Ķ̷̛̟͈̹̟̭͖̪̈́̃̈͗̋͐͝͝ͅǪ̵̧̨̣͚̝̳̲̓̈̄͊̓C̴̡̋̏K̶̦̖̗̿̾̀̈́̋̽̆̋͌ ̸̡̲͉͚͍̜̟̙͌̂̔́́̃͒ͅͅA̸̡̛̞̍̕͜ ̶̢̝̫͖̖͓̳̒̈̋́͜͠D̶̤͉͈̱̼̥̃͐̌̊O̶̹̟͚̦̻̒̆̈̒̑̈́͂̔ͅỚ̸͇̠͎̗̊̐̓̽̏͛̋̋ͅD̶͇̹͗̇̐̀̍̄͒L̵̛͎̩̩͗̽̃͠Ę̸͎̼̼̈̊̋̿̕͝ ̷̤̬̰̭̞̘͇̘̑͌͊͘͠ͅS̷̥̿͒̈́̈́̃̔̈́̓͊͊U̶̯̥͚̥̤͙̖̱̣̓M̶͉͕̣͍̰͎̈͜M̸͖͌̓̽̔O̵͇̲͍͌͗̑͗N̵̜͆̽̾̅̇̎̚͠ͅ ̸̧̡̘̱̩̯̠͙̦̏͑̀̃̀̉̀̋̂̚T̶̼̯͕̳̀̑ͅH̴̢̨̧̥͚͉̫̭̋̀̔̽̾͛̏̿͘Ę̸̨̖͕͚͔̼̞͍͋̏̍̿͂̄̔́̋͝ ̷̟͉̼̺̲̞̇͂̃̚D̴͉͚̖̗̎̈A̴̧̛͙̬̺̫̘̭̙͇̥͆͘R̵̨̢͚͉̩͓̜͌K̸̛͖̲̗̫̦̝̘̹͓̔̿̾ͅ ̵͕̫̭̖̆Ö̴̪̟͉̰̖̭̜̖́͐̄̃̇̕͜͠N̷̙̮͍̉̂̆̐̒́̄́͒͗Ë̴̹̻͚̲̗́͑͜S̵̨̫͈̣̭̾̄́̇̓̾̈́̇ ̶͙͈̬̯͇̼̮͓̎̄̍́͘F̵̝̦̞͕̞͔͈̙̮̈̅͊̒̈́̒͝͝ͅR̴̦͖̬̤̟̮͉̪̾̂Ó̷̺̌̎͂̂͂M̵͎̯͍̘̥̻͒ ̴̗̗̘͂̑̐́B̶̧̛̥̳̤̜̞̥̞̓E̴̢̢̞̭̭͈̼̫̫̾̂̋̈͐͐̉͝Y̶̢͚̓̌͌̀̊̈́Ȯ̸̻͖͙̹̱̙͚̫͈́̓ͅN̷̡͍̗̙͋̀͛̋̂̊̊̅́D̶̯͚̘͈̩̻̺̮͒̂̆̃͂͊͐̚ ̴̧͛̀T̵͎͇͈͝ͅH̶͇̦͚̿̾́̿̑͑̑͘͘͘ͅE̶̖͓̻̲̞̥̭͖͐͠͝ ̵͖̮͎̰̺͇̫̻̟̰͊̒̆S̴͇̼͙͆̎Ṯ̵̢̛̙̼̱͕͛̍͋͒̈͋́̕͝Ȃ̴̳͒̂̆́͛R̷̨͕̜̙̩͎̘͇̖̀̔̒̄͜S̶͔̺͍̯̗̈͂̀͘̚͜͝ ̵̛̪͖̖̓̀̀̎̎̋̓͑D̵͖͎͎̪̮͙̹̉͊̌̍́̅̀̾͜͝͝O̴̧͇͕͔̓͆̑́̐̍̄̓̕͠Ō̷̝͎͍̬͓͙͕͉̦͍̎͗

I’m not even going to bother complaining about him anymore...I’ll get you one day, Rooster! But not today. Too much to do this morning!

