Once the Ironthorn Fruit was harvested and loaded, a Qi Refinement cultivator would lead the cart with it back to the sect.

They were still very close to sect territory, so a high level of security was not really required.

The fields that Chen Yu was working on were directly managed by the sect as they were very close to the sect division and direct oversight over them was feasible - rather than the usual system of having a village chief who would pay taxes to the sect yearly, as was true in other parts of the territory the Rising Phoenix sect controlled.

Some of the harvested Ironthorn Fruit would be sent to other branches of the sect, while some of it would be sold on the open market.

A portion of it was kept by the sect for internal activities of course - meaning that it would be used by the alchemists of the sect to make various products.

Yin Tiang inspected some of this latest shipment of Ironthorn Fruit as it arrived. “Hmm… not damaged, and almost all of it is intact.” This was a very good batch of Ironthorn Fruit, and Yin Tiang felt that whoever had harvested this batch had done a phenomenal job.

While it was true that the Ironthorn Fruit could still be used even if it wasn’t intact as its juices had various alchemical properties, it was still the most useful as a whole fruit.

Yin Tiang’s solo mission involved working in the sect’s alchemical division - this was rather expected given the fact that this was the area he not only wished to specialize in, but also the area where he was most talented in.

Not to mention that the alchemical division generated a huge portion of the sect’s revenue and they could always use a few extra hands, so anyone who was even moderately good at handling things in it would be assigned to it for virtually every solo mission.

There was a reason that Yin Tiang was rather adept at alchemy. Although Yin Tiang was the oldest of his squad, he was the one who lagged behind the most when it came to cultivation - that was before Tang Ze showed up though and really brought their group’s average level of cultivation down.

This was not of much concern to him - he lagged behind because he chose to focus on alchemy, and it wasn’t like he was too far behind. He was just slightly below average for where one would expect him to be at this point in time.

Conversely, though he might lag behind slightly when it came to cultivation, he more than made up for it by greatly excelling at alchemy.

Most Initiates couldn’t get into advanced alchemy classes like he could, and didn’t have his skill either.

Then again, most of them didn’t share the kind of heritage that Yin Tiang had either.

His grandfather had married a wood nymph - and a part of that blood flowed through him.

Wood nymphs were known to be quite close to nature, animals, and plants as well.

Yin Tiang had basically been born with a green thumb kudos to this, and was excellent at naming and identifying plants even when he had only been five years old.

Of course, this was only one part of alchemy. It was one thing to be able to identify and nourish rare plants - and another to know how to use them well. Still, being able to identify plants was the first step to becoming a good alchemist, and he was extremely gifted at this step. This was also the part of alchemy that most beginners struggled with the most, though Yin Tiang soared over this obstacle with ease, allowing him to focus on more advanced aspects.

He never really appreciated how useful this inherent talent of his was until he saw how much his squad members struggled to remember the names of plants. That notwithstanding, he had to say that Tang Ze was nearly hopeless when it came to such things to a point that it shocked Yin Tiang - Tang Ze was not even being able to tell Moon Lilies and Silver Lotuses apart, something that was childishly simple.

When it came to using the plants properly, Yin Tiang had another advantage which gave him yet another leg up compared to his peers.

His father was an alchemist as well, and so Yin Tiang had gotten a head start and access to some alchemical manuals the other Initiates wouldn’t have from a very young age.

So it was only natural he was asked to work in this division - his solo mission involved not even having to go out of the sect building itself.

He felt a pang of pity for Tang Ze - who knew how he was holding up right now?

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

In addition to being worried about Tang Ze’s issues with this current mission, Yin Tiang really wished he could think up of something that might be able to help Tang Ze break through the Zeroth Realm.

After that, Tang Ze would actually be able to use some of the resources that the sect provided.

As of now, all that Tang Ze could do was sell them to other people. If he kept them for later use, they might expire by them. And the closer they were to their expiry date, the lower the amount they would fetch on the market.

He ended up giving some of his monthly resources to the other members of his squad because of this - at least between the four of them, he could be relatively assured that they might pay him back later at some point.

Yin Tiang had reached out to not only his teachers, but also to his father to ask if they had any ideas that might aide Tang Ze.

Sadly, nothing had turned up that might be able to solve his issue.

It wasn’t like it was a hard problem in terms of Qi. The amount of Qi needed to reach Qi Condensation from the Zeroth Realm was minimal, the issue was making it in a form that Tang Ze could take. After all, you would not use a flamethrower to try to light a candle.

