Chapter 391 – Life 109, Age 21, Martial Grandmaster 1

Author's note: I've been implementing a change to chapters as they go live on RR. I changed maximum possible pill efficacy to 200%, with everything created being shifted to between 50% to ~160%.

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When I first met the Pill King who was in charge of the opening round of the competition to enter the Temple of the Herb Saint, he looked at me with an expression of calm indifference. After I handed him the list of ingredients I planned to use, his attitude rapidly shifted. First, to bafflement. Then, to scorn.

“Do you think that you can flout the Palace’s rules just because you have the backing of an Emperor?” The muscles of the hand that held my list of ingredients clenched as the man barely held himself back from crumpling it up into a ball of trash. “You are required to provide an explicit list of the herbs that you intend to use. How dare you pad it with this… this… filth.”

The Pill King slammed his right index finger down upon my list.

I didn’t even need to look to know which herbs he was pointing at. I just gave him a stoic nod of my head. “This is my list. All of these herbs will be included in my final pill.”

The Pill King’s entire body tensed in anger. “Fine, but know this. If the judges determine that you included unnecessary herbs in an attempt to obscure your true recipe, you will be disqualified.”

I cupped my fists and bowed my head. Then, without saying another word, I turned and left.

The source of the Pill King’s anger was easy to understand. I had given him a list of 25 different Rank 1 herbs, 5 of which contained a rare form of poison energy. In the past, I had used regular, elemental herbs to concoct poison pills, but these five herbs were filled with medicinal energy that was poisonous by its very nature. The idea of using such herbs to concoct what I had dubbed a ‘Beauty Reviving Pill’ must have seemed utterly absurd.

In truth, a couple of months earlier, I would have doubted this list of ingredients myself. However, after two months of testing, I had found that these five poison herbs were exactly what was needed to take my Beauty Reviving Tea from 99% effective to 100% effective.

When translating the herbal tea into pill form, I only needed to extract a few small snippets from these poison pills, but those snippets were the difference between a pill that was exceptional and a pill that was perfect.

I could have tried to explain this to that Pill King, but there wasn’t any point. He would see the effects of my recipe soon enough.

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The first round of the competition to join the Temple of the Herb Saint was held in an amphitheater that was located near the top of the mountain. My fellow contestants and I sat in horseshoe-shaped rows of seats that surrounded a single workbench, and a group of three Pill Emperors sat on a raised platform opposite us.

The Heroes’ Domain contained dozens of Sovereign territories, hundreds of empires, and thousands of kingdoms, each of which possessed its own Hall of the Herb Lord, King, or Emperor. With all of these Halls sending between three to twenty-seven alchemists to the Palace each year, I was expecting the number of people competing to join the Temple to reach into the thousands, if not the tens or hundreds of thousands.

I had failed to consider, however, that only a tiny fraction of those who left their Halls would actually end up joining the Palace, and only a fraction of that fraction would be skilled enough to take part in this competition.

So, instead of there being thousands of competitors in this amphitheater, there were barely a hundred. Most were Martial Grandmasters, but there were a few Disciples, a dozen or so Masters, and a handful of Lords.

Aside from the master of ceremonies, the only Martial King present was the bark-skinned man who sat at the center of the first row. He was wearing an ugly green robe accented in bright reds, and he had adorned himself with several pieces of red-gold jewelry, including a small crown that held up his topknot of bleach-blonde hair.

As this man was the only Martial King present, I had to assume that he was the infamous Mandakh, and after taking a moment to inspect him more closely, I had to reluctantly admit that I was somewhat impressed. Instead of a bulky, ugly core, like those that were common on the Nine Rivers Continent, Mandakh’s core had been formed from a delicate lattice of karmic energy, like the Core of Fellowship that I had created. I didn’t know what the effects of Mandakh’s core might be, but simply having created it was enough to prove that the man had a rather high affinity for karmic energy.

Considering this, and considering that Mandakh had been seated front and center, I had to admit that Emperor Chan had been right. I needed to improve my standing in the Palace before attempting to dethrone its golden child.

After a brief opening speech, the Pill King emcee—the man who had inspected my list of ingredients—began the competition by inviting one of the Martial Disciples up to the stage.

This first competitor was… not good. He made numerous mistakes, both large and small, causing his final pill to be a zero-patterned, Mid-Purity mess.

Since such an alchemist would have never been allowed to join the Palace, I quickly concluded that he was here for the second part of the competition. He was here so that we would have an easy target to critique.

When the Disciple was done concocting his pill, one of the Martial Masters stood and looked at Mandakh. Mandakh gave him a nod, and the Master launched into a short speech about what the Disciple could have done better, such as using more intense qi in certain areas, while exercising more restraint in others.

Once the first Master was finished, he sat down, and a second Master stood up. After receiving the go-ahead from Mandakh, this second Master then added a few suggestions of her own.

After a total of five Masters had given their critiques, no one else chose to stand up, so the Pill King escorted the Disciple off the stage and invited the next contestant to step forward.

The competition continued in this manner for several hours, with one Disciple after the next concocting pills and being critiqued. When the fifth Disciple concocted a three-patterned Rank 1 Purifying Pill, none of the Masters were willing to step forward to critique it, so, for the first time, a Grandmaster stood up. Not long after this, one of the Disciples concocted a six-patterned pill, and not even the Grandmasters were willing to critique it.

So, since I had yet to put myself forward, and since this Disciple had truly done an excellent job, I decided to offer her some advice.

Climbing to my feet, I copied what everyone else had done and turned to Mandakh. After getting a somewhat dismissive nod of approval, I turned back to the Disciple.

