administrative deacon's office where they were supposed to report for duty.
"Disciple Zhao Yunxiao, reporting for duty!" Zhao Yunxiao reported the moment he entered the room.
"Disciple Bo Fei, reporting for duty!"
"Disciple Su Jiemin, reporting for duty…"
"Mm, you lot are punctual as always," a middle-aged looking man looked up from his desk and nodded in satisfaction. "Your disciple tokens."
"Here!" Zhao Yunxiao gathered the disciple tokens from the other two and handed it across the desk counter. "We will be in your care again today, Senior Wu."
The middle-aged looking man, Wu Chifeng, recorded their attendance in a log book before passing the disciple tokens back to them, along with a slip of paper each. "Here is the list of appointments for each cauldron room. Yunxiao will be in charge of the third cauldron room today, Jiemin fourth, and Bo Fei fifth."
"Nice," Su Jiemin could not help but smirk upon hearing that.
When disciples wanted to rent a cauldron room, they could choose whichever room they wanted and did not have to book the rooms in numerical order. By allowing disciples the flexibility to choose the rooms they preferred, it provided disciples the psychological comfort to perform alchemy in their best condition.
And with the number four considered inauspicious, Su Jiemin's fourth cauldron room usually had the least number of appointments.
Zhao Yunxiao and Bo Fei both shot Su Jiemin a begrudging glare, but did not complain too much about it.
They had all been doing this for a while, and knew that the allocation was done at random. Moreover, as disciples who had been activated to supplement the rostered disciples, they would not have too many appointments to deal with themselves anyway.
"What are you waiting for? Off you go," Wu Chifeng shooed them along.
The trio left obediently, each heading to their respective rooms.
Zhao Yunxiao entered the third cauldron room, and put down his bamboo backpack before giving the room a quick scan.
Fortunately, the third cauldron room had been left in a rather good condition, which meant that the previous disciple on duty did their job properly.
It sounded like a natural matter, but there had been several occasions when the previous disciple decided to skive off of work.
Whenever that happened, the administrative deacons would assure them that warnings and punishments were meted out to the disciple responsible. However, nobody had ever witnessed any of such punishments, or even to whom the punishments were meted out for that matter.
Who knew if anything was actually being done to punish such infringements?
If Zhao Yunxiao had not known Su Jiemin well enough to know that she still had that basic sense of responsibility, he would definitely have thought of asking Su Jiemin about the punishments to satiate his curiosity.
Zhao Yunxiao opened up the list of appointments that Wu Chifeng had passed him earlier, and let out a soft sigh.
The good news was that there was only one disciple who reserved the third cauldron room today.
The bad news was that this disciple happened to be a slightly difficult one, so he had better make sure the cauldron room was ready and proper before she arrived!
Next came the usual motion of scrubbing and wiping. As duty disciples, they had to make sure that the cauldron was clean inside and out, free of impurities that could affect the alchemy process.
Zhao Yunxiao then tidied up the entire cauldron room before checking that there was enough fuel for the cauldron fire.
By the time he was finally done, it was already almost time for the disciple to arrive for her appointment, so Zhao Yunxiao simply stood at one corner and patiently waited.
As expected, the door opened soon after, and a pretty young lady stepped in.
"It's you again, Junior Martial Brother Zhao?" Leng Huiqi remarked nonchalantly after seeing Zhao Yunxiao in the room. "You really do work hard, don't you?"
"Haha, unlike Senior Martial Sister Leng, talentless people like us have no choice but to work harder," Zhao Yunxiao scratched the back of his head with a forced laugh.
"Mm, that's the right attitude to have," Leng Huiqi nodded while opening the small pouch hanging around her waist. "Here, help me arrange the ingredients in order."
Next came a magical scene that Zhao Yunxiao could never get tired of watching.
From within the small pouch, Leng Huiqi continued to pull out item after item, one by one laying them out on the table top in a tidy manner.
These items, judging from the size and amount, would never have been able to all fit in a pouch as small as hers. However, they just kept appearing one after another, as though that small pouch had a limitless space within.
Well, that was not too far from the truth either.
The pouch hanging around Leng Huiqi's slim waist was called a spatial bag.
A spatial bag belonged to a particular set of treasure items called spatial items which, as their name suggested, were treasure items imbued with spatial properties. These items served as a link to a separate space, allowing their users to store far more items than what normal physical bags could offer.
Of course, there were limitations to it as well.
Firstly, even though each spatial item was linked to a separate space, this separate space was still finite in size and was not truly a limitless container. The size of the separate space varied from item to item, and depended directly on the level of spatial properties imbued upon each individual spatial item.
Secondly, this separate space could not store another spatial item. Doing so would cause spatial distortion that could damage both items permanently.
Lastly, this separate space could not store living creatures. This meant that one could not hide people in a spatial bag, or at least not when they were still alive…
Yet even with these limitations, possessing a spatial item was still the dream of outer disciples like Zhao Yunxiao.
If he had something like that, he would no longer have to lug around his large bamboo backpack everywhere he went!
"Enough gawking and get to work," Leng Huiqi's indifferent tone broke him out of his daze. "I'll be refining twenty Winterwarmth Pills today. Here is the alchemy recipe. Do a stock take of the ingredients and arrange them in order. Make sure you don't make a mistake."
"Understood, Senior Martial Sister Leng!"
Knowing Leng Huiqi's personality, Zhao Yunxiao dared not dally.
With both hands, he respectfully received the slip of paper detailing the alchemy recipe even though he had long memorised it by heart, going through it once just in case Leng Huiqi had made any modifications to the recipe.
After confirming that it was the original recipe, Zhao Yunxiao started to check the pill ingredients on the table against those listed on the paper.
"The ingredients are in order," Zhao Yunxiao finally confirmed after checking things through in his usual meticulous manner. "Should I fire up the cauldron?"
"Wait," Leng Huiqi said before personally walking over to inspect the inside of the cauldron. "Not bad, seems like you did put in some effort to clean it well?"
"After hearing that it is Senior Martial Sister Leng coming, of course I would have to make sure that everything is in order!" Zhao Yunxiao answered with a radiant smile on his face.
"Heh, at least you know what's good for you," Leng Huiqi smirked. "Fire up the cauldron!"
"Yes, Senior Martial Sister Leng!" Zhao Yunxiao hurriedly added burning coal to the stove underneath the cauldron.
Heating of the cauldron was an important skill when it came to alchemy. However, that was mainly referring to controlling the heat level after the cauldron had reached a certain temperature.
As for the menial and less impactful initial heating process of the cauldron, it was often left to the disciples on duty instead.
Of course, there were the more meticulous disciples who made sure to personally take care of everything from beginning till end, but Leng Huiqi was not one of them.
"You know me, don't you?" Leng Huiqi commented with crossed arms as she watched Zhao Yunxiao take care of the flames. "Do a good job, Junior Martial Brother Zhao, and you will definitely get your fair share of rewards!"
Zhao Yunxiao's eyes lit up upon hearing that.
That's right.
Leng Huiqi might be quite difficult to deal with at times, but there was one thing about her that Zhao Yunxiao really liked – the fact that she was as generous with her resources as she claimed.
High risk high rewards.
While Zhao Yunxiao very much preferred leading a smooth sailing and mundane life instead of going for something like that, he was also a firm believer of making the most out of any situations.
Since he had already been tasked with overseeing his Senior Martial Sister Leng's cauldron room, as an outer disciple who only received a paltry amount of sect resources on a regular basis, Zhao Yunxiao naturally had to work his hardest to please a big customer like this!