Without having concocted an Improved pill successfully, aiming to complete a Superior pill at high efficacy in eighteen months seemed implausible. I wasn’t going to let that stop me.
I began to feel more and more that the other disciples here were being held back by their lack of drive. Most spent a lot of time just enjoying themselves. I couldn’t blame them though. This was a steady, safe life. People here had homes, food, entertainment, and steady work. It wouldn’t be wrong to come here and just… live.
I needed to stay focused though. If this had been my only life, I might have been willing to just settle down here too, but I needed to prepare for the distant future.
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Bao didn’t have much advice for me. He could still only make Improved pills, and he told me I was doing everything he could think to do. Cao told me basically the same thing. She was good at teaching cultivation, but her pill refining was lacking.
I wanted to find another private teacher, but the ones that could make High-Purity Superior pills spent their time concocting, not teaching. That’s when I began signing up for public lessons. I didn’t have another choice.
My days were filled with lessons, pill practice, and a mad scramble for points to pay for everything. In time, I was able to concoct Improved pills to a high purity. After that, I started making High-Purity Improved pills to fund everything.
Advancing to Martial Master was a boon. It helped provide me with more energy to keep pushing. I was always short on energy.
I considered using alchemy to help me with the energy problem but decided it wouldn’t work. My basic reasoning was that Qi Gathering pills were great, but they were only really useful when cultivating and shouldn’t be used when making pills. They increased the speed I gathered qi too much over too short a period of time.
I considered looking into whether there was a different pill I could potentially make to help me here, but I knew that every other Rank 1 pill was nearly useless. It wasn’t worth the effort.
So, I did my best to power through, using my cultivation to supply what I needed.
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On the day of the preliminaries for the outer sect disciple exam, I was mentally and physically exhausted. I had pushed myself to the last moment and only afterward realized I should have rested.
I would only need to concoct a single pill though. I had the mental fortitude to do that at least.
We were to be tested in batches of one hundred with new groups cycling in throughout the day. Testing sites had been set up in a few areas across the city to make things quicker and easier.
The place I arrived at looked like it was just a crossroads chosen at random because it was spacious enough. One hundred workbenches were evenly spread out across the area. There were a few people who came to watch, but this testing location, at least, didn’t seem to draw much of a crowd.
We were given a short pill recipe describing the basic steps and a single set of ingredients sat atop our workbench. I had no idea what the pill was, and the recipe didn’t include the pill’s name. The sect had gathered a couple thousand sets of ingredients just for us to use in the test. Yes, we had to pay contribution points for ingredients used in the exam, but I could guess that the ingredients couldn’t be too important if the sect was willing to see most of them destroyed in the exam. This just showed how little value the pill had.
The primary ingredient for this recipe was a strange mushroom. It had a white stalk and a pink cap. The odd part was that it had sacs of some kind of blue liquid attached to it. The supplementary ingredients were what looked like an ordinary stick of wood and some type of blue-green leaf.
The process was the same as any other pill. Burn away the toxins, mix the energy together, compress it into a pill. Using qi vision to look at the ingredients revealed an abnormality. Usually, medicinal energy was green, but here it was a strange blue color. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I couldn’t worry too much about it in the moment.
I followed the process in the recipe as best I could.
The instructions for preparing the wood and the leaf were simple enough. Remove the thin layer of bark from the wood first, then grind the leaf into a fine paste. I did so and set the results to the side.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
The mushroom was more difficult to handle. The instructions said to carefully separate the liquid sacs without bursting them. Then, cut up the mushroom into tiny cubes.
When I looked at the mushroom closely with qi vision, I got an understanding of what was going on. The liquid sacs were packed with medicinal energy and very little pill toxin. The rest of the mushroom was the opposite. It was almost all pill toxin with very little energy. The mushroom had to be cut apart to allow easier access to all the toxins to destroy them.
Fixing the mushroom and getting it to a usable state would be a daunting task. It contained a lot of toxins. So, I didn’t do that. The only reason to bother with the stalk of the mushroom was to boost efficacy. I decided to place the stalk to the side and work only with the liquid sacs. I wouldn’t get as much energy out of it this way, but it would be significantly easier to make a High-Purity pill.
