The Undying Immortal System

The next few months, my finances took a hit. My primary motivation during this time was to improve my control of fire qi. From what I had seen, advanced alchemy was beyond me until that happened.

Oh, could I try to make a more advanced pill? Sure, but producing anything that wasn't High-Purity was just throwing money away. If I was going to burn money anyway, I might as well burn what was supposed to burn, those damn index cards.

Honestly, some days I wished I could just burn that whole store down.

Even following Bao's advice, progress was slow. Trying to get fire qi right up to the edge without going past it was making me insane. Bao had said to think of the qi like a needle or dagger. The problem was that qi wasn't solid. Trying to form it into a dagger led me to create something that might resemble a dagger, but only if said dagger had been sitting in salt water for a few hundred years. My 'qi blade' was a rough, patchy, worthless mess.

I thought I might be going down the wrong path, but Bao assured me that I was doing fine. This was just how things were at first. All I had to do was keep practicing. So, that's what I did. I practiced. I burned through cards at a truly manic pace. When my funds started to get low, I made pills. Everything I did was to push my skills in qi control as far as they would go.

Eventually, I gave up on the plan to only use the Low-Yellow technique on my upper right arm. I needed access to more energy. I was spending far too much time restoring my energy and far too little time using it. So, I cultivated my upper left arm and advanced to Martial Disciple 3.

This would hurt the purity of my qi, but it would only hurt the purity of the qi in my upper arms. After hitting Martial Master, qi becomes mobile, so impurities in one place would travel throughout the body, but as a Martial Disciple, my problems would remain stuck in my upper arms, so I felt it was worth it.

After this breakthrough, the speed of my progress improved significantly.

After an agonizing five months, I was finally able to successfully cleanse every single card in the first set.

After completing the first row's accuracy cards, I had to decide what to do next. As I saw it, I had three options.

First, work on getting a higher cultivation technique. Second, begin work on a new set of practice cards. Third, learn to make Mid-Purity Qi Gathering Pills to make credits more efficiently.

"Wait, wait…" I suddenly stopped myself. "My plan was to get the highest-grade cultivation technique first, then cultivate, and then use that extra power to learn alchemy more quickly. How did I get sidetracked into focusing so much on these cards?"

I thought back.

I had been making solid progress on earning enough points to obtain the High-Yellow cultivation technique, but after Bao dragged me to that tournament, I threw away all of my work and focused on those index cards to the exclusion of everything else. I even broke through with the Low-Yellow technique to make the process faster.

Why did I do that?

I had no idea, but I needed to be careful. I suddenly changed my goal and didn't even realize that I was doing it.

I breathed out and tried to focus.

What was done was done though. I had advanced. At least it gave me more energy to work with. Before anything else, I needed that High-Yellow technique.

I returned my focus to making and selling pills. Before anything else, I needed to earn contribution points.

At this point, I was making eight pills a day, and with the improved accuracy of my qi, seven of them were High-Purity, and I was making a profit of 35 points a day. It only took a little over a month to get enough money for the High-Yellow technique.

After gathering the necessary points, I made my way to the Technique Hall.

"You want the High-Yellow cultivation technique? Not many come in here for that. It's expensive."

"Yes, but I wanted to ask, is High-Yellow the best I can get? Before, there was mention of better if I had 'special permission.'"

"Oh, sure, no way to get a Profound one I'm afraid, but it is possible to get your hands on a Peak-Yellow technique. Hard though."

"How do I get it?"

"You've seen the small competitions around town, haven't you? Those can sometimes reward the Peak-Yellow technique. Even then, it's all about whether you're willing to spend your prize on it and if the elder in charge thinks you're suitable for it. Mostly, people who win those competitions ask for a Rank 2 skill."

I hadn't, in fact, seen those competitions. "What do they test? Pill refining? Do we need to make a high-level pill?"

"Nah, most of them are about your basic control skills. Just work on your qi skills."

I grabbed the High-Yellow technique and headed out. The conversation made me eager to study and improve my qi skills, but I could only do one thing at a time. Cultivation had to come first.

It took me a long time to successfully learn the High-Yellow cultivation technique. I had to work on it for nearly a year before I was able to successfully maintain its qi filter.

