I wanted to return to my alchemical pursuits after the meeting, but I needed to ensure my karmic income remained at a high level. I decided I had to deal with the issues my ministers had raised in both this most recent meeting and the previous one.

The first issue was something that was not only important to the city but also important to my idea of creating a factory valuable enough to catch the attention of the Brilliant Sun Empire’s ruling family. We needed a way to produce more herbs for Nutrition Pills. The plan we had decided on was to make farms, and I knew little about arranging such matters. I would let my minister work on designing them, and I would just copy their work to my library. There was one thing I could help with, though. Those farms would be significantly more productive with Soil Enrichment Pills.

The Rank 4 Soil Enrichment Pills I had been producing recently were, of course, a terrible idea for such farms. Instead, I needed Rank 0 pills. It took me time to look up the recipe, but when I did, I was happy to see that it was another basic pill that only required a single ingredient.

The herb in question was simply called a Grower Pod. Similar to a Kairaway Pod, Grower Pods were long bean pods with several ‘beans’ of medicinal energy. Unlike the Rank 4 pod, though, the beans inside them were nearly pure medicinal energy, so purification mainly involved destroying the outer shell of toxins.

I made a couple of the Rank 0 pills to get a feel for the process. The toxic energy of these was much more robust than in other herbs of this quality, so it took more than a light touch to cleanse it. It took more energy than a normal Rank 1 herb would, but not nearly as much as a Rank 2.

The entire process made me slightly confused by the ‘Rank 0’ rating the pill was given. Throughout purification, they seemed easy enough for a low-level Disciple Alchemist while not being so easy that any untrained fire cultivator could make them. It felt like it should be a Rank 1 pill, and since they only affected mortal plants, the name would normally be Rank 1 Basic Soil Enrichment Pill with the version that helped Rank 1 plants would be Rank 1 Superior or something.

So, why was this considered a ‘Rank 0’ pill?

The answer came after the purification step. To my surprise, the individual beans began separating and dispersing, somewhat similar to how Rank 4 herbs acted. I allowed the energy to disperse freely and studied it as it did. There was no way this cheap pill would require a Lord to make it, so I tried again.

This time, as I burned away the toxic energy, I locked the medicinal energy in place with my wood affinity. This allowed me to smoothly make the pill with little difficulty.

Reviewing the process, I estimated that concocting such a pill would require the skills of a low-level Disciple Alchemist, the soul power of a high-level Disciple Alchemist, and at least a low seven-star wood affinity. This made the number of people who could make such a pill rather small, and those who could certainly had better things to do with their time, so I decided to accept the pill’s Rank 0 rating.

The advantage of the pill was that any alchemist who was capable of making it could easily make it as a Perfect pill with high efficacy. This placed our factory formations in an uncomfortable spot. If we wanted high efficacy, we would only be able to make High-Purity pills. If we wanted to make Perfect pills, it would involve targeting small flecks of toxins trapped inside the medicinal energy, which would tank the efficacy.

I had no idea how impurities would affect the results of such a pill, or if they were even important at all, so I decided to try taking a broad approach to the matter. We would design both High-Purity and Perfect versions of the production lines and use whichever gave the best final results. At worst it would be a waste of time and money.

Pills in hand, I was ready to visit the Hu clan.

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“Lord Su, if I had known you were coming, I would have greeted you from afar. Welcome to the Hu clan,” said a Grandmaster when I arrived. “How can we help you today?”

“I was told there were new formation designs available, so I came to take a look. I apologize for taking so long to find time to visit.”

“Not at all, Lord Su. Our formation specialists have simply taken the opportunity to further refine the initial designs. I think you will be happy with the results.”

The Grandmaster led me through the Hu complex and showed me the two designs they had created.

The first was for a Rank 0 Healing Pill. It only worked on mortals, and it could only heal simple injuries, so such pills were considered extremely wasteful. Mortals could recover on their own from any injuries the pill would be able to heal, so why bother making such a thing? The low price meant it wasn’t worth the effort, and the price couldn’t be raised because then people would just buy Rank 1 pills that did a better job.

The second was a Rank 0 Energy Pill that restored a person’s stamina. Again, it only worked on mortals, and how much money was giving mortals a little extra stamina worth? It would let a farmer work longer, but you could always just hire a second person instead of feeding the first one pills.

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I estimated that these pills would end up producing significantly less karmic energy than Nutrition Pills had, but they were cheap, so there should still be a solid return on investment.

The main difference between the designs for all the different pills was the purifying formation. It had to be specially calibrated to target impurities in a way that would create results with maximal efficacy. Creating a formation that could handle the variations within a single type of herb without ruining any of them was extremely challenging.

“Grandmaster Hu, these designs look excellent to me, what are your results?”

“Thank you, Lord Su,” he said while taking out a pill bottle and handing it to me. “These are the pills we have made with our prototypes.”

I appraised them and found them excellent. They were both Perfect with efficacies in the high eighties.

“Excellent job,” I said, taking out a bottle of Soil Enrichment Pills. “Here is your next challenge.”

I spent the day working with Grandmasters from the Hu clan. First, I described the process of refining the pill and the various difficulties I could foresee in automating the process. Then, I began demonstrating for them. I concocted the pill as slowly as I could and allowed the Grandmasters to closely observe the entire process.

The first time I made a pill for them, my process of concoction was somewhat organic, and I sent qi in places I deemed appropriate using whatever means I felt best. This resulted in complex qi movements to conform to the curvatures of the various energies within the herb.

After that, the Hu Grandmasters gave me instructions on how to make the process easier for formations to handle. I followed their guidance and concocted a second pill, but the result of doing so was a steep drop in efficacy. The simple movements they requested made it impossible to attack some toxins without hitting large swaths of medicinal energy.

We spent a long time going through an iterative process. At each step, I would demonstrate what they wanted, and we would discuss how to make improvements for the next attempt.

We outlined two formation designs, one for a High-Purity version and one for a Perfect version, and once everyone was happy with the resulting efficacy from my demonstrations, the Hu clan got to work on the hard task of actually designing formations to do what we had outlined.

Situation well in hand, I left the Hu clan to attend to the final matter of importance. I needed to teach some students.

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Minister Bei had done as I had asked of him previously and had assembled a list of fifteen cultivators for me to personally instruct in alchemy. Five were new Disciples who wanted to learn the basics of alchemy, five were Masters who wanted to improve, and five were Grandmasters who wanted to refine their skills before the next King Selection.

Initially, I was hesitant to teach others alchemy since I could see no way it would help me in acquiring the fire seed in Brilliant Sun. Additionally, when I died, everything would be reset, and the skills I imparted would vanish. Only my own skills would persist, so my time was best spent on them alone as they would be what I would have to rely on to complete my mission.

However, I remembered a simple proverb I had once heard: “To teach is to learn twice over.” I needed to teach these students alchemy. Not for them, but for myself.

Teaching the Disciples was perhaps the most rewarding part of this process. They knew nothing about how to concoct pills, so I had a clean slate to work from. Long ago, Rudy started me off by having me make countless portions of Qi Gathering Powder. He didn’t care about how well I did, just that I acted as his workhorse.

In my classes on nurturing talents, I studied how the Eight Flower Kingdom expected me to do the job, but I didn’t feel bound by their expectations. I was willing to try different strategies to see how well they worked, and if I found a valuable teaching technique, it could be another bargaining chip for the future.

I created a teaching plan which catered to several different learning styles. I prepared reference books for them to read, lectures about pills and herbs, visual demonstrations so they could see what they needed to do, and kinesthetic exercises to help them feel what they needed to do.

To me, the most interesting of these was the visual demonstrations. The students didn’t have well-developed qi vision, so they couldn’t easily see what they needed to do. I remembered a technique I used to help teach SuYin long ago and decided it would work well here. I increased the intensity of my fire qi and manipulated it to emit light as I worked. They couldn’t see the medicinal energy very well, but this did let them see in detail what kind of qi movements they would need to employ.

For the Master Alchemists, classes were much simpler. They didn’t need any help with concocting pills. They understood that well enough to not need my assistance. Instead, they needed help learning to control their spirit flames.

I wasn’t a complete master of using spirit flames since I focused so much on using my seed, but I was close. The fire seed mastery I purchased came with far more information about spirit flame manipulation than a typical Grandmaster would know, so teaching a few basics went smoothly, but because I was just conveying purchased knowledge by rote, I didn’t gain too much from the teaching process.

The Grandmaster class was its own version of challenging, though. These five were all skilled alchemists, and most of them seemed to believe they were my equal, or at least close to it, and all of them saw me as a competitor for the position of Eight Flower King. We were all close to the same age, some of them were even older than me, and I had only recently advanced to Lord, so our skills shouldn’t be too far apart, right?

I had to field a barrage of questions about why I chose to employ one specific technique over another, or why I spun my qi clockwise instead of counterclockwise. The class was a lesson in torture.

I felt that many of the questions they asked were inane. Like, why does it matter what direction I spin the qi? Spin it in the direction that works. It almost seemed like they were asking random questions to trip me up and prove I should bow out of the race and support them to become the next King.

However, their questions made me think more deeply about the reasons I did what I did. Over the years I had formed many habits without realizing it. Some were good, some were bad, but I didn’t have a solid rationale for any of them. The process of being grilled by somewhat arrogant Grandmasters helped me develop a deeper understanding of my actions.

All that said, I didn’t enjoy teaching. It helped, and I learned from it, but it didn’t help me advance my goals, so I didn’t plan to seek out opportunities to do more of it. The fact that I learned from the process only meant that I wouldn’t fight against Minister Bei when he suggested that I do my duty as Water Groom and nurture the Kingdom’s talents in the future.