As the potter’s wheel spun and Booker shaped the clay, folding and pinching and lifting the shape of a jar from a crude block of material, his mind was split between the pleasing mundanity of the work and reading the new technique the book had delivered to him.

Four Directions Sacrificial Fuel Technique

A secondary refinement technique, increasing the odds of successful refinement by sacrificing materials at the same stage of refinement as the intended ‘true’ material.

Refinement procedure as follows:

1. Arrange the intended refinement material and four sacrificial materials of the same refinement step, with the sacrificial materials arranged in a diamond around the primary material.

2. You need five sacred essences: fragrant pine resin, three-times purified charcoal, the soil of a distant continent, liquid mercury, and water from a sacred spring.

3. Anoint the primary material with the sacred essence for the element being refined.

4. Anoint each sacrificial material with the other sacred essences.

5. Refine all materials at once. The four sacrificial materials will be destroyed to increase the primary material’s refinement chance.

Booker… frowned. It wasn’t that this wasn’t helpful. If he could consolidate his chances of making it through the 2nd refinement stage, he could guarantee receiving at least one 3rd level refinement material. That was one worry…

The problem was, he had a much bigger issue at hand, and this method would might actually make it worse. Each 3rd level refinement only had a chance of providing the property he needed, Demon Purging. Without a way of guaranteeing that the property would appear, he was better off simply rolling the dice and trying to refine as many materials to 3rd level as he could, hoping one of them would be what he needed…

So this doesn’t get me anywhere, unless I find a way to force the right property to emerge.

But…

Booker paused, and thought again. The book had never been wrong before. Often, it seemed to know what he needed before he knew. So why did it insist on this method?

Unless…

The pages of the book flipped to an illustration: a watercolor of a mountain, the shape of a resting clay giant half-buried by the forests and glaciers. In the shadow of the mountain was a humble cottage and a river of red clay.

Of course.

Booker had the technique he needed already. He was using it at that very moment, to feel out the ‘right’ shape for the clay flowing beneath his fingers on the wheel. It was Master Long’s technique!

He finished the pot and moved back to the kiln, collecting the finished heartcores from the bucket of icy well water. Each wet jewel sparkled like a diamond, faint blue with a streak of veined red at its center, where it had first formed from a single drop of ancestral blood within the fish’s heart.

Sitting down with his legs folded, Booker set three of them down beside him in the grass and clutched the remaining jewel to his chest, holding it his clay-stained hands and closing his eyes to better sense the… the…

What’s a word for it…

The basic desire to be.

The meaning of the material.

The essence.

The essence of the heartcore. For a long moment he felt nothing, except the round glassy smoothness of the jewel between his fingers, the drip of icy water down between his knuckles.

This was so easy when I was around Master Long. Was he helping me, or…

Or was it his very presence.

No.

His aura.

Master Long had the most ferocious martial intent Booker could have imagined. Far worse than Valley Tiger, who had to rage and roar to bring out his killing aura, Master Long had simply reminded each and every person who met his eye that they would die someday.

That’s it.

Booker tried again to do what he’d done when he resisted Valley Tiger – he reversed the direction of his aura technique, pushing out instead of drawing in. The subtle energy he’d barely learned to sense expanded out over a small radius around him, the grass bending, sparks from the kiln swirling around him to form a spiral of tiny orange-red points.

The glassy smoothness of the jewel…

The drip of ice water through his fingers…

And…

As he breathed in and out, slowly pushing out other thoughts until total concentration remained…

And there was something else, something that he slowly became aware of. A slight circulation of energy. A pulse. It wasn’t anything physical, but something so ethereal that, if Booker didn’t already know to look for its presence, he would have thought he was imagining it.

The gem was responding with a wisp of its own intent.

It was the intent of solid stone, resilient and forever durable, scraped clean by wind and water but towering above the world. It was the proud soul of a mountain.

Booker opened his eyes.

It was impossible to tell if minutes or hours had passed, but looking up at the sun, it had dipped lower than Booker had noticed the last time he checked.

Right. Okay. Okay…

The sweat fell from his brow as he smiled to himself, spontaneously bowing his forehead to the grass and kowtowing to the spirit of Master Long.

