"Oh, I almost forgot the finished dishes will also be evaluated and scanned.." Yang Qing added with a straight face, though inwardly he was gleeful.
He had taken liberties and ordered triple of each dish that Li Shu regularly ordered at the restaurant in the past ten years. With the enhanced memory of a core formation cultivator, it wasn't hard for her to recollect every single meal that she had over the past decade, and the fact that she was a creature of habit, who only had three selections every time, it was easy to remember.
Every time she went over she had the restaurant's special which was the golden roast duck, barbecued crimson pig which was another house specialty, and smoked veal.
Yang Qing had the branch in Silent Willow County prepare three of each of those meals for easy analysis, and after the inspections were completed, well he would have nine meat dishes for lunch.
He couldn't wait for the case to be done with.
"Palace Master Meng Ye, Vice Palace Master Pan Xin, we will start with the both of you, then daoist Liang Tian it will be your turn..." said Yang Qing.
"Seniors, I will leave the next matter to you both to decide how you want to go about it.." he added as he addressed the two blue-grade alchemists.
Of the two members of the Blue River Cauldron Pavilion, Vice Palace Master Pan Xin seemed to have agreed with the palace master that he would go first since he had been the one to diagnose and treat Li Shu first before he went to consult his palace master when the matter got too difficult for him to handle.
"Daoist Li Shu came to our pavilion a few months ago for help concerning her ailment which the alchemist of the Shao clan had struggles identifying.
With my relationship with Shao Qing, I readily agreed to help her. She proceeded to explain her symptoms to me, which at the time had the ear markers of a poison.
I had a Silverleaf euphorbia gotten from the tree that was at least 5,000 years old, and I used it to perform a general check to find if she had any obvious signs of being poisoned.
On using the leaf, there was no change to it. This is the leaf I used.."
Vice palace master took out a palm-sized brown box and gently opened it revealing a white colored leaf that had a metallic shine to it, which made it seem like it was carved from metal. It had smooth edges and a single mid-rib and veins that were white in color.
Yang Qing took the box as he nodded inwardly. The box was made from serenity oak wood which was an excellent material for storing sensitive spiritual herbs. It helped preserve their efficacy even after they had been harvested.
He gently parsed his hand through the leaf, and from its fluctuations, he could tell Vice Palace Master Pan Xin didn't lie about it being from a Euphoria tree that was at least 5,000 years old. As per Yang Qing's estimation, it seemed to have been approaching 7,000 years. The midrib had a lustrous liquid flowing through it. The liquid was thin and if one wasn't keen, one could easily miss it.
The liquid flowing through it was the silver dew that could only be formed on the leaves of the Silver leaf euphoria tree that had crossed the five thousand mark in terms of age. The liquid had gentle properties which made it an excellent ingredient as a potion stabilizer, especially when the potion involved was a volatile one. The dew also enhanced the properties of the leaf itself especially when it came to poison detection.
The leaf of the silver leaf euphoria tree also went by another name, which was the hundred poison leaf, which was given due to its ability to detect different kinds of poisons. Every time it detected poison the silver leaf would change colors. It usually reflected three colors; red, orange, and green. Red showed a high level of toxicity in the poison detected and green showed it was mild.
It was a common must-have item for most alchemists especially those just starting out, due to the ability to accidentally interact with poisonous materials, or a potion accidentally having a poisonous attribute due to some mishap somewhere, and the one in his hand was even better than most silver leaves at the job due to the presence of the silver dew.
Yang Qing fiddled with it for a bit before he passed it on to Alchemist Ma Bo and Alchemist Luo Fan for their own inspections. They all did quick scans that lasted barely three seconds and then handed it back to Vice Palace Master Pan Xin with a tacit agreement of the nature and age of the Silverleaf he had presented.
Vice palace master Pan Xin looked visibly relieved as he received his Silverleaf back. Despite knowing none of what he said was false about the leaf, he couldn't help but be nervous as the three inspected it. Some nervous-ridden part of him expected him to be called a fraud and for things to go downhill from there.
After this, I'm going for a secluded break, he thought.
"After getting no reaction from the Silverleaf euphoria, i proceeded to use other means for checking poisons that i had at my disposal and they all failed.
Some of her symptoms were evident to me such as her sluggish qi but none of my tests showed it was a result of poisoning. That was when I decided to conduct one final test, which is something every alchemist at the Blue River Cauldron does, which is the pill poisoning test.
With how many potions and pills we make, along with our personal research, despite our skills, we are always at risk of pill poisoning. Therefore we devised a method to regularly check if our bodies had accumulated a lot of pill and potion residue, and that method is using the flames produced from lighting the branch from a night star Rowan tree that had been soaked in water produced from middle grade spirit stone mine.
The flames produced are able to trigger a reaction in the person's body and cause a coloration to appear on their skin if they have pill poisoning. We can keep the flames burning a while longer and if the coloration turns to colored smoke coming out from the pores of the person, then that shows their pill poisoning is extensive.
I'm sure you are all aware of the particular technique. It's the spiritual kindling cleansing art that's been shared by the Flowing Valleys Sect.."
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