Chapter 408 – Life 109, Age 32, Martial King 1

My new workshop had its advantages, but it also came with a few drawbacks—other than placing me directly under the thumb of the local Sovereign, of course. Chief among these was the effect that it had on my training schedule. Taking care of all the room’s plants would cut into my practice time, and I wasn’t a fan of needing to navigate an endless maze of corridors every time I wanted to give my teammates an alchemy lesson.

Unfortunately, if I wanted any hope of raising my wood affinity, there wasn’t much that could be done about this first concern. Thankfully, though, Enkhtuya had already taken care of the latter one.

My teammates had all been moved to the floor right below me, and a short tunnel connected our five new workshops together, giving us quick access to one another’s rooms. While their new accommodations were not quite at the level of what I had been given, this was still a major step up from what they had been using originally.

Still, while having our rooms so close together would be helpful, it only made things a little more convenient. It didn’t actually do much to solve the real problem.

I needed to focus on raising my skills to a level where I would be confident in defeating Jon. How was I supposed to do this while also training my teammates and taking care of a room full of plants?

The moment I asked myself this question, I had my answer. It was, of course, obvious. 

---------------------------------------------------

When Mandakh and the others entered my workshop, they were greeted by a rather strange sight.

I opened the door, welcomed them inside, and guided them to the room's sitting area. Then, I went back to tending the room’s plants, ignoring them completely.

Simultaneously, ‘I’ sat on one of the room’s plush chairs, eyes closed in a meditative posture, waiting for everyone to arrive.

Once my teammates were all in position, ‘I’ opened my eyes and smiled at them. “Thank you for taking the time to meet with me. I’ll keep this short.”

‘I’ gestured over to where I was taking care of the room’s plants. “Compared to my alchemy skills, my horticulture skills are somewhat lacking. To add to this, the plants in this room are rather fragile, so if I want them to survive, I’ll need to check in on them regularly. I’ll need to spend at least a couple of hours on this each day, and that’s time that I don’t want to waste. This avatar of mine is incorporeal, so I can’t use it to perform alchemy myself, but I can use it to give one of you a lesson while I tend to my plants.” 

Originally, having an avatar that could talk to and interact with others while my real body was focused on an intricate task of its own would have been impossible. However, after several years of having eight different avatars monitor eight separate alchemists, my ability to control them had increased significantly. 

I was still nowhere close to being able to give all of my teammates independent lessons at the same time. However, having one avatar perform a complex mental task while my real body was focused on something else entirely wasn’t too difficult. I wouldn’t want to divide my attention like this while doing anything important, but using it to both teach and tend to a few plants wasn’t much of a problem.

As soon as I finished talking, Mandakh cupped his fists and bowed his head. “Thank you for your guidance, Teacher. I have been attempting to master a new Rank 6 technique recently, and I could use your assistance. Also, I have a few questions about a passage that I recently read in the Soul Cultivation Library.”

Mandakh might have had his faults, but I had to give the man credit for one thing. He never passed up on an opportunity to grow stronger.

---------------------------------------------------

While I remained locked away in my workshop, the months passed with ever-increasing frequency.

My gains during this time were barely worth mentioning. After several millennia of growth, a few extra years of occasional soul cultivation barely had any effect, and while I continued to refine my ability to make highly-patterned Rank 5 pills, I was never in a position where I couldn’t just bull my way through with the raw power of my affinities and soul-enhanced cauldron.

That said, this lack of progress was mostly due to the fact that, whenever I felt my cultivation base stabilize, I entered seclusion and pushed for the next breakthrough.

When Enkhtuya gave me this room, the competition against Jon was five years away, and I was a first-level Martial King. Advancing slightly faster than was advisable, I broke through to Peak King after only two years.

Then, I swallowed a Rank 5 Cicada Pill, wiping out my cultivation base entirely.

Considering that I was in a rush to reach Peak Emperor before the upcoming competition, destroying my cultivation base like this was risky. However, my pill furnace was an important trump card that would help me defeat Jon’s blessing. I needed to be as powerful as possible.

Thankfully, this risk was mitigated by the way Cicada Pills worked on Rulers. They only drained a person of qi—they didn’t destroy a person’s core or restore the world’s chains. So, all I had to do was climb back up to Peak Grandmaster, and my cultivation base would be completely restored.

As I worked on this, a couple of thoughts popped into my mind.

First, what if all my meridians had been made from pill toxins? Cicada Pills didn’t remove toxins. So, wouldn’t that mean that I would, effectively, be a Half-Step Grandmaster the instant I broke through to Peak Disciple? To ascend from Peak Disciple to Peak Grandmaster, I would only need to reactivate my meridians and compress my qi. This idea might not be too useful, but if I ever wanted to perform a few quick Returns, it might come in handy.

Second, what if, after taking a Cicada Pill, I went in and pulled apart my karmic core, allowing the energy to dissipate? To all appearances, I would be nothing more than a simple mortal, but with the chains of the world still broken, I would have the full power of an Emperor’s will-lock. This would also mean that I was still, ‘officially,’ an Emperor, meaning that I wouldn’t age until I was 120 years old, and I would live for 600 years.

Would there be any point to this? Maybe not, but it made me wonder if any of the ‘mortals’ in the City of Selfless Courage were hidden Emperors who had destroyed their cores.

In any case, after consuming the Cicada Pill, I spent six months carefully restoring my cultivation base.

