Volume 1 Chapter 32 The Background of Xiaozui

I turned around, and a figure suddenly appeared behind me. I let out a yelp of fright, my heart nearly stopping in my chest.

Upon closer inspection, I smiled; it was Hu Xiaozui.

"What are you doing here?"

Hu Xiaozui’s captivating eyes scanned me from head to toe, and it was only then that I realized I was stark naked. In a panic, I covered my manhood with both hands.

"You brat," Hu Xiaozui remarked, "you haven't even grown any hair yet, and your mind is already full of lewd thoughts."

"Why did you come?"

"Where is your master?"

"He went off to fool around with the young widow."

Hu Xiaozui’s eyes went blank for a few seconds before she laughed. "That sounds like him. He’s truly still full of vigor."

I persisted, "What did you come for?"

"Has your master taught you the Ghost Gate Thirteen Needles?"

"He mentioned them on the way down the mountain, but I only have a rough understanding."

"If there’s anything you don’t understand, you can ask me. You’ll be performing the procedure tomorrow; don’t go firing blanks on your first shot and ruining my reputation."

I pondered for a moment, but Hu Xiaozui suddenly cut in, "Don't ask about the Jade Gate acupuncture point. You little rascal, you’ve watched enough movies to know more about that than I do."

At those words, I swallowed the question that had been on the tip of my tongue.

Hu Xiaozui waved her hand, telling me to get dressed first. In the darkness, we sat on the *kang* and chatted idly. I dared not lie in her presence, for she could read my mind.

Although Hu Xiaozui looked young, like a girl of sixteen or seventeen, she was actually nearly five hundred years old. She was born in the thirty-seventh year of the Jiajing Emperor’s reign in the Ming Dynasty—that is, 1558 AD.

Hu Xiaozui’s cultivation was directly related to the Jiajing Emperor. The Emperor’s primary occupation was that of a Taoist, with being an emperor merely his side job; thus, he was obsessed with alchemy his entire life.

The raw materials for his elixirs were eclectic—such as the urine of prepubescent boys, specifically the middle segment of the stream, collected while still warm and placed directly into the furnace. There was also the menstrual blood of virgins; to extract it, the Emperor had ruined many young girls' lives. Because he was dissatisfied with the quality of the materials, he had over two hundred young girls beaten to death.

As for Hu Xiaozui, her mother was a white fox with a bit of cultivation, living in the vast wilderness. One winter day, she was unfortunate enough to be caught by a hunter. The hunter, seeing the white fox’s lustrous fur and elegant form, considered it a rare spiritual treasure of the forest. He brought the fox home and presented it to the local magistrate. After changing hands several times, the white fox was sent to the Ming Imperial