Lingfeng arrived at my door just as I was finishing breakfast. I had called him over so we could talk about my attempts at creating some sort of Petri dishes.

He was still very curious about my microbiology knowledge, and had agreed to help however he could.

I began to tell him about my current needs for the experiment. While I did have the dishes and the culture base somewhat covered with the ceramic plates and the red algae, I still needed some place that was as close to sterile as possible, to allow the cultures to grow without interference.

Unfortunately, microbiologically “clean” places were almost impossible to find in this place and age. In the end, we wound up in a storage closet somewhere deep inside the Hall of Medicine which had an isolation formation around it, since a few more of the ”sensitive” types of medicines were being stored in there. It was a little cramped, but it would have to do for now. The lady Healer that had helped me a couple of times, which I now found out was actually called Lady Yao, a very fitting name, had also expressed deep interest in our “research” once she had found out what we were up to. It turns out that she wasn’t just some random healer-person over there, but rather the Head of the Hall of Medicine herself. With the “main doctor” on our side, we easily secured our “mini-lab’s” location.

After that was settled, I headed back to my house to attempt and prepare the base agar solution for the cultures. I had bought a full backpack of red algae just for that, since I knew that I would mess up a few batches for sure until I got it right.

Barely as I began washing the red algae clean, Fung arrived.

"Aha, just in time! I could use a second pair of hands! Morning, Fungus!"

"Good morning to you too, Lady Trina. I have arrived just as you have requested."

"Pff, drop the polite talk, Fung! Do not make it sound so dire! “Requested”, sheesh. You make it sound like I would chop off something if you didn't show up".

"You wouldn’t?" Replies Fung with an amused look on his face.

"Hah...That’s the spirit! Of course I would! I would start by chopping off your hair! MWAHAHAHA (evil laughter)!"

"But I’m Bald! I shave regularly!"

"Aha, but are you bald EVERYWHERE?"

"NOOO! You wouldn’t DARE!" He contracts.

"Would I not?"

"Pfff AAHHAHAAH!" We both burst into laughter.

"Anyway. Here, take this metal pot, scrub it down with soap until you can see your reflection into it, rinse it clean, then boil some water inside of it, about half-way up, while I work on these algae. We can save some time that way."

"Ugh...sure..." Fung looks doubtful at the soup pot I had just handed him.

I return to washing all of the dirt and dust from the red algae. The more contaminants I can get rid of out of the batch, the better the results will show up.

Just as I was focusing on a particularly messy strand of tangled algae, I hear some sort of arcane muttering from the kitchen where I had sent Fung

*丂ｱﾑ尺ムの 爪ﾉ刀の尺 ﾉム刀ﾉ丂 丂ｱん乇尺ﾑ*

BOOM!

The entire house shakes and dust falls all over the place, including on my recently washed-algae stacks.

NOW WHAT?

"Fungus, I swear to god, I leave you alone for one second and…YOU! What the hell happened here? Why is my stove shattered into pieces? Where are your eyebrows? Hfft...Hiss...Ewww, gross! It stinks of burnt hair and singed flesh in here! WHAT HAPPENED! WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY STOVE!!!"

"Well, the wood was a little bit wet and it wasn’t catching fire. I got annoyed after a few tries of using the flint and tinder, so I thought I'd speed up the process using a little bit of Qi."

"Define “a little”!"

"Urgh...minor fireball? I cast it at the lowest power level I could, I swear!"

"You found it suitable to start a kitchen fire using a minor fireball? Now I do not know which one is more cracked, my stove, or your brain!"

"Well, I do not know any lesser fire spells!"

"You, my friend, are a total moron! Go get me a replacement stove from the market while I clean this mess up! One with 4 eyes and sturdier frame than this one that you just blew up!" I point at the tangled mess of pig iron that remained out of my previous stove.

"Yes Miss!"

"NOW MOVE IT!"