During that time, Bao encouraged me, but he confessed that he would never be willing to try it. The technique was too difficult, and the benefits of using it weren't that great. I was starting to agree with him.

Nearly every time I talked with Bao, I set the High-Yellow technique aside and started using the Low-Yellow one again. It was only an hour into using the lower-ranked technique that I remembered the point of everything and returned to the better technique. Bao was concerned about this life, so spending so much time learning a technique might not matter to him, but I had to prepare for the future.

I looked for teachers to help me, but Cao had only used the Mid-Yellow and couldn't give me much advice. There were supposedly teachers who could, but the cost for a single lesson from them was more than the scroll itself, so I just buckled down and pushed forward.

What saved me, as it turned out, was my practice with the accuracy exercises. The skills I gained from them were what finally helped me form the proper High-Yellow filter. This also proved to me that the qi skills were valuable for more than just alchemy.

I struggled to lock the new filter in place as I cultivated. As I drew in qi, the filter began to buckle. As I approached the rate of cultivation I could achieve with the Low-Yellow technique, the qi filter suddenly shattered.

That was okay. I was making progress.

Improving my accuracy with qi had significantly helped me earlier. I realized that the next step to improving my cultivation skills was improving my qi skills.

I thought through the four skills available: accuracy, insulation, speed, and power. Which one did I need here?

Insulation didn't sound like something that would help me in this case, but the other three all seemed to have some level of merit. Accuracy to draw the filter better. Speed to do it faster. Power to make it stronger.

I could already do the first pack of accuracy, so I didn't worry about that for the time being. Speed was not vital, since taking longer didn't matter to me. Therefore, I went with power.

The power cards were a lot more expensive than the accuracy ones had been, but it turned out they were a much better deal.

The power cards were all white with a single solid red circle. The goal of the card was to focus enough energy into the circle to set the red ink on fire. This would leave the card completely blank, the sign of success. The qi did not need to be focused. If it hit the white area, that was fine. All I needed to do was pump energy into the circle enough to burn it away. However, if I used too much power, the entire card would also catch on fire and vanish into ash.

The goal was to use sufficient, controlled power.

The reason these cards were a much better deal was because I would only lose a card if I pushed too much energy into it. Mostly, the problem was not putting in enough. On the other hand, they consumed way more energy. The accuracy cards only needed a trickle of qi. Some of these needed a fire hose.

I fell into a cycle. Train my power, cultivate to restore my energy, train power, cultivate to restore my energy.

As I trained, my qi filter became stronger, allowing me to gather energy faster, allowing me to train more. It was a virtuous cycle.

In the small, secluded world of the sect's city, I barely noticed as several years came and went.

After my first year in the sect, Bao was no longer getting the discounted rate for living with me. I thought he would move out at that point, but for some reason, he chose to stay. I was always working, trying to advance my skills and knowledge, so I didn't spend too much time with him, but I was thankful to just have someone to talk to whenever I struggled to make progress.

Cao didn't know the High-Yellow technique, so she wasn't able to provide too much insight into the technique itself, but she was still a Martial Master. Over the course of several more lessons, she helped me avoid a variety of pitfalls in my cultivation journey.

With her help, I was able to reach Martial Disciple 6 when I was only 20 years old. My speed of advancement was slower than it had been in the past, but I was using that time to build a much firmer foundation than ever before.

Eventually, I turned 21. I had been in the sect for nearly five years at this point. From what I knew, I was a rarity. There were very few people who lived here for that long and never once tried to make an Improved pill, but that didn't bother me.

Instead of performing alchemy, my focus was on improving my basic skills. This would make alchemy much easier and allow me to concoct more valuable pills. I couldn't allow myself to waste herbs. I needed to prevent myself from wasting precious resources. To do that, I had to first improve all four of the basic qi control skills.

Accuracy - to better control where the qi goes.

Insulation - to heat one area while keeping an adjacent spot cool.

Speed - to quickly redirect the flow of qi.

Power - to use exactly as much energy as required.

When I was able to do all the packs from the second row without making a mistake, I nearly collapsed to the floor in joy. Two rows out of five might not sound like much, but I felt amazing about it.

At this point, I started the next phase of my cultivation journey: consuming pills.

