In alchemy competition, despite frequent askance from those currying favor, Zhu Qiu refused to take part. His skills were a realm above those of his peers. There was nothing to be gained.

Also, he took part in designing its reward. How could he be shameless enough to win it?

The competition came to an end with a grand ceremony, where every attendee received praises and minor rewards depending on their conduct. The crowd showered them with Spiritual Qi and the hidden orchestra played upbeat songs to end everything in a jovial manner.

Li Ao slept through it, so his rewarded jewel was taken by his senior sister.

Zhu Qiu joined the nobles to an after party and mingled with them for the night. When the matter came to an end he sent a servant to deliver a message to Master Jiao.

One day later, in the Imperial Relative’s residence, Li Ao arrived.

He cast curious looks to the room around him. It was no room, but a wide hall by itself, at least three hundred square meters. There were vials boiling, strange glass compartments holding liquid and half-solid matter; jars and cups and boxes of medicine, pills, animal parts, extracts, and blood.

Over his head hung dried herbs on black ropes, receiving sunlight from a pair of windows at the top. Their spicy and fresh smells cleared up his lungs.

‘’It must be good to work here.’’ Strolling around, he came beside Zhu Qiu who was noting down on a paper.

‘’Good for lungs, eyes, heart, dantian—’’Zhu Qiu smiled. ‘’But in time, it makes outside world unbearable to walk on.’’

‘’Did you get older?’’

‘’...can’t I share some insight with my little cousin?’’

With a smile, Li Ao flicked his sleeves. ‘’Should your little cousin share some insight as well?’’

‘’Don’t bother with the act—come over here.’’

Rising from the table, Zhu Qiu took the written papers with him to a three-legged cauldron. There were four of them situated at the center, where no light hit or wind blew.

Peering inside, Li Ao saw a scarlet liquid bubbling. ‘’This smells familiar.’’

‘’It is Blood Enhancement Pills.’’

‘’Is this a pill?’’

Li Ao put a finger in the liquid.

Zhu Qiu smacked his head. ‘’Don’t touch it, retard!’’

‘’Ow, since when did you get so strong?’’

The slap hurt quite a deal. Rubbing his scalp, Li Ao assessed Zhu Qiu’s cultivation.

Eleventh-level of Qi Condensation. He seemed infinitely close to Twelfth-level.

‘’Home-cooked pills? Eat what you make kind of deal?’’

‘’...Grandmaster Fan didn’t help you, at all?’’

‘’On what?’’

Zhu Qiu shook his head. ‘’Forget it. You don’t know much about alchemy, do you?’’

‘’Would I have given the slip to you if I knew?’’

Zhu Qiu laughed. Then he smacked Li Ao’s head again. ‘’Okay, I received permission to have you as a guest for a week.’’

‘’Stay here with me. I will teach you the basics, and you can learn the rest by yourself.’’

‘’...what about my permission?’’

‘’Sorry?’’

‘’My permission.’’

‘’Yes?’’

‘’I don’t need to learn it. I already have my hands full with Forging and Formations!’’

‘’Don’t be an idiot.’’ Zhu Qiu picked a jar full of brown flower petals and poured two into the scarlet solution. ‘’You should know the basics at the very least. You need to know how to assess a pill’s strength, purity, side-effects—then if possible what might have been used in it, and take basic precaution against toxicity in them.’’

‘’I know enough about poisons.’’

‘’The rest?’’

Zhu Qiu snorted as he started taking temperature. The fire under the cauldron shrank until no heat came.

‘’Where will you go now—ah, take a seat. Watch carefully.’’

Li Ao did as he asked. He pulled a stool from the tables and sat to the side, watching Zhu Qiu’s side profile.

‘’Home, first.’’

‘’What about second?’’

‘’I don’t know yet.’’

‘’Whatever they assign, is it?’’

Li Ao nodded. Zhu Qiu didn’t know about him being an Universal Agent, nor could Li Ao tell it anyway. However, it was easy for Zhu Qiu to glimpse at the nature of what he did.

Especially when he was a bit too naive, at the beginning of their journey.

‘’You must have some ideas.’’

‘’...there is one. I need to go to some sect for a few deals. Help them. It is a bit too far down the line.’’

‘’What kind of a sect?’’

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‘’Usual.’’

‘’Anything else?’’

‘’...do you need me to give an example so you can make a witty ‘You will need that knowledge there!’ comment?’’

‘’You think too much.’’ Wiping his forehead, Zhu Qiu scooped a spoonful of the liquid and poured into a glass tube. He put it on the table and, with his Qi, began to force it to collapse in itself.

Throughout the process, he was silent. Only the bubbling liquid echoed within the room.

After a few minutes, sighing, he poured out a foul smelling black slog.

‘’Failed?’’

‘’Usual outcome.’’

‘’How many can that cauldron make?’’

‘’One vial is four pills. One cauldron is fifty vials. Around half of them succeed.’’

‘’’...you profiteering bastard!’’

Five pills a bottle—one bottle of these cost five hundred mid-grade spirit stones!

‘’What is this profit level—is it so broken?’’

‘’At my level, of course.’’ Zhu Qiu threw away the black liquid into a container and took another scoop. ‘’It isn't easy to reach this level, however. You should know how hard it is to begin these things.’’

‘’How expensive are the cauldrons? The vials? The base materials for the pills; herbs, bones, blood, spiritual rocks, then the materials to inspect, clean, and refine these? Furthermore, the space to contain them, then proper containers to preserve them, then the space to sell them?’’

‘’Forgetting all of it, the means to produce them! How do you create a pill recipe? You should know from your own work.’’

Li Ao nodded.

Forging wasn’t just about taking metal, melting, then hammering it.

There was a need to design and draw the foundations, to know about the ore, then to temper and refine it. A forger did specific calculations depending on the need.

This wasn’t just mortal forging, either. Working with Spiritual Materials required great attention span and ability to multitask. Each strike of a hammer had to require not just fleshly power, but also strands of Qi. The required angle and force required to hammer, or the most basic ability to stabilize the metal with thongs...

The ability to control fire, to read the temperature, to understand malleability and liquidity, percentages of purity and mixed minerals, how to extract them, how to enhance them...

No profession was as easy as it seemed. Mastery in any art required great theoretical knowledge, then at least twice that of practical knowledge to achieve an amount of success.

And first and foremost, it required a path!

‘’Without that jade slip you gave, how could I make Blood Enhancement pills, for example?’’

Zhu Qiu began infusing his Qi into another vial, forcing the scarlet liquid to collapse in itself.

This time, the liquid swirled and merged like a small typhoon. In a few minutes, it turned into four, dull-red pills.

‘’How can I know, for example, when to mix the blood of a Qi Condensation Serpent with a digestion flower in the process? How can I know about their relationship with each other?’’

‘’What is the rate of mixing them? What do I want to get out of mixing them, then build on top of that? It would take me ages to find answers to them.’’

A grand path always required questions. It was no different for any profession or dream.

For Alchemy, perhaps it was much more vital than Forging or Formations to answer them.

After all, their domain was deeply involved in life.

They dealt with living things; with humans, animals, plants—nature was their provider.

Just like mother nature, it was required of them to find a balance between everything.

Only then could they produce something beautiful.

‘’I get it.’’ Li Ao nodded. ‘’Still, it was of no use to me. So it isn’t so precious.’’

‘’It might have, no, it saved my life. It is more precious than you think it is.’’

Saying so, Zhu Qiu took the dull-red pills and put them in his hand. ‘’These few pills can’t even compare, even if they are in thousands.’’

Li Ao took them without reservation and threw them into his mouth.

‘’...these are 7-th grade pills, right?’’ Zhu Qiu questioned himself. ‘’How do you munch on them at ease?’’

Li Ao smiled. ‘’I got a good body, that’s how.’’

‘’...I wonder how terrifying you will be in the future.’’

‘’I wonder~’’

‘’Okay, stop meandering around and help me.’’

‘’How am I supposed to help? I don’t—’’

‘’I will teach as you help, so get up and do some work.’’

‘’I am serious.’’ Zhu Qiu added after a while. ‘’You need to have the most basic ability to provide everything for yourself out there.’’

‘’You said it yourself. You’ll need many skills further down the road, and not one of them can be lacking. Who can say what nugget of knowledge will separate life and death?’’

‘’I don’t have much left to teach you, Li Ao. And I suppose...you won’t have the chance to come back here.’’

‘’Not in the near future, at the very least.’’ Li Ao replied.

Even if there was a way, the time difference was too important to ignore.

‘’Then let me do this at least.’’

After a long while, Li Ao stood up.

He crouched next to Zhu Qiu, and the duo looked into the silent flames. It seemed to be a higher grade of fire, without sound.

‘’Once I finish memorizing the slip, do you want me to destroy it?’’

‘’Keep it.’’

‘’Then don’t forget to come back for it.’’

After that, there was not much discussion about the future. Instead, Zhu Qiu smacked Li Ao left and right at each of his mistakes.

He taught Li Ao about how to identify general plants, what to watch out for when he needed to gather and secure them, then how, in general, the pill making process worked.

It was several times more exhausting than Forging for Li Ao. After all, though he didn’t admit it, he was a bit of a muscle-head.

He liked to use force if possible and relied on his strength to accomplish his feats.

Now, he had to memorize tons of information and make use of his analytical part of the brain to make calculations.

Controlling the flame was easy enough. Reading the temperature proved too easy as well. The rest made him stumble every few steps.

Still, he spent a good deal of his time worthy of the effort.

Six days later, the duo entered the Imperial Ancestor’s palace with the Imperial Relative. They bypassed a series of guards and checks, walked past grand hallways empty of a soul, and arrived in his personal study.

With approval, the duo entered alone.

Inside the study was empty. No carpets, no portraits, tables, or anything. A single brown-red sofa to sit remained in the center.

On it, the Imperial Ancestor regarded their kneeling figures with lit up eyes.

‘’Good to see you two. Raise your heads.’’

Li Ao and Zhu Qiu looked up.

‘’You two...are one of the most exceptional talents of this generation.’’

He talked in a soft voice, much unlike his appearance at the competition. His long hair and bread were combed and loose. His clothes had no formal air about them.

The Imperial Ancestor was relaxed, to say in the least implicative sense.

‘’How did you two meet?’’

Li Ao stiffened. He did his best to not move or glance, and instead let Zhu Qiu speak.

‘’He is my younger cousin.’’

‘’Is he?’’

Zhu Qiu clasped his hands and bowed his head.

A minute passed.

A bead of sweat trickled down Li Ao’s chin.