Lin-Lin’s world was falling apart. Her father, the indomitable hero of his people, the strongest person she knew, had been killed in a fight. Fortunately, she was carrying his valuables, but even so, her father had only given her them because he wasn’t certain of the outcome of the battle.

The presence within Lin-Lin was still and unresponsive. That was truly dangerous. Whatever had killed him had also damaged his soul to the point where he required extensive rest.

What the hell was even the odds of finding a Dao Seeker in some random backwater port-town? That could not have been a coincidence. There were only nine, or eleven if she included Yi Ming and her father, and finding one so quickly into their adventure wasn’t logical at all.

In the far distance, Lin-Lin spotted a generic mountain chain which she headed towards at full speed. She had already traversed several thousand li in the span of 24 hours of constant travel. The mountains seemed imposing at first glance, but with a push of her palm, she indented a part of the mountain wall, creating an artificial cave.

She dug it deeper and deeper before sealing of the entrance to make it look like it hadn’t been destroyed. Deeper into the mountain, she sensed strange emanations of a high power, but that was of no concern to her.

Effectively, she was entrenched in complete darkness.

Father was in a critical condition. His soul was rapidly dissipating and she could feel it. She held both his bags of holding. With a deep breath, she reached into both of them and removed whatever she thought may help.

There were 25 soul gems inside capable of boosting the power of one’s soul, a few Mistvale Roots that could also do the same thing and a Turmoil Ginseng which contained an extreme Qi potential. All these items were rare and extremely difficult to come by, but in the face of her father’s imminent death, that really didn’t matter to her.

She was going to make a pill.

Her Essence Flame hadn’t been determined just yet, and she was wracking her brain trying to figure out what it could be.

Her likes were architecture, beauty, art, and pills, but none of those were profound enough a subject to base her Essence Flame on. It had to be something primordial, something that could destroy the impurities in each herb.

She also needed a pill furnace. There was one inside a bag of holding, so it was of little consequence.

Back to her pondering, she revisited almost every moment of her life. The calm and idyllic days in the Village, her training with her adoptive brother, the time spent traveling through the woods on their first journey all the way to Gold Stone City.

But there was a moment of her life before that. Before she was even born, yet somehow she could remember it. The memory resurfaced slowly as she focused intently on it, but once it did, a tear rolled down her cheek.

Mother Nuwa’s grace pulsed deep inside her pseudo-soul, reassuring her that she was a real creature, something of substance. Her father had done True Creation, and only by the grace of a Goddess.

Creation.

While an Essence Flame destroyed impurities, one based on creation would do the same, but with something more. A Creation Essence Flame would bolster the potential of the ingredients used severalfold while at the same time completely eradicating impurities.

Concentrating deeply, she summoned the flame in front of her, burning bright-white, illuminating the cave’s every nook and cranny. Placing it on the pill cauldron, she began the process of creating her very first pill.

--

Lao Chen was dying. That bothered him, despite himself. His journey had just begun. To have cut it short was a cruel fate the Heavens placed on him, but nonetheless, he had lived a fulfilling life.

The battle against the Dao Seeker was anything but unmemorable. In the first and last clash, that woman had been trapped in a perennially-tormenting dream which would have driven any man insane.

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The problem was that she was struck first and Lao Chen should have never suffered any consequences. The Three Desires are not to be trifled with, and the Four Fiends are just the same. A Fiend based on a desire such as the four-legged reptile-dog-shark-like Taotie was a power Lao Chen did not take into account.

Once she broke out of the spell, the woman, bedraggled as she was, wore a lecherous smile.

“A thousand years only? Why, aren’t you the liar?”

Lao Chen had realized then that he was outclassed. Before he could retaliate, the Taotie consumed him whole, leaving nothing but a blood-smear on the floor.

At that moment, Lao Chen had felt her cultivation base. Seven of her Eight Heavenly Meridians were unlocked, and even discounting that, her Qi potential was much higher than his own from her long life of training.

In a deep and black space, he existed, naked and bare. Bits and pieces of his ethereal body detached from him slowly. Death was nearing and the only one that could stop it was his daughter. He had faith in her, so he did not fear. Instead, he simply waited, biding his time with a resolve to become stronger.

