"Ugh... when's this bad leg of mine ever going to heal?"
"Your old injury acting up again?"
"Can't be helped... it's always like this whenever the weather turns cold."
The ground floor of the city's largest inn was, as always, packed with regulars come for their evening meal. Most were travelers or mercenaries just back from work outside the city. Gathering here served a second purpose besides eating — trading whatever news happened to be circulating these days.
"Ho! Your leg still hasn't healed?"
The table by the window was where the laborers usually gathered. Most of them worked for hire doing manual labor, which meant it was normal for each of them to be nursing some chronic ailment or another.
An old man asked his companion, but at the same time he pulled something out from his sleeve and set it on the table with a showy flourish.
"What's that?"
"Heh heh... I only just got my hands on it today."
He chuckled softly as he uncorked the bottle. Inside were nearly ten white pills, gleaming faintly and giving off a delicate fragrance.
"Sniff... that smell...?"
The smell alone was enough to draw a crowd of burly men in close. They breathed it in deep, eyes fixed on the pills inside the bottle.
"That's right, River-Calm Pills, what else."
"Is that the real thing!?"
"...it's been so long since anyone's seen these..."
"Where did you even get these!?"
The moment it was confirmed, excitement swept through the burly men. Every one of them craned forward to get a closer look at the neatly packed pills.
The River-Calm Pill was a Grade-2 medicine, prized for how well it eased sore, overworked muscles. Its formula combined herbs that healed and repaired worn muscle tissue, but the key ingredient was the blood of an ancient bull, which, once processed through a special method, left whoever took it brimming with strength — able to labor all day without tiring.
"Isn't this supposed to be hard to come by these days?"
Its effects made it hugely sought after among laborers, but there was a catch — this particular medicine was only ever imported from Dawnbreak City. During the recent war, that had caused a severe shortage, since merchants had been unable to travel between cities.
"Heh heh, today at the Goddess Alchemy Palace I saw a whole pile of them for sale on the first floor."
"Really? Since when does the Palace have connections to Dawnbreak City?"
"It's not that. I asked the girl running the first floor, and she said these were all refined right there at the Goddess Alchemy Palace."
"So that means we'll all have River-Calm Pills to use again..."
"Excellent! I'll go tell the others. Why don't we all head over tomorrow and buy up the whole stock?"
Chatter buzzed through the whole inn as usual, and this table was far from the only one talking about the Alchemy Palace today. Listen closely, and it became clear that most people, without any coordination at all, were discussing the very same thing. The Palace reopening today had sent ripples through Moondrift City's economy and society on an enormous scale. Whatever line of work someone was in, "medicine" remained something no cultivator's world could do without.
And a palace selling everything from cheap Grade-1 medicine to treasures beyond price was bound, without question, to build itself a reputation and become known once again!
But right then—
"Doesn't it make you wonder where a Palace as far gone as the Goddess Alchemy Palace got all this medicine from?"
No one knew who had first raised the question, but that single sentence alone was enough to bring the whole room's conversation to a dead stop.
"Come to think of it... I heard that over the past year, hardly any customers were even going up to that mountain anymore..."
"Seems like even a lot of the elders who'd been there for years gradually disappeared, until it was just the Palace Master left."
"The number of disciples dropped to just a few dozen too."
"...how did they manage it?"
Questions like this sprang up all over the room at once. No one noticed that in a quiet corner behind a pillar, two young men in cloaks were exchanging sly smiles. They caught each other's eyes, nodded, and made ready to move straight on to their next target without needing to stick around for the outcome.
...because their job here was already done.
"The stock of medicine I saw today was worth more than the entire treasury of some small sect, you know?"
"Right, right, I went by there today too. Just what was on sale on the first floor alone had to be worth several million gold. There's no way you can call that a place on the decline."
"...so where did all that medicine come from?"
Once one person started doubting, it was like a stone dropped into water. No one needed to do anything more — the suspicion that had taken root would spread outward on its own. Even if they gave it no further thought, this small doubt would linger quietly in the back of their minds.