Not long after I reached Disciple 6, my cultivation speed declined sharply. Advancing any further was becoming difficult, so I needed to start using pills to assist me, and with my qi control skills now at an acceptable level, I could start performing alchemy again in order to do so.

The thing was, while I could make Basic pills, they weren't very effective on me as a Disciple 6. They helped, but they weren't ideal. Since the sect didn't sell any pills, only bought them, I had to turn to my fellow disciples for assistance. This, however, proved to be a little tricky.

The sect bought High-Purity Improved pills for 30 contribution points. I would have been more than willing to pay that price for one, but there was no way for disciples to directly transfer contribution points between each other. So instead, I tried paying people in pills.

There was no explicit rule against this. A High-Purity Basic pill was 10 points, so if I gave someone five pills, that would just be paying them 50 points for it, right?

No one I talked to was willing to even consider this kind of exchange, and I couldn't understand why at first. However, after one of the disciples explained things to me, it made perfect sense in my mind.

The contribution point system existed to help us succeed as alchemists, and I shouldn't do anything to exploit it in such a way. While it was possible to turn in someone else's pills as one's own, it was something only a poor alchemist would do. I needed to be more forthright and honest in my dealing with the sect.

Something about these thoughts seemed wrong, but I couldn't put my finger on it, so I decided that the 'wrongness' just came because of how quickly I changed my mind on the topic.

After understanding that the pill exchange method was wrong, I tried a different approach. Purchasing pills with gold.

I had three gold remaining from when I first entered the sect. I hadn't used or gotten any since. Outside this place, High-Purity Improved pills were 40 silver each. Inside, I had trouble finding anyone willing to sell one for 80. I had no reason to hold back, so I spent all of my money and bought four, getting a slight discount by doing so.

With the improvements to my qi skills, cultivating with an Improved pill wasn't a problem. After using all four pills, along with a few extra Basic pills I made myself, I reached Martial Disciple 8. I was only 23 years old. I had been in the sect for seven years.

After breaking through to Disciple 8, I immediately tried to concoct a Basic pill. I wanted to see how my advancements had changed things.

Making such a simple pill was a breeze, and I quickly removed every trace of a toxin from the herb's medicinal energy. My speed and accuracy were better than I would have believed possible just seven years earlier. After carefully ensuring the medicinal energy was perfectly pure, I condensed it into a pill and used my analysis ability to examine the result.

High-Purity Rank 1 Basic Qi Gathering Pill, 98% Medicinal Efficacy. Value: 20 silver.

I was very pleased with the efficacy, it was almost perfect, but the purity rating annoyed me. I was confident that I had removed every speck of toxin from the pill. Shouldn't it be a Perfect pill? Why was it only High-Purity? I needed to look into this, but later. There was something else I had been putting off for far too long.

I gathered a blue peony and an astragalus root. It was time to make an Improved Qi Gathering Pill.

The first step was to correctly balance the medicinal power of the two ingredients, two parts peony to one part root. I did my best to measure this visually, but it was hard. I would need to look for a technique to help me with this later. Imbalance wasn't a critical problem, but it would hurt the efficacy of the final pill.

Next, I had to remove the toxins from both ingredients simultaneously. It was difficult to balance this, but my qi control skills helped tremendously. By the time most of the toxins were removed, I had damaged the medicinal energy slightly, but I could only hope it was not too much.

Third, I needed to blend the two powers together. This was problematic since I could only manipulate fire qi. I couldn't directly manipulate medicinal energy. I used a strand of insulated fire qi as a kind of stirring rod, but this wasn't an ideal solution. I added this to the list of techniques I needed to look for.

Finally, I had to compress the energy and form the pill. This worked just like it did with Basic pills, so nothing new here. There was more energy to compress, and it tried to get out of control a bit more, but it was fine…

A small pill dropped to the bottom of the pill furnace. I picked it up and inspected it.

Mid-Purity Rank 1 Improved Qi Gathering Pill, 12% Medicinal Efficacy. Value: 58 copper.

It was complete trash. I felt a twinge of anxiety at having wasted precious herbs, but I had gained experience with the concoction process and a stronger foundation for future learning. It was time to find a teacher and grab a few helpful techniques. I may have wasted some points on herbs, but the experience would be helpful as I moved forward.