The Undying Immortal System

After leaving Elder Mu's office, Deacon Ma guided me out of the buildings and back down the bluff. Once we got back to the cliff face, he took me into the first cave opening we came to. Like all the others, it was a perfect rectangle, showing it was manmade, but what set this one apart was that around its entrance was a wide, delicately carved border with a floral design. While the entrance was clear, a heavy wooden door was set well back within the tunnel.

Inside this cave, we found a nice homey cavern that felt like someone's personal study. Bamboo mats covered the ground and tidy bookshelves lined the walls. Two small desks, one against the left and one against the right, provided workspaces for the cavern's two occupants. Glowing orbs set on sconces around the room provided them light as they scanned through stacks of ledgers.

Deacon Ma approached the old man who was working at the desk on the right.

"Old Chen, we have a new in-name disciple. He needs someone to show him around."

The old man looked up from his work and gave me a warm smile. "Oh? A new disciple? Yes, yes. Jun'er, come here."

The girl working at the other desk stood up and walked over.

"Yes, Deacon Chen?"

"Jun'er, this is a new in-name disciple. Show him around and assign him a cave."

"Yes, deacon." She turned and bowed to me. "Come with me, please."

I followed the girl out of the deacon's cave and back to the cliff face while both deacons stayed behind.

Once we were outside and under the bright sun, the girl looked up into the sky happily before turning to face me.

"Hello, I am Chen YanJun. You can call me Little Jun. That was Deacon Chen. He's the head administrator of Elder Mu's enclave. Try not to disturb him."

"Little Jun? Is that appropriate? Shouldn't I call you senior sister?"

She laughed and tugged at her pale robes. "No, I am only a servant disciple. Because we share the same name, Deacon Chen took me in to assist him, but I have no official position. As you are a disciple of the elder, it's proper to call me Little Jun."

"Alright, so, what do I need to know?"

She pointed to our right. "First, that direction leads to the deacons' caves. You should never go down that path without permission. The same applies to the elder's abode. While you may not face any official punishment for violating this rule, your fellow disciples will not be so kind."

I nodded, beginning to get a sense of how this place worked. "Are most of the rules going to be like that? No official punishment, but social conventions are enforced by the other disciples?"

"Yes. Cultivators strive to defy the Heavens, so of course they would be willing to defy the elders. Instead of rules from above, it is the rivalry between disciples that maintains order."

That seemed impractical. Trusting rivalry between children to maintain order seemed like a disaster waiting to happen. However, the effects of cultivation techniques combined with an invisible guiding hand might make it possible.

Jun waved at me and gestured to the left. "Follow me."

This was the same path the deacon and I came from earlier.

We walked back to the place where the path split apart and led to stairs up and down the mountain face. "The upper caves are the residences for inner sect disciples. The lower caves are for outer sect disciples. Those in the middle are shared areas. You will be able to handle most of your day-to-day transactions there, including selling pills and buying herbs, techniques, and basic resources."

"Do they use the same contribution points as the rest of the sect?"

"No, the halls here are run by Elder Mu, not by the sect. They do not operate on a strict point basis, and what you are allocated is determined by the deacons. The more you contribute, the more resources you will be allocated. As an in-name disciple, your base allocation is extremely limited, so you will need to amass significantly more contributions than a direct disciple would."

"So, all my supplies have to be given to me by Elder Mu? I can't earn and use regular contribution points at all anymore?"

While I had become accustomed to this under Deacon Ma, I had expected the situation to only be temporary.

"No, you can still go down to the village and trade using points like normal. The sect operates halls there that run on the standard contribution point system. They have more resources available, and the prices may be better or worse than they are here. However, by going through the sect halls, you are not contributing to the elder. That is your choice to make, but it could limit your access to any special opportunities he could provide."

I put the situation in a context I could better understand. I had to choose between operating under a hard currency exchange or a favor system. I liked the former more since it was more structured, but in truth, I didn't know which would be better for me. Ideally, I would be able to make enough pills to work both systems simultaneously.

After explaining the halls, she took me on a path to one of the lower caves. The entrance was bare rock and lacked the flourishes of Elder Chen's room. The inside of the cave was barren except for a bed roll and a ratty bamboo mat on the ground. Its only saving grace was its relatively large size. It was a square nearly three meters to a side. If I could get furnishings, it wouldn't be a terrible place to stay.

Jun winced slightly at the sight. "This is your cave. Since you're new, your cave is the worst one available. If you want a better place to stay, you'll need to defeat others in challenges for the right to claim their place as your own."

"Can I buy furniture?"

"Yes, but none is available from the elder. Some furnishings are available in the sect halls, but you'll need to carry whatever you purchase up the mountain. Most people find it easier to simply focus on winning a better cave than trying to improve the one they were assigned. If you do make improvements, you may find yourself losing this cave in a challenge."

"They get to keep anything I place in it?"

"You'll have a short time to move, but it will not be enough to take everything away."

So, either way, I needed to be able to win challenges. Doing any work to improve my living situation first would be futile.

"What are the challenges? How do we compete?"

"Everyone here is an alchemist. You'll have to compete by concocting pills. There are many different ways to compete though. If you compete on quality, both of you will be given the same ingredients and whoever makes the best pill wins. You can compete in speed, to see who can make pills the fastest. You can compete in value, to see who can make the most profitable pills. You can pretty much compete in any way you wish."

"Can I challenge anyone? Can they refuse?"

"Yes to both. However, challenging a disciple who is considered far more or far less skilled than yourself risks offending the other disciples. Likewise, refusing a challenge may be seen as cowardice. Of course, if a highly skilled alchemist is challenged by a weak one, they will usually refuse. There are no real rules about challenges, but you need to understand how others will react to everything you do."

