The Undying Immortal System

I spent the remainder of the month working on my cash flow. Thankfully, having risen to Martial Disciple 2, I had more energy to work with. I did not, however, have the free rein that I thought I would after I began cultivating again. The reason for this all boils down to qi purity.

To concoct anything more than the most basic of pills, a cultivator must use their body's qi. As a low-level Disciple, I could use my qi to enhance my control over natural fire to refine medicinal herbs more easily. More skilled alchemists didn't even need a fire and were capable of refining herbs with their qi directly. In either case, concocting pills required energy.

The higher one's cultivation base was, the more energy they had for use in alchemy. At the same time, advancing as a Martial Disciple integrates the cultivation technique used into one's body.

As a Disciple 2, the qi filter and whirlpool in my upper right arm had become automated, and I no longer had to put any effort into drawing qi into that muscle group. However, if I needed more energy quickly, I could actively cultivate, spinning the whirlpool faster to draw in as much energy as possible. The only downside to this was that I would need to maintain a firm hold over the qi filter as I did so or else I would start drawing in a substantial amount of impurities.

Originally, I had thought that after I started cultivating, I would be able to use my qi freely when concocting pills and then actively cultivate to quickly restore it. This would allow me to make better pills at a significantly faster rate than was possible by only using my affinity to try and control a natural fire.

After my lesson with Cao, I knew that I had to put this plan on hold.

Burning through my entire qi pool and then quickly recovering it would lead to the purity of my qi slowly decreasing over time. I had worked hard to raise my purity to 80%. If I used it all, the 20% of the energy that was impurities would mostly be expelled along with the fire qi, but a small fraction of it would remain. After I restored my energy back up to full, I would be lucky to reach a maximum of 79.9% purity.

At first, this meager drop in purity wouldn't be an issue, but the more times I expended and restored my qi, the worse it would get. I didn't know what the lower limit of this decline would be, but it wouldn't be anything good.

My goal for this life was to break through to at least the Martial Master realm. From what Cao said, that meant pushing hard to reach Peak Disciple before I turned thirty, and if I did that, I already wouldn't be able to have as pure of a foundation as I would like.

The qi purity in my upper right arm had already been compromised by a Low-Yellow technique, but that was fine. I could rely on qi from there while concocting pills and avoid cultivating in other parts of my body. If I wanted my best shot at being successful in this life, if I wanted the purest foundation possible, I had to get a better cultivation technique before advancing even a single step further.

At the end of my first three months in the sect, I was happy. I had paid my rent and still had a good number of contribution points to spare.

I had reached the point where I could pop out five pills a day, and at least half of them would be High-Purity. This let me accrue around 40 points a day. Of course, this only lasted for six days before my 'special' points ran out. After that, I had to start paying for my ingredients with the points I earned from selling pills. Still, I was managing 15 points a day profit. After these three months, I had racked up a total of about 500 contribution points.

This seemed almost too easy. Two more months and I would get my hands on that High-Yellow cultivation technique. It was just a matter of time. I wasn't sure why everyone didn't get the High-Yellow technique by the end of their first year.

I asked Bao about this, and he looked at me slack-jawed.

"Because it's too hard! Look, most people move up one step at a time. They start with the free technique, then go to Low, then Mid. Learning the extra complications that come with a higher-level technique takes time and energy, and we usually spend that on alchemy."

"But a better technique means better alchemy, right?"

"Yes, but there's another thing. By the time most people have mastered the Mid-Yellow technique they are already Peak Disciples and are ready to advance to master. To switch to the High-Yellow technique, they would have to disperse their cultivation and start over. However, this wouldn't remove the impurities that already exist in their body. So, they would be doing a ton of extra work for very little benefit."

I understand that. It seemed like a mistake to me, but it was their life.

Bao smirked at me and decided to change the subject.

"Anyway, are you going to the tournament? It's going to be great this year. There are even a few new disciples who entered at the same time you did who will be competing!"

"What tournament?"

"Argh, you spend too much time working. You need to socialize more! It's the yearly tournament to determine who is going to move up to the outer sect. There will be dozens of people competing but only the top five will be promoted! Not only that, the prize for the top three is an opportunity to become a Master Alchemist!"

"What? How can becoming a Master Alchemist be a prize?"

