This is much more tedious than I thought it would be.

His channel plan had hit a few minor snags. In order to pinpoint the exact locations that his stomach was discharging ki from, when it entered its ‘panic’ state, he needed to observe it with his sense while it was discharging… Which meant bathing his spiritual sense in caustic ki, which was a far from ideal situation for observing fine details.

So, he had switched to carving channels for his veins to hide inside – which was itself going slowly. He no longer had his network, and qi didn’t have physical properties conducive to the channeling process, so all that was left was the ki in his stomach. And while his reserves had grown, the amount the enchantment produced was fixed.

So, he was left with a lot of free time.

So, he had decided to work on the next step of his business empire, and learn alchemy. He knew the very basics; he could turn a spirit stone into a qi replenishment pill, or make a poultice with the right herbs. The sorts of things anyone could pick up with a week’s effort. But what he was looking for was some kind of explosive powder, and that required access to more restricted knowledge – it would be foolish to hand out such things to absolute beginners, after all.

So… He was grinding plants, to make a pill, to show to the administrators of the alchemy wing, to prove that he wasn’t a complete amateur, to get his hands on more advanced recipes. A simple, logical series of events. The only problem was…

Alchemy is actually a lot of boring, hard work. The actually interesting parts – finding the spirit herbs, and concocting the pills – were right at the beginning and end. The in-between steps, preparing the ingredients, was labour-intensive and monotonous. And I skipped the herb-finding bit by buying them. I’d have preferred to have skipped the prep work too, but few people sell pre-prepared ingredients. Probably because different pills needed to prepare their ingredients in different ways. So a prepared ingredient would probably actually sell for less, since it would be less useful. The realisation that he was lowering the market value of his possessions wasn’t a balm to his aching fingers at all.

No Lu, don’t think about it like that. The intermediary state doesn’t matter, only the final product! Think of the pills, the pills!

At the moment, he was grinding down goldenyear wheat into flour. Normally, turning wheat grains into flour was handled at an industrial level; farmers would bring their wheat to a mill, and the mill would process it in bulk. But spiritual herbs were too rare – and often too finicky – to be farmed on an industrial scale. Goldenyear wheat, for example, appeared sporadically in fields of normal wheat. The manner that it formed from normal wheat was unknown, and it failed to breed true; planting it as seed would just get you normal wheat. The majority of spirit herbs were like that.

So he was doing it by hand. It wasn’t easy; the spirit herb was unreasonably resilient, requiring extreme force to separate the grains from the straw, and then even more to remove the chaff from the edible bit he needed. I should have hired someone to do this for me. Surely the alchemists will accept a pill as long as I did the important part, right? Grinding the flour was comparatively easy, since he had procured a quern and only needed to spin the stone. But once he was done, he had a fine, gold-coloured powder that he gathered into a large pot and placed next to the other prepared ingredients.

Besides the flour, there was also roughly chopped beast garlic (incredibly poisonous), riverblue water chestnut skins (which were extremely delicate; the flesh needed to be scooped out carefully by hand), and pickled spirit earthworms. He had luckily been able to get the earthworms already pickled, otherwise he would have had to aim for a different pill; they needed to sit in a dark place for multiple years to pickle correctly, and he valued his time too highly to wait that long.

Lu took a calming breath. Ah, all done! Together with some perfectly mundane water, the fruits of his labour would soon combine, to become a batch of grain liberation pills. He rubbed his hands together, stepping over to heat the cauldron.

Said cauldron was of exemplary make; the body was solid jade, with golden ornaments hiding the formation work, and the base was enchanted meteor iron. The viewing window was similarly enchanted glass, and it had a modern lidded design, rather than the more archaic open-top style some old-fashioned alchemists used. Ah… Lu looked at the tool with mixed pride and regret. Perhaps I shouldn’t have gotten the most expensive model. I don’t see myself becoming a master alchemist anytime soon…

…Bah! I’m rich now, what do I care? A good cauldron will make concoction easier, so it was worth it! He nodded to himself, running a finger down the beautifully carved green jade. And it looks amazing. A normal iron cauldron would clash terribly with the furniture.

He set a spirit stone into a depression, and instantly the stone sublimated, consumed to power the heating formations. The cauldron was now on stand-by, not heating up, but able to do so with the barest touch of his spiritual sense. He felt a bit of giddy anxiety; he had been handling plants for hours, and the difference between success and failure would depend on the next few minutes.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He went over the steps one last time, ensured he hadn’t forgotten an ingredient somehow, and meditated for a moment to calm himself. Then, he began.

First, he filled the cauldron a third of the way with water, and set it just below boiling. The formations changed the heat nearly instantly, faster and more precisely than he had expected. This is a true premium product! Even with the price, it’s beyond my expectations! He added the water chestnut skins one by one, careful not to crush them even slightly, then poured a bit of the flour in.

