The Undying Immortal System

I spent a few contribution points to rent a room in the village. While I could have returned to the elder's enclave to concoct the pills, I was enjoying the change of scenery. It was a little wasteful, but these few contribution points didn't matter much to me.

In total, it took me three days to make the five pills needed for the mission. Why three days? Because that was the maximum time allowed. I could have finished them all in only a few hours, but that would have been too revealing. I had been told a regular Martial Master 3 could only make two or three pills a day, so erred on the low end and only made two pills a day.

However, since I had the extra time, I spent far more time than usual on each of these pills. I wanted to make them as perfect as I possibly could. I wasn't sure how good my competition would be, so I had to do my best. I was exceedingly careful with my spirit fire, and I always made sure to only use fire qi when cleaning near medicinal power.

Concocting these pills consumed far too much time and energy, but the five pills I made were undoubtedly my best work to date. In the end, I couldn't find even a trace of pill toxin. They were as close to Perfect as I could possibly make them without peak eight-star affinities for every element.

Still, while I did spend significantly longer on these pills than usual, it was only a fraction of the time I was allocated. I wanted to use the remaining time to continue improving my alchemy, but the entire point of taking so long was to avoid showing off my concoction speed. Using the time to make pills would be defeating the purpose of waiting so long in the first place. Instead, I spent my free time cultivating.

As I did, I realized that it had been a long time since I sat down to work on my cultivation. I had been so focused on improving my alchemy skills. Taking a break to cultivate reminded me of its importance. An improved cultivation base would improve my alchemy. I needed to work on both of them, not just one.

The three days quickly passed me by, and all too soon I had to leave my rented apartment and return to the pill hall. It was time to see the results of this competition.

The hall was bustling with activity when I entered. There had to be more than twice as many people as there were last time.

When I stepped through the door, I heard a loud, familiar voice.

"There he is! That's the idiot who thinks he's better than Senior Brother Wen Hao."

The same young woman from last time was standing in the middle of the room with a manic look on her face.

Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked over at the commotion.

I saw the same deacon from last time in the corner of the room. She was observing the situation, but she didn't step forward.

The female disciple continued her rant against me. "We all thought you gave up and ran away like a coward. I don't know what's more shameful. Running away or proving to everyone how worthless you are."

Again, like last time, I decided to just ignore her. The sect rules were clear. Neither she nor anyone else here could do anything physical to me. All she could do was talk. I could talk back to her, but what was the point? How could that possibly benefit me? There was zero chance anything I said would change anyone's mind, and even if it did, that would all get reset in the future anyway, so why bother?

This was not a battle of words or a battle of martial skills. It was a battle of alchemy. Anything else was meaningless.

Walking past the yapping girl, I stepped up to the counter and placed my pill bottles on it.

"Disciple Su Fang, turning in his mission."

The receptionist's face was a mask of professionalism.

"Hand over your jade." Even as others in the hall jeered and mocked, he calmly noted everything down. "As you are the last to turn in this mission, the results will be announced shortly. If you wish to leave, you may do so. The credits you are awarded will automatically be added to your account in a few days."

I decided to wait since the goal of this mission was to compete with others. Alchemy was an individual pursuit, so only by knowing the results would the competition be meaningful.

I stepped away from the counter and walked to a less busy part of the room.

The young woman sneered at me. "Running away? Hmpf, we all knew you were a coward, but now you're running away before completing your part of the bet. Are you even a man?"

I raised an eyebrow. "What bet? When did you hear me agree to any bet?"

"Denying it? Everyone here heard you bet that you would beat Senior Brother Wen Hao. Don't think you can lie about it."

"I don't know what you heard, but I know I never said any such thing."

"How dare you! Do you think…" She continued talking, but I tuned her out.

It took a quarter-hour before the results were ready. I didn't have a System-granted skill to assess Rank 2 pills, but I had learned a bit about how to do it on my own.

I had made many Meridian Builder Pills over the past year, and that had given me a good feel for the pill's 'standard efficacy.' Based on previous results, I estimated that the ones I had made for this mission all had an efficacy above 90%, and a couple were above 95%. I may not win all five spots, but I expected at least one to pass.

The receptionist quieted the room as he began to read the results. "The five pills selected were all concocted by Master Alchemist Wen Hao. The efficacies were 135%, 136%, 139%, 140% and 143%. He will be awarded the full 5,000 points. All others will be compensated at 60% of the normal value of the pill."

The room burst into applause. The young man who had been with the screaming girl earlier stepped forward and handed the receptionist his jade token to collect his points.

After the room quieted down, I stepped forward to do the same.

The receptionist gave me a polite nod. "Disciple Su Fang, you are awarded a total of 642 contribution points."

After paying the initial cost of the mission, my five pills had only netted me 142 contribution points. The points weren't the biggest issue, though. I needed to go back to Deacon Liu and learn how Wen Hao had made pills with greater than 100% efficacy.

I stepped away from the desk and began walking toward the exit.

"Where do you think you're going?" The screaming girl and several other disciples moved to block my way. "You aren't leaving here until you get down on your knees and bark like a dog."

I replied calmly, knowing they weren't allowed to hurt me. "I'm leaving. I didn't bet with you. Anyone who was actually there can confirm it. Please move out of the way."

The people around me began to laugh. "Do you think this is a joke? Kneel!"

The people around me took a step forward, closing the circle tighter.

I looked the girl in the eye as she gave me a malicious smirk.

I turned my head to look at the deacon who was standing in the corner.

"Deacon, are you just going to stand there while these disciples violate the sect rules?"

The deacon gave me a furious glare. "What did you say?"

"Are you going to stand there as these people threaten me with violence?"

She waited for several moments with a scowl across her face. "Make a path. Let him through."

"Deacon! We can't—"

The deacon cut her off with an angry expression. "Let him through. Don't touch him."

I gave the deacon a short bow and walked through a small gap that opened in the circle.

I hadn't made any friends in the pill hall, but I had done my best. I didn't know what else I could have done.

After exiting the pill hall, I went back to the elder's enclave to talk with Deacon Liu about everything that had happened.

He smiled as I entered. "Little Fang, welcome back. How was your mission?"

"Deacon… I wanted to ask you about something that happened. There's something I don't understand."

"Hold on, let's start from the beginning. Just tell me everything."

So, I did. When I told him about my first encounter in the pill hall with the woman and the deacon, his smile began to fade. When I told him about the five pills Wen Hao made, his face showed no reaction. After I talked about the final confrontation and how I had to force the deacon to intervene, he began to frown.

His voice turned cold. "Su Fang, how would you grade yourself during this trip?"

"I'm not sure. Regarding the mission, I didn't succeed, but I made the best pills I possibly could have. I don't know how he made pills with that kind of efficacy. I never had a chance."

"And regarding your interactions with the other sect members?"

"Everyone seemed completely unreasonable. I believe I handled it the best way I could, but it all left a bad taste in my mouth."

The deacon's face twisted in a way I hadn't seen before. A lot of the warmth he had been showing me for several years now had seemingly vanished in an instant.

When he spoke, his voice was cool and detached. "I see. For the first encounter, I would give you a poor grade. It was bad, but not disastrous. For the second, I would rate it a complete failure."

"What? Why? What else could I have done?"

He gave me a somewhat cold, analytical look, as if he were trying to decide the value of explaining things.

"Before anything else, you need to better understand the sect and the disciples around you. One of your failings was rushing to accept a mission before adequately understanding the situation around you."

I nodded in acceptance.

"The young woman in your story. What is your evaluation of her?"

"She seemed crazy. I didn't do anything, but she wouldn't stop yelling at me."

"And why do you think that was? She has the same cultivation techniques you do. Rank 1 reduced aggression. Rank 2 increased aggression. These don't cancel each other out. They both form distinct pathways for your thoughts. With a balanced individual, they'll even each other out, allowing the cultivator to consider different ways to handle each situation."

I tried to feel what he was talking about within my own thoughts, but it was difficult to sense.

"I don't know this woman, but I can make a few solid guesses about her. The situation isn't uncommon here. She is probably a Martial Master 9 or 10, but she could well be a Peak Master. She rushed her cultivation. Likely, she sped through the entire Master realm in only two or three years. This has completely unbalanced her mental state, and it may take a decade or more for her to completely recover."