“While you did concoct an exceptional pill, there are a couple of areas that need improvement. First, the Palace’s library contains several important techniques that you need to study. Using them won’t improve the quality of your pills, and they will make performing alchemy more difficult, but they will help you conserve your energy. This may not seem important right now, but at the higher Ranks, it is vital. If you need me to provide a list of which techniques you should be using, I can, but I suspect that you already know them.”

The young alchemist flinched in annoyance, then nodded politely.

“More important,” I continued, “is that you need to be more discerning when selecting your herbs.”

Upon hearing this, nearly everyone in the amphitheater looked at me in confusion, including the young woman on stage.

“You used a full set of sympathetically bonded herbs.” I gave the young woman a slight smile. “This allowed you to concoct a High-Purity six-patterned pill, but you should have swapped out the angelica root. With only a bit of effort, you could have found one that would have let you concoct a Perfect pill. You might think that the small amount of toxic energy you had to leave behind is unimportant, but there is no reason for it to be there.”

I gave the young woman a menacing glower that belied my youthful appearance. “In both cases, both your refusal to use proper techniques and your refusal to properly source your herbs, the only explanation is sheer laziness. If you wish to become the best alchemist possible, you need to do better, understand?”

The young woman was nodding reflexively before I even finished speaking.

After giving a polite bow of my head to the Emperors, I retook my seat.

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Once all the Disciples were done, the Pill King began bringing the Masters on stage.

Knowing that I was supposed to hold back, I only chose to comment on the two Masters who I felt could benefit the most from my critique. Both had done an excellent job, but like that young Disciple, their exceptional talents had made them sloppy.

After all the Masters were done, the Pill King adjourned the competition, allowing us to return to our apartment to get some rest.

The next day, the first of the Grandmasters was brought on stage.

In this competition, we were being graded on three criteria: the value of our pills, the quality of our critiques, and the uniqueness of our pills. So, at the start of the competition, I had been excited by the idea of learning several new pill recipes. Sadly, all of the pills made by both the Disciples and Masters had been in the recipe book given to me by Emperor Chan.

I thought that, with the Grandmasters now going on stage, this might change. However, when the first Grandmaster made a basic four-patterned Rank 3 Qi Gathering Pill, I knew that I was in for disappointment. Throughout both the second and third day of the competition, one Grandmaster after another went forward and made common, everyday pills.

This was disappointing, but it made sense. These Grandmasters were eager to compete, both to vie for a place in the Temple and to simply show off their skills. However, they didn’t actually have any chance of winning, so why would they give away a secret recipe?

By the fourth day of the competition, there were only ten of us who had yet to go on stage–five Grandmasters, four Lords, and Mandakh. A tension in the shoulders of the remaining competitors, as well as the three judges, told me that this was the day of the real competition.

When the Pill King walked on stage, he looked directly at me. “Up first today is Pill Grandmaster Su Fang, who will be concocting a Rank 1 Beauty Reviving Pill.”

There was a touch of scorn in the Pill King’s voice, causing the audience to break out in murmurs of confusion. So far, every Grandmaster had concocted a Rank 3 pill, with the worst being a one-patterned Rank 3 pill. None had even considered concocting a Rank 2 pill, let alone a Rank 1 pill.

I didn’t let this bother me, though. I strode directly on stage, bowed to the judges, then walked over to the alchemy workbench.

When I began unloading the vast array of herbs that I was planning to use, the audience’s whispers intensified, with several calling for an attendant to provide them with a list of my ingredients. Aside from just the number of herbs on display, what caught many people’s attention was that none of my herbs were connected by a sympathetic bond.

Blocking out these distractions, I focused on my pill furnace and used its formations to evenly heat the inner chamber until it was at the absolute limit of what Rank 1 herbs could bear. Then, I tossed in the five herbs that formed the core of my pill.

After perfectly cleansing these five herbs, I joined them loosely together and moved the combined mass off to the side of the furnace’s inner chamber.

Then, I tossed in ten more herbs. Once these were cleansed, I used streams of fire qi to burn off about 80% of their medicinal energies, retaining only the sections I needed. I then simultaneously attached the remnants of these ten herbs to key points of the structure that I had formed from the first five herbs.

Once everything was in place, I pulled the whole thing together, causing a burst of energy that signaled the transition to a one-patterned pill.

Not wasting any time, I threw five more herbs into the furnace and cleansed them. With these, I burned away over 90% of the medicinal energy, leaving only specific, key sections untouched. After attaching these five herbs to the mass of energy that now sat in the center of my furnace, I pulled everything tight together, causing it to advance to a two-patterned pill. Then, I reshaped the energy, forcing it to advance to a three-patterned pill.

The transition to a three-patterned pill had caused tiny fissures to appear, so, to fix this, I carefully added two of the poison herbs to the furnace and burned away almost everything, until only a few scraps of medicinal energy remained. Then, I stuffed these scraps into these fissures and pulled the energy together twice, giving the pill its fourth and fifth patterns. Then, I reshaped it to give the pill its sixth pattern.

This caused several more fissures to appear, so I had two more poison herbs to the mix.

Two more tightenings and one reshape later, the ball of medicinal energy was ready to form a nine-patterned pill, but that final reshape had, yet again, caused several new fissures to form. So, I first added the final poison herb to the furnace to fix them.

Finally, I used my soul to tap lightly on the ball of energy, causing it to swiftly condense into a pill.

Opening the furnace, I took out the pill and held it up to the judges. As I did, I analyzed it.

Perfect Rank 1 Beauty Reviving Pill, 200% Medicinal Efficacy, 9 Patterns, Effective Rank: Peak King. Value: —