The Almighty Dominance novel Chapter 626

The old sect master hovered in mid-air, robes fluttering in the high mountain wind, his jaw slack as he stared down at the transformed peak.

Li Qingxue floated beside him. “It is still Thousand Herb Peak, Master. Only… improved.”

Improved? The word felt like mockery. Where once a humble wooden hall had stood—three stories of weathered timber, roof tiles cracked by centuries of rain and snow—now rose a forest of towering structures.

Twenty buildings at least, each fifty stories high, their walls gleaming with metal and polished stone and something smooth and transparent like frozen water.

No thatch. No carved beams. No familiar scent of aged pine and herbal smoke. Just cold, hard lines that screamed of foreign craft.

“These materials,” he rasped, pointing a trembling finger. “Wood has always served us. It breathes with the mountain. These… these things are metal and stone and… whatever that clear substance is. They feel wrong. Cold. Dead.”

Li Qingxue’s voice stayed gentle. “They are fireproof, Master. A single spark once burned half the old herb halls to ash in the Great Fire. You surely remember how many times the buildings burned back then—we would rebuild them, and they would burn again. This time, Jun Jiu designed these walls to never burn again. Even if a Nascent Soul cultivator unleashed heaven-fire here, the buildings would stand.”

The old master’s eyes widened further. Fireproof? The very idea was blasphemous to every tradition he knew.

Before he could protest, Li Qingxue gestured downward. “Shall we go inside? The production lines are running now. You will understand better once you see.”

They descended together, landing on a wide platform of smooth gray stone that felt unnaturally warm beneath their sandals. A pair of massive metal doors—taller than three men—slid open with a soft hiss, revealing a brightly lit hall that stretched farther than the eye could track.

The old master stepped inside and froze mid-stride.

Gone were the rows of wooden tables where disciples once sat for hours, pounding herbs with stone mortars, mixing by hand, chanting formation spells with every pill. Instead, the space hummed with machines. Sleek black and silver contraptions moved in perfect rhythm—arms of metal spinning, tubes glowing with soft blue light, conveyor belts carrying trays of fresh herbs straight from the outer gardens. The air smelled clean, sharp, almost clinical.

“What sorcery is this?” he shocked beyond believe.

“Not sorcery,” Li Qingxue said, walking beside him. “Jun Jiu calls it automation. Every step that once took a hundred hands now happens here, faster and cleaner. Healing pills. Strength pills. Bone-mending pills. Even the simple food pills that disciples used to eat during closed-door training. All of them are made by machine now.”

A nearby line caught his eye. Fresh spirit ginseng—roots still dripping with morning dew—rode a belt into a sealed chamber. Inside, blades flashed, liquids bubbled, and glowing runes flared in perfect sequence. Seconds later, finished golden pills rolled out the other side, each one identical, each one radiating pure medicinal qi.

Li Qingxue pointed to a small worker standing at a control panel, palms pressed to a formation plate. “Only a few disciples are needed now. They simply channel their spiritual energy into the final infusion step. Everything else is handled by the machines.”

The old master watched, stunned, as tray after tray of perfect pills emerged. “How much is the production now? It seems a lot.”

The old master remembered that if he pushed the thousand herb peak elders to create this many pills, the next day all the disciples would already be protesting and running away. But with this machine they could keep up production. And it was all automatic—he barely saw any disciples here.

Li Qingxue explained. “In the old days… one year of labor by the entire herb hall might produce one hundred thousand pills. And half would lose potency before the year was out.”

“Now the same number is made in ten days. And the packaging is different too.” She lifted a small bottle from a finished tray and handed it to him.

It was not the familiar clay or glass vial sealed with wax and string. This one was wrapped in a thin, silvery material that felt cool and impossibly light. When he poured a pill into his palm, the spiritual energy inside it felt as vibrant as the day it was born.

“Refined spirit-jade foil and qi-locking barrier films,” Li Qingxue explained. “Jun Jiu says the old bottles let the medicinal qi leak away. After one or two years, half the efficacy would be gone. After five years, three-quarters lost. These new packages hold the energy almost perfectly. Ten full years, and the pill loses barely ten percent of its power.”

The old master turned the bottle over in his hands again and again, as if it might vanish if he blinked. His mind reeled. Hand-made coconut pills—laborious, sacred, passed down through generations—had been replaced by this… this factory of steel and light.

He walked deeper into the complex, Li Qingxue at his side. Each new hall showed another miracle. One floor produced Qi Condensation pills at a rate that would have made the old sect weep with joy. Another floor sealed emergency healing kits that could save a dying Core Formation elder in minutes. Workers—only a handful—moved with calm precision, their only task to add the final touch of human qi where the machines could not.

Everywhere he looked, the old ways of Xia had been overwritten by something straight out of Prussian legend: endless production, perfect uniformity, ruthless efficiency. The very air hummed with the quiet power of it all.

The old master stopped in the center of the largest hall, surrounded by the ceaseless rhythm of machines, and slowly sank to his knees on the spotless floor. His hands pressed against the cool stone as if he needed to feel something solid.

“Qingxue…” His voice cracked. “We spent centuries grinding herbs by hand, praying that a single batch would not fail. We lost entire harvests to fire, to mold, to simple human error. And now… this.”

Li Qingxue knelt beside him, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“Jun Jiu said the old way was honorable,” she said softly. “But the new way keeps more disciples alive, lets more of them reach higher realms, and protects the sect far better than fear and scarcity ever could.”

“Master, you should try each of these pills,” Li Qingxue said, offering him an assortment of pills. The old sect master had always personally checked the quality before selling any product in the past.

When he ate the alignment pill, the strengthening pill, and many other pills—one of each of the twenty-five kinds—the more he consumed them, the more his tears fell.

Even the pills created by the machine were two to five times better than those hand-made by the best disciples.

Li Qingxue then showed him the sheet listing the cost of each pill and the resulting profit.

The old master was shocked. He had assumed that pills two or five times more potent would come with much higher costs. But in truth, they now cost only about thirty to fifty percent of the normal price. As a result, her profit was astonishingly high.

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