The sound of running water could be heard in the distance, further inspiring his tired body into action. Leon hobbled up and walked over to the nearby stream. He filled up an empty water bottle and wandered back to the berry bush. On the way, however, he found a shattered house. It was as if a chunk of an abandoned kitchen had been ripped out and teleported into the forest.

Or maybe it was so old that only a corner of the entire building had survived? Upon closer inspection, Leon found that the corner of the house had been cut out by something. The kitchen benchtop was sliced in half and the corner where the two walls intersected was diagonally cut. Even the wooden boards that made up the wall had been sliced into a point.

Leon searched through all the rusted crap and managed to find a positively ancient wooden bowl along with a blackened pot hanging above what should’ve been the fireplace. The pot looked so greasy that the moisture in the air didn’t even have a chance to rust it.

Ripping out some of the smaller planks, Leon searched around the area for some more kindling and twigs. Once he had everything, he sat down and used a rod of flint to get the fire going, the dry twigs catching instantly.

It took half an hour to build the fire up enough to boil the water. Leon sat in front of the cauldron, unsure of what to do next. He had never learned to make any home remedies before, and he certainly wasn’t going to find any kind of books in the half-rotten house. Which couldn’t have helped him anyway since he didn’t speak any language other than English.

Sighing, Leon realised he would just have to use his high school knowledge of chemistry to wing it.

Herbal extracts were usually boiled and strained of their pulp, right? That logic wouldn’t necessarily work here since he was trying to extract the Qi or aura, or whatever was in the berries, but Leon decided to try it out anyway.

First, he started by using a positively ancient wooden spoon to crush a handful of berries up in the bowl. The berries were going to break down anyway so why not speed things up by mushing them into a paste?

He then tossed the crushed raspberries into the cauldron and gently mixed the medicinal brew with the spoon. They dissolved quickly, releasing a sickly sweet yet slightly metallic steam. Leon didn’t really know what to do from there. Waiting was probably the best choice, prompting him to grab a stick of dried meat as he tossed another branch onto the fire.

Leon didn’t bother to stir it anymore. The liquid was frothing up and spinning like crazy, anyway. What use would jamming an old, rotting spoon have other than to contaminate the spiritual medicine? Then again, could a magical tincture even be contaminated by regular microorganisms? Bacteria, mould, and fungus could all pose severe health risks if a normal person were exposed to them, but Leon wasn’t a normal person anymore.

He was getting closer to superhuman status every day, and his Qi supply helped a lot with reinforcing his body. Leon was nearly halfway to establishing his foundation. For all he knew, immunity to disease may come along with advancing to the next realm. He could almost imagine it. A world where everyone had superhuman abilities, enhanced regeneration, and immunity to diseases.

Wouldn’t that be much closer to a utopia than modern society ever was?

Of course, that was excluding the possibility that bacteria couldn’t cultivate. If people were able to grow stronger, why couldn’t other things? Superbacteria would be the least of their worries if that were true. Regular diseases were bad enough, so much so that Leon couldn’t even imagine what cultivating microorganisms could do.

Who didn’t like a cough that transformed into a lightning bolt?

Leon shuddered at the thought but was brought out of his musings by the scent of blood rising from the cauldron. He didn’t know what that meant, but his intuition was telling him it was either very good or very bad. After another second, Leon decided it was bad. He used the towel in his pack to grab the handle of the little cauldron and move it away from the fire.

He set it down and allowed it to cool on the grass. Once it was cool enough to drink, he tied his ripped-up shirt over the mouth of the cauldron. It was going in the trash anyway since it was torn to pieces.

A minute later, Leon swirled the wooden bowl in his one good hand. The liquid was a bright red and had a strong metallic, coppery smell. It was a bit too watery to say it was like blood, but it was close. If he used less water, it would grow thick enough to be indistinguishable from the real thing.

Leon stuck his finger in and tasted a drop of the stuff. It was quite tart, making him recoil at how sour the liquid was. But that wasn’t the important part. Focusing on the energy, Leon felt it seep into his bloodstream much faster now. The tiny amount did nothing to his health, but the medicinal strength was absorbed into his flesh several times faster than when he ate the berries raw.

Despite not being anything too incredible, the result proved that preparing Qi-infused ingredients could affect their use. Leon dripped some onto his wound and found that doing so granted a focused effect. He took the time to crudely suture the cut on his leg, even using a stitch Alex taught him. Once the separated bits of flesh were pulled together, Leon drank half of the bowl and slowly dripped the other half onto his leg. Some of the liquid disappeared into the golden blades of grass, but the cut was almost completely healed from the extract so he didn’t care about a few wasted drops.

Leon scratched the itchy scabs and got to work on repeating the experiment. He did everything the same as before, but now he used half the water and allowed the tincture to boil even longer. He only took the cauldron off when the scent of blood was burned away entirely. He felt good breathing the steam in, his back a little straighter from the invigorating smell.