I’m truly lucky. Whatever becomes of me, I’ve been blessed with many great teachers.

If I fail to learn from these giants, I only have myself to blame.

And…

Thank you, book. I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you before.

“Alright.” He straightened up. “I have until the moon rises to finish my jars, fire them, and refine the ingredients.”

— — —

The first task was the jars, and Booker tried to put all thoughts out of his head as he spun the clay. There was no point in worrying, in regretting, even in thinking. The only part of him that needed to move was his hands, and they seemed to move with a spirit of their own, guided by the clay.

Once the jars were firing in the oven, he made his way to the market. For the sake of not being recognized, he donned his disguise, leaving the medicines he’d prepared days ago with the clerk. When the confused clerk asked, “Don’t you intend to deliver them to the patients?” Booker only replied,

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“I will be gone for some time.”

And carried out his business, buying the five sacred essences the recipe called for. Thankfully, none of them were very rare. Fragrant pine resin, charcoal, soil of distant continents, mercury, and sacred springwater…

All of them were things a mortal could lay hands upon.

He bought what he needed and departed, eyeing the sun as it descended in the sky. His time was slipping past every second…

The next matter was to carefully examine each of the ingredients, finding the ones that he felt had the right spirit. Among them, many had the souls of stones run flat under a river, of patience and quiet calm, but others were spirits of earthen fury, the terror of the land beneath your feet giving way and splitting open in an all-consuming upheaval. Spirits of mud, and standing stones, of mountains undersea and above the clouds….

There were five he found that Booker thought had potential; their spirits were furious, stern, and righteous. They had nobility.

He hoped they would turn into components of Demon Purging.

He also… wondered what it meant, if even unliving things had this remnant of vague intent. Was the world itself alive?

This world…

It has its own rules. Any time I make an assumption based on Earth, I risk just being dead wrong.

By the time the potter arrived with the second contingent of clay jars, ready for refinement, Booker had prepared himself. For the rest of the night – until the moon rose – he had one goal. Finish this damn quest and save Wild Swan.

If he could do that…

He could say he’d made a difference.

As the potter and his sons left, Booker loaded the first jar full of ash and burning branches, sealing it off with fresh wet clay to let the vacuum form inside. As he worked the ingredients into their sealed containers and loaded the kiln, Froggie let out a croak, unburying his head from the ash.

“Yeah, it’s been a long day little buddy.” He would’ve pet the little frog’s head, except it was glowing bright like metal straight from the forge.

Instead, he went back inside, digging into his repository of spare ingredients for something good. He found Earth-Sea Spirit Blossom powder and a whole chunk of Petrified Amber-Bound Mosquito, fusing them together with a flash Furnace and forming a glassy, pale-blue pill.

Walking into the garden he shouted “Catch!” and flicked it towards Froggie, whose tongue flashed out, snatching the pill from the air and swallowing. A moment later, a ferocious croak billowed out from the kiln, and the flames redoubled in intensity.

Already, the first jars were beginning to crack and split open, black ashes spilling out. As he scooped out ruined pots and jars with his wooden paddle, a few condensed shards of beast blood glittered like rubies among the dust.

The next batch to meet the flame was the frog livers, and then the heartcores again, rotating the 2nd refinement batches through. Sweat dripped from Booker’s every pore; he had stripped his robes down and was wearing nothing but his underwear, and his body gleamed with sweat. He listened to the snap and crackle of the flames, the dull roar of rising air buffeting his sweat-drenched skin, and pulled the ingredients out as soon as the sound of shattering clayware echoed out of the kiln’s mouth. The flames were getting hotter by the second – this push seemed to be doing Froggie some good, because his fire had developed a more golden, noble character, and Booker was beginning to feel the presence of martial intent flooding out of the kiln.

Booker labored under the growing heat, grateful for the faint drizzle of misty rain falling from the darkening sky as the sun lurched towards twilight.

One refinement. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six….

The monotony of the work and the wall of heat burning out of the kiln, the sweat and the toil, made Booker feel as if he himself was being refined within the furnace. Each time he stepped forward to scoop out another ruined jar with his long-handled wooden paddle, he had to willingly sink himself into a sea of heat, forcing him to ignore the pain dancing along his skin and billowing up against his grimacing face.

