The Undying Immortal System

While I didn't know how to deal with issues of karma and fate, what I did know was that I needed to improve my alchemy skills. Wen Hao's results in our competition were beyond anything I believed possible. I needed to know how to match them.

"Deacon, I will try to manage the situation better next time, but can you tell me how to make pills with more than 100% efficacy?"

He sighed and softened his demeanor. "Very well, let's move on. Pill efficacy. What is pill efficacy? Let's start from the basics. When you make a pill, there are two basic ways to judge the result, efficacy and purity."

I nodded. This information was familiar.

"You have made 'Perfect' pills before. What does that mean? What is a 'Perfect' pill? It is a pill where all of the toxins have been eradicated. There can be a Perfect pill because there is an absolute limit to a pill's purity. Once there are no more toxins, purity can no longer be increased."

I furrowed my brow. "And efficacy is different? If I don't harm the medicinal efficacy of the herbs, they retain 100% of their power. Isn't that perfect efficacy?"

The deacon shook his head. "No. There is no such thing as 'perfect' efficacy."

He ducked behind the counter and searched around a moment before standing back up and setting down two blue peonies. One was in pristine condition while the other was filled with toxins and barely retained any medicinal energy.

"What would happen if you made Perfect pills with both of these flowers without harming any of the medicinal energy they contain? You would end up with two pills with wildly varying amounts of medicinal energy. Their effectiveness would be completely different. That is why we cannot grade pills based on the amount of energy retained from the original herbs. Instead, they are graded based on a 'standard efficacy.' A pill with 100% efficacy simply means it has 100% of the energy that should be expected from such a pill."

I cocked my head to the side. "So, 100% efficacy just means it contains a specific, arbitrary amount of energy?"

Deacon Liu winced slightly. "It's… It's a little more complicated. As I understand it, the efficacy ratings originated from blessings. They aren't arbitrary. They are the values assigned by the Dao."

I raised an eyebrow. Just because they were assigned by the Dao didn't mean they weren't arbitrary. However, I didn't comment and moved the conversation along.

"So, how can I improve my pill's efficacy?"

"There are three ways that I know of, though there may be more. The first is the easiest. Use better herbs. A pill will have 100% efficacy if it is equal to a pill made by extracting 100% of the energy from top-quality common herbs. Herbs have a natural maximum amount of energy they can hold. If you use herbs that are all at that maximum, and then extract and use all that energy, you have made a pill with 100% efficacy. However, herbalists are capable of pushing the energy in herbs above their natural maximum. If all your ingredients have 150% of their natural maximum energy, you can make pills with 150% efficacy."

"Is that what Wen Hao did? He used abnormally powerful herbs?"

The deacon scoffed. "No, that was an open competition. The hall wouldn't have provided herbs of that quality, and using them in such a way would have been extremely wasteful. No, there is no question that Wen Hao went with the second method. He used his blessing."

I dropped my jaw a bit in surprise. Of course this was possible, blessings could be anything, so there would certainly be people who had blessings to improve the quality of their pills.

"He can directly make his pills stronger? How does that work?"

"I don't know how his particular blessing works, but based on the results, I would say he can somehow mimic the effects an herbalist would have when increasing the potency of herbs, but this is just a guess. This is why I said it was your fate to lose the moment he was your competition. If he can transform regular herbs into pills with 140% efficacy, there is no way to compete against him."

"That seems incredibly powerful…"

"Yes and no. It's a nice ability to have, but it wouldn't be too attractive to more powerful forces. His blessing can easily be replaced with a good herbalist. Even if he can add his blessing's power on top of herbalist-boosted herbs, the benefits are limited. Perfect pills will always be more valuable than High-Purity pills of any efficacy. If his blessing doesn't help purify the herbs, its benefits are limited."

I nodded in agreement, but in my head, I still wished for such an ability. I wanted to eventually learn herbalism so that I could make better ingredients for myself, but doing so was a problem. Without cultivating wood qi, learning herbalism wouldn't be possible, but if I did that, I would no longer have access to fire qi for alchemy. This kind of blessing would be a nice shortcut.

"It would still be nice to have."

The deacon smiled at me. "Yes, it is one of the reasons Wen Hao is considered a genius alchemist and so many people try to curry favor with him. In this sect, he can be considered a top-tier talent."

"Better herbs or a better blessing. Neither is a solution for me. Is there something else I can do to improve pill efficacy?"

"Yes, but it's more limited. I have held off on this because you needed a good foundation first, but you should be ready. There is a skill in the elder's technique hall that you can use to improve efficacy. The general idea is to use your qi to enhance the medicinal energy of herbs. Your qi is fire-based, and you have an earth-attributed spirit fire. Have you tried using them to boost the power of pills before? Using your earth-based spirit fire to make metal energy more powerful, perhaps?"

"Yes, deacon, but it doesn't work. If I inject metal energy with the spirit fire, or earth energy with my fire qi, it seems to make the energy stronger, but the pills always collapse in the end."

"That's because there are limitations. You can only extract enough power to raise a pill to around 110% efficacy, 120% would be the absolute maximum. That's why I say Wen Hao must have used a blessing to get his pills so high. Aside from that, you should only try to enhance the first portion of medicinal energy in the pill's energy cycle. So, if you are making a Meridian Builder, you can start by enhancing the earth energy with your fire qi before combining it with anything else."

"If the pills don't start with earth or metal energy, there is nothing I can do?"

"It's worse than that. You need to learn a skill from the technique hall to be able to do this at all. You won't have enough control of your spirit fire, so you can only use it with your fire qi, So, you will only be able to enhance pills that start with earth energy."

I had hoped for a skill to easily push myself further, but pies wouldn't fall from the sky.

"Is there anything I can do to improve the efficacy of other pills?"

"Nothing I know of. Honestly, if you could make Perfect Rank 2 pills, it would be far better than worrying about an extra 10 or 15% efficacy. The ability to consume countless pills without worrying about pill toxins is of far, far more value."

Unfortunately, that wasn't going to happen. I would need a peak eight-star affinity in all five basic elements to completely cleanse the toxins from Rank 2 herbs, and I couldn't get that in this lifetime.

"I understand, deacon. I'll go to the technique hall to see what I can learn."

I turned to leave, but the deacon stopped me.

"One moment." He looked at me carefully. "You need to start working on cultivation again. Reaching Grandmaster before thirty is out of reach, I believe. You would need to advance at least twice every year, and that would lead to an unstable foundation and mental state. Instead, try to advance once every year. You should be able to break through before 35 at that rate."

The deacon put a small box on the counter. "Here is a set