Before Su Min could offer a response to the sect leader, the doors to the hall swung open again.
"Father, Elder Brother, we are here."
The three youngsters, all now at the Qi Refining stage, limped in one after another. They were a sorry sight, covered in fresh bruises and moving stiffly, making it abundantly clear they had just taken a severe beating.
"My lady," Prince Yong said, turning to Su Min with a concerned frown. "Should we prepare some medicinal pills for them?"
Though he understood that Su Min had been teaching them a necessary, harsh lesson, their miserable state still startled him. With a war looming on the horizon, these three were supposed to be his trump cards, and their injuries looked rather serious.
"You are not a cultivator, so you do not understand their recovery speed," Su Min replied, her voice flat and unimpressed. She then shifted her gaze to the three young men. "And you three little brats, stop pretending. These are superficial wounds. They will not even take a full day to heal."
"...Uh."
Sure enough, the moment she spoke, the three straightened their postures at once, their faces flushing with a mixture of shame and fear. They did not dare utter a single word of complaint. The swiftness of their obedience left the seasoned Jianghu practitioners in the room wide-eyed.
Because of their recent thrashing, the trio's spiritual auras were unstable, leaking from them in uncontrolled waves. Yet this very instability served to prove something crucial to everyone present: all three were genuine, foundationally solid Qi Refining cultivators. Their power was not artificially boosted by some dark, forbidden art of the Demon Queen. Moreover, they were still young, their potential vast, unlike the middle-aged Sect Leader Mo, who had likely reached his limit.
Among the gathered experts, a few had reached the peak of Body Refining. But precisely because they stood on that threshold, they knew how impossibly hard it was to take that final step into Qi Refining. Their gazes toward Su Min grew even more intense, filled with a raw, desperate hope. Undoubtedly, this miracle was all thanks to a single type of pill, one capable of defying fate itself.
"Hmph."
Seeing the looks exchanged around the room, Prince Yong smirked inwardly. These people clearly understood what was truly at stake now. It was no wonder, he thought, that even the Demon Queen and the Emperor, despite suffering such public humiliation at Su Min's hands, had not dared to issue a warrant for her arrest.
After all, on the surface, Su Min was just a reclusive wanderer with no official allegiance. Though she had business dealings with the Fuding Merchant Guild, she was essentially a free agent, a force of nature. Even at the height of her power, the Demon Queen had always chosen to recruit such individuals rather than provoke them. The only pity was that he, Prince Yong, was likely the only one who knew the true depth of Su Min's personal grudge against the Emperor.
As for the greedy, calculating looks now directed at Su Min, Prince Yong merely smiled. None of these people could ever afford her services. Only he knew how truly exorbitant her prices were. Even his family's centuries-old accumulation of wealth and resources strained to meet her demands, let alone these comparatively small Jianghu sects. As his business partner, Su Min had only one major flaw: she was ruinously expensive.
But what a single pill could buy was immeasurable. Just look at Mo Shaosheng. The man had become a leading figure in the Jianghu alliance and had finally reached the long-dreamed-of Qi Refining stage after consuming one of the pills Prince Yong provided. And Prince Yong still had five more of those precious pills in reserve.
The only regret was that Su Min could not refine them on demand. It was not a matter of her skill, but of the ingredients, which were simply too rare. When she had broken through herself, she had needed two pills, while others only needed one to advance. That did not mean her talent was lacking. It only showed that the pills she refined for her own use were of a completely different, superior caliber.
"Enough." Su Min's voice cut through the murmurs, drawing all attention back to her. "Since you called me here, I will be direct. I have no interest in those grassland nomads. I will only act if the Flame and Earth Elders show themselves." Her eyes swept across the room, ensuring every person felt the weight of her words. "Of course, that means you all must hold off the rest of their army. Make sure no one interferes with my fight against those two old bastards."
After finishing, she leaned back in her chair and fell silent. She had less than zero interest in the details of military strategy. Though she had played her share of grand strategy games in a past life, reality was another story entirely. Besides, she understood one golden rule in situations like this: if you keep your mouth shut, no one will realize you are an idiot. So she chose silence.
Her demand was not unreasonable. Su Min was not afraid of facing tens of thousands of soldiers head-on; with her mobility, she could move freely within an army. But there was one critical condition: the enemy could not have other experts near her level. If she got dragged into a prolonged fight while being harassed by other powerful fighters, things could get genuinely dangerous. If these gathered heroes could not even hold back the grassland army's elite cultivators and commanders, then the war was already lost.
"No problem," Prince Yong agreed immediately, not daring to refuse. "As long as the Danxianzi can handle, or at least delay, those two old monsters, it will be the key to our victory."
Her reasoning was sound, and that was exactly why he had gathered so many experts in the first place: to create a clean arena for her battle. The more intelligence he received about those two elders, the more fearful he became. Though he had never met them and was not a cultivator himself, he knew instinctively that even his three newly advanced Qi Refining subordinates did not stand a chance. Among everyone he knew, Su Min was their only hope. Fortunately, she had her own compelling reasons for intervening.
Today, he had brought his heir along specifically to let the young man meet Su Min in person and understand the kind of power that truly shaped the world. He had taken her earlier advice about succession to heart. No matter what faction you belonged to, you needed a true pillar of strength to survive. That was why his son could not be burdened with the day-to-day governance of a territory. He had already discussed it with both of his sons. Fortunately, his heir had no interest in rulership, only in seeking greater personal power. That made the future arrangement much simpler.
"Gentlemen," Prince Yong began, addressing the crowd and noticing Su Min's growing impatience from the corner of his eye. "The reason I have gathered you here is this war. The grassland tribes are marching south with nearly two hundred thousand troops, a scale rarely seen in history. But in today's world, numbers alone do not guarantee victory..."
His words also had the effect of silencing those who had been scheming on how to best curry favor with the alchemist. Despite their fame and prestige in the Jianghu, none of them were worth anything in Su Min's eyes, not even the respectful Sect Leader Mo.
For the remainder of the long meeting, Su Min sat in her place of honor, leisurely sipping her tea and saying not a single word. Yet, no one in the room dared to criticize her for it. Meanwhile, the three unlucky brats she had beaten earlier sat quietly in the back, discreetly circulating their spiritual energy to heal their bruises. By the time Prince Yong finally brought the council to a close, their wounds had completely vanished without a trace.