Seph and his monkey friend returned to the alchemist’s workshop, where Zhi welcomed them. The young man showed him the herbs they got along with the sinister straws.
“Well, that’s just a great haul. We have all the ingredients to make a deadly might pill for you that will raise your strength, but the quality won’t always be the best. It depends on how well you understand my instructions. Luckily for you, I am the best alchemy teacher around.” Zhi then said under his breath, “Hmm, come to think of it, if we really are inside a trial. That means I am the only alchemist around! But the young man doesn’t need to know that.”
“Did you say something else, teacher?” Seph wondered, as he heard him muttering to himself.
“Oh, no, don’t worry. I was just speaking to myself, anyway let’s move on to the practical lessons. Follow me to the alchemy part of the workshop.”
The ghost floated to the other room, which had a big green furnace in the middle of it that went up to Seph’s knees, and had intricate decorations on it. He stopped next to the furnace, pointing at it proudly.
Seph and Sun followed him, looking around. Seph looked extremely interested in the furnace in the middle of the room. He had never seen its like before.
“I present to you my super rare quality furnace. Me and this furnace saw many outstanding achievements in our journey together. We were the talk of the empire, and now you get to make your pills using this, which will increase the quality of your pill significantly. Just look at its brilliant red color. This was my pride and joy in life.”
Seph seemed hesitant for a second before saying, “Umm, that furnace is green, not red, Master Zhi, are you okay?!”
Zhi became wide-eyed for a second. He looked at the furnace. It was still red, but thinking of what Seph just said, the image in front of him distorted, and the once red furnace became a green furnace! In front of his eyes.
He rubbed his eyes and looked at it again. It was still the same color — green!
“I…It was…I don’t know what’s happening to me…Since you woke me up from my fantasy to this reality. That I am now a ghost, I have been noticing the surrounding things changing to the worse. It’s like I am in a waking nightmare. I don’t know what’s real anymore. I don’t know if you are even real.”
Zhi looked downcast, beaten, and lost. Seph felt a curse was at play, to live like this, for sins Zhi had to pay for. Even thinking of that, though, Seph had nothing to offer the tormented ghost. He didn’t know how to help him, because even Seph recently thought that he was possibly dreaming, that he could be in a nightmare, but he wasn’t. This was his new reality, and as he came to accept that, and live with that, Zhi needed to accept his reality, too.
Sun, though, didn’t have that issue at all. He leaned forward, trying to pat the ghost on the back to comfort him, only to fall right through the incorporeal ghost to the ground face first.
This broke Zhi out of his self pity though, as he asked the monkey, “Are you okay?”
The monkey just got up and gave him a thumbs up with a wide-toothed grin.
“Oh! Good, okay. Where were we? Yes, teaching you alchemy. First, I need you to sit down and meditate your energy around your body. I want to make sure you have enough energy to sustain feeding this furnace for the next 5 hours to make your first pill.”
“Just sit down and circulate my energy, nothing else?”
“Yeah, nothing at all. I can see the energy within you since I laid eyes on you, but it’s very faint. I believe if you move it around, I’ll get a better feel for it. Usually my students are with me for a long time before we mess around with pills. So I know exactly how much energy they have. Luckily for us, this new ghost ability that I got will enable us to skip the long time to become familiar with how advanced a cultivator you are.”
“Good, I will start then!”
Seph sat on the ground, in a lotus position, closed his eyes, and started meditating, feeling the energy circulate around his body, the current was steady, and moving at a decent speed, thanks to the days upon days of meditation and training that Seph spent between the rooms.
Unbeknownst to Seph, Zhi’s eyes went wide like a couple of ceramic plates!
Wow, this kid has so much energy circulating his body, and he is only death dismantling (I)! Why didn’t he try to cultivate to reach higher levels? I will ask him for sure, but his energy is enough to cultivate a few stages and make a bunch of pills while we are in this workshop together!
“Enough, good job Seph. I can tell that you have sufficient energy to make the pills, so let’s move to the real pill making alchemy part of the lesson. Tell me, young man, how do you think pills are made?”
“Hmm, I assume we should add the herbs to that furnace and push our energy through our palms into the furnace or something?”
“Yes, that’s exactly it, but it’s not that simple. First, you need to know which herbs to add first. Some herbs need a longer time in the furnace than others. Some herbs need to be mixed first before you add the rest of the ingredients, and that’s why alchemy formulas matter. It’s not just you find four herbs and add them, and pray to Buddha something usable comes out of it!”
Seph felt his body shudder upon the mention of Buddha’s name! He didn’t know what that was about, but he didn’t want to show it to the alchemist, so he put it to the back of his mind for now.
The alchemist continued when he noticed Seph’s lack of comment, “Also that’s not the only thing, you need to control the heat, between different levels of intensity, during different stages of the pill making, the pill we will make first takes 5 hours to make, you will need to listen to my instructions throughout the entire process!”
“Understood, teacher, I am in your care. Let’s start the process!”
“Good, good, I like your enthusiasm. Okay, the first thing you need to learn is how to control your energy to open up the furnace while maintaining certain heat with the other hand. You will not stop pushing for five hours, so try it out, try to remove the lid of the furnace with your energy!”
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Seph used the eye first at the furnace!
Appraising…
Name: Alchemy Furnace.
Type: Tool.
Quality: Uncommon. (Soulbound)
Durability: 100%
Usage: Important for every aspiring cultivator, only you will live long enough to see the end of your journey. Being able to make your own pills guarantees a steady growth on the way to transcendence.
