This was the first year in which Zhang Huoyun was in charge of crafting the daoshi elixir pills without any assistance from his father, Zhang Shengfa, but there had been no issues with the brewing process. Secured in an ornate wooden box and laid upon a fine silk cloth for presentation’s sake were four pills, that would be issued to and consumed by the top four junior disciples of Yangjian Sect as they advanced into becoming full-fledged members of the sect.

It was just the two of them, now: his mother had passed away years ago, claimed by an illness even their best efforts at creating medicines couldn’t cure. He and his father were the sole remaining members of their line of the Zhang family, and the only ones who carried the legacy of Zhang Shenggang.

Huoyun was nervous, if he was being honest with himself. As someone who wasn’t a cultivator himself, it was hard to tell the potency of the pills at a glance the way that the Five Elders of Mount Qingliu could. All he had were theories and visual observations, and an intuition born of countless years spent inscribing Zhang Shenggang’s teachings to memory.

Unlike his later descendants, who had listed down the actual steps for creation of his more esoteric medicines, Zhang Shenggang merely wrote down alchemical principles for their crafting. Though Huoyun hadn’t the slightest clue of exactly how his ancestor had deduced the underlying formulae, he could vaguely get a sense of what he was going for, and was able to adjust his brewing on the fly, adapting the Twelve Processes as necessary.

Even then, though… what if he’d made a mistake? What if his pills turned out to be failures? For the past eight years, since the time he was four, he had either assisted his father during the yearly brewing, or more recently carried out the steps under his father’s direct supervision. A failure here would bring shame to him and all his ancestors for sullying the relationships formed between their family and the cultivators of Yangjian Sect, who were among the Guardians of Qingliu that watched over Yunjiang Town and many others along the River Zhu.

There was no more time for corrections, though. Already, he and his father were making their way up the mountain pass, Zhang Shengfa expertly steering the carriage they were riding in. On Huoyun’s lap was held the precious elixirs, while the actual interior of the carriage was empty. Once the initiation ceremony was concluded, the Elders would present them with their side of the annual agreement – a decent amount of gold for them to live comfortably in Yunjiang Town, alongside some of the more mundane herbs and substances that they used to make medicines for the commonfolk.

It was a good thing they could travel by carriage. He didn’t want to think how difficult it would be trying to climb up the mountain as he heard junior cultivators began doing early in their training. Zhang Shenggang’s alchemical techniques did require a degree of manual labour, particularly in dissolving or separating stubborn mixtures, but it couldn’t at all be compared to what Yangjian sect members went through.

“And if the solution turns a dark yellow during the process?”

Zhang Shengfa’s question interrupted his musing. As always, during the long trips to and from the top of the mountain, his time was wisely spent quizzing Huoyun on the techniques listed within Zhang Shenggang’s scrolls.

“Excessive calcination,” Huoyun replied easily. “Putrefaction of the rencao grass releases impurities that corrupts the milk of anran. If left unchecked, congelation of the impure solution will make the mixture worthless. Either lower the heat immediately, and attempt sublimation to purify the xinguan jelly, or if it is already too late, introduce first a conjunction step to bind the active ingredients of the rencao and anran and protect them from the precipitation step that will follow.”

His father laughed jovially, tugging on the reins slightly as the pass wound around the mountain base. “Excellent,” he praised. “All those days in the archives haven’t been for nothing, I see. If only I’d been as industrious when I was your age! A rather unorthodox approach, too, diverging from what Zhang Guayi and Zhang Yanrong suggested… you took inspiration from the recipe of the aozang cure, I’m guessing?”

Huoyun nodded. He wasn’t surprised his father has picked up on it; most of his intuitive changes were based off observations of his father at work over the years. “The aozang and the anran may seem like polar opposites, but because they both primarily come from the rencao grass, it follows that the putrefaction of the grass is the sole cause for alteration of the resultant properties that makes the aozang do what it does.”

“Mmm… very crafty…” He took his eye off the path for a moment, glancing and grinning at Huoyun. “Ah! How about this? Xinyan herbs are the base of both the daoshi elixir and the kangfei cough-drop; going by that model, how would you propose they differ?”

Ah, an easy question. He’d been fretting over his brewing the daoshi through the entire week, that there hadn’t been any angle that he hadn’t covered, cross-referencing it against every other recipe in Zhang Shenggang’s repository.

“Citrinated salt is the primary difference in their formulation,” he said. “Sure, the kangfei might avoid a conjunction and congelation step, but really, the critical element that changes their function is cibation in introducing crushed citrinated salt to the crucible for making the daoshi.”

His father nodded in agreement, but continued to press his question. “Can you propose why, Huoyun?”

“That’s because…”

That was what so bothered him. Citrinated salt was, in fact, not something that they could find easily. It was part of the shipment they would bring back with them from the Yangjian Sect after their business was conducted, and he hadn’t had the slightest clue as to how it was actually made. Hell, the one time he had dared venture the question to an Elder years ago, all he’d earned was an affectionate pat on his head, and that those sorts of questions weren’t something he ever needed to worry about.

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Even though other grasses, herbs, and flowers were part of the inventory of items that had been settled on by their long-dead ancestor, those items could at least be obtained if he searched widely enough. Exactly how salt could be citrinated or even what citrination was remained a huge mystery.

“There is no right answer, really,” his father assured him, after he had lapsed into silence. “I never found the answer, and neither did your grandfather, or your great-grandfather. Zhang Shenggang was probably the only one of our family to know how everything fit together.”

“Salt for the body,” Huoyun whispered, his thoughts harking back to the mysterious passages written down. “Mercury for the mind, and sulfur for the soul.”

