The Undying Immortal System-Chapter 359: Life 92, Age 16, Martial Disciple 2
After Jon left me alone with Yong GeHong, the Pill Lord’s posture shifted from that of a subject to that of a Ruler.
“Apprentice Fang, you have advanced your cultivation base more quickly than I had expected. However, speed should not be your goal. If you wish to grow to your full potential, then you must take things slowly and only advance when you are confident in your success. While I cannot detect any flaws in your cultivation base at the moment, if you continue to advance recklessly, you will leave behind hidden dangers that will eventually cripple you. Understood?”
I lower my head in submission. “Yes, Lord Yong.”
Based on his tone, I could tell that the Pill Lord was genuinely concerned that I had advanced too quickly, but I was certain that he didn’t give a damn about me crippling myself. He only wanted to slow me down.
As I still needed to get the Rank 2 and 3 manuals for the Writ of Pill Fire from the man, I was willing to put on the mask of a submissive disciple and follow instructions that made sense, but my primary concern was blocking Jon from successfully completing his mission. If I felt that Lord Yong’s orders would get in the way of this, I wouldn’t hesitate to ignore him.
Still, while I didn’t necessarily plan to listen to all of the Lord’s advice, I would indeed advance slowly and methodically—but only in relative terms. To an outsider like Lord Yong, my rate of advancement would be horrifying.
I had done my best to maintain a respectful demeanor, but Lord Yong must have noticed something wrong, because the moment I raised my head and looked at him, I saw him flinch and make a decision.
“Apprentice Fang, as Young—Jon suggested, having reached Martial Disciple 2, it is time for you to learn the basic skills of an alchemist. Come over here.”
Without waiting for me to respond, Lord Yong turned away and walked to the room’s pill furnace.
Unlike the alchemy workshops on the Nine Rivers Continent, in this room, the workbench hadn’t been placed against one of the walls. Instead, it sat in the center of the room, allowing for people to approach it from many sides at once. A full third of this workbench was occupied by a square, half-meter-tall pill furnace, with the rest of the space left vacant.
After walking around to the side of the bench opposite me, Pill Lord Yong laid out three familiar herbs.
“Apprentice Fang, the most basic pill in a Disciple Alchemist’s arsenal is the Rank 1 Qi Gathering Pill. The three herbs used in the basic formula are the blue peony, the astragalus root, and the schisandra berry.” As he spoke, the Pill Lord gestured to the herbs on the workbench. “To successfully concoct a pill, one must first carefully purify these herbs, then blend them together into a complex tapestry of medicinal energy.”
The Pill Lord reached around and tapped on two hand-sized formation inscriptions on the side of the pill furnace facing me. “Place your palms on these inscriptions and trickle a small amount of energy into them. Only a small amount. Do not try to push energy into the furnace’s inner chamber.”
While I had seen formation-inscribed pill furnaces before, I had only played around with them briefly, as I had never seen much point in them. So, having Lord Yong show me how to use one properly was a bit of a unique experience.
Upon empowering the two formations, I didn’t notice any immediate effects, but when Lord Yong began heating the furnace, I understood.
In ‘normal vision,’ I was suddenly able to see into the pill furnace’s inner chamber, where sparks of red energy danced around in the empty air.
After several long minutes, the furnace reached a temperature that the Pill Lord deemed appropriate, so he picked up the blue peony from the workbench and tossed it inside.
The moment it entered, in my formation-enhanced vision, I saw the sudden appearance of a ball of green and black energy that was covered in a layer of gray sludge.
“The first step is to free the herb’s energy from its physical shell.”
The Pill Lord placed his hands on either side of the furnace and channeled a stream of energy into a pair of formations. Then, he moved his hands to another set of formations, which allowed him to control this energy and melt the gray sludge, which slipped to the bottom of the furnace.
“The green energy is the peony’s medicinal energy. It is what will produce the beneficial effects that we’re after. The black energy, however, is toxic and will cause a body harm. So, the next step is to purify this energy.”
Saying this, the Pill Lord tapped a series of formations in a well-choreographed dance. With each touch of a formation, he pushed a small amount of qi into it, causing the formation to shoot out a line of energy and attack the peony’s toxins.
This somewhat reminded me of the automated formations that I had once used in my pill factories, but the energy of these formations was much less controlled. Relying exclusively on the furnace’s formations, Lord Yong was able to destroy most of the herb’s toxins, but he did severe damage to the medicinal energy in the process.
Whether because Pill Lord Yong was trying to make a point or because he was just incompetent, by the time all was said and done, only about 75% of the flower’s toxins had been destroyed, with nearly 25% of its medicinal energy having disappeared along with it.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
The Pill Lord then proceeded to throw both the astragalus root and the schisandra berry into the furnace and cleanse them in sequence. Once this was done, he then reached up and tapped a set of formations on the top of the furnace.
“Once all the herbs are cleansed, you next need to prepare them for melding.”
Confused, as this was not a process that I had ever seen before, I watched as the formations along both the top and bottom of the furnace sent out waves of heat that began destroying both toxic and medicinal energy alike.
“You must ensure that the herbs fit together properly. Otherwise, the concoction will fail.”
As the Pill Lord moved the three blobs of medicinal energy together, the powerful heat of the furnace forced the energy into shapes that slotted together nearly perfectly. When the three blobs finally touched, they melded together into the mixture that I was familiar with.
Finally, Lord Yong ramped up the temperature in the furnace and used this extra heat to help condense the herbs’ energy into a medicinal pill.