Soulbound! That’s a new term I hadn’t seen before. Does it have anything to do with Zhi Zixin being a ghost? Not sure if I should ask him now, any question or realization regarding his state of being seemed to shake him to the core.
He then pushed his energy into the furnace and moved the lid easily, since he was already adept at moving his gourd weapon, which was much heavier than the lid.
“Excellent, remember you will need to do this while pushing heat and adding ingredients, now for this pill, you need to put the tougher materials together to mix for the first three hours, so add striking willow bark, and bear cub root inside first, then start pushing your energy into the furnace.”
Seph did just that. After the lid was closed again, he let out a steady current of his energy towards the furnace.
“Okay, good, but not exactly what we need yet. Close your eyes, picture the sun, picture heat, picture fire, and imagine that your energy is turning to a similar source of heat. You will begin feeling your hand getting warmer when you are on the right track, so stay at it. Your only mission is visualization right now.”
Seph imagined the sun and its warm rays of light. He imagined the light getting warmer and warmer; he remembered the days where he worked under the sun, carrying water all day to houses that don’t fill their own water. The heat lashing the back of his head, his bamboo hat not doing much to protect him from the sun, especially when he was leaning forward, exerting effort to climb an incline.
He felt his whole body become warmer, but concentrated more to push that warmth to the palms of his hand, and the warmth started leaving his body gradually towards his palms, and they started becoming warmer, pushing the heat out, saved him from exposing his hand to more heat than it could handle.
“Excellent! You are doing it, my pupil, you are pushing heat into the furnace. Now I want you to make that heat stronger, because of the tougher ingredients we are working with.”
Seph imagined fire next. He imagined sitting around a campfire in the middle of the village during their small gatherings, the youth courageously jumping over the fire pit in the middle, the fire rising sometimes and lashing their bare feet with its heat; he grasped that feeling then used it to increase the heat he was pushing towards the furnace.
“Good, good, very close, we just need one level higher of heat right now, believe it or not, there are actually even more levels of heat, but you won’t need them in this stage of cultivation, and you probably won’t be able to reach them now either.”
The young cultivator resolved to remember that one time, the village kids fooled him into catching a lump of coal out of the campfire with his bare hand. In a dare! They had claimed they all had done it already, and if he wanted them to accept him, he should do it too!
He wanted so badly to be accepted by the other teens of the village, so he caught the lump with his bare hand, and it burned him immediately. One kid had water ready to throw at his hands after he got burned, but it still kept him out of his profession for two weeks. His mother scolded him at first harshly for putting himself in danger, but then she took care of him for the entire two weeks, changing bandages on the burn daily.
Seph grasped that level of heat, and the heat he was pushing out of his palms intensified.
“That’s it, now the patience game. You keep at it for three hours, before we add another ingredient.”
Seph kept his concentration to keep the heat at the same level for 3 hours, and it went very well with no notes from his teacher. After the time passed, his teacher said, “Now it’s the taint time. Usually, in normal alchemy, we put a pure energy ingredient at this stage. But for Yin Cultivators, we put a tainted material for this phase. In this formula, it’s the sinister straw. Open the lid and add it to the mix, and reduce the heat to the second degree. You will keep this for 1 more hour before adding the last ingredient.”
The young man did just that. Once the straw was inside, the energy inside the furnace seemed more wild, which gave him a guess why he now needed to reduce the heat, to not clash with the energy, but tame it instead, which he did. He kept at it for one more hour. Sometimes the energy became crazy and tried to push the lid open. His teacher instructed him to control the lid and keep it closed, which he did. At the end of that hour, the energy seemed to become tamer, and it was now time for the last ingredient.
“Okay, now add the bullwhip grass, and reduce the heat to the first degree. In the last half an hour, you are doing well so far. I expect a pill of good quality to come out of your hard work.”
Seph added the bullwhip grass and kept the heat at the same level. Nothing crazy happened in the first half hour. When he finally reduced the heat, he could feel the herbs being liquified in the furnace this entire time. He could feel impurities being removed by the heat he was using. The bullwhip grass had the least impurities or maybe needed the least time to remove the impurities, he wasn’t sure.
At the last phase, when he reduced the heat, he could feel the liquid inside congealing, to form the coveted deadly might pill, which after just 30 minutes, he moved out of the furnace using his energy to look at it.
Appraising…
Name: Top Grade Deadly Might Pill.
Type: Pill.
Quality: Uncommon.
Effect: Consume to get +4 strength.
“Marvelous, just marvelous. You did a great job, Seph, but this took time and effort. Do you think you can continue making the rest of the pills now?”
“Yes teacher, I don’t feel tired at all. I am excited by the gains I’ll get from these pills.”
“Amazing, then let’s move on to the next pill. I’ll walk you through this one as well.”
Seph repeated the process again with the instructions of his teacher and got a peak grade pill this time. His eyes were wide open in disbelief. His teacher was very excited, like he didn’t perform alchemy for a long time, and was glad someone else was doing it in his stead. The pill would give him +5 strength.
After that Seph did another pill by himself with no instructions and got another top grade pill. He moved immediately to making the last pill, but discovered his own limitations. His energy was not depleted, but he had exhausted his body and energy paths by this point. He pushed himself to finish making the pill, with less heat than usual, and he got a low grade pill that would give him +1 strength only.
Seph took a break after that to sleep, after apologizing to his teacher for the low grade pill. The teacher was dismissive saying that it’s okay and now they know he can maximally make pills for 15 hours straight.
The young man was going to take the 3 high purity pills in the morning before venturing into another garden to get newer herbs.