"HAIIII!"

Fung runs the house while a trail of smoke is still rising from some of his clothes. Meh...he’ll put himself out when it starts to hurt.

Ah, the things I do for +rep.

I resume “bathing” my algae while I wait for moron-boy to come back with another stove. I was 50% certain that he would get a heavily decorated one, and 50% that he would get something useless and would have to go back again to replace it.

After about a half an hour, Fung was back with what I had demanded. In front of the house lay a delivery rickshaw and a couple of “furniture mover” looking-dudes that probably had come to install it. Of course, I had landed on the “heavily decorated” side of the coin when it came to my predictions.

The new firewood stove had legs that looked like the paws of panthers and the rims had things that looked like serpentine dragons circling around the whole thing. Which was absolutely pointless and it only made cleaning the thing even harder when something spilled over, but I do not think “Practical” is higher on Fung’s importance mental list than “Fancy”, but I blame that on his upbringing. Maybe he’ll come around, time will tell.

I ushered the two workers into the house, and fortunately they were polite enough to give us a hand with removing the old exploded stove before installing the new one. It did take a little bit of time, since it had to be connected to the exhaust chimney as well, and that had been slightly more complicated. I did get to witness something new though, as one of the worker-dudes literally used his finger to melt and weld together two iron pipes. When I asked him about it, he said that he’s a fire-attuned cultivator disciple, and that this was only his day job that he got to pay for his cultivation expenses. He also left a sort of a “visit card” with me and told me that if I ever needed anything iron-related I should come and see him and his Master at the Sect’s Smithing forges, where they were usually found.

I thanked the two movers, and told Fung to tip them.

"Why should I give them any extra money? They have already been paid by the mechant store for the delivery and installation!"

"Because they helped with the cleanup and because you will brighten their day with just a meager amount of coin, making them remember you as one of the “nice” clients that is polite and tips rather than an arrogant prick?"

"FINE!"

Fung produced a couple of gold coins from his storage ring and then passed the worker boys a gold coin each. The two stared at the bling with eyes as large as onions, then departed while continuously alternating bows towards us until they ran out of sight.

"DUDE! I told you to give them a TIP, not half-a-month worth of their apprentice salaries! You have no sense for the value of coins, do you? Fucking rich ass bastard!"

"Well, I did not have any lesser coins on me, and you told me to tip them!"

"Then couldn’t you have asked me if I had some spare silver to exchange for your gold coins?"

"Ugh...didn't think of it…"

"It’s ok, dear Fungus, I know that thinking is hard for you, with all of that narrow forehead of yours. Your frontal cortex must be feeling mighty claustrophobic in that skull of yours!"

"You...are not making much sense to me again…"

"Giggle! I’m not supposed to!"

"Hrr!"

"Anyway, back to boiling water. We’ve already wasted like 2 hours from the entire day and we’re still at the starting point. And this time...DON’T BLOW UP ANYTHING, yourself included!"

"Yes, mam."

In the end, Fung miraculously learned how to successfully boil water (and probably even got an achievement from the system because of it, by the look on his face), then I proceeded to add different quantities of red algae to the “soup”. After they boiled long enough, I poured the byproduct inside of the ceramic tea plates.

It took a couple of attempts to get the “gelatin” just right, but I had finally narrowed it down.

Timmy: New Recipe unlocked - [Gelatinous Agar Culture Base]

Recipe has been added to your [Cooking] menu tab.

Hah, good! Now I can have the system assist me with the perfect timing and heating, to get the recipe done quicker. I hope. Otherwise I do not see the point of the whole list.

There was no point in filling the rest of the tea plates with the leftover gelatin, because it was going to take a little bit more time for me to get my hands on some decent bacteria samples, and I wanted the culture bases to be fresh and untainted when I did that.

Fung was still confused about what I was trying to achieve here, but had complained very little. I like that about him, he executes instructions without asking why. Must be some byproduct of his martial training. Here in this world, you don’t ask the Dojo Master “why do that”, because you would only get slapped or punched as a reply, then made to scrub the floors.