Then, I pushed forward and made my breakthrough to Martial Emperor. 

With only two and a half years to go, I didn’t even consider attempting to rush forward to Peak Emperor. Making a few extra minor breakthroughs would be useful, but I needed to spend most of my time improving my understanding of Rank 6 pills.

---------------------------------------------------

While I was hard at work, doing everything I could to prepare for my showdown against Jon, my teammates… had concerns of their own.

For the most part, I didn’t pay much attention to this. The four of them had plans and goals of their own, and as long as they were diligent in the workshop, I couldn't care less what they got up to outside of it. However…

Mandakh… Mandakh wasn’t a problem, not exactly. But… Well… His mentor must have given him the same lecture that Chan had given me. Unlike me, though, Mandakh was fully on board with the idea of leaving a flourishing clan behind when he went off to join the Temple.

His main target for this was Lau CoiHung. However, when she didn’t return his advances, he switched his focus to the other female member of our group… and the young woman who didn’t make the cut for our final team… and several other young women in the Palace.

He never forced anything, but whenever a talented young woman gave him the time of day, he would do his best to… pull them into his clan.

Why target so many? Because, “A powerful man should have three wives and four concubines. Anything less, and my ancestors would never forgive me.”

This behavior worried me, but as long as it didn’t affect his performance, I would hold my peace.

---------------------------------------------------

In the upcoming competition, we would only be allowed to concoct Rank 6 pills. So, if I wanted to achieve the highest score possible, I would need to concoct a nine-patterned version of one of the more valuable Rank 6 pills. 

This was, unfortunately, far more difficult than I had been hoping.

As a general rule, to successfully concoct a nine-patterned pill using one of the common, basic recipes, an alchemist needed their affinities to be two stars higher than the Rank of the pill. To concoct a nine-patterned Rank 1 pill, one needed seven-star affinities. To concoct a nine-patterned Rank 2 pill, one needed six-star affinities.

So, to concoct a nine-patterned Rank 6 pill, one would usually need two-star affinities.

I had sensed movement in my wood affinity, and I could only assume this was my latent talent being converted into essence—or something like that—but even if this room could somehow grant me a two-star wood affinity, I didn’t have any way to acquire similar affinities for any other elements.

My only solution to this was to develop better recipes.

With my ‘complete’ recipes, I only needed affinities that were one step higher than the Rank of the pill that I was trying to make. Concocting the most difficult of Rank 6 pills with high three-star affinities would still be difficult, but with the help of my pill furnace, it should be possible.

The only problem with developing these new recipes was that the herbs for such pills were also incredibly valuable. Sovereign Enkhtuya was able to help me gain access to these herbs, but I was still the one who had to pay for them.

To brew thousands of worthless pots of Rank 6 tea, I was forced to sell hundreds of valuable pills. This, again, ate into my practice time, but I at least didn’t need to brew all the tea myself. I could let the Palace’s attendants do that. I just needed to check each pot with my ability and note down the results.

Using this setup to improve the recipe for Ascension Pills, however, was still a problem. While a few of the herbs in these pills were rare and difficult to grow, they could be grown, so they could be purchased. I just needed a sufficient number of spirit stones.

The problem was that they also required the carcass of a Peak Rank 5 demon beast that had ascended by feasting on the flesh of cultivators. With the Heroes Domain in a constant struggle against such beasts, these carcasses were available, but they weren’t exactly common, and the idea of wasting thousands of them on worthless tea was anathema to pretty much every cultivator in the entire domain.

After a few experiments, though, I found that the demon beasts weren’t actually necessary.

Ascension Pills might have been powered by the energy from beast carcasses, but that energy was almost entirely raw. It didn’t form any part of the pill’s structure. So, I was able to test out herbal teas using pure herbs and only use a beast carcass when concocting a complete pill.

This was still difficult, since none of the effects that my ability showed me were anything even remotely close to “allows cultivators to ascend”—they were, instead, all focused around energy control. Still, over time, I was eventually able to start making a few improvements. I wasn’t able to do much, but I would take whatever advantages I could get.

---------------------------------------------------

Four and a half years after I started training in this new workshop, during just a normal, average day, I was tending to the room’s plants when I felt the world around me freeze. Then, it shattered, and I was flooded with countless new sensations.

Hunger. Thirst. Cold. Hot. Dark. Bright.

Whenever I turned my head, new feelings poured into my mind.

This strange state only lasted for a few seconds, but those few seconds left me terrified. What had happened? Had someone attacked me? Could it have been some form of soul attack?

After several minutes of frantically searching my surroundings, I noticed a new anomaly. When I studied the nearby plants, I could almost feel what they needed from me. 

This sensation wasn’t entirely new. After caring for these plants for several years, I had begun to develop a strange connection with them, but now… something had changed. And it had changed suddenly, with no warning.

Slowly, a new thought crept into my mind, and before I even had time to process what I was doing, I pulled out one of the affinity orbs that I had gotten from the Nine Rivers Continent and flooded it with qi.

After I constricted my acupoints, the chaotic lines in the orb resolved into the image of a tree, and as more of my energy poured into it, this tree rapidly changed colors.

Low five-star wood affinity. Low four-star. Low three-star. Mid three-star. High three-star. Peak three-star.

Then… the color of the tree shifted from a bright blue to a dark violet.

Low two-star.

How? I had no idea. But, somehow… Somehow, it was true.