As he poured, he increased the temperature. This is the most volatile step; I need it hot enough to fuel the reaction, but not so hot it begins to boil. Boiling would ruin the flour's properties. As he added more flour, the color of the water became like molten gold. He carefully regulated the temperature, keeping it just below boiling even as the reaction sapped heat out of the mixture. This is amazing! The formation is so easy to use! It’s basically cheating! His recollection of the outer sect’s cauldrons were that they were orders of magnitude less precise. I can never go back to a peasant’s cauldron again.

The moment the water became fully saturated, he stopped pouring. Next, he donned heavy gloves and scooped a small amount of the chopped garlic into the mixture. Before it had even touched the water, he slammed the lid down and secured it.

The moment the beast garlic touched the golden water, it was stained black. The water started to look like it was boiling, but Lu knew that it was actually poisonous fumes being released. He unscrewed the jar of pickled earthworms, and with a grimace reached in and fished one out.

Though the invertebrate was undoubtedly dead, having been steeped in vinegar for the better part of a decade, the moment it touched air it wriggled in his hand as though alive. Ah, if the last step was the most touchy, then this one is the most disgusting. Moving with grit teeth, he held the worm above the lid before opening it with his other hand. A malicious-looking black vapour rose out from the cauldron, before being sucked into the worm, which went limp. He brought it lower, letting the very tip of the worm touch the solution, and held it there while it drew the poison out. Purified, the solution returned to its previous golden state, while the worm darkened.

Lu spent the next minute alternating between adding garlic, and removing the resulting poison with the earthworms. When a worm turned mostly black, he set it aside and retrieved another. He went through four worms before he was out of garlic.

He breathed out a sigh of relief. Almost done. He added all but a dash of the flour, all at once, and turned the heat off. As the solution cooled, it began to shrink and turn viscous. Lu reached out with his sense, and began pumping qi into the molten-gold-like fluid. He kneaded it with his sense, and as it further cooled he began to feel hard spheres congealing out of the mixture. Ten, fifteen… A full twenty! He was impressed with himself; he had assumed that some of the chestnut skins would have been bruised or torn beyond usability, but it seemed he had prepared them perfectly. While they had seemed to dissolve completely, a unique effect of goldenyear wheat was an incredible healing power – though only of other plants, and only of heat-based damage. The skins drew back together, compressing most of the remaining golden fluid inside themselves.

Lu removed his wormy gloves and gingerly extracted the hot pills from the cauldron, then peeled the skins off – they were technically edible, but tasted foul, so it was better to remove them before they fused with the fluid completely. He rolled the pills in the remaining flour, and they solidified fully.

Lu looked at his spoils. They weren’t completely perfect; he had used a bit too much flour, leaving some of the golden fluid – and therefore some of the condensed nutrients from the beast garlic – staining the inside of the cauldron.

But they were successful! Twenty grain liberation pills! Each one could keep a mortal fed for a full year – with my stomach I suspect they’ll be slightly less effective, but that’s still more than enough! In his absolute worst predictions, where he had to trial-and-error his way through carving channels for months and months, just two or three pills would be enough to see him through. That meant he could sell the rest, or give them out for social credit; there were some cultivators who enjoyed eating, and they would find the secondary effect of the pills – not needing to expel waste, no matter how much you ate – to be of great worth.

Lu pat his cauldron on the lid. Amazing, worth every stone.

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Low Bon tipped the pillbottle just enough to extract a single golden orb, then returned it to the outer disciple. The man gave him a nervous smile while he turned the pill over, inspecting it with all his senses.

The shape is good, as well as the texture. Colour is a bit off. I’m not sensing any voids in the structure… Imperfections like that would show up when one used ground spirit stones to supplement one’s own qi in the concocting process, and it was distressingly common. But I don’t see any here, not that I would expect to. Earthly Golden Bounty pills require very little qi; if a disciple couldn’t supply the necessary amount, they wouldn’t be able to call themselves a cultivator.

Overall, the pill was quite good. Not above-average, since grain liberation pills were very simple to concoct, but in this case average was enough. And most importantly, it had his qi signature, so he wasn’t trying to cheat using someone else’s work. Also distressingly common. He handed the pill back.

“Disciple Lu, I believe you’re shown enough skill to use the archives. Of course, for now you will be restricted to the section for outer disciples, but I’m sure that won’t be a problem for long.” Low Bon was vaguely familiar with the man; apparently he had contacted a Heart Demon when ascending to the inner realms, and it had regressed his cultivation. But things were always easier with experience, so the man should rise swiftly.

For whatever reason, the man’s smile became even more nervous. “Thank you, Sir Low Bon. I’ll be sure to make good use of this privilege.”