"Is that possible? Rushing cultivation has that much of an impact?"

I thought about my own experiences. I had assumed the strong changes in my mental states had simply been a result of a poor cultivation technique and having cultivated incorrectly, but if simply cultivating faster made the effects stronger, it would explain some of the more powerful influences I had been under.

"Yes. This is a frequent problem in the sect. Everyone wants to advance to Grandmaster before 30, but trying to do so can cause serious problems."

I nodded in acceptance. "I understand, deacon, but I don't know what I could have done to change anything."

He waved that off. "For now, you just need to better understand how the sect operates. Let's talk about the deacon in your story. What is your assessment of her?"

"She… Her actions showed a strong bias toward the other disciples. She wouldn't even hear me out and allowed them to threaten me. What was I supposed to do?"

Deacon Liu grunted. "You were supposed to handle it by yourself. I can't tell you what you should have done. I wasn't there. I don't know. But you were supposed to deal with everything yourself while following the rules of the sect and not bringing shame to the elder's name."

My jaw dropped in disbelief. That… That was impossible, wasn't it? Was there any scenario where I could have pulled that off?

Deacon Liu continued. "The deacon didn't violate any rules or cause any problems for you. You accepted the mission, turned it in, and were graded fairly. According to what you said, none of the other disciples even laid a hand on you. You could have stood there and stared them down until they gave up and left. Instead, you called out a deacon and accused her of not doing her job."

I closed my eyes silently in thought. It had been a possibility. If I had thought it through, if I had a better understanding of the culture here, I might have even been able to find a different solution.

"Disciple Wen Hao is a genius alchemist with a bright future. The deacon is doing everything she can to climb up his tall tree. It is a little unsightly, but as long as she does her job fairly, no one is going to overly criticize her for her words. She would have prevented any actual violence from breaking out, but in a battle of mere words, she was always going to side with the known genius."

"That seems… wrong…"

"If what you described is accurate, I doubt her actions would even tempt Wen Hao. She went too far, but she did not violate any rules."

The situation was unfair, but I had to accept that was just how things were here. "Yes, deacon, I just don't know what I could have done better. Please, help me."

Deacon Liu breathed out heavily and his chilly expression thawed slightly.

"Your mistake was picking a mission that a far superior disciple had already chosen. From the moment you tore off that slip of paper to accept the mission, you were fated to lose face for the elder. In truth, the only thing you could have done to prevent this situation was to have chosen a different mission."

"But… How was I supposed to know he chose it? When I selected it, it looked like no one else had picked it yet. Was I supposed to stand around and listen in to everyone else's conversations?"

Deacon Liu shook his head slowly and considered his words very carefully.

"Elder Mu wishes to ascend to Martial Lord. I believe you know this."

I nodded.

"What Martial Lords care about more than anything else is karma. You could not have known he would choose that mission. You unknowingly selected a mission that put you up against the most talented young alchemist in the sect. That is your karma. That is your fate."

The deacon paused to gather his words. "You have a talent for producing a large number of pills, but to the elder, that isn't as important as your fate. He needs subordinates with powerful karma that can help him rise. I told you that this was a test of your judgment and discernment. It was more than that. It was also a test of your fate. You…"

The deacon trailed off, not willing to finish that thought.

After closing his eyes for several moments, he changed the topic.

"For now, just remember this. Never call out a deacon for their behavior. If you think they did something wrong, report it to one of us and let us handle it. Always show deference to their authority. You may continue accepting missions if you wish, but it might be best if you simply return to focusing on producing as many pills as possible."

"I understand, deacon."

I wasn't sure about fate and karma. Did they still apply to me? Even if I ran into an unpleasant situation in one life, I would just need to learn from it and fix it in the next.

That produced a new thought.

Was I born with terrible karma and simply fixing it step-by-step with each life? Had my 'fate' in this life not yet reached the point where I could benefit Elder Mu? I wasn't sure. I was providing him with a large number of pills. That should be helping him, but that didn't necessarily mean it was the help he needed.

I sighed and shook my head. There were no answers to these questions. I could only do my best and leave the rest to fate.