Just as we were done, Lingfeng also walked in. He was similarly undecided about my weird attempts.

To prove my point, I poured the leftover gel inside four of the tea plates, then I told Lingfeng and Fung to put their hand on the agar gel, once it became solid.

After that, I told Fung to just go wash his hands with plain water, and then I told Lingfeng to scrub his hands thoroughly with soap.

After they both washed up, I had them touch the other two remaining plates again.

"Ok, so what now?" Lingfeng asks, still doubtful.

"NOW we leave these for about two days somewhere warm and safe, then if I’m right, by the end of those two days, we should have some visible effect showing up on the surface of the gelatin."

I placed the ceramic lids on top of the plates to avoid further contamination, then we headed towards the Hall of Medicine. Once we got there, I stored the makeshift Petri dishes on a shelf in the “mini-lab”, then we all left.

Bacterial cultures were not something that could be rushed.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

I spent the rest of the evening talking with Lingfeng about what bacterial samples I wanted and from what places we could get them from, with Fung just sitting there with a total confused look on his face listening to our discussion.

I also introduced Lingfeng to the notion of a microscope, so that he may study the bacterium “up close and personal”, rather than relying on normal sight. He told me that such a thing like the one I had described might be possible to construct, since it resembled somewhat a sea captain’s spyglass, with the telescopic extendable lens, albeit with some different functions and lenses inside, but that it would cost a decent sum of money so I had to prove my point first before he invested.

I said goodbye to both of them, then I sent them off. I spent the rest of the evening gathering Qi in my dantian by using my branch-tentacle as a Qi snagger, which wound up putting me a little bit over 500 Qi for the moment, since my meridian network was not “leaking out” like a punctured tire anymore.

The two waiting days passed in the blink of an eye, with the only result being that I had now extended my control over three more elongated branch-tentacles, that now worked together by taking turns gathering Qi from the environment.

Which had literally quadrupled my Qi intake rate. I wondered how high the Qi regen could become if I “upgraded” all of my branch-tentacles. There was an issue of tentacle control coming up though. I knew that I did not possess the attention span needed to process the hundreds, if not thousands of tentacles, all at the same time.

By the end of the second day in the evening, Fung and Lingfeng had come back to my place and we all departed for the Hall of Medicine, to inspect the results.

Sure enough, I had been right. After going into the “mini-lab” and uncovering the culture dishes, a large handprint-sized swathe of random bacterium and fungi had sprung up on the agar gel. Both “unwashed” versions of the culture looked absolutely terrifying, with the plain water version only a step behind, and the soap version being much, much cleaner, but still displaying enough traces to make out the hand-shape.

All of my “witnesses” literally froze in place after seeing the results. Fung was panicking and kept rubbing his hands against his clothes, feeling like he had somehow become tainted all over.

Lingfeng had a very sour look on his face, and kept muttering something inaudible under his breath.

The Healer lady on the other hand was brimming with joy. For her, such discovery was proof that the thousands of years of medicine had not been a waste, and that a “true enemy” existed out there in nature to be exterminated by the might of the healers. It's like she had found her Dao somehow.

Please don’t suddenly have a breakthrough, Lady Yao, that would be too corny!

After the results were out and I had proven my point somewhat, my microbiological research project was fully given the “green light” by both Lingfeng and Lady Yao. Coin was going to be heavily invested into this, and better, proper Petri dishes were going to be ordered from a glassblower craftsman along with the lenses for a microscope.

I did not know much about that subject, so I left it up to Lingfeng to handle those certain minor details.

Since Lingfeng was going to go to a glassblower anyway, I begged him to also get me a full beginner’s set of alchemical tools. He agreed immediately, and did not even ask what I wanted them for.

━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━

Once a few more days had passed, I finally got my Alchemist’s set.

Fung had stopped by every day during the entire week just to say hello. He was now always squeaky clean and smelled like fine perfumed soap. I was hoping that I had not inadvertently transformed him into some sort of a clean freak by traumatising him with the bacterial sample display.

