NOVEL NEXT Ch. 10
Chapter 10: Chief Product Officer, You Take the Role!
The whole hall fell silent.
One thousand three hundred and fifty pills.
That number was like an invisible mountain crashing down upon the hearts of every alchemist present, suffocating them with sheer weight.
Tenfold!
A full ten times the yield—and even more!
Everyone’s eyes darted back and forth between the hundred or so crystal-clear, artlike pills before Leng Yanran and the mountain-like pile of black, ugly “coal balls” at Chu Feng’s feet.
One side was elegant and refined; the other was crude and common.
Yet now, the elegant had been pinned to the ground by the crude and rubbed mercilessly in the dirt in the most unreasonable way imaginable.
The Pill Pavilion steward’s face turned blue and white in turns. His lips trembled as he tried to speak, but not a single word came out. He had wanted to watch Chu Feng make a fool of himself, even use Leng Yanran’s hand to suppress this “heretic.” But now, he felt that he was the biggest joke in the room.
What the hell was this? That brat wasn’t using alchemy—he was using sorcery!
“Impossible… absolutely impossible…”
“Cheating! He must have cheated! He must’ve hidden those pills beforehand!” shouted an alchemist close to the steward, unable to accept that the Dao of Alchemy he revered had been so humiliated.
Chu Feng smiled at those words.
He strolled lazily to the mountain of “coal balls,” picked one up casually, and shook it before that alchemist. “Senior Brother, did you just say I cheated?”
He swept his gaze around the room. His voice wasn’t loud, yet it reached every ear clearly. “With so many eyes watching—from processing the ingredients to opening the furnace—at what point could I have cheated? Did I conjure these pills from thin air, or did I make these three Senior Brothers summon them out of nothing?”
Chu Feng pointed toward the three apprentices who were still frozen in disbelief.
Zhang San, Li Si, and Wang Wu stood staring at their own ash-stained hands, then at the mountain of pills, their minds blank.
We… we refined this many pills in one day?
Weren’t we the ones known for blowing up furnaces?
Wang Wu’s entire body trembled with excitement as he looked at Chu Feng, eyes filled with burning admiration. He remembered the words Chu Feng had told him after the first failed batch—“You did well. Keep going.”
That single sentence made this “idiot,” who had been scolded for years, feel for the first time that he wasn’t a useless waste.
“I… we didn’t cheat!” Wang Wu shouted with all the courage he could muster. “Every single pill was refined by the three of us—no, under Senior Brother Chu Feng’s lead, one by one!”
“That’s right! We can testify!” Zhang San and Li Si echoed, standing tall and straight-backed.
At that moment, they were no longer timid apprentices; they were proud members of the victorious team—the Heavenly Dao Mutual Aid Association!
Seeing the excitement on the three apprentices’ faces, everyone else fell silent.
The truth lay plain before their eyes.
Chu Feng ignored the cries of those who had failed and walked toward Leng Yanran, who still stood in a daze.
“This isn’t alchemy…” Leng Yanran murmured blankly. Her pride, her faith—all of it was shattered to dust in that instant.
“Who said this isn’t alchemy?” Chu Feng’s tone was calm.
He picked up one of his own “black coal balls” in one hand and carefully held one of Leng Yanran’s “top-grade Qi Nourishing Pills” in the other.
He placed them side by side in his palm, showing them to her.
“Senior Sister Leng, I admit—your pills are works of art. They’re clear and flawless, their fragrance rich, and their potency three times stronger than mine. But what about their price? Ten times, even twenty times higher! Only those pampered inner disciples can occasionally afford them.”
Chu Feng’s voice carried a strange magnetism that drew the entire audience in.
“But my pills,” he said, weighing the black ball in his hand, “are ugly, they smell bad, and their effects are only a third of your top-grade pills. Yet they have one enormous advantage—they’re cheap, and there’s plenty to go around!”
“They can let over two hundred disciples in this Sect—those like me, or even worse off—actually have pills to use! They can give them hope so they don’t fall into despair on their cultivation path! Senior Sister Leng, tell me—aren’t they the majority of our Qingyun Sect? Aren’t they our biggest market?”
“Your pills are luxury goods, displayed in glass cases for admiration. Mine are the hard currency that can sweep across the world, pills everyone can afford to use!”
Every word from Chu Feng struck Leng Yanran’s heart like a heavy hammer.
Market? Hard currency?
She didn’t understand those terms, but she understood their meaning.
Her Dao of Alchemy pursued the ultimate quality, serving the few at the top of the pyramid.
Chu Feng’s Dao pursued the ultimate quantity, serving the vast foundation beneath it.
Who was right? Who was wrong?
Before today, she would have declared without hesitation that Chu Feng’s path was heretical.
But now, looking at that mountain of pills and the three “foolish” apprentices flushed red with excitement after creating a miracle, her faith began to waver.
“Now, do you still think your ‘Dao’ is the only correct one?” Chu Feng asked, eyes blazing, his voice carrying a final, irresistible invitation.
“Your talent shouldn’t be used just to please a select few. Your brilliance shouldn’t be confined to a craftsman’s bench.”
“I need you—to become the one who sets standards, designs products, and leads this revolution in alchemy!”
“Senior Sister Leng, I formally invite you to take the position in our Ascension Group as—”
Chu Feng paused, his tone solemn, almost sacred, as he uttered the phrase he had prepared meticulously, the words meant to completely shatter Leng Yanran’s final line of defense.
“Chief Product Officer! In short—CPO!”
Chief Product Officer?
CPO?
Leng Yanran’s mind buzzed—completely frozen.
She recognized every word, yet when combined, they formed something utterly incomprehensible, mysterious, and immensely grand.
What kind of position was that? Just by the sound of it, it seemed countless times more impressive than being the “Pill Pavilion’s Senior Disciple.”
“Chief… Product Officer… what does that do?” Leng Yanran asked instinctively, her voice dry and uncertain.