After the ingredients were prepped, everything was placed in the cauldron, and I began to look for the toxins and direct my qi. I noticed immediately that the energy of the leaf was very easy to damage, so I needed to protect it. The toxins of the wood needed high heat to remove. The ones remaining in the mushroom were difficult to target without hitting the mushroom’s medicinal energy.
There were dozens of small complications. It was challenging, but I did my best. Through sheer grit, I didn’t allow the concoction to fail. Finally, when I was reasonably satisfied with purity and knew doing more would put efficacy at risk, I forced the pill to coalesce.
I had made the pill. I wasn’t sure how potent it was, or if it would be good enough, but I at least had something, so I went to turn it in.
I wasn’t too interested in whatever pill this was, but I decided to analyze it for fun.
High-Purity Rank 1 Purifying Pill (Water), medicinal efficacy 43%.
Huh, that was cool, I thought. Too bad it was a useless Rank 1 pill.
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After submitting my pill, I had to wait a day for the results. 43% efficacy was bad, no question, but I would be surprised if too many people did significantly better without practicing that pill specifically, and I doubted anyone had done that.
Having finished my part of the exam and needing a break, I decided to have dinner with Bao. I had been so focused during this time I had barely seen him.
“So, how do you think you did?” asked Bao as we sat down to eat.
I sighed. “I don’t know. I did the best I could.”
“Ah, don’t worry about it. Everything will be fine. Honestly, look at me. I’m a few years older than you and I’m not even close to ready to become an outer sect disciple. Just settle down for a few years and take it slow. You’ll get there eventually.”
I thought about what he said. Was it worth working so hard? It would all happen eventually anyway. If I didn’t pass this time, I could just try again next year. No reason to worry about it. It would be good to just take a couple of years and, like he said, just live.
“Maybe you are right,” I finally admitted. “I pushed too hard to get everything done this year. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll take some time off.”
“That’s the spirit! There are tons of things we can do around here for fun. Just you wait.”
After eating, I went back to get some rest. In the morning, I was informed of my results. I had passed. I was in eighty-fourth place, but I would be able to compete in the finals.
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The finals were held in the same stadium where I had watched them in my first year here.
Last night, I was nervous. I was so worried about the results of this exam. But the conversation with Bao calmed me. The results didn’t matter. Afterward, I could just live and slowly work on improving. That thought allowed me to work freely today without worrying about the future.
There was nothing special about this test. All I had to do was create five High-Purity Superior pills. I had already been able to do that. I was to make the medicinal efficacy as high as possible. I didn’t need to worry about anything else.
Superior pills needed three ingredients: blue peonies, astragalus root, and schisandra berries.
I had lifetimes of experience with blue peonies. Maximizing their potential was easy.
I had less experience with astragalus root, and balancing its energy with the peony was difficult. However, over the last eighteen months, I had used them countless times in Improved pills. I might not have been as expert with them as I was with peonies, but that wouldn’t be a problem.
The main difficulty lay in the schisandra berries. I watched as many of the competitors began to peel the berries. This reduced the initial pill toxins that would have to be dealt with, and it made the refining process easier, but it was a trap.
I used the same strategy I had with the mushroom.
The goal of the competition was not to reduce toxins as low as possible. It was to maximize efficacy. Peeling the berries severely impacted this. By leaving the skin on, I would be able to make a pill that barely qualified as High-Purity but had the most efficacy possible.
I worked slowly and methodically.
People began to finish and turn in their pills to be judged. I didn’t care. Speed didn’t matter.
After each pill, I rested and cultivated. I wanted to be at my peak at all times.
One hour stretched to two. Two stretched to four.
Finally, I finished the last pill. I reflected on my memories of the first competition I watched. My alchemy was not even close to the people I had watched in previous exams. All I could hope was that it was good enough.
I checked my pills: 91%, 86%, 84%, 89%, and 90%.
I laughed. A total of 440. I did my best. Maybe it was time to live a normal life for a while.
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I knew my results, but I still stood with the other contestants waiting for the winners to be announced.
First place had 492 points of efficacy. Second had 487.
Then, they announced third place.
“Su Fang, a combined efficacy of 486.”
While the other winners cheered, I just stood there. I didn’t know what the others’ results were, but I knew mine definitely wasn’t 486.
I had won though, that was good, right?