Once I began to arrange my alchemical tools, something came up that was definitely impeding my progress. My long-ass girly hair was getting into my eyes, in the way of my arm movements when I bent down, and even inside all of the glassware.

I remembered that I had also once attempted sporting long hair even when I was still back on Earth, during my “metal band” college days because I had found the long locks looking “cool”, but I had ended up trimming them off because of the same reason, and that is because they got in the way of everything.

The long hairdo had to go, therefore I went to the mirror and trimmed the whole thing down to near over-the-shoulder length, where it wouldn't be too short nor too long, but would stop getting into my eyes and my alchemy tools. Unfortunately, I now looked like a spiky parrot and an unwashed hobo mixed together. Meh, I’ll have Lingfeng or Fung fix it later for me.

The important thing for now, was that the hair wasn’t getting in my way anymore.

Timmy: Your self-destructive hair tendencies have temporarily lowered your total Charisma.

Timmy: You will receive a -2 penalty to your total Charisma until you grow back your hair or fix that horrendous hairdo that you’re currently sporting.

Meh, whatever, less Charisma means that I will be a less of an attention grab, which is fine by me at this moment.

I resumed arranging my alchemy tools with nonchalance.

━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━

Being an Apothecary was generally quite a profitable job. Even the lowest level elixirs and pills could sell for quite a large amount of money. Of course, to begin leveling up on this path, I needed a lot of materials at hand, not to mention recipes, which were actually close guarded secrets of all of the apothecaries. There were very few universally-known recipes that anybody could “cook up”. To get a decent list of recipes, one would usually have to apprentice themselves to an older alchemist and either gain his trust or steal all of his recipes. Since I had no way of buying or gaining access to either of those because I was broke, I found myself being forced to pick up some herbalism skills.

Besides my usual branch-tentacle upgrade cultivation time, I spent the next month running each day inside of the nearby forest with a lot of plant encyclopaedias tucked inside of my backpack. I slowly managed to learn how to identify each of the wild plants, and what their general usefulness was. My house was now half-occupied with jars filled with dried leaves, powdered tree barks, weird mushrooms of all types and even some slime-like resins that I had yet to identify.

Lingfeng would wiggle his nose at the more “fragrant” of my ingredients everytime he stopped by, but he did not seem to generally disapprove of my endeavours. He even went as far as giving me one of his old alchemical pill forges.

It was a burnt-up shabby old thing that looked more like a witch's cauldron rather than a pill forge.

I spent a whole day just scrubbing the soot and the rust off of the damn thing, until I could see my own reflexion in the mirror-like bottom.

Lingfeng was by no measure an alchemist, but he had dabbled a little bit in the arts of pill forging when he had been younger out of sheer curiosity, as any decent scholar should.

Therefore, he had gladly imparted some of his lower-level recipes with me, but he did not have that many available in the first place. They were the mostly wide-known type of recipes, created out of readily available ingredients, which for the moment, suited me just fine.

The first time I tried to create a simple brew with the Alchemical Pill Forge, I got a system prompt:

Timmy: [Cracked Normal Quality Alchemical Pill Forge] detected.

Cracked? I do not see any crack.

Hmm…[Appraisal]

Timmy: You have appraised [Cracked Normal Quality Alchemical Pill Forge]. 10 Qi has been deducted.

Description:

This poor pill cauldron has seen its fair share of abuse, and some of the rim has been cracked because of repeated thermal expansions and contractions. The minor metal fatigue fracture is barely visible, but still possesses a danger for the user. While it can still be safely used to concoct low level recipes up to level 25, creating medium or even high tier products could result in a catastrophic durability failure. Basically, it would blow up in your face. And sister, when Pill Forges blow up, they BLOW UP HARD! Entire Sects have been wiped out by that shit!

Do you wish to use your [Alchemy] recipes menu?

Ugh...yes?