But - everywhere that Yin Tiang looked, he got the same answer.

One could not build where there was no foundation.

You could not give a newborn baby steroids and expect it to be able to lift weights suddenly, now then could you?

The only option that Tang Ze had was to let his dantian and meridians open slowly on their own as nature would allow - that was the conclusion that Yin Tiang had reached after searching for so long.

It had been his initial hypothesis as well, but he had hoped for Tang Ze’s sake that he would be proven wrong.

Alas, it was not so.

Yin Tiang was sure that there was an answer somewhere - it was just that such an answer was not profitable enough to develop a solution for.

After all, Tang Ze’s situation was rather unique. If he had regressed to the Zeroth Realm due to injuries to his meridians, as did happen to some people, there were medicines to help cure them.

What there wasn’t was something that could cause them to open faster. No one would really think to do so - at least, no one before someone like Tang Ze had showed up.

However, Yin Tiang, even if he was precocious when it came to alchemical ability, was still just a novice.

He had not reached a stage where he could really develop new recipes or modify existing ones on his own - which was something that even seasoned veterans had trouble with.

And any mistake could potentially endanger Tang Ze’s life - and Yin Tiang doubted that Tang Ze would agree to become a guinea pig for his experiments.

Even if there were no huge benefits to anyone from solving Tang Ze’s problem - it was an interesting enough question that it might be worth trying to solve merely as it would deepen people’s understanding of alchemy.

Yin Tiang didn’t quite grasp how it was that Tang Ze had landed in this situation in the first place.

The only thing that he could think of was that he had grown up in some environment entirely without Qi - though he didn’t know how that was possible.

Even in the regions of this world where Qi was the weakest, by the time one was twelve years old at the latest they would have advanced beyond the Zeroth Realm.

Only if they had somehow been born and brought up in an environment where someone had artificially siphoned off the Qi in the air could such a thing happen - though Yin Tiang couldn’t think of a reason as to why someone would do such a thing. It was possible to do something like that, but why go through that kind of trouble? What would the point be?

If Tang Ze had a good family backing - say, were he an actual noble (and not a pseudo-noble like Chen Yu) it might’ve been worthwhile for someone to find a way to get him to leap across through the Zeroth Realm into the first minor realm of Qi Condensation.

Putting that aside, if Yin Tiang had been a bit more experienced and his cultivation more advanced, say, at the Golden Core realm - he could likely embark on solving the problem himself.

It was much like solving a curious thought experiment - though it might not have any direct benefits, it could improve one’s understanding and building upon that, be useful sometime in the future.

By its very nature, one couldn’t know how valuable an unknown piece of knowledge was until one had obtained it.

But, Yin Tiang did not have any sort of backing.

He was still a novice alchemist, and it was unlikely that anyone who was higher up would take a harebrained idea like his seriously. There might even be some flaws to the ideas that Yin Tiang might come up with that he simply couldn’t recognize because of his lack of knowledge - that possibility could not be ruled out either.

Resigning himself to the fact that a solution to said problem was not going to appear anytime soon, Yin Tiang set out to do his actual work.

The alchemical lab in this division of the sect was located underground and was built so that the floor was the earth of the mountain itself. This was so that any spills could easily seep into the ground rather than onto a floor which would get damaged anyway.

The room was large - one of the biggest in the entire sect, and was filled with beakers and cauldrons.

There was a fume hood at nearly every table, to carry the noxious vapors often generated during alchemical processes safely outside, and most people chose to wear masks inside the place.

Noises permeated throughout the lab, whether they were from the results of experiments or just things like beakers rattling as they were heated - and it was full of activity, though no one was dumb enough to do something like run around the place.

It was busy, sure, but not chaotic. Many of the things being made in this place were dangerous and so no one was going to risk a spill.

If there was such an immature person who didn’t know what they were doing, they would be kicked out at once!

All of the rest of his coworkers, those who were actual alchemists and not assistants or the like - were at the Qi Refinement stage at the least.

However, thanks to his bloodline in part and because of his early education as well, Yin Tiang was able to keep up with them when it came to many things!

Much like with Chen Yu, Yin Tiang contributed enough to the sect through these kinds of missions that he actually fully repaid the amount the sect spent on him and then some; making him yet another outlier when it came to considering a net profit/loss ratio among the Initiates.