Chapter 451: She’s Here! |
After about two hours, someone truly arrived to deliver the spirit beast milk.
Among the delivery was a thousand Jin of hundred-year-old spirit horse milk, meant for the lesser version of the Heavenly Horse Milk Wine.
As for the other materials, such as bran starter, wild honey, and thin pungent grass, Jiang Chen would have to purchase them himself. Fortunately, they were not expensive.
Zhao Mo had been particularly attentive regarding the spirit beast milk he needed.
There were two types in total, five hundred Jin of each.
The first was ice-attribute scaled horse milk.
The second was water-attribute horned deer milk.
Both contained extremely faint traces of the dragon bloodline, so their price was far from cheap.
Perhaps to make their cooperation smoother, or perhaps to draw their relationship closer, Zhao Mo had not asked for a single Spirit Stone this time, essentially offering it as a gift.
“I was in a rush to leave earlier and forgot to leave this behind. Please pass it to him for me.”
The male disciple from Beast Mountain nodded excitedly.
“Yes, Senior Brother Jiang!”
He then turned and took his leave.
Jiang Chen looked at the various types of spirit beast milk before him, his thoughts beginning to stir.
The little dragonkin had not yet been born, so there was no rush to feed her.
He would first try brewing the Heavenly Horse Milk Wine and see its effects.
Lin An was not home at the moment; he had already run off to the Rogue Cultivator Market in Green City to amuse himself.
Therefore, Jiang Chen had to personally make a trip to the Flower Sea market to gather the remaining ingredients for the lesser version.
This round trip took nearly another two hours.
Fortunately, an immortal sect was an immortal sect for a reason.
All sorts of materials were readily available, and buying in bulk even came with a discount.
For convenience, Jiang Chen bought a large pile of supplies all at once and temporarily stored them in the Jade Green Gourd.
He could have used the Square Inch Ring, which possessed an even larger inner space.
Unfortunately, the situation inside was a little complicated.
Even with only the bare minimum of resources supplied to it, the Dragon-Transformed Meridian-Reversing Worm Mother would still periodically produce an egg sac that hatched into worms, making it a poor place for storage.
If he stored his ingredients inside, they likely would not survive past the second day.
Many things had to be squeezed into the Jade Green Gourd for now.
When the opportunity arose, Jiang Chen planned to move all the worms, including the Dragon-Transformed Meridian-Reversing Worm Mother, into his personal space to rear them there.
That way, he could free up the space within the Square Inch Ring.
…
…
The West Wing, in the brewing area.
The space here was expansive and relatively quiet.
It was already filled with wine vessels meant for storage, vessels he had specifically refined for this purpose.
This not only gave them more inner space, but also allowed him to store a greater volume of wine.
Currently, he still had three thousand Jin of high-quality Spirit Wine. That had not changed.
But as for the Top Grade Spirit Wine and Top Grade Golden Wine, their yields were dismally low.
There was nothing to be done. A single person only had so much energy.
Jiang Chen pondered, “It seems I need to refine some puppets specifically to help with the brewing. Relying on myself alone is too tiring.”
Fortunately, as long as the specific steps, flow, and ratios were mastered, the brewing method could be repeated again and again.
Even if he handed the work over to puppets, he would not need to worry about any mishaps.
After all, his puppet-crafting skills had now reached the pinnacle.
Soon, he entered the quiet room dedicated to brewing and took out all the ingredients for the lesser version of the wine.
Two hundred Jin of hundred-year-old spirit horse milk.
Ten Gui of bran starter.
Eight spoonfuls of Top Grade wild honey.
Two stalks of high-quality thin pungent grass.
He now had the time, the materials, and the ratios. The only thing missing was the method itself.
Normally, he would have had to slowly figure it out on his own, but during his previous moments of advancement, he had already gained a thorough understanding.
Therefore, Jiang Chen began with practiced ease.
First, he took out the fresh spirit horse milk, added an equal amount of spirit spring water, and set it aside to rest.
After an incense stick of time, the resting spirit horse milk emitted a faint gamey scent, and a layer of floating fat rose to the surface.
Seeing this, Jiang Chen immediately skimmed and poured off the top third, keeping only the lower two-thirds of the liquid.
He poured it all into an earthen urn.