Before my eyes, a list comparable to my [Cooking] recipe list showed up, but the only items listed were the few “standard” alchemy recipes that Lingfeng had given me. Strangely, there were also a few cooking ingredients and recipes listed in there too.

But then I guess that there is a small crossover between the two “jobs”, as some cooking ingredients can be also used in alchemy, and alchemy ingredients most certainly can make their way into cooking recipes.

My first attempt at creating even a basic healing brew out of all of the recipes which seemed the “cheapest” from an ingredient scarcity standpoint, wound up catastrophically bad.

I had placed the ingredients inside the cauldron just as instructed, then I had put it on boil. I was thinking to myself “what could be so complicated about this? It’s just boiling some plants together!”

Oh how wrong had I been!

The moment they hit the boiling point, all of the Spiritual Herbs literally melted into goo, then promptly exploded into a cloud of toxic smoke, filling the entire living room. I had to spend the next half an hour just airing the place.

You see, there’s a difference between Normal Ingredients, and Spiritual Ingredients.

Normal Ingredients were considered to be your everyday potato, cabbage, tomato, wheat, corn, etc. stuff that could be INTENTIONALLY grown and planted.

On the other hand, Spiritual Herbs cannot be “artificially” grown at all. Spiritual Herbs are said to be a manifestation of Mother Earth’s bounty, so they can only spawn at random and only within the confines of an environment that is considered “best suited” for them. And “best suited” is a VERY broad range. Hell, some of these things could even grow out of lava, or out of ice directly, stuff that would even kill bacteria from the exposure. But no, apparently these Spiritual Plants were even more stubborn than their Earth-counterpart bacteria, taking the notion of Extremophiles to a whole new level.

There have been many attempts at “domesticating” Spiritual Herbs over the years, but all of them have failed. Even the act of pulling the plant out of the ground, then replanting it back in exactly the same spot would still nullify the “medicinal Qi connection” that the plant used to have with Mother Earth. While the plant would not die, it would not gain any extra “medicinal Qi” anymore, when it became “severed” from the Earth even for a second.

The best method that people had cooked up to get a constant harvest of these things, was to identify and isolate the “spawn range” of the plant, based on its environmental requirements and wait for it to “pop up” from the earth. These Spiritual Herbs sure as hell did not follow any biology “common sense” that the plants back on Earth did. They were basically just plant-shaped Ingredient System Spawns.

Of course, there were also many “grades” of spiritual herbs, based on the “concentration” of medicinal Qi that they could hold within. Some Spirit Herbs were just about as common as roadside grass, with some even being used as cattle-feed, since they grew together in abundantly-wide fields, all at the same time. Those low-level Spiritual Herbs usually held so very little medicinal Qi inside of them, that nobody even bothered to extract it, since the output quantity was not even worth the processing costs.

On the other hand, the stronger the medicinal-Qi content inside of the Spirit Herb there was, the rarer the chance of it freely spawning became, and the harder and harsher the spawn conditions would be needed for that to happen.

Almost all of the level 50 hard-to-find and fucking-valuable Spirit Herbs were Extremophiles, and could only be found in the darkest woods, highest peaks, or deepest dungeons.

The fact that Spirit Herbs were not “actual” plants, but rather Plant-Shaped System-Designed Medicinal-Qi containers meant that I could not just toss them into the pot, leave them there to simmer to a stewing point and then voila, Alchemical Spirit Herb Soup.

No, complicated rituals like constantly changing the temperature, and mixing the stuff in a certain direction and other aberrant shit like that was needed for a proper “execution” of the recipes.

The next few attempts, I paid very close attention to the process listed on the recipe, to try and avoid any sort of a deviation from the written instructions.

After nearly gassing myself to death a couple more times, I had finally figured a decent method of approach, and I now had my first “successful” alchemical healing brew in hand.

Timmy: You have gained the skill [Passive Alchemical Fire Control]

The skill progress bar has been added to your status screen.