--

Seven nights had passed and Lin-Lin was well on her way. The 25 soul gems had been compressed into a single, superpotent active ingredient that held a hundredfold the amount of power that Lao Chen’s soul currently possessed. The Mistvale Roots and Turmoil Ginsengs had been blended together along with an adherent, Celestial Sap. The Sap was intended to bond the different ingredients into a single stable lattice to prevent accidental separation somewhere along the process.

After Lin-Lin compressed them into a head-sized orb, the purification was due. Placing the raw amalgam of ingredients inside the main pot on the cauldron, Lin-Lin closed it and inserted her Creation Flame inside, causing the whole cauldron to screech ear-piercingly loud.

A black mist seeped out from the holes on the side of the cauldron, indicating how the impurities of Earth were being purged.

Lin-Lin could feel her Qi slowly running out. Her father wasn’t alive, so she couldn’t draw from his wellspring, thus forcing her to rely on her own uniquely pure Qi stores.

The Essence Flame continued to burn brightly, expelling the putrid stench of impurities as she continued on. Her stores were running dangerously low, but she held on. The impurities were still gushing out with wild abandon.

The cascade of impurities began to slow to an almost imperceptibly thin stream of dark mist until its imminent cessation.

Lin-Lin took a deep breath and killed the Essence Flame before lifting the lid of the cauldron, letting out an almost suffocatingly thick aroma to waft through the cave.

The Pill was sapphire-blue, luminescent in its purity, multiplied several-fold by her Creation Essence Flame born from her grasp on all soul affinities and Qi elements.

Picking it up, Lin-Lin smiled at it, using the precious few seconds she had to treasure her first creation, feeling every single side of it.

Her play-time was cut mercilessly short as the memory of her ailing father took precedence. Steeling her expression, she swallowed the pill, noting how it almost exploded with energy as it ran down her throat.

It took all of her mental strength and will to direct every ounce of it within her away from her own pseudo-soul and towards her father.

The energy took time to settle before penetrating into her father’s soul, lighting it aglow once more.

And finally, Lao Chen regained consciousness.

Projecting his soul out of her body, wearing the same clothes as the ones he died with, Lao Chen hugged his daughter. “I am so glad that you’re safe,” he whispered, wiping away a tear as he assessed her. “You didn’t come to any harm?”

“No, father,” Lin-Lin hugged back, crying as well. “I thought you were going to die!”

Kissing his daughter on her forehead, Lao Chen nodded. “I need to recreate my body. Then, I shall meditate and increase my strength. They think I am dead, so we shall have some peace for the time being.”

Lin-Lin nodded. “Don’t scare me like that, again. That was awful of you.”

“I apologize,” Lao Chen chuckled. “It seems this old man still has a thirst for glory and excitement.”

Lin-Lin just groaned. “Don’t worry me like that again, promise?”

“I cannot,” Lao Chen sighed. “But I’ll do my best.”

Returning to the safety of Lin-Lin’s pseudo-soul, he set to creating a corpus for his body, somewhat hoping that he would make a younger version of himself.

--

While her father concentrated on crafting himself a new body, Lin-Lin decided to pursue the emanations that she had felt initially upon entering the mountain.

After having recovered her Qi, she burrowed herself further into the mountain, expecting to find the source of the Qi at any moment, but as the power signature grew and grew with no end in sight, Lin-Lin began to dig faster, intent on sating her curiosity.

Eventually, she ran into a wall that she couldn’t dig through using normal means.

The wall was a solid, smooth black metal and no matter how much pushing on her side using air pressure, it remained still and unblemished.

Using a larger portion of Qi, she attacked the wall using an orb of pure Qi, foregoing any need for a technique. The golden orb flew straight towards the metal wall, and phased through it, leaving it undamaged.

“Strange,” she noted, approaching the wall slowly before shoving it with her hand. Surprisingly, it slid straight through along with herself.

What awaited her on the other side was anything but normal. She was on one end of a large antechamber stretching on for what seemed like several li. The walls were lined with blue-fire torches lining the walls at regular intervals, illuminating just enough to see the floor, but not the endless darkness that was presumably the ceiling.

Taking in the beauty of it, Lin-Lin took her time as she walked through the antechamber, towards the tremendous Qi signature that was still so far away.