This time, the liquid was almost grey, losing most of its red lustre. That was a bad omen if he had ever seen one. Leon stuck his finger into the lukewarm mixture and was glad to find it much closer to a syrup, but that joy quickly faded when he drank the sludge. Nothing happened, making him literally facepalm. That bloody smell must have been the medicinal strength boiling away.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Leon tried a third time, but instead of boiling the healing effect away, he waited until the smell of blood appeared and quickly moved the pot away from the fire. He shifted it far enough away so that it reduced to a simmer. by keeping it cooking on medium heat, the liquid slowly began to glow it was so heavily reduced.

He wanted to keep going but the bruises and breathing pain were getting to him, forcing Leon to take the pot to the stream where he could half submerge it. Not two minutes later was the tincture cool as a cucumber. Leon filtered it into the wooden bowl and tasted a drop of the new liquid to test its potency.

The drop slid down his throat like a bead of mercury, heavy and solid. When it finally landed in his stomach, a hint of medicinal strength flowed out of the drop, surging through his body and healing him faster than ever before. Compared to the first batch, the potency was several times greater. Leon tried to focus on the sensations but got distracted by a notification.

[Congratulations! You have successfully refined: Bloodroot Extract (Inferior) - 3%.]

When no more information appeared, Leon used True Sight on the bowl.

[Bloodroot Extract (Inferior) - 3%]

This inferior-quality medicine was made using Bloodroot Berries and boiled river water. Once the mixture was brought to a simmer, a mortal flame was used to refine the liquid to a syrup. This mortal-grade elixir can speed up recovery from physical injuries and will also increase the number of red blood cells present within the blood.

Leon read over the notification again. There was a wealth of information contained within, an unusual amount compared to when he scanned the phantoms. Maybe it was because he made the potion? Shrugging, Leon parsed through the text, only some of the details being obvious to him. The description clearly spelled everything out without directly saying it. The berries, water, and flame were mentioned for a reason. Why else would they be in the description while the shirt and cauldron were both missing? If Leon changed or improved any of the three things mentioned, he guessed that the final result would be very different.

The fact that the prefix ‘mortal’ was used when talking about the flame made him wonder if there were better versions. Would a gas fire be considered higher quality or was Qi the major deciding factor? A wood fire could only burn half as hot as a coal fire, but that wasn’t an uptick in quality, only temperature.

Leon didn’t know the answer yet, but he could experiment and find out. Which brought him to even more interesting details. Why did it take him three attempts when the first two were not that different from the last?

He had started the experiment by removing the cauldron mere seconds after the scent of blood appeared, but the first tincture didn’t register as a medicine to the system. The second attempt was a complete failure that seemed to remove the magical properties by boiling them all out. As for the last, Leon now realised that he’d added in a confounding variable. Instead of just taking the cauldron off the fire, he had allowed the mixture to simmer for as long as his aching ribs could handle being ignored. He could do two separate experiments to see what worked, but that felt unnecessary.

The time frame in which he stopped boiling his first and last attempts were extremely similar. The most likely cause was not the timing, but that he allowed the boiled mixture to simmer under a high heat. The long exposure had done something to the previously unrefined ingredients. It had extracted or activated or triggered something in the berries.

Content that he had deciphered the notification, Leon focused on the side effect of the Bloodroot Extract. Professional sports teams would often train in high altitudes before competitions to raise their red blood cell count.

Leon wasn’t familiar with the research, but the logic was simple. Red blood cells carried oxygen around the body, feeding your muscles so they can produce energy. More red blood cells meant more oxygen, which obviously produced more energy for your muscles to use. While it sounded a bit strange, many athletes had been caught doping before, including world-famous cyclists who liked to filter their blood out and only put the red blood cells back in before a race.

Although the effect of the elixir would likely be quite negligible, people would pay top dollar for something like this.

Leon prepared to close his screens when he noticed another notification.

[Congratulations! You are the first in the world to discover the revered art of alchemy. There are two main branches to this art, and mastery in either can establish one as a legendary figure that all will desperately wish to befriend. These two are transmutation, also known as the branch of change, and refinement.]

Leon burst into laughter before he winced, his chest full of stabbing pains. He was the first cultivator of humanity and the first alchemist. The amount of leverage he could exact now was huge. While modern science was extremely advanced compared to the caveman cooking he was doing now, it took a lot of guesswork to randomly find out that alchemy even existed.

With half the world devastated by nuclear war and the other half assaulted by hordes of monsters, his work now could result in him becoming known as the father of alchemy. The indisputable leader on the topic for the next few years. Even if a genius or massive research institute quickly overtook him, Leon would forever be known as the first alchemist.

Barring death, he was in for a cushy life after he reconnected with his family and friends. Who wouldn’t want to hire the first alchemist and cultivator? Just having him on payroll would exact an enormous amount of leverage in both the open market and amongst his future alchemical peers. And best of all, the fame would allow him to leverage an enormous amount of money that he could use to advance his cultivation.