After Ruyi became a demon, her research output shot up.

She found she tired much less easily. When her mind was distracted, seized by an urge, she couldn’t think. But when it was quiet she could turn her mind to nearly any task, even boring ones like hours-long ingredient dissections. She could set her mind on a thing and trust it would stay there forever if she so wished; the way you could set a cup on a table, and trust it would simply stay.

Distractions had been as natural as breathing to her. Before, she could hardly go two hours without stopping for a snack or going for a stroll. Now she could lose half a day to a single problem.

***

What bothered her most was being called ‘prodigy.’ It had been nice the first few years. But she was coming up on sixteen now, nearly an adult. She didn’t want to be a prodigy, she wanted to be good. How many alchemists were prodigies as children, only to become mediocre adults?

She wanted her name known on its own merits, like the great grandmaster Alchemists; her favorite, Wu Yan, pioneer of the use of silver stirring rods—among a thousand inventions—was a cantankerous binge-drinking zealot who might’ve single-handedly shifted the field fifty years forward. She’d been dead four hundred years and folk still spoke her name in reverence.

She was who Ruyi wished to be. Except for the drinking and smoking herself to an early grave bit. Though to be fair, that had only strengthened her myth…

Ruyi was confident she was on her way there. Her works were getting broader recognition; her treatise on the novel uses of Emperor Spider venom for disinfection was named one of the most significant studies of the year in Alchemy Quarterly—they put a little golden crown next to the title, so everyone knew. Ruyi had it cropped out and hung on her lab wall.

She took no small satisfaction in knowing somewhere out there, Tingting must’ve read this.

Nowadays she could sleep four hours and still feel refreshed. She carved out time to work on the Cult leader’s little thing, lost a few more hours to testing or fooling around with her powers, but the rest she spent hard at work.

Really the postal service was the main limit on her. This whole ‘requisition’ process for ingredients could be dreadfully slow sometimes; the true top-of-the-heap Alchemists, Grandmasters like Yin or Ouyang, either had their own private networks of suppliers or went out to gather ingredients on their own.

One day, she promised herself. One day.

***

Alchemy Weekly, a brief review of the most significant publications of the week, came out mid-week. Ruyi dashed to her mailbox. Every registered Alchemist had a reviewer’s duty, randomly assigned—this way the community could sift through the chaff. Usually this grunt work fell to the new Alchemists.

By some cruel twist of fate one of Ruyi’s works got Tingting as a reviewer. When she’d first heard the news she’d wanted to curl up and wither away. It was bound to happen, with how much work Ruyi was putting out; it was hardly like there were droves of new Alchemist-reviewers. Still, she was somehow totally unprepared.

She thrust open the magazine, read Tingting’s notes, then reread them, and then again a third time, just to be sure.

“scintillating insights,” Tingting had written. “Rigorous analysis, as expected from this author.”

What did it mean?

She didn’t understand—why couldn’t Tingting just come out and say it? Was this an apology? A rejection? Did she want Ruyi back or not? On the one hand Tingting had called her ‘scintillating,’ which, yes, of course. But she’d also called her ‘this author’—like they were strangers! Ruyi was on the verge of tearing her hair out.

That night, badly drunk and through tears, she wrote Chen Qin a letter asking him to please take good care of Tingting, and to be gentle with her, since she was very sensitive and sweet, and the most wonderful girl in the realm, probably, and that he would regret it horribly if he lost her, he really would. There might have been a few veiled threats about what Ruyi would do if he hurt her.

She might’ve hit her most pathetic low that night. She truly was considering accepting Qin’s offer to be their concubine if it meant the chance to be with Tingting again.

The next morning she woke up more disgusted with herself than she’d ever been.

She read the letter, got two sentences in, tore it up and chucked the strips into her lab incinerator.

***

By now, Gao only dropped by once a week. After a certain level most of her learning was self-directed, and they both had their own research interests. But it was always nice when she came—they spent pleasant afternoons sipping tea in a marble pavilion in the Yang family garden, watching insects flutter about the blooms. They spoke, sometimes of themselves, mostly of the state of the field. This amounted to Ruyi talking up how great her latest projects were, and Gao taking exasperated jabs at her. But she still liked it.

“Whatever happened with that Codex?” said Gao.

“Oh, I gave up on it,” she said, taking a sip out of a gold-engraved porcelain cup. “It was a ridiculous text. It went nowhere.”

“Hmm,” said Gao. “I see. Ah—by the way, a friend of mine wishes to meet you.”

“Who?”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“Have you heard of Zhilei Zhen?”

Ruyi leapt out of her wicker chair. “Are you serious? The Grandmaster—the Rising Phoenix Prize winner?!”

“The very one.”

“That old fart is still alive? He hasn’t published in decades!”

“Sit down, idiot girl,” sighed Gao. “And yes. For whatever reason, truly it is beyond me, he has taken a liking to your work. He seems to think you have... potential. He has extended an open invitation for you to meet him at his estate in the Dragonspire Mountains.”

“He said I have potential?!”

“I believe his precise words were that you were, ‘one of those rare true genii’ and that your work was ‘a breath of fresh air.’ But I took the liberty of paraphrasing, for fear that you would become so insufferable it would ruin the rest of my afternoon.”

“Zhilei Zhen wants to meet me,” said Ruyi, eyes shining. “He thinks I’m a genius!”

“See? Precisely what I was afraid of.” Gao rolled her eyes. “Regardless, this is a good chance for you. A true Alchemist ought to see the world. You’ll get a chance to do field work—harvest rare ingredients the Guild might not have. And the Dragonspire Mountains are full of rare flora and fauna. Certain ingredients expire so fast they must be harvested and brewed on-site. A number of grandmaster level brews are like this.”

“They won’t even let me take the grandmaster test ‘till I’m fifty,” muttered Ruyi. She sat back down, crossing her legs. “Stupid rule.”

Even stupider was the rule that you couldn’t test for Master until you turned thirty. She wrote a column in Alchemy Quarterly, the most widely read publication in the field. She’d been sitting on an idea for a while now; she floated it to Gao. “Do you think they’ll make an exception for me if I lambast them in the Quarterly?”

“No. They’re more likely to cancel your column.”

“But it’s not fair!” whined Ruyi. “I shouldn’t have to follow these stupid rules. I’m special. I’m a genius—Zhilei Zhen said so.”

Gao stood up to leave.

“Wait—wait! It was a joke!” she gasped.

“One more insufferable word, I swear,” said Gao, waving a crooked finger.

“I’ll be good. I can be good! Promise.”

Gao treated her to a look of withering suspicion. Then she hoisted herself back into the wicker chair. “So? What do you say?”

At Ruyi’s blank stare—“To the offer, girl, the offer!”

“Ah! Yes—yes, a thousand times yes!”

“Then I’ll send him a crane. And I’ll alert the Guild branch there, too—they’ll be falling over themselves to welcome you.”

“Makes sense,” mused Ruyi. “I suppose it isn’t often they get an Alchemist of my caliber passing through, is it? Wait—wait! I’m sorry! …Are you really leaving?” Then, standing—“Bye! Same time next week?” she shouted.

Gao gave a loud grunt in response.

***

There was a more nefarious reason she was so excited to go into the mountains.

Whoever wrote the Tartarus Codex had, as any good Alchemist ought to, laid out paths for future exploration. Unsolved mysteries.

One formula in particular drew her eye. She called it, creatively, Mystery Elixir One. It boosted the body’s natural affinity for demonic essence, which meant she could hold more and absorb more at the same stage. In short it boosted demon talent. It might also grant strange and interesting abilities—or side effects—she wasn’t aware of. After she’d taken that first dose of essence and found she hadn’t died, she’d grown much more open to self-experimenting.

This formula was half-finished, a puzzle missing a key piece. They needed just the right ingredient, prepared just the right way.

She deduced the properties of such an ingredient, and from that derived a list of ingredients that just might fit. She was planning on requisitioning them one by one, which might’ve taken years.

Far easier to go to the source herself.

She thought of Father, strangely. If only he could see her now—if only he knew how strong she’d become! She’d be a Feral before the month was out—as strong as a Foundation Cultivator. He’d be so proud of her.

But of course he could never know. No one could ever know.

It did burn her a little.

***

When Mother heard she was heading to the Dragonspire Mountains she’d almost burst into tears. She’d wrapped Ruyi in a hug that had her wheezing, even in her demon form. Sometimes when Mother got really happy or really angry she forgot her strength.

“My little Rue, all grown up!” Mother cooed. “Going out all on her own!”

“It’s just a day trip, Mother—ow—ow!” This was at Mother, ruffling her hair far harder than necessary.

“I’m so proud of you,” said Mother with this wobbly smile. “You go get those elixirs. I’m rooting for you.”

“Ingredients, Mother. I’m collecting ingredients.”

It was so easy to forget Mother was ranked on the Heavenly Scroll. Her nickname was apparently the Butcher, but sometimes Ruyi had trouble imagining Mother could hurt anything. On purpose, that was. This was the same Mother who herded up vermin who’d broken into the house to let them loose into the fields and fed the porch sparrows corn by hand each morning.

..She supposed there was that one time in the Wonder District with those thieves. An image was still lodged in her head—Mother splattered in blood, smiling sheepishly, as though she’d dripped soup on her skirt at the dinner table.

Ruyi hadn’t seen that Mother ever since. She wondered if it had all been a strange dream.

“Oh, I so wish I could go with you, dear,” Mother was saying, “But I must stay here, with Jin. Someone has to keep him safe.”

“You do know Jin’s at Peak Core Formation, right?” He was probably one of the hundred strongest fighters in the City!

“Precisely,” said Mother, shaking her head. “It’s just not safe. Perhaps once he reaches Nascent.”

Mother had a weird attitude toward cultivation—everything under Nascent Soul was bunched up as ‘beginner’ to her. She had a casual disregard for even most Nascent Soul fighters; not in an arrogant way, but in a simple matter-of-fact way.

“No one’s sending assassins after Jin, Mother,” said Ruyi, exasperated. “Especially not ones that strong.” It’d been years and Ruyi hadn’t seen even one.

“Well…” Mother had a strange look on her face. “You’d be surprised, dear…”

***

Mother insisted on packing her homemade rice boxes with lots of raw fish and bloodied beef, since it was all Ruyi ate nowadays. She all but forced them on Ruyi. More annoyingly, she’d insisted on requesting an escort from the Li Family Branch in Jade Dragon City.

In other words, a babysitter.

And Ruyi had been so looking forward to running wild in the mountains.

Mother must’ve known Ruyi would throw a fit about it, since she had the babysitter sent over already—and ambushed Ruyi with the news when she came home from the lab after work.

And now they were arguing about it in the entrance hall, even though the matter was pretty much already decided, because Ruyi was in a stubborn mood.

“I don’t need a sitter.”

“An escort,” said Mother gently. “It’s for your own good, Rue.”

“Why don’t you let me decide what’s for my own good?”

But Mother wouldn’t be moved, despite much bickering and pouting on Ruyi’s part.

“Whatever,” said Ruyi, wrinkling her nose. “You can send them with me if you like. I’ll just lose them in the mountains.”

“Aiya…” groaned Mother. “Sen? Will you come in, please?”

There was a shadow moving behind one of the bamboo sliding doors, and Ruyi realized, slightly mortified, that whoever was behind must’ve heard everything she just said.

The door slid open. A girl stepped out.

Tall, lithe, with straight black hair cut in blunt bangs which went down to her waist. She wore a warrior’s leathers which hugged an athletic body, flowing down long toned legs. Her lips were pressed to a tight line, her eyes regarding Ruyi with a coolness that made her shiver. She had a huge sword strapped to her back, sheathed in a black leather scabbard. She was so pretty she scared Ruyi a little.

“Mistress Li,” said the girl said, bowing.

“You may rise,” said Mother. The girl did, nodding curtly.

“Sen here is a branch member of the Li Sect. She’s of peak Core Formation, and very talented—one of the most talented swordsmen of your generation, I’d say. She won first prize at the Dragonspire Juniors’ Provincial Tournament.”

“You’re too kind, Mistress,” said the girl.

“Sen will be your escort,” said Mother. “Will that be alright, Rue?”

“Yeah...” said Ruyi, her voice a little strangled. “Yeah, um, that’ll be just fine.”

“Mm, I thought so,” said Mother, looking smug. Before Ruyi could figure out what that was supposed to mean, Sen strode up to her. “This way, mistress. The carriage awaits.”