Chapter 390 – Life 109, Age 21, Martial Grandmaster 1

The recipe that Emperor Chan had given me used ten different herbs to create a six-patterned Rank 3 Saber Aura Pill.

Its core was a pair of entwined herbs that contained saber energy. These two herbs were each empowered and altered by different metal-based herbs, and the two metal-based herbs were, in turn, empowered by earth-based herbs. These six herbs formed the heart of the pill and regulated its effects.

A basic Saber Aura Pill could be made with these six herbs alone, but doing so would leave unsightly gaps in the pill’s structure. Adding two more metal-based herbs and two more earth-based herbs patched these gaps, allowing the creation of a six-patterned pill.

This much was easy enough to understand, but there was only so much that I could learn about a pill’s structure by just reading a recipe. So, to get started, I bought a few cheap sets of the six core herbs and experimented with concocting the base form of the Saber Aura Pill.

While several of the herbs used in this recipe were new to me, other than two of them containing saber energy, none were particularly special. So, making a bog-standard zero-patterned pill was straightforward. Unfortunately, though, because I needed to leave behind an unhealthy amount of toxic energy to get the herbs to fit together properly, and because I couldn’t properly cleanse the saber herbs without a saber affinity, my first attempt resulted in a nearly worthless Mid-Purity pill.

After destroying this pill and sending its ashes to fertilize the gardens of my inner world, I went out and bought several more sets of herbs.

Now that I had a firmer mental image of the structure that I needed to create, properly matching herbs to create that structure was much easier. After a few more attempts, I was able to reliably concoct High-Purity pills, and after a few more, I was able to imbue my pills with their first pattern.

Going further than this, however, proved to be rather difficult.

The saber herbs were a problem. Since I had access to pill qi, I could work on these herbs without needing to worry about them being contaminated by other types of energy. However, I could only use my pill qi. I couldn’t use the fire qi from my furnace’s formations, and I didn’t have any fire seeds of an appropriate element—not that I would be willing to use them even if I did.

Additionally, there was an issue with the metal herbs. They didn’t fit. Even after trying dozens of different combinations, I couldn't find any good matches between the saber herbs and the metal herbs. No matter what I did, there were always large gaps that needed to be filled with toxic energy. If these herbs had been grown in sympathy with each other, these gaps wouldn’t have been quite as large, but naturally, the saber herbs and the metal herbs just didn’t want to go together.

Both of these problems could have easily been solved with a saber-based spirit fire. Such a spirit fire would easily be able to cut out all the unwanted toxins, and with the help of my pill qi, I could transform the fire and use it to bind the saber and metal herbs together.

Since the members of the Chan Clan were mostly all saber cultivators, they were likely in possession of a saber-based spirit fire. However, even if they were willing to let me borrow it, there was no way they would be happy if I decided to permanently bind a portion of its energy into a random pill. Using a spirit fire like that only made sense if one had access to the original fire seed, and from everything I had seen, I doubted the Chan Clan had one of those.

In any case, since I was intending to make this pill in front of a large audience of fellow alchemists, depending on a spirit fire that few people would have access to would be less than ideal.

To try and solve the problem of cleansing the saber herbs, I crafted a simple Rank 1 furnace and inscribed it with a formation that was supposed to produce beams of pill qi instead of fire qi. However, the lines of the formation proved to be just as ineffective at directing the flow of pill qi as normal meridians were. The gathering inscription worked well enough, but all the energy leaked away before it could be put to use. There might have been some formation equivalent to toxic meridians that could fix this, but if there was, I didn’t know what it would be.

Admitting defeat, I left my workshop, went to the Palace’s Emporium, and purchased the best sets of herbs they had. Thankfully, while Saber Aura Pills weren’t overly popular, there were enough saber-cultivating herbalists in the Palace that standard sets of the six core herbs, while expensive, were readily available.

Upon returning to my room, I studied the herbs in greater detail and was thoroughly impressed. I hadn’t noticed much of a difference with Rank 1 herbs, but the Palace’s Rank 3 herbs were a clear step up from anything offered in the Halls.

Taking the worst of these sets, I concocted a basic Saber Aura Pill.

Though not entirely pristine, the saber herbs contained very few toxins, and I was able to get them to an acceptable level without needing to spend too much energy. 

As for the metal herbs, at first sight, they looked rather strange, as if their stems were covered in tumorous growths. However, these physical deformations altered the shape of the medicinal energy’s structure, allowing it to perfectly mesh with the saber herbs.

With only the slightest bit of effort, I folded all six herbs together and concocted a three-patterned Saber Aura Pill.

Making this pill was satisfying, but it highlighted the challenge ahead of me. The recipe that Emperor Chan had given me was unique, unknown to anyone in the Palace. Because of this, buying a full set of high-quality, specially grown herbs wouldn’t be possible. Instead, I was expected to somehow make a six-patterned pill without relying on the power of a sympathetic bond.

This would be difficult, but if my competitors could do it, I was confident that I could as well.