Bao gave a dramatic sigh. "To become a Master Alchemist, you need to absorb a spirit flame into your body. It's nearly impossible to create rank 2 pills without one. The top three will be given spirit flames. Since they're already the best of the best as Disciple Alchemists, getting a spirit flame is a guaranteed promotion to Master Alchemist! This is, like, the only chance we will ever get to advance. Making it into the top three is jumping over the Dragon Gate!"

Bao didn't let me decline the invitation. He grabbed my arm and physically dragged me to watch the tournament with him.

We entered a large stadium with seating that wrapped around the field below. Bao's tickets were for seats high up and away from the action, but at least we would be facing the contests' fronts instead of looking at them from behind.

After we took our seats, I looked at the workbenches set up on the field below. "Only 100 spots? Do only 100 people get to compete for outer sect disciple?"

"Brother Su, my man, we have got to get you out more. What have you been doing? Cultivating and working all day? You need a hobby." Bao sighed in resignation. "No, every nominal disciple is allowed to compete for a spot in the outer sect. The sect has been holding preliminaries for this competition for a month now. Thousands of high-level nominal disciples tried and were eliminated."

I blushed with a bit of embarrassment. "Oh, really?"

After leaving the Su Clan, I had felt… wrong. Something about staying in the alchemy lab alone and practicing pills felt… right. That was who I was. That was what I was supposed to do. I needed to cultivate, tend the herbs, and practice alchemy diligently. That was who I was.

Going around the sect and socializing felt unnatural.

"So, uh, what's the test like?"

"Alright, so, the prelims were crazy." Bao started to get excited again. "Everyone was given a pill recipe that no one had ever seen before. To pass, you first had to make the pill, which almost no one was able to do. After that, the top 100 were chosen based on their pill's medicinal efficacy. The guy who came in at number 100? His efficacy was only 22%! That pill was brutal."

Bao shook his head in mock sympathy.

"Today's final will be much tamer. I bet there are hundreds of people cursing the fact that the test for the final wasn't used in the prelims. Today, the contestants just need to make five Superior Qi Gathering Pills, something all of them have done countless times before. The final results will be based on the total medicinal efficacy of the pills. Of course, only High-Purity pills count, anything below that will be thrown out."

"Only High? What if someone makes a Perfect pill?"

Bao guffawed. "If anyone down there makes even a single Perfect pill, they will probably be sent to the inner sect immediately. They won't even have to bother with the outer sect. A Disciple Alchemist making a Perfect Superior Qi Gatherer? That doesn't happen."

The tournament was fascinating.

The recipe for the Superior pills was no secret, and I had learned it my first month in the sect. The base of the pill was still a blue peony. For an Improved pill, astragalus root was added to the peony and both herbs were combined into a single pill. To make it Superior, schisandra berries also needed to be added to the mixture. Everyone knew the ingredients, but being able to successfully make the pill was a different story.

I watched as the contestants carefully trimmed the astragalus so that the resultant medicinal strength correctly complemented the peony. After that, most of the people ranked lower down in the competition began slowly peeling the schisandra berries. The skin was pure pill toxin, so they wanted to remove it first. Those who were higher ranked didn't bother. They would simply burn away the skin in the pill furnace.

As they began concocting, qi flowed like water. Where I used my qi as a shell to slowly melt toxins away, the contestants used theirs like scalpels and spears, ruthlessly cutting and hacking at any impurities.

Every person had to make five pills, so the competition took hours, but I couldn't look away for a single moment.

The final result was staggering. Even the worst of the champions had made five High-Purity pills, all with medicinal efficacies above 90%. As for the woman who took first place? Her total efficacy was 482! She had made three at 96% and two at 97%! I had never even gotten close to those kinds of numbers when making even the most basic of pills.

The skill of these competitors was far beyond anything I was capable of.

After the tournament, I sat in contemplation. I was really glad Bao had dragged me here. Watching a group of alchemists who were so much more skilled than myself showed me how much I was lacking.

I had been watching from far enough away that I couldn't clearly see what they were doing, and even if I had seen it clearly, I still wouldn't have understood why they did what they did. Still, even from what I could see, it was obvious to me that they all had masterful control of fire qi. Even the people who were eliminated early had skills far, far above what I did.

