Most of the books on the bookshelf in my bedroom were useless to me. Most of them were on the array of Daos. I wasn’t interested in Daos. Perhaps I would give them a try later, but for now, I had other things to worry about.

I was drawing blanks when it came to the issue with Hui Ming. I had a couple solutions, one of them was to make her swallow the seed of an Explosive Bulb. If I went with that plan, I would tell her I would kill her if she told anybody information about me. Then I’d let her go.

Of course, that plan didn’t take into account her loyalty to her sect. She might value her sect above her life. Or she might think I’m bluffing as well. In any case, there was a chance she would tell her sect about me.

That method also came too close to the explosive slave collar method, which I despised.

To keep my mind off these matters, I turned my attention to alchemy.

As of now, I cared very little for most of the people of this world. I gave the people here a surface level of respect as fellow human beings, but not much more than that. I only knew the names of three people: Chen Wei, the sect head. Hou Tian, the guy I met at the alchemy store. And Hui Ming, the spy sitting outside.

Of them, the one I cared for the most was Chen Wei. She had helped me a lot, even giving me a place to stay for free. Maybe renting wasn’t even a concept here. I would’ve been left on the streets.

Hui Ming? She was a huge thorn in my side. I couldn’t wait to find a way to get rid of her.

Hou Tian, I felt that he was a good person, although I don’t know much about him. He still owed me some soul shards.

In the future, I was certain I would get closer with a lot of people. In that case, it would be best if they were as strong as possible. As an alchemist, I would be able to construct powerful pills to artificially boost them up if they weren't able to do it themselves.

Other alchemists wouldn’t be able to do this. They don’t have an infinite pool of rare ingredients. I just needed to touch an ingredient once to copy it.

Additionally, it’d be great if I could masquerade as an alchemist. My future identity in the city would be Alchemy Grandmaster Jin. I liked the sound of that. Alchemy Grandmaster Jin.

The majority of alchemy was memorizing ingredients and their uses. An alchemy student needed to know nearly a thousand herbs, what they looked like, how to identify them, and how to use them. They were all split into different sections with a bunch of overlap, each with many exceptions.

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But I could permanently memorize everything about the plants just by touching them. I was certain that the alchemists of this world had missed many of the attributes Identify was able to find.

The only thing I wasn’t able to instantly memorize was the names of the plants, but thankfully, the people of this world were just as bad at naming as I was. With names like Six Petal Goldflower, it was obvious what the plant looked like. I could use this method to guess which plants each name referred to.

And so I decided to begin on the Dao of Alchemy.

I picked up the backpack I had bought last time and headed back to the Blue Fire Alchemy Garden. I bought a bunch of books on beginners alchemy and touched all the plants that weren’t behind a glass case.

I also bought a caldron for refining(or burning) my medicine. It was a bulky iron pot that I should never have been able to lift. But after eating the ginsengs, I lifted it with ease.

The cauldron was expensive though, it cost forty thousand soul shards, which was nearly all I had gotten from selling pollen from the Mist Lighting Flowers.

I spent the rest of the day looking through the alchemy books while filling vials with some basic ingredients.

The next day, I started doing the actual alchemy. For conception stage medicine, there was no need to use the refining process. I mashed up some herbs and mixed them with each other… twenty of them, in a precise order, without messing up a step.

I said the instructions aloud to keep track of the steps. “Two drops of Spirit Grass extract mixed with ten drops of water…”

“Add twenty drops of moonshine weed juice.” a seed at my side transformed into a moonshine weed. I held it above the cauldron. “Hm, shouldn’t it be twenty two drops? Whatever.” I added twenty two drops.

“One Black Spotted White Mushroom, crushed. Stir for two minutes.” I continue following the directions and thirty minutes later, I had the finished product. I had no way to test it, so I put into a vial and stored it away.

I spent the next five days making more conception stage medicine. I got the hang of it by the fifth day. I was making my own recipes at that point, completely ignoring the books. My comprehensive knowledge of the plants was beyond helpful. I was able to intuitively link herb to herb to create better and better recipes.

I was ready to move onto the next stage: the refining process. For this, I needed high quality control of flames and a good recipe. I created a conception stage pill and began preparing the cauldron.

You’ve created a new type of plant! What would you like to name it?

“Myriad Flame Vine” has been named!

Experience required for next level has not been reached! Myriad Flame Vine stays at level one!

I took a seed and put four thousand mana into it. I threw it out the window.

Myriad Flame Vine has reached level two!

Myriad Flame Vine has reached level three!

Myriad Flame Vine has reached level four!

Myriad Flame Vine has reached level five!

Myriad Flame Vine has reached level six!

I designed them to look exactly like snakes. They had scales, a mouth, and everything else. As the name suggested, they could also breathe fire. Ten seeds in my pocket transformed into the snakes and slithered up to the cauldron. I couldn’t control the flame like a cultivator with the Dao of fire could, but my method was just as effective if not more.

I put the cauldron on the ground and the pill in the middle of the cauldron.

I rubbed my hands together and started the refining process.