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

Even if I could get a proper set of all ten herbs needed for the six-patterned pill, I could at least start with a proper set of the core six and just tack on the remaining four, right?

This was what I thought at first, but I soon discovered that the mutations in the core herbs that helped them fit together also made them resist the inclusion of additional peripheral herbs. Ironically, the worse a set of herbs was for making a three-patterned pill, the better it was for making a six-patterned pill.

Still, even knowing this, after using up all of my recently purchased herbs, I had only been able to concoct a single five-patterned pill. Everything else had maxed out at four patterns.

As a new Grandmaster Alchemist, being able to create a proper five-patterned Rank 3 pill should be considered impressive, but would it be enough for me to place in the top five of the upcoming competition?

I would be facing Pill Lords and Pill Kings. As long as they were only able to concoct even relatively common three-patterned Rank 4 pills, they would easily be able to surpass me in terms of raw value. From what Emperor Chan had said, I might have a leg up in terms of uniqueness, but if the Chan Clan was willing to hand over a valuable recipe to a complete outsider, what might other clans be willing to do for their top scions? I couldn’t allow myself to underestimate the legacies of clans that may have existed on this continent for an untold number of millennia.

So, what should I do?

The obvious solution was to go to Emperor Chan and request a set of proper herbs. Such a set might not be available in the Palace, but this recipe had come from the Chan Clan. They had to have herbalists growing what was needed to concoct it, right? In fact, if the Chan Clan was being smart, they would have a stockpile of such herbs ready to sell the moment this recipe became public knowledge.

This was the obvious solution, but I didn’t like it.

If the only reason I did well in this upcoming competition was because of the knowledge and resources that had been handed to me, my future in the Palace would be tied to the Chan Clan far too strongly for my liking—in people’s minds, if not in reality.

So, if I couldn’t make a six-patterned Saber Aura Pill using only the herbs commonly available in the Palace, maybe I should try to develop an entirely new recipe. Even if it was somewhat less valuable, the added uniqueness should more than make up for it.

What type of pill should I try to make, though?

Any of the beast alchemy pills I knew would easily be able to clinch first place, but they were far too dangerous to pull out for a silly competition between kids. No, I needed something that would be valued while also not being valued so highly that it could get me killed.

Making another trip to the Palace’s Emporium, I spent a full day going through all the pills on offer, both those readily available and those that could be requisitioned, and it wasn’t long before I realized that something obvious was missing. After checking with one of the attendants, I found that, indeed, no one in the Palace was capable of making the pill I had in mind.

This didn’t mean that it was entirely unique, but it should be unique enough. So, I placed a giant order for hundreds of copies of all the herbs I needed, then went back up to my workshop to prepare.

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

What was the connection between alchemical pills and herbal teas? At first blush, aside from them both being made from medicinal herbs, the answer seemed to be practically nothing.

To make an herbal tea, all one needed to do was chuck a few herbs into a pot and add water. Sure, some herbs worked better if cut up first, and others worked better if slightly bruised, but that was it. There was no burning away of toxins, and there was no careful melding of medicinal energies. Instead, herbs were carefully selected so that their toxic energies simply canceled each other out, and the energies of the herbs melded together on their own.

Also, as I had already found out, while normal alchemy recipes could be used to brew herbal teas, the results were almost always less than pleasant. Instead of canceling each other out, the toxic energies usually fed off each other, causing them to become even more potent than where they started.

Still, while recipes for alchemical pills couldn’t be directly translated into herbal teas, I had a feeling that I should be able to translate a recipe for an herbal tea into an alchemical pill—as long as it was good enough. After all, the effects of a tea had to be coming from somewhere. All I needed to do was extract the important bits, meld them together properly, and condense the result down into a pill.

My recipe for Beauty Reviving Tea contained 20 different Rank 1 herbs—none of which were present in the more common Rank 0 Beauty Pill, a pill that was only effective on mortals—so I had a feeling that mixing them together properly would create a strong Rank 1 pill.

The idea of competing against Pill Kings and Pill Lords with a lowly Rank 1 pill was almost laughable, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like the right move.

The Palace’s Emporium only sold three-patterned Rank 0 pills, which were only effective on Martial Disciples. Nothing better was available. A higher-Ranked cultivator could still enjoy the benefits of these pills by abolishing their cultivation base, but after they ascended past Martial Master, the effects would begin to wear off.

If I could make a Beauty Pill that was effective on Rulers, while it might not be the most valuable pill on the market, it should at least be in rather high demand. When combined with the utter uniqueness of such a pill, this should be enough to see me safely through the competition.

Still, while I was relatively certain that my herbal tea recipe could be transformed into a pill, I had no frame of reference for what the structure of that pill might be, and I only had a little over two months to figure it out. If necessary, I still had Emperor Chan’s Saber Aura Pill to fall back on, but once the idea of designing a new Beauty Pill was lodged in my mind, I couldn’t imagine entering the upcoming competition with anything else.

So, after receiving a massive shipment of thousands of herbs, I got to work.