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Chapter 212 – A True Alchemist
🕑 Added 2025-03-10 02:32:29 +0000 UTCBenton’s attention had been drawn to two people running from the residential neighborhood to the Central Business District by the noise their churning legs and hard footfalls made. He flared his spiritual sense and determined that the two were Zou Tian and Wan Ai.
Obviously, their actions made Benton curious, but the fact that he could use his enhanced hearing to literally spy on anyone in the sect grounds made him very worried about too much surveillance. It had been a long time since he read 1984, but the book had made a big impression on him. He did not want to become Big Brother.
Besides, eavesdropping was just plain rude.
Therefore, besides noting that they ended up in Wan Ai’s lab, he left them to their own devices. Until he heard Zou Tian raise his voice and call, “Master!”
Sweet. That was an invitation if Benton had ever heard one.
He Quickstepped into the lab. “Hello, my disciples. What’s up?”
Zou Tian made Wan Ai explain the situation. The girl had a suspicion about why she had been unable to form a pill that should have been really easy for her to do, but she needed his help to confirm her hypothesis.
“Sure,” Benton said. “I’ll Analyze one of the herbs now.”
With a thought, he pulled up a notification.
Well, that description confirmed what Wan Ai suspected. He told them that.
“Great,” Zou Tian said. “What do we do now?”
Benton remained silent to let the kids work it out for themselves.
“The heating device infuses the cauldron with fire qi, which works against the Nature properties in the herb,” Wan Ai said. “As we previously discussed, we need to infuse a different type of qi into the cauldron, one that works with the element.”
“Yeah,” Zou Tian said. “I understand that. But how?”
They both turned to Benton.
He shook his head. “You tell me what you want done, and I’ll tell you if it’s possible.”
Wan Ai looked to Zou Tian, clearly imploring him to take the lead, but he, too, shook his head.
She sighed. “Master, can you modify the array to use a different type of qi?”
“I can. What type would you like?”
She bit her lip, thinking. “Not Nature. That might overwhelm the herb and cause the pill either to fail or to be too potent for mortal use. We need something complimentary. Wood, maybe. It’s similar to Nature, but it might be too similar. Wind is complimentary to Wood, and therefore probably to Nature as well. But something completely neutral, like Water, might be best.”
“You’d like to try Wood, Wind, and Water, then?” Benton said.
“Yes, Master. If it’s not too much trouble.”
Modifying the current heating array to use multiple qi types would be problematic, but that problem didn’t mean he couldn’t come up with an easy solution to do what she wanted. Easier would be to simply start from scratch. After all, the formation was really quite simple. It drew qi from a source and converted that qi to heat.
All he had to do was take a correctly sized piece of Orange Vigor Spirit Wood, engrave an array into it, and place a correctly aspected spirit coin onto a corner to serve as the source. Of course, the placement of the coin on top instead of in a slot would look terrible, something not at all fitting for something created by a Formations Expert.
Which meant he really needed the coin slot.
Benton wasn’t skilled enough with detail work to create the slot on such a small device and make it look integral to the piece, and he had neither the desire nor the inclination to learn a Woodworking technique. After all, he did not plan on creating many devices like the one for Wan Ai.
Besides, he was the sect leader, and it wasn’t his job. Such detail work should be done by the Woodworking Pavilion. Giving them the opportunity to work with his array plate in such a manner would give them contribution points and valuable experience.
“I can have the device for you no later than this afternoon,” Benton said.
Wan Ai didn’t say anything. She didn’t even pout. But her expression was crestfallen. He hadn’t seen a face like that one since the time he’d had to tell one of his granddaughters that her hamster had died.
Ugh. That was a horrible memory. Why he and Evelyn had agreed to babysit the critter in the first place was a mystery. The thing was over two and half years old and constantly at the vet’s office, clearly on its last legs. Rather it was the stress of being transported to a new house or simply the change of scenery, he didn’t know, but it had died when the family was on a cruise, leaving the grandparents to watch it.
He shook his head.
“Do you have to have it now?” Benton said.
“Of course not, Master.” Her words said one thing, but her face said the opposite.
“Look, I can make you something that you can use this morning, but it will be only a temporary solution, okay? I’ll get you the real thing later.”
Her eyes lit up, and she cupped her hands. “Gratitude, Master.”
He would have thought that, after being alive for so many years, disappointing youngsters would get easier. Instead, the opposite was true.
Benton removed a portion of an Orange Vigor Spirit Wood tree from his ring, and used various techniques to slice off a rectangular portion about the size and thickness of the one currently being used as a heating device. After a few minutes of engraving, the array was in place, and he channeled a minute amount of his own qi into it as a test. The heating plate worked just fine.
“Here. Don’t forget. I’m going to want this back.” So he could destroy the homemade-looking contraption. His disciples deserved to use only the best.
“Of course, Master.”
He quickly conjured up two one-thousand qi coins for each of the three elements she requested. “I’ll give you a supply of coins with the permanent device to get you started, but you’ll have to resupply from the Contribution Points Shop. That will get expensive after a while, so you might want to use the regular Fire heating plate whenever you can.”
“Yes, Master.” Wan Ai exchanged a glance with Zou Tian after she said that, though.
“What is it?” Benton said.
“It’s just that all the members of the Alchemy Pavilion will need to make these pills as practice, Master,” she said. “I’m worried about the added expense of needing individual spirit coins.”