I thanked Jun for her tour, and she left me alone to consider the new situation I had found myself in.

Without being able to use my fire seed, I couldn't concoct Rank 2 pills. That meant I couldn't compete against the other disciples, and I wouldn't be able to succeed in any challenges. If I couldn't win any challenges, I would be stuck in this moldy cave until Elder Mu kicked me off the mountain.

The more people talked about these competitions, the less interested I became in them. I had lived a long time without having to compete against others for standing or resources, and changing my mindset now was difficult. I could only take things one step at a time and see what happened.

Before anything else, I had to understand how to use my fire seed. It could provide me with an important advantage, but if I couldn't control it, it was little more than ballast weighing me down.

Alone in my cave, I sat down and got to work.

I opened the book that Elder Mu gave me and began reading. As he had told me, it was nothing like a technique scroll. The books detailed the experiences of a cultivator as he tried to master his own fire seed.

The cultivator in the book had absorbed a seed of the Tidal Waters Fire. It was, as its name suggested, a water-based spirit fire.

I didn't know how a spirit fire's element affected it, and the book didn't explain anything on the topic, but I didn't get the impression that a fire's element would have too much of an effect on the basics of how to control it. Though, it was likely a cultivator's affinity for said element would play a part.

The book described a process of opening one's soul and allowing a tendril of the fire seed to enter the body. If I had only absorbed a spirit fire like normal, the energy would be fused with my body, and I would use my qi to empower and control it. With the seed, the first step was to get the energy into my body. The biggest difference was that the fire would be empowered by the seed, not by my personal qi.

From what I read, it seemed like the biggest roadblock ahead of me was simply opening my soul to allow the fire to flow from my soul into my body in a steady, controlled way. Without opening my soul, I would not be able to reach the fire. If I opened my soul too widely, fire would flood out of the opening and rampage through my body. In that case, surviving with only serious injuries would be the best-case scenario.

Without an actual technique or any real instructions for what to do, attempting to do anything with the fire seed would be extremely risky. I needed to rely on the System for assistance.

"System, how much to learn how to control my fire seed?"

Mastery of Seed of the Yellow-Rank Cold Mountain Fire. Cost 100,000 credits.

I had checked this back when I was secluded in Rudy's workshop, and even with Elder Mu's journal, the price hadn't changed. I would not be able to purchase such a skill without the credits from a death as a Martial Grandmaster.

"How much to learn the skills described in this journal?"

Partial Mastery of Seed of the Profound-Ranked Tidal Waters Fire. Cost 5,000,000 credits.

"No, I just want the cost of learning the information that's described in the journal as it pertains to the seed of the Cold Mountain Fire."

Cost 5,000 credits.

That was much better. It was clear I'd be missing out on a lot of valuable insights, but if I had the basics, I could begin practicing alchemy again and would be able to learn to use the seed better in the future. Still, the price was too high. Maybe I should have saved more credits earlier, but unfortunately, everything is useful and everything costs money.

"Okay System, what about only the basics for opening my soul to release the fire? I don't want mastery of the skill, but I need enough expertise that I can successfully release the fire into my body without significant risk of injury."

Cost 500 credits.

Good enough. I could try to add a few more features, but it was unlikely my remaining credits would be able to make much of a difference.

"Purchase it."

Purchase confirmed. 290 credits remaining.

The information I received was as limited as I had expected. With only this knowledge, I would not be able to make any Rank 2 pills for a long time, but I did gain a starting point to work from.

Using my newly gained understanding, I opened my soul and allowed a small trickle of spirit fire to seep into my body. It felt strange, like an alien presence had invaded my body and was squirming around my chest cavity. I quickly closed my soul, and the invading energy stopped increasing, but what was already inside me did not dissipate.

My chest began heating up, and I started feeling sharp bursts of pain in several locations around my torso. It was similar to what I experienced during my death when I first absorbed the seed. However, with my soul closed off and the energy inside me limited, the sensation remained bearable, for the moment.

I was supposed to use the qi in my body to control the spirit fire energy, so that is what I tried to do. I wrapped the foreign energy in my qi and tried to force it to move. When I did so, I faced complications I did not expect.

The Cold Mountain Fire was mainly made up of a type of earth energy, but it also had a trace of water energy inside it. My qi was fire qi. When I tried to control the spirit fire's energy, its water energy eroded my control over my fire qi. At the same time, my fire qi fed the earth energy, making it stronger.

This was part of the basics of the five-element system. Water extinguishes fire. Fire produces earth.

These interactions didn't just make controlling the energy from the spirit fire more difficult, they made it life-threatening. As my fire qi fed the earth energy, the pain in my chest steadily increased. To combat this, I sent all the qi I could out of my chest and into other parts of my body.

Somehow, regular sect alchemists could control the Cold Mountain Fire, but I didn't know the details. Since I had the fire seed, neither Elder Mu nor Deacon Ma had seen fit to explain how to use a normal spirit fire, and at that moment I was in no condition to go ask. I needed to do something quickly to save myself.

Controlling the fire's energy through qi didn't work, but I had another option. I had affinities in both earth and water. They were only low eight-star, but I didn't need deft manipulation. I just needed to expel the energy.

I mentally connected with the fire and pushed. It was not as easy to manipulate as the medicinal energy in herbs, but it still gave way. Slowly, ever so slowly, it emerged from my chest.

While inside my body, the spirit fire had been able to use my qi to sustain itself. Once expelled, it no longer had a power source and dissipated, vanishing into thin air.

With the immediate danger dealt with, I collapsed to the floor in exhaustion and a smile appeared on my face. This incident had been dangerous, but it had been a success. I had tapped into the seed and controlled a spirit fire. From here, all I needed was practice.