The Chief Instructor of the Coventry City-State Pharmacists' Guild, His Excellency Deben Basten, considers himself not to be a narrow-minded man. Pen Fun Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 But when he saw his companion, who had been as desperate as himself in his quest for the door of the Grandmaster's Palace, and who had become desperate in the midst of repeated failures, finally embarked on the right path after more than twenty years, his heart was almost filled with joy and excitement, but was filled with unspeakable feelings of jealousy and pain.

The torment made him reluctant to stay in the lab for even a second longer.

After leaving the laboratory on the top floor of the tower in a near-escaping manner, Deben Basten stopped and gasped against the polished wall. The night breeze blew through the high window, bringing with it the chill of early spring, and gradually sobering his mind, which had been burned by the flames of jealousy.

This is Heldland's chance, not its own.

Deben Basten was bitterly aware of the foolish mistake he had made by leaving the Lord's Mansion early for believing that Madame Veronica's injuries were incurable.

Lady Veronica turned the corner in the end, and the Iron Master was undoubtedly the greatest contributor, followed by President Helderland, who remained in the City Lord's Mansion. As for Deben Basten, it was obviously the palliative potion he personally concocted that helped Madame Veronica survive the most dangerous half of the day, but due to the unreasonable special toxin of Alchemy Death, coupled with his later practice of leaving the City Lord's Mansion, he was excluded from Baron Edelman's gratitude.

The power structure of the Coventry Pharmacists' Guild is not precarious, with a powerful chief mentor and a low-key branch president, leaving the superstructure in a top-heavy inversion. However, due to the seniority, strength, and connections of Chief Mentor Deben Basten, President Helderland did not show a strong desire for power, and the power structure that should have been crumbling was barely stabilized for twenty years.

But now, once again, this power structure has been shaken.

Both in terms of contacts and the level of dispensing of medicines, Deben Basten no longer has the upper hand. On the contrary, once President Helderland successfully crossed the Grandmaster Trench and stepped into the sacred temple of the reverence and desire of countless Apothecaries, his prestige would immediately soar to the top, and the entire city-state of Coventry would frantically pursue the newly released Grandmaster Apothecary.

Part of the reason Deben Basten escaped from the lab was that he didn't know if he could control the poisonous flames of jealousy, and if he were allowed to witness President Heldland's successful concoction of a grandmaster-grade alchemical potion, the chief mentor might do something irrational.

The last sanity allowed Deben Basten to leave the laboratory, but after barely calming down, a new thought arose in the old pharmacist's mind. "Iron Master, the root of everything is the mysterious Iron Master. He paced back and forth in the hallway, his face suddenly pale, and suddenly stained with an unhealthy flush, "My accumulation is stronger than Herderland's, and if I can get an opportunity, there is no reason why I can't cross the Grandmaster Barrier...... If yes...... If it's ......"

The chief teacher's voice grew deeper and deeper, and a kind of persistent determination gradually appeared in the depth. When all the sounds finally fell silent, the old man stood by the window like a stone statue, looking at the night, his hands clenched into fists in his sleeves, and the green tendons on the backs of his hands bloomed.

A cheer rang out from the direction of the laboratory, filled with excitement, sentimentality, and a mixture of incredulity. Deben Basten trembled violently as if struck by lightning, then turned decisively and walked briskly towards the stairs.

Instead of returning to the top of the tower to congratulate his long-time friend on his promotion, he walked towards the private room that the Apothecary Guild had prepared for the Iron Master.

Due to the narrow spiral staircase of the Guild Tower, Deben Basten rarely climbed up and down alone in recent years. Normally, there are two young and strong apprentices supporting His Excellency the Chief Mentor, but tonight was different, and what he wanted to do could not be seen by the second pair of eyes.

The chief instructor had just walked halfway before he had to stop to catch his breath, rest his feet, and by the way, go back to his somewhat messy thoughts. "Master Iron will not fail to welcome my visit, because he must have a purpose for joining the Apothecary's Guild anonymously. He leaned against the cold, hard stone puppet and muttered to himself - the puppets of the Imperial Capital Association are mobile, have the strength of high-level molten gold warriors, and can act as the most reliable guards, but this is only a statue.

"I'm not afraid of any conditions that Master Tie puts forward, no matter what it is, as long as I can get the opportunity to be promoted to Grandmaster, I must agree to it. Deben Basten secretly encouraged himself, "The only thing that might cause trouble is whether Heldland agreed to more conditions? It doesn't matter, one grandmaster is certainly not as helpful as two, it's just a gesture, what reason does he, or the Excellency behind him, have to refuse me?"

The silver moon and the blue moon staggered above the sky, and gradually drifted away, and the eastern sky had already appeared a slight pale, and the night was about to pass. Deben Basten looked up at the sky, and a faint anxiety could not help but appear on his face.

In fact, until Deben Basten came to the door of the Iron Master's room, he did not make up his mind, whether to lower his posture and plead with his face, or deliberately put on the face of his predecessors to coerce and seduc.

Master Tie is young, and even if he follows a certain Grandmaster and learns and masters many secret alchemy techniques, he is still a thin line away from his mentor. As a veteran tutor and the most skilled pharmacist in Coventry, Deben Basten couldn't help but hesitate, he really couldn't bow his head to such a young man, even just thinking about it made his whole body feel very uncomfortable.

Fortunately, the locked door kept the chief instructor from having to continue to struggle, and the Iron Master did not seem to have returned to his room. Deben Basten didn't know whether to rejoice or regret his luck, he hesitated and reached for the lock.

"Magnetic lock key. ”

With a simple alchemy trick, the door lock clicks twice and the lock cylinder pops open. The Iron Master didn't put any alchemy protection on the door lock, much to the surprise of Deben Basten, who was just a test boy.

"Could it be...... Didn't the Iron Master leave anything in the room?" the thought came to the head teacher's mind, causing him to rub his fingers uneasily. "I look like a thief...... And what is stolen is an incomparably precious wealth of knowledge. The old man muttered, using self-deprecating language to relieve the guilt in his heart, and at the same time raised his right hand, palm outward, and slowly pushed, and the door immediately opened silently.

This is a subtle application of the Repulsion Shield skill that does not leave any marks on the door.

There was no light in the room, but the darkness couldn't stop a powerful apothecary. Deben Basten didn't light the candle or touch the fireplace, he just closed his eyes silently.

After a few seconds, the Chief Mentor's eyes opened again, and a circle of golden flames lit up around his pupils.

This skill is a mentor-level alchemist ability, known as the "True Vision", and it is impossible to hide in the face of the True Vision, whether it is darkness, fog, illusion, copper barrier, or other means of obscuration. Moreover, this skill can be used in two ways, one is suitable for use on the battlefield, which can completely destroy all masking means within a certain range, and the other is the method that Deben Basten is currently using, which will not cause damage to the masking means, but only make them temporarily ineffective.

The use of True Vision as a substitute for a candle flame is undoubtedly a luxury, but Deben Basten does not consider it a waste. There are so many secrets in the Iron Master that it is necessary to set up some means of concealment or protection in his room. True Sight reveals most hidden secrets without alerting those who set up the cover-up guards.

As Deben Basten had speculated, although the Iron Master did not seem to have left any personal belongings in the room, there was always a thick black mist in the open field of vision of the True Vision. However, when the chief instructor focused his attention and cast his gaze over, he could not see the presence of the fog.

In order to make sure that the fog was not his illusion, Deben Basten cast his True Sight three times in a row, and finally confirmed that the fog did exist, but his self-protection ability exceeded the limit of the Mentor-level Alchemy Melting Skill to crack. There are quite a few alchemy items with self-protection ability, but being able to resist the cracking of the True Sight in the absence of the owner means that this item has at least reached the quasi-grandmaster level.

A quasi-grandmaster-level alchemy item, in this era when the cultivation technique has declined, even if it is placed in the Imperial Capital of the Apothecary Guild, it is also a treasure that can cause a bloody battle. Deben Basten felt his heart beat faster, his tongue sticking to the surface of his jaw like a piece of paper, and he had a hard time swallowing his saliva.

"Could this be my chance to be promoted to Grandmaster?" said Deben Basten, whose hands were trembling slightly. Quasi-grandmaster-level alchemy items should not have been within his reach, because he was not a molten gold warrior after all, and he could not use the powerful skills to crack the protection of quasi-grandmaster-level alchemy items. But it just so happened that his carry-on bag contained a grandmaster-level one-time alchemy prop - the Barrier Breaking Stone.

Compared to the mildness of the True Vision, the Barrier Breaker Stone is a very violent alchemy item, which can not only destroy the alchemy protection of the same level, but may even spread to the surrounding area. On the battlefield, high-grade barrier-breaking stones are often used to break through the protective barriers of important areas, one is not enough for two or three, with the advantage of numbers, even the super-level protection of some ancient civilization relics will be successfully destroyed.

Deben Basten took out the barrier stone from his satchel and pinched it in the palm of his hand, his face gloomy and deep in thought. The barrier breaker stone is very easy to activate, and as long as it is touched by condensing spiritual power, it can be projected and destroy the barrier, so simple that even an apprentice can do it. But to do so would mean to formally tear the skin with the Iron Master—or the Excellency behind him, and in the current position of President Heldland, even for the sake of more than twenty years of working together, it would be best to be able to choose neutrality.

Without the backing of the Apothecary's Guild and the fact that he was not on the side of reason, Deben Basten certainly did not dare to provoke a big man who must have reached the level of a grandmaster. Just as he hesitated for a long time, not knowing whether to take the plunge or leave, dawn broke in the east, and a ray of golden sunlight shone through the window, shooting right on the position of the black mist.

There was a "poof" sound like a bubble bursting, and Deben Basten turned his head to see that the black fog had dissipated, and a wooden box that looked simple and delicate appeared on the table not far away.

This wooden box closely resembles the potion storage box recorded in ancient texts, and the lid of the box has been opened at some point, revealing twelve bottles of alchemical potions in a neat row. Each vial of the potion exuded the most obvious alchemy fluctuations, some of which reached or exceeded the level of a grandmaster, and at least half of the fluctuations were very unfamiliar.

"The gods are above, so many, so many grandmaster-level alchemy potions with lost formulas!"

Deben Basten's legs went limp, and he collapsed involuntarily. He didn't remember crying, but when he came to his senses, he was holding a bottle of alchemical potion tightly in both hands, and his face was full of hot tears. The bottleneck that had imprisoned him for forty years was slowly loosened in the flow of tears.