The Undying Immortal System

After we returned to the alchemy hall, Deacon Liu placed five herbs on the counter.

"These are the herbs needed to concoct the most important Rank 2 pill, the Meridian Builder Pill. This pill increases the flow of qi, like a Qi Gathering Pill, while also improving the ability to focus. While this combination of effects might be useful in a combat setting, the inevitable buildup of toxins when consuming pills means that it is only used when necessary, such as when constructing meridians, thus the name."

I nodded at his explanation and studied the herbs.

"These herbs are harder to process and use than Rank 1 herbs, and I'll need to be able to maintain control over all five herbs at once? Isn't there an easier place to start? Like, a pill that uses fewer herbs?"

"Yes. The Meridian Builder is far from the easiest Rank 2 pill, it is actually one of the more complicated ones. However, it is also by far the most common. You could learn to make Rank 2 Earth Skin Pills, but how many would you be able to sell? How many cultivators would be willing to put pill toxins in their bodies to harden their skin for a brief time? At most, a martial cultivator would carry a single pill and only use it in the direst of circumstances. It is better to simply start by learning Meridian Builder Pills since the demand for them is far higher than anything else."

I nodded, eager to get started. "I understand. What do I need to do to receive ingredients to practice with?"

The deacon raised a hand to stop me. "Hold on. Take a close look at these herbs in qi vision first."

Doing so, I noticed that they were almost entirely composed of chaotic, toxic energy. Very little medicinal energy existed in them.

"Rank 2 herbs are significantly harder to grow. While a normal farmer can grow Rank 1 herbs with consistently high and standardized amounts of medicinal energy, the same cannot be said for Rank 2 pills. To concoct a pill with 100% standard efficacy, not only do you need to be a good alchemist, but you also need to start with high-quality ingredients. These herbs were grown by a mortal farmer with no understanding of how to care for them properly. They are complete trash and useless for pills."

"They are worthless for pills, but you kept them…" I thought through the situation. "So, they are useful for something else. Training?"

He grinned at me, "Right you are. We didn't just keep them. We commissioned them as a resource to train new Master Alchemists. Herbs like these are far cheaper to mass produce than proper ones. Based on your performance earlier, you can be allocated five sets of training herbs for Rank 2 Meridian Builder Pills. If you are able to use them to create just a single pill of any quality, you will be given access to more. If not, you will be assigned to assist with other tasks."

I nodded and reached forward to grab the herbs. My first impulse was to seclude myself in an alchemy workshop immediately to figure out how to use them, just like I had always done in the past. With enough time, I was confident that I would be able to learn how to use Rank 2 herbs just as well as I could use Rank 1 herbs.

As my hands neared the herb, I stopped them and pulled them back. I had a support system around me now. I needed to use it.

No one had known how to use a fire seed, so no one could help me learn how to use it, but this was different. Everyone in the elder's enclave would know how to make this Rank 2 pill. I didn't have to struggle alone in the dark this time.

It was time to ask for help.

"Deacon Liu, can you teach me to make this pill? I know that the sooner I learn this, the better, and I don't know how long it will take me to learn on my own."

The deacon looked at me with a kind smile. "Of course."

I bowed to him. "Thank you."

He caught my shoulder, stopping me. "No need for that. Let's just go to a workshop."

The deacon began explaining as he laid everything out on a workbench.

"You can already make excellent Rank 1 pills. Rank 2 pills aren't too different. There are just a few extra complications you need to worry about."

He picked up one of the herbs and handed it to me. "Try to use your fire qi to work on this like you would with a Rank 1 pill."

I looked at the herb in my hand. It looked like nothing more than a spout of sage but looking at it in qi sight showed thick toxic energy with just a hint of green at the core.

The deacon motioned once more. "Try using your fire qi to burn away the toxins."

I took a strand of fire qi and attacked the chaotic energy with it. It worked. Where my qi landed, the toxins vaporized and drifted away, but the process was very, very slow. Cleansing this herb would take far more energy than it had with the lower-level ones. Even if I completely drained myself, I doubted I would be able to remove all the toxins.

"Now you see why we need spirit fires." Deacon Liu picked up another herb. "What do you know about pill toxins? What can you tell me about them?"

I thought about it. I realized I had never thought to ask that question. I was just told they were toxins, and toxins were bad. I knew from experience that if the herbs retained too many toxins, it would be impossible to form a final pill, but that was about it.

"Not much… I just know that I need to remove them."

Deacon Liu nodded, expecting my response. "I'm no master herbalist, so I only know the basics myself. As herbs grow, they pull in energy from the environment. If grown in the perfect environment, with the right energy balance, the herb's medicinal energy will be extremely pure. These herbs are in such a bad state because they were contaminated by other energies as they grew."

The deacon placed the five new herbs in front of me. "For a Meridian Builder Pill, you need an herb of each basic element. This water-affinity herb has mainly been contaminated with an abundance of wood energy. The other four have been contaminated with an abundance of water energy. The reason your fire qi did so poorly at purifying that first herb was because fire qi is terrible at cleansing water-based toxins."

"So, using an earth-based spirit fire is far more effective."

"Exactly. Your spirit fire is great for dealing with water toxins and okay with fire toxins. Your fire qi will work well on metal toxins and should suffice for wood. You should only have any real problems when dealing with strong earth toxins. You'll have to use your spirit fire against them, but earth against earth will make things difficult. You may also occasionally find herbs contaminated with more exotic energies, but those are usually impossible to properly cleanse and simply need to be discarded."

The deacon again handed me the herb with wood energy that had been contaminated by water toxins. "Try to cleanse this one again, but this time use your spirit fire."

I placed the herb in the workbench's pill furnace and started the fire. Using my fire qi and heat from the natural fire, I slowly melted the physical structure of the herb and exposed its energy.