As soon as the pill coalesced and dropped to the bottom of the pill furnace, the Lord vented the excess heat, opened the furnace’s door, picked up the pill, and showed it to me.
“This is a Mid-Purity Qi Gathering Pill with roughly 61% efficacy. Consider this your initial goal. However, I expect you to aim higher than most of the trash who call themselves apprentices. You have a supreme talent for alchemy, and you must do it justice.”
Lord Yong took out another set of herbs and began a second round of concocting. This time, however, I noticed that he was using herbs of a substantially higher quality.
The Pill Lord still used formations to inject the furnace with energy, but this time, he didn’t let it just shoot out in straight beams. He used his fire affinity to guide these beams to exactly where he wanted them to go. Surprisingly, though, he still destroyed a good amount of medicinal energy, and when he was done, the herbs were far from purified, with about 15% of the toxins remaining.
When he began overheating the furnace and melding the energies together, I saw why he had left these toxins in place. The carefully positioned toxins had turned the blobs of medicinal energy into puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly.
The moment the three herbs locked together, there was a bright flash of energy, and the toxins, which had always appeared black to my formation-enhanced vision, turned pale green. Then, Lord Yong did something to reshape this energy, and an even brighter flash of energy lit up the furnace. Finally, with a flex of will, the Pill Lord forced both the medicinal energy and these new energies to condense down into a single pill.
After venting the heat of the furnace and retrieving his pill, Lord Yong allowed me to examine it. Where a normal Qi Gathering Pill was a uniform, pale, translucent blue, this one had two bands of white rings wrapping around its equator.
“To ordinary people, High-Purity pills might seem like unobtainable treasures, but to a true alchemist, a pill without patterns is worth less than trash.” Lord Yong took out a pill bottle and showed me its contents. There were pills with anywhere from zero to three rings around them. He lifted the two-ringed pill that he had just made. “This is a two-patterned pill. Its effects are an order of magnitude greater than a one-patterned pill, and an order of magnitude less powerful than a three-patterned pill.”
“How… How high can you go?” I asked.
“Nine. The limit is a nine-patterned pill. Zero- and one-patterned Rank 1 pills are suitable for Martial Disciples. Two- and three-patterned Rank 1 pills are suitable for Martial Masters. So, making an eight- or nine-patterned Rank 1 pill means making a pill suitable for a Martial King using only the knowledge and herbs of a Disciple Alchemist.”
As Lord Yong smiled encouragingly at me, I noticed a hint of deception in his voice. “When I was a Disciple Alchemist, I was considered rather ordinary, since I could only create pills with a single pattern. For a genius such as yourself, however, I expect more. I dare not say that you can reach nine patterns, but if you cannot get to at least six, then you are wasting your talents.”
A Rank 1 pill suitable for a Martial King seemed odd, but Lord Yong didn’t seem to be lying about this. Likely, he was just underselling the difficulty involved in achieving such a feat. After all, if concocting nine-patterned pills was so easy, then why was money on high-Rank herbs?
Whatever the case, for now, I just needed to gather more information. “What about the toxins? Why did they turn green?”
“Good question. Normally, toxins are dangerous, but as long as they’re melded into pills properly, they’re benign. In truth, a one-patterned pill is no more powerful than a pill without patterns, since the job of this first pattern is to neutralize the pill’s toxic energy. However, while such toxins are no longer dangerous, they will still build up in a person’s body. They won’t cause any harm, but they will reduce the effectiveness of any pills that contain the same herbs as those previously consumed.”
“Why not just… get rid of them? Destroy them all.”
Lord Yong shook his head. “Not possible. At least, not with normal herbs. I know of a few factions that have herbs capable of producing toxin-free pills, including the Palace of the Herb Sovereign, but access to such herbs is heavily restricted. Also, without toxins, making patterned pills would be exceedingly difficult.”
I nodded in thought. More powerful pills would be nice, but were they worth the tradeoff? I couldn’t immediately see any reason to choose a nine-patterned pill over a Perfect Pill of a higher Rank. They might allow alchemists to save money on herbs, but I doubted most alchemists would pass on these savings to their customers.
Still, at the moment, I didn’t need to weigh the relative merits of the different types of pills. I only needed to study these new pills and learn to make them. freeωebnovēl.c૦m
Lord Yong pulled a thin brown book from his storage space. “This details the functions of a standard pill furnace. It also contains instructions for making the basic Mid-Purity Qi Gathering Pill that I showed you earlier. Study it carefully, and perfect this basic pill before trying to do anything more complicated.”
While we had been talking, the room’s flag had been raised. Lord Yong walked over, opened the door, and accepted a storage bag from the attendant who was waiting there. Then, he passed it to me.
“Take these. Aside from carefully raising your cultivation base, I expect you to attempt to concoct at least 5 Qi Gathering Pills each day. As I said, for someone of your talents, concocting six-patterned pills shouldn’t be a problem. So, do not look for me again until you have concocted at least a four-patterned pill. If you run out of supplies, just talk to the attendant in the Assignment Hall.”
As I nodded in understanding, I sent a wisp of soul energy into the storage bag to study its contents.
Lord Yong had given me five hundred sets of herbs for concocting Qi Gathering Pills. From anyone else, I might have considered this a generous gift. But given the circumstances, I knew that this was just a way to keep me busy. After all, how long would it take for even a talented Disciple to learn how to concoct one of these four-patterned pills?
Still, expanding my knowledge of alchemy was one of my top priorities, and if Lord Yong wanted to fund my research, then I would let him. I just had to wonder if he had any idea of what to expect from such an action.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from fre𝒆webnove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺
