Ye Lan looked over at the table beside her.

She had been blowing up the furnace the whole time, but she knew exactly how many portions of ingredients she had laid out and how many she had used.

And now, apart from what she had gone through, the ingredients were short by only one portion.

That meant Shen Yi had picked up the booklet, skimmed the pill recipe a few times, and produced a pill this flawless on his very first try.

That was no case of “I know a little.”

Pills for a seventh-rank True Immortal weren't high grade by the Fifth Peak's standards, or they wouldn't have been recorded in a beginner's volume.

But the point was, Shen Yi wasn't a disciple of the Alchemy Peak. He had never studied the precious teachings her master and the others had left behind. He couldn't be judged by the standards here.

This one bottle alone was enough to mark him as an outstanding talent in alchemy!

Just then, Ye Lan saw Shen Yi reach for the second booklet, Volume Two of the Four Symbols Pill Manual.

For some reason, her heart, usually as still as an ancient well, suddenly lurched.

“Don't.”

Ye Lan reached out on instinct and pressed down hard on the back of Shen Yi's hand. Under his puzzled gaze, she bit her lip and finally shook her head. “If you're interested, once we're back I'll copy it out for you when I get the chance. Don't study it here on the mountain.”

Of course she didn't want talent for alchemy this astonishing to go to waste either.

But now wasn't the time!

Her accepting a disciple on her master's behalf was already likely to make the Sixth Peak misunderstand and think she had come back to seize power.

If the junior brother she had taken in also happened to be good at alchemy, then even if she was willing to explain, she would have no way to clear herself. No one would believe her.

Ye Lan was still peak master in name, and she had fifth-rank cultivation…