Then, I held my right hand close to the herb and expelled a tendril of spirit fire from my soul. The moment the energy touched the toxins, both energy and toxin almost seemed to instantly vanish without any effort on my part.

Using my wood affinity to rotate the herb and my earth affinity to control my spirit fire, I worked to carefully expose the core of medicinal energy trapped under layers of toxins. My control and isolation of the spirit fire wasn't great, so I nicked the green energy a few times, but it wasn't catastrophic. When I finished, there wasn't much medicinal energy remaining, but what was there was extremely pure.

Once my task was complete, my concentration lapsed, and the small ball of energy quickly dissipated. With the herb's physical shell destroyed and its toxins having been burned away, there was no structure to keep the remaining medicinal energy together.

Deacon Liu smiled and nodded at my results. "Not bad. Even if you did hurt the medicinal energy slightly, it was still a respectable job. However, I recommend not using your spirit fire so much. Without a high earth affinity, your control of the spirit fire will never be as strong as your control of qi. Nicking the medicinal energy with a wood herb wasn't that much of a problem, but even getting close to water-based medicinal energy with it is a problem."

He picked up another herb and began working on it as he explained. "Use the spirit fire to remove the bulk of the toxins but leave a thin membrane around the core. Then, use your fire qi to remove whatever remains. This is a way to balance out efficiency and efficacy. Doing everything with your qi would take too much energy, but doing the detail work with your spirit fire is too difficult, so just switch between the two as needed."

"I understand." I was happy to be making progress in alchemy once more. "What's next?"

"Next? Here are the other four herbs from that set. You need to be able to cleanse five simultaneously. You've done three before when working on Rank 1 pills, so begin by moving up to four."

I accepted the bundle and got to work.

The water herb, being contaminated with wood energy, was easy to deal with since I could use my fire qi. However, the other three all had to be dealt with using my spirit fire. These were more challenging, but they were still within my capabilities. I followed the deacon's advice and only focused on removing the bulk with my spirit fire while using my fire qi for the finishing touches.

"Good job. You got the hang of it a lot faster than I expected. Now, let's try all five at once."

Again, I set to work. Another herb meant additional complications, but since it was the wood herb, which was the easiest for my spirit fire to deal with, it wasn't too bad, and having more practice, I was able to clean these five slightly faster than I had the previous four. I was not focusing on making a pill though, so once I relaxed the energy lost cohesion and quickly dissipated.

Deacon Liu looked excited. "Good, good. We still have three sets of ingredients to work with, and you're already at this point. That's excellent work."

"I just need to combine the energy now, right?"

"Yes, but have you ever worked with a pill using ingredients of different elements before?"

"No, deacon."

"Alright then. When working with multi-element pills, you need to consider the cycle of elements when combining the energies. If you simply push water and fire energy together, the result will never be good. Also, with a five-element pill, you need to think about what the final goal should be. We want to make a Meridian Builder Pill, but what kind of meridian do we want to use it to make? You have fire qi, so you will have fire meridians."

Deacon Liu placed the fire herb in front of me.

"A fire meridian is our end goal." He placed the wood herb to the left of the fire one. "Wood feeds fire, so the wood energy needs to be fed into the fire energy."

He then placed all five herbs in order. "Earth produces metal. Metal generates water. Water nourishes wood. Wood feeds fire. By starting the cycle from earth, the energy will be enhanced each time, and you will end up with a Meridian Builder Pill tailored for fire meridians."

I took the herbs to the pill furnace and began to work. Cleansing the herbs went more smoothly than before, and I finished it having expended less energy than the previous two times. After that, I quickly moved to combine the energies together.

I fed the earth energy into the metal energy. When I did so, it wasn't a simple matter of 1+1=2. It was more like 1+1=3. The combined energy felt at least 50% more potent than when they were separate. This didn't create new… 'particles' of medicinal energy. It simply enhanced the medicinal energy that already existed.

This gave me new questions about the nature of energy in this world, but I didn't have time to dwell on them, I had work to do.

I fed that combined energy into the water energy, then that into the wood energy. Each time, the energy transformed into a more excited state. After finally feeding it into the fire energy, the cycle was complete, and energy blossomed again.

The growth of the medicinal energy's potency was surprising, but the final bundle of energy I was left with was still somewhat underwhelming for a Rank 2 pill. The final product felt like it was only about twice as powerful as one of my normal Rank 1 pills. This was due to the extreme lack of energy in the herbs I was using.

This wasn't necessarily terrible for my first real attempt at making a Rank 2 pill. Because the total energy was close to what I was used to working with, I was able to condense it and form a pill without any added difficulties.

When the final pill dropped to the bottom of the pill furnace, Deacon Liu picked it up and examined it. "Looks to be barely Mid-Purity with about 3% standard efficacy. It's barely acceptable, but it's good for your first attempt."

He looked at me with a slight smile. "You have two more sets of ingredients here. Get to work and bring me the results when you can."

With that, the deacon left me alone in the workshop.

Practicing with the herbs and making the pill had used up quite a bit of my energy, but I had sufficient reserves to finish the other two sets. To try and improve my final products, I was more careful when cleansing and mixing the energies, and it seemed to help.

In less than an hour, I was able to produce two more pills. I took them and returned to the pill hall to see how my results stacked up.

"Deacon Liu, please check these for me."

He blinked at me. "Already finished? I didn't think you'd have the energy to make any more today. Let me see them."

The deacon took the pills and spent several moments examining them.

"4% and 6% of standard efficacy, and both are solidly Mid-Purity. I would say these are about the best pills you could make from those waste herbs." He gave me a somewhat wicked smile. "Good job. Now it's time to start earning your keep."