This wasn't about knowledge of techniques. It was pure basic skill. Like how a professional athlete, without doing any special tricks or fancy moves, would be able to crush an amateur with basic fundamentals.

"Brother Bao, I need to improve my qi control. I was told I should work on improving my innate skill with it instead of relying on techniques. Do you know any way to do that?"

"Working on your control? Sure, that's easy enough. Come with me."

Bao took me to the Provisions Hall. In the past, the area I had entered was just a small room with a single counter. Turns out, that was just an express store for picking up alchemy ingredients. I thought the rest of the building was a warehouse of some kind, but there was also a large store for miscellaneous goods. Before, I had been so focused on the task at hand that I walked right by it.

Bao explained that this store sold most random things one might need. It had the cultivation mats he had mentioned when we first met, it had more comfortable sleeping rolls, and it even had books and games for entertainment during downtime.

Our focus was on a set of shelves that contained an awe-inspiring number of what looked to be nothing more than packets of index cards. The packets were sectioned off in a grid-like pattern of five rows and four columns.

"These are something the servant disciples get paid to make. I hear it's a real pain to do. Each pack contains fifty cards." He grabbed a pack from the group on the top left and showed it to me. "These are to help you learn to control your qi more accurately. The top row has the easiest exercises, bottom row has the hardest. Each column is a different skill. Accuracy, insulation, speed, and power. Most people would say the skills get harder as you move from left to right, but that depends on the person."

"Let's go buy these and I'll show you how they work," Taking the pack he had grabbed from the top left, he headed toward the counter.

Bao offered to pay for the cards, but I had a decent reserve of points built up, so I declined his offer. He wanted to fight me over it, but after explaining that his help was enough, he finally relented.

We took the cards back to our apartment and he began to explain how to use them.

"The top card is going to be the simplest, so it's a good place to start. Take a look."

He showed me a card of white paper with a thick black line running horizontally through its middle.

"I'm not sure if it was originally a joke or not, but the first few cards are just numbers. Anyway, this is to help you practice accuracy. You want to channel qi from your body and into the card. Your goal is to completely burn away the black line, but you have to be careful. If your qi touches the white part of the card, the entire thing will turn to ashes in a flash. This level isn't too sensitive. You might get away with burning the white a little, but the higher the difficulty, the more sensitive the paper and the more complex the pattern."

He flipped through the cards, showing me a few of the different designs.

"You're only Martial Disciple 2, so you don't have much qi in your body yet. That's one of the nice things about this set of cards, it barely takes any qi. Just keep a light, steady touch, and focus on where you send it. If you were to try some of the other skills, you might need to supplement your qi with natural fire, and I don't recommend that. Stick with this skill for now and start on the others when you're at a higher level."

I sat down and started working on the first card.

When I made Qi Gathering Pills, my process was to create a rough shell of qi around the flower and then mold it into shape, slowly concentrating my energy in different areas to burn away the chaotic tainted energy as evenly as I could. I tried to use that same process with this card.

I started from the center. I could freely push qi there without worrying about it hitting the white paper. Slowly I massaged my qi to the borders, first the top and bottom, then the sides. My qi spread through the card like a highly eccentric oval, and I was able to cleanly remove the black paper along nearly all the sides.

The problem was the shape on the card was a rectangle with sharp corners. Getting flush with the sides was easy, but the corners were a different story. As my qi approached the corners, I kept stopping and pulling back. The more I tried to form it into a right angle, the more I lost control. Eventually, I slipped, and the entire card flashed as it turned to ash.

Bao clapped at my performance.

"That was pretty good. I didn't get nearly that far my first time. Just keep trying, you'll get the hang of it. One suggestion though. Your qi is covering a pretty thick area at any one time, so you have to try to shape it into hard lines. That can be difficult, as you just saw. It's good to practice that, but you might want to start with a narrow band of qi. Think of it like a thin knife, or like a long needle. Just burn a tiny part of the card at a time. It will be a lot more work to do the sides like that, but it will be great for the corners."

He used his qi to demonstrate his meaning.

"In the end, you will be working on doing it both ways, but I think starting with a narrow beam will probably be easier for you."

"Thank you, Brother Bao," I gave him a martial salute in gratitude.

"Hey, you're treating me like a stranger now. This is what I should do for my brother!"