Then, the Golden Core within his Dantian rotated, releasing a faint thread of spiritual power.
Warmth radiated from his left hand, slowly raising the temperature of the urn.
Once it felt lukewarm to the touch but not scalding, he mixed in three Liang of bran starter for every ten Jin of spirit horse milk and began stirring.
He stopped only when it reached a milky, turbid state.
He then transferred the mixture into a porous earthen jar and placed it in a cool spot to continue resting.
For the first two days, he left it untouched.
On the third day, he stirred it again.
On the fourth day, he left it alone again, though the cracks on the ice womb had noticeably widened.
By the fifth day, fine bubbles emerged in the milk, and it officially turned into wine liquid.
Jiang Chen did not hesitate.
He immediately dissolved eight spoonfuls of Top Grade wild honey into three times that amount of warm spirit spring water and slowly poured it into the wine.
Then, he washed two stalks of high-quality thin pungent grass, cut them into one-Cun segments, and carefully placed them inside to steep.
With this step done, it was not far from completion.
An hour later, Jiang Chen filtered the mixture through a coarse cloth, finally obtaining a semi-white, semi-yellow turbid wine.
But the process was not entirely over.
He transferred the liquid into a narrow-necked earthen bottle, lightly sealed it with a cork, and placed it in an even cooler environment to continue resting.
The days passed like this, one after another.
Jiang Chen’s daily life settled into a fixed rhythm.
Every day, he would check on the Heavenly Horse Milk Wine, inspect the condition of the ice womb, and study the Spirit Seed Enlightenment Art.
Around the eighth day of brewing, it was finally complete.
Jiang Chen poured out a cup to examine it and found that it was still slightly cloudy.
A sniff revealed none of the raw milk’s gamey odor, but rather a warm, fermented milky fragrance.
He took a small sip.
Upon entering his mouth, the clear sweetness of the wild honey came first, wrapped in a faint milky aroma, followed closely by a hint of the thin pungent grass’s refreshing bitterness.
The texture was thick but not sticky, much like diluted yogurt, yet considerably smoother.
As he swallowed, there was none of the usual astringency of wine. Instead, it left a lingering sweetness on his tongue.
Taken together, its layers of flavor were much richer than ordinary Spirit Wine.
Yet Jiang Chen felt that, compared to the Ice Heart Jade Pot Wine, it still lacked that breathtaking quality.
After all, it was ultimately just a lesser substitute for the true Heavenly Horse Milk Wine.
As for its effects, he quietly sensed the changes within himself.
His mind indeed became free of distracting thoughts, completely devoid of worldly desires.
It was as if he had entered a state of serene detachment after a bout of cultivation and sudden enlightenment. It was truly wondrous.
Jiang Chen smacked his lips, carefully savoring the taste as he carried the bowl of Heavenly Horse Milk Wine into his personal space.
The moment he entered, he heard a crisp series of cracks, as if something was gradually fracturing.
He paused for a moment before flashing to the side of the ice womb, his eyes fixed upon it.
Fine, fragmented sounds rang out in quick succession, as though the ice layer was breaking apart inch by inch.
A hazy, faint light rippled across the semi-transparent, pale blue walls of the womb.
White vapor, frost flowers, and ice crystals alternately bloomed across its surface.
The cold air trapped inside seeped out through the fissures. It was not biting; rather, it felt refreshingly crisp and moist.
As the layers continued to crack, the ice womb miraculously blossomed into an ice lotus, gently lifting out the little dragonkin nestled within.
Little legs like lotus root segments.
Curled-up little hands.
Skin as fair as fine snow.
A tiny, fragile body.
A round, chubby head.
Two tiny horn buds protruded from her forehead.
On the back of her neck, three needle-tip-sized blue dots could faintly be seen, currently emitting a soft glow.
Nestled in the folds near her tailbone was a small, soft, pale-blue tail.
As she breathed, her chest rose and fell in a gentle rhythm.
The white vapor exhaled from her lips condensed into an ice crystal smaller than a grain of rice, only to be gently blown away by her next breath.
For any normal infant, it would take at least an hour or two, if not longer, to open their eyes after birth.
But her eyelashes fluttered slightly, and she instantly opened her eyes, revealing a pair of crystalline ice-blue pupils!