Description:

You begin to instinctively approximate what the proper temperature of the Fire that you are using for your alchemy purposes needs to be at for a successful attempt to occur.

Current Fire Level: Natural Fire (0-9)

Current Temperature Estimation Range: +- 50 Degrees C.

By the way, Timmy, you bastard, I KNOW that there has to be a faster method of making these. There is no way that High Level Heroes spend hours at an end just stirring a pot and playing dubstep with the flame temperature just to get some healing pills!

COUGH UP THE AUTOMATED METHOD NOW, YOU DUMB CIRCUITBOARD!

Timmy: Your Intuition has unlocked a Hidden System Option.

The [Low Level Automated Item Crafting] Hidden Skill has now been unlocked in your menus and is available for purchase.

You must first spend a Skill Point to enable the use of this Skill.

The skill progress bar has been added to your status screen.

I did not hesitate for even one moment, so I instantly purchased the skill. This would become an incredible time and ingredient saver, if I did not have to do this Alchemy bullshit “manually” all of the time.

Timmy: You now have 14 Unassigned Skill points left.

MWAHAHA!

Ok, Mr. stinky ass recipe, let’s try this again!

The next attempt, the process becomes immensely simplified, requiring just a few minor gestures and flame adjustments for the batch to become a success. Ah sweet, sweet Timmy, I could kiss you right now if you weren’t just an imaginary voice inside of my head.

In the end, I repeated the “brewing” process a few more times, until I ran out of herbs, but I had now gained 25 Progress Points into my [Alchemist] job tab, which allowed me to attempt even more difficult recipes.

Crafting jobs had a different “progress bar” subdivision rate, and they usually went up to 500 Progress Points, which was equal to crafting Level 50 Pills and Potions. At 500, you could be considered an Alchemy Grandmaster. Of course, it did not stop there, and you could still continue on the path of Alchemy, the same as with Paragon Levels, since some of the most rare-ass recipes out there that catered to Paragons actually required an alchemy skill level of 750 or even 1000 or more to properly forge the product, but those would be near-legendary items that would only be seen in the public eye only once a few hundred years.

Therefore, the “great” 25 Progress Points that I had gained meant that I could now properly use Spiritual Herbs without failure only up to level 2.5, aka still in the range of cattle feed.

Bummer :(

I guess that I would have to “grind” this shit to a whole new different level from now on.

Also, by successfully crafting and unlocking the recipes, I had gained a trickle of Normal Experience for every successful output.

Compounded with my Qi-Gathering-that-transforms-into-Cultivation Experience Passive Skill that I had obtained earlier-on during my life, I was now slowly approaching level 15, since I had been “sucking in” a lot of Qi lately, because I was constantly using it to upgrade my root-tentacles.

Which actually reminded me of something.

Hey Timmy, you overgrown circuit board. I have you all figured out right now!

COUGH UP THE AUTOMATED QI GATHERING METHOD!

Timmy: Your Intuition has unlocked a Hidden System Option.

The [Automated Qi Regeneration] Hidden Skill has now been unlocked in your menus and is available for purchase.

You must first spend a Skill Point to enable the use of this Skill.

The skill progress bar has been added to your status screen.

FUCK YEAH, TIMMY!

Alright, Purchase that Shidd!

Timmy: You now have 13 Unassigned Skill points left.

Immediately as I put a Skill Point into the [Automated Qi Regeneration], I felt all of my root-tentacles dash out of my navel meridian and start to snag “white” Qi out of the atmosphere all around me. I didn't even have to control them anymore! SO...MUCH...WIN!

I gazed at my Qi bar, and slowly but surely it was now filling up by itself. I would have to keep an eye out on the bar and never let it fill up to the brim, since I only gained Cultivation Experience out of the “Qi harvesting” action only as long as it was active. If I let the Qi bar hit max, then the Regen would also stop, along with the incoming CXP.

But spending Qi did not seem like a big problem for the moment. I still had a myriad of small branch-tentacles that still needed upgrading on my Spiritual root.