Okay. Valid point. He had to assume that all the plants grown near the village would have the same issue, and she was right that practicing making those pill while in the Qi Gathering stage was quite important. She was also right that the coins would make the process more expensive.
Benton could already predict that making spirit coins would become one of his daily tasks. The main power supply needed ten-thousand-qi coins to operate, and there were already a lot of uses for the smaller coins. He really didn’t want to create a demand for more of them.
“I’ll be traveling between here and Vermilion Incomparable Rain Town quite extensively,” Benton said, “and even if I don’t go there, I’m sure that Fatty Ren or others will come here. We’ll purchase common herbs from there. Anything else?”
She grimaced. “No, Master.”
He sighed. “Just tell me.”
“I’ve been having my assistant, Bai Xinyi, learn from the manuals just like I have instead of teaching her so that we can compare notes,” she said.
That approach was a reasonable one. That way, if Wan Ai made an error in understanding something she read, it was possible for her assistant to catch the mistake.
“It’s just that experimenting with different qi types should be a great learning experience, Master,” she said. “If Bai Xinyi had the same opportunity that I had regarding using the device with the spirit coins…”
It wasn’t like it was much more difficult to make two devices than it was to make one.
“Fine,” Benton said. “Two devices coming up. Anything else?”
“No, Master. Gratitude, Master.”
###
Wan Ai let out a huge breath in relief when Master left. That conversation had been so stressful. She couldn’t believe she’d been so shameless to ask him for so many things!
But each had been necessary, and none of it had been for herself. It would not have been fair for her pavilion members to have to pay for spirit coins at the Contribution Points Shop just to practice making mortal grade pills that had almost no value. And she would have felt horrible if she made a mistake in learning how to do something and taught it wrong to everyone who came after her. Bai Xinyi’s work was incredibly important to make sure that didn’t happen.
“You did fantastic,” Zou Tian said. “I’m proud of you. Master is proud of you as well.”
“He was annoyed with me if anything. I don’t know if I can ever face him again.”
“Nonsense!” he said. “Trust me. I know people, and I’ve spent much time with Master. I guarantee you that he’s proud of you.”
“You really think so?”
“I do. I swear.”
Wan Ai relaxed some at her boyfriend’s firm assertion. He really was better at reading people than anyone she had ever met, and he wouldn’t lie to her about something like that.
“Okay,” she said. “I believe you. Now, let me get to work.”
She first chopped up enough herbs for three pills, keeping only the portions known to have the highest quantity of vitamins and getting rid of other portions and any that appeared wilted or had other defects. As soon as she finished, one of the batches went right into her cauldron, and it went on top of her new heating plate.
For the first experiment, she wanted to try the most neutral aspect, so she placed a Water qi spirit coin on top of the plate.
From that point, there wasn’t much that she could do other than observe with her eyes. Real alchemists would use their spiritual sense to monitor the flow of qi and adjust the heat as needed. Since she was still in the Qi Gathering realm, she couldn’t do that.
Theoretically, she didn’t need to, though. As long as she followed the instructions in the manual closely enough, a pill should form, which was why she was so incredibly frustrated that weeks of work hadn’t produced a single one.
She tensed as she watched the mixture slowly heat, and when the point neared where it normally turned into a gooey mess, she clasped her hands together. But that point passed, and the mess didn’t appear. In fact, the mixture began to combine like it was supposed to, with the cauldron funneling the qi from the heating plate in such a way that a shell began to form.
Soon, that shell completed into a perfect oval that contained the contents of the mixture.
She’d done it. She’d created a pill.
In a way, Wan Ai could now consider herself to be a true alchemist, albeit a novice one. Cutting herbs and throwing them in water for a bath was one thing. Creating a pill was the real test of her profession.
And she’d done it. She’d finally done it.
Before she even realized what she was doing, her arms were around Zou Tian, and their lips found each other.
Wan Ai really, really hoped that Master wasn’t listening.
Comments
Keldra
What's the term you prefer?
BWFoster78 Last
All terminology is essentially being translated by the narrator. They're not using the term boyfriend as much as they are referring to a concept that the translator interprets as having a similar meaning. Does that help?
Sarah Grfghlt
Of course, “boyfriend” is a common word today, but there was no such term in traditional China—or even in medieval societies elsewhere. I wouldn’t be so bothered if the author hadn’t repeatedly had their characters discuss the strict rules governing relationships. Given those rules, there couldn’t be a concept of a “boyfriend” or even a “dating” phase. And yes, I would prefer a term like “beloved,” for example. I also agree that words like “okay” and other modern phrases feel out of place at times, but what annoys me the most is the idea of dating, which could never have existed in such a society.
KingOrgasmusTwo
Boyfriend was and is a totally normal Chinese or Korean word. Would you prefer lover or soon to be husband etc? I get your point. But „okay“ is way more devastating since it’s modern English and would throw me off way more if the characters in the story wouldn’t be fairly modern and advanced in certain technological areas. They aren’t dumb medieval peasants and described as fairly knowledgeable, even the farmers or the major of an insignificant village in the forest speak very sophisticated
Sarah Grfghlt
I just can‘t stand the modern term „boyfriend“ like they are natives of this era and planet and yes I know it‘s fiction but you can‘t deny that xanxia novels simulate a kind of eastern medieval society. Why would they use such a term? If benton does it it’s totally fine but the others should not!? It breaks the immersion immensely for me :(