In those first six rounds of refinement…

Thirty ingredients dwindled to nineteen…

Nineteen to twelve…

The pressure between his eyes built into a throbbing headache…

And finally he was left with one road forward.

Three of the five he’d chosen as candidates were gone, burned up in the furnace on their way to the 2nd refinement. Now…

Now it all came down to luck.

Setting the two ‘candidates’ aside, he shoveled the remaining 2nd generation refinements into the furnace and waited. His body was trembling as he pulled out the remains of the procedure…

Ash.

Ash.

And…

A success. Something glittering in the piles of ash.

Beast Blood

Intact // Dull Quality (3rd Refinement)

The blood of a spiritual beast.

Effects:

>> Qi Recovery 20% (Earth) <<

Toxicity 5% (+)

Toxicity 15% (-)

Potency 5% (+)

Booker felt weary. His bones felt heavy within his body, and he wanted nothing more than to lie down and let the coolness of the night wind overtake him.

That’s… That’s one successful refinements. I have a finished beast blood.

I just need… I just need one more refinement to go well.

One more.

He shoveled the jar into the furnace and stood there, his skin roasting, feeling the pain prickling on his skin, and pulled back as soon as he saw splits forming on the surface of the jar. He dumped the load of crackling, ember-scarred ash onto the ground, and pushed at it with the side of the paddle. There was nothing inside.

Again and again, he stepped into the heat, and time after time, he pulled back with nothing to show for it but dust.

Until – almost past the point of losing hope – at the fourth refinement, something gleamed.

Yes. YES.

“YES!”

He grabbed it, scalding himself, dropped it, pulled on his gloves and grabbed it again, and held it up. The beast liver had matured from a pinkish-red to a deep and vibrant purple, separated by wavering lines of flint gray.

But the properties….

Frog Liver

Intact // Dull Quality (3rd Refinement)

The liver of a frog is a potent antidote to many minor illnesses.

Effects:

Disease Curing (Water)

>> Body Cultivation 20% (Earth 3) <<

Potency and Toxicity 5% (-)

Beautification 1% (+)

Not the property I needed.

No good.

One more try.

Dropping the finished beast blood and frog liver onto his potter’s wheel, Booker gathered up the rest of the ingredients. Anointing them with the sacred dusts, powders, and oils he had collected for the Four Directions Sacrificial Technique, he called out to Froggie, “Lower the flame!”

Froggie obeyed, and the glowing orange mouth of the kiln dimmed. One by one, Booker pushed the sacrificial materials inside, and then, finally, the last remaining koi heartcore. The last of his ‘candidates’ for the Demon Purging property.

Booker stepped back and called, “Light up!”

Froggie bellowed, and fire swirled forward, brighter than ever, spilling out of the confines of the kiln and forming a blazing pyre five feet tall as the grass withered back or burned to cinders.

Booker stared into the abyss of flames.

Blue sparks were drifting from the four sacrifices, swirling around the main jar. One by one, those sparks sank through the outer shell and joined the inner materials, strengthening them.

But something was wrong.

A crack was forming.

It was too soon – Booker had been through this process enough to develop a feel, an instinct, for when it was following its proper course, and this was far too soon for the jar to break open. If he didn’t stop it…

I’ll lose my last chance.

Exhausted and past thinking straight, Booker grabbed the bowl of glaze from the sidelines and waded into the flames. As the heat began to scorch him, began to make cinders burst up in his hair, he thought, Dialyze.

As if the power knew what he was thinking, a shield of water exploded around him, a bubble of swirling blue surrounding Booker and dividing the flame from his skin. No matter how the fires rose and licked at him, he pushed forward, protected by his water barrier.

His hand reached into the blazing furnace.

With one finger, he smeared the glaze into the growing fault in the jar, and stepped back, allowing the fire to rush over the ceramic surface and instantly dry the glaze into a hard resin. The crack ceased to grow, held together by his last second improvisation.

Booker staggered back and fell into the grass, huffing, panting, trying to get cool air into his burned lungs.

One by one, the four jars surrounding the fifth shattered, releasing rushes of blue-white flame that billowed outwards and then were sucked into the central jar.

And then…

With a cracking sound that echoed through the night sky…

The jar split open…