"I don't know if I should even be saying this... but wasn't the Goddess Alchemy Palace supposed to have handed over all its high-grade medicine to the authorities for the last war?"
It was one of the cloaked young men who spoke that line, his voice laced with a thin thread of qi that carried it to every corner of the room. He watched the growing unease with satisfaction in his eyes.
"That's right! I heard that's exactly how it was."
"..."
"...they must have secretly been hoarding it."
"In a situation like this?"
Frowns spread through the room. The mood, so lighthearted a moment before, soured in an instant. A middle-aged man threw back his drink until his face flushed red, then slammed his cup down on the table with a bang before moaning out loud, his face twisted with grief.
"Hic... a friend of mine died because the emergency medicine ran out during a clash at the front lines..."
"My older brother too!"
Another young man shot to his feet and shouted, a single tear tracking down the corner of his eye.
"He came home only to die of a chest wound. The doctor said if there'd only been medicine on the battlefield to stabilize him..."
Once there was a first and a second, more and more followed. Each shared their own losses from the last war, and every single one shared the same thread — there simply had not been enough "medicine" to go around.
Some were only piling on because everyone else was, but the mood in the room was tilting hard in one direction — toward casting the Goddess Alchemy Palace as the villain responsible for the deaths of the people they loved.
Sometimes, this was just how frightening a crowd could be.
"I heard there was a huge stock of high-grade medicine too, is that right?"
"Right, right! Enough to forge dozens of Grandmasters or Sages, easily!"
"If all that medicine had gone toward strengthening the army instead..."
"Ho! My son!"
"Why are they being so selfish! When everyone's struggling, we ought to be helping each other!"
"Exactly! I'm sure if our generals had been stronger, the war wouldn't have dragged on this long!"
Everyone let their emotions run loose. Pockets of anger began forming across the room. Not one of them remembered that the Palace itself had been out on the front lines and had suffered its own losses. All they cared about was their own hardship, and more than a few had already started gripping their weapons tight.
"Um... maybe we should all calm down first?"
Axiao, who had just delivered a Pure Yin Elixir to his little sister at home, thought something about this felt off. He tried to talk his friends down from getting swept up in it all, but the moment dozens of eyes snapped around to glare at him, he could only shrink into himself and sit back down in silence.
A small stone stood no chance against a raging current.
"Maybe Luo Qingyan only became an Ancient Sage because she was hoarding all this medicine in secret?"
"Hmph! She was probably afraid it'd all get handed over to the authorities if word got out, so she rushed to burn through the high-grade medicine on her own breakthrough first."
"That's why they only dared start selling so much of it once the war was over."
Every strange rumor floating around got dragged into the story, logic and reason abandoned entirely. The townsfolk turned themselves into detectives, spinning out whatever theories their imaginations conjured up, until the rumor spiraled into something ever more chaotic and vicious, unstoppable now.
"And what about King Jongliean?"
"..."
"Wasn't it the medicine Luo Qingyan refined that made his condition worse in the first place?"
"I was there that day too! Thank goodness people from the Wild Bloom Sect were around, or the situation would never have been brought under control."
"Hmph! Goddess Alchemy Palace, my foot. 'Alchemy Empress,' my foot. How vicious and selfish can these women get — it's disgusting."
"I can't just sit here anymore! Who's coming with me to that Palace!"
"Calm down first. I say we're better off all going together tomorrow at noon — let everyone who goes there to buy medicine see just how rotten they really are!"
"Good! I'll go tell the others. Tomorrow morning we'll all gather in full force! Even if she's an Ancient Sage, we're not afraid of her!"
The men in cloaks allowed themselves one last smile. Then they slipped out of the restaurant one at a time, blending in among the other departing guests to avoid drawing attention. Many customers left early that day to get ready for tomorrow, and the room slowly emptied out.
No one noticed the young woman sitting quietly in one corner of the room, her face hidden behind a thin veil. She lifted her teacup and took a small sip, and the cold radiating from her eyes was enough that the serving boy, who happened to glance her way, felt a shiver run straight through him!