“That old thing again?” his father asked in exasperation, as the carriage rounded another bend. “I mean… sure, there’s salt in there, but why hasn’t anyone else in our family figured it out if it was so simple? And mercury and sulfur?” He shook his head. “We’ve been over this hundreds of times, Huoyun. Zhang Shenggang, for all his genius, wasn’t thinking straight in the last days of his life.”

It was an elegant theory, but one filled with so many holes. If, suppose, citrinated salt were ‘of the body’, it could explain why the daoshi jumpstarted a junior sect member’s path to cultivation, by tempering the body. The problem there was that mercury was absolutely useless in their practice, save for solution and dissolution of metals, and sulfur was outright worthless, mostly being filtered out as an impurity.

That was before considering the butchering of all meaningful language that was his fixation on the Three, or One, or Five, or Two and Four that were littered across the texts. A single association was no place to build a firm underlying theory, as his father and many of his ancestors had argued many times over throughout the generations. If mercury and sulfur were to have a use, then perhaps Zhang Shenggang’s writings could be re-examined, but for now they were treated as ramblings of a madman, or as yet another cosmic joke he was attempting to pull on them from beyond the grave as he watched generations upon generations of Zhangs argue about their hidden meanings.

“I don’t blame you for being so fascinated by it, though,” his father continued saying, his eyes on the road, misreading the lack of response for silent argument. “Gods above, I nearly drove your grandfather insane with my own questions. It was really only after I met your mother that I learned it was time to stop chasing answers I couldn’t find.” He turned to face Huoyun, holding the reins with one hand, the other affectionately caressing his cheek with the back of his hand. “And then we had you.”

Zhang Shengfa’s face grew wistful, no doubt lost on the memories of Huoyun’s mother. He didn’t remember much of her, but from what his father told him, she had been a villager in Yunjiang Town who had grown fascinated over their family’s apothecary, snuck in to observe him at his work, one thing led to another over time, and then they got married. Soon enough…

Well, there were details there that Huoyun wished he could purge from his memory. Sometimes, he wondered if it was the curse of the Zhangs that every descendent of Zhang Shenggang lacked a filter over the words that spewed forth from their lips.

Hopefully he wouldn’t be like that too, someday. Despite the good work their family did for Yunjiang Town, they did have a bit of a reputation as the local oddballs.

“Hmmm… perhaps I should find a suitable wife for you soon, Huoyun?”

That unexpected comment snapped him out of whatever stray thoughts had been running through his head, staring incredulously at his father. The teasing grin on his face told him, thankfully, that his father had been joking, as always. Alas, Zhang Shenggang’s poor sense of humour that littered the pages of his texts inevitably influenced his descendants as they dedicated their lives to mastering his techniques.

If ever Huoyun found Zhang Shenggang in the afterlife, he would make sure that his grievances were made known. This was not joking material.

“Relax, son,” his father said amid chuckles, as Huoyun continued staring at him flatly, unimpressed. “Sure, you won’t be thinking of a wife now, but give it six – no, three years, and hoooo boy…”

He trailed off, a single eyebrow raised, the wide grin remaining for a moment. Instants later, his eyes widened, correcting the carriage’s path just before they would have been sent dangerously close to the side of the mountain.

Huoyun snorted. Trust his father to make a joke at a time like this, when a single moment of inattention could send them tumbling off the cliffside into their doom.

“Weren’t you the one complaining about how I wasn’t making sense with the whole salt-mercury-sulfur business?”

“Bah, they’re hardly the same,” his father scoffed, his eyes thankfully navigating the mountain path now as they ascended higher up Mount Qingliu. “Besides, if you’re going to talk about that, what about the whole deal about make of a man and a woman a circle? Make our ancestors and me proud, and find a wife before I pass on, eh?”

“Fair point,” Huoyun conceded. Trust his father to use their ancestor’s words against him. “Although if we’re arguing about that… how would you even make a quadrangle out of that? And then a triangle out of that, and another circle from there?”

“Do you really want to know, son?” his father followed up almost immediately, and Huoyun got a sense that he’d just asked something he really shouldn’t have. “Alas, has my little Huoyun grown up to that age already? Well… I’d wished your mother would have been the one to teach you about this, but the duty now falls to me. You see, my son, there are times when even though a man and a woman love each other very much, they desire for something more, and so they…”

Huoyun didn’t know how he sat through the next two-hour-long lecture on the social dynamics and structure of families and relationships, a gross perversion of Zhang Shenggang’s ancient words twisted by his father’s lips. If he could ever rewind time, he would wish he never had tried raising his circular argument.

Eventually, though, the grand estate that was the home of the Yangjian Sect came into view, and at last, the long teaching session he never asked for thankfully came to an end. Trees with iridescent flowers in full bloom surrounded the path as they neared the peak, almost as though the visible world itself separated the realm of cultivators from ordinary mortals like themselves. Grand pagodas, towers, and buildings rose from the mountaintop, watching over all of Mount Qingliu and the many towns below, nestled along the flow of the River Zhu.

This was Yangjian Sect, and all at once, his nervousness came back full force at the thought of the elixirs placed on his lap. This time, though, excitement welled within, as though introduced to the crucible made up of his collective mental state and emotions, a cibation process like any other he would perform in alchemy.

This year would be different, and not just because it was the first time the daoshi pills were crafted independently by himself. This year, he would see the world of cultivators with his own eyes rather than passively being a part of the proceedings as he hid behind his father as he had in the past. He would question everything, and hopefully find answers to Zhang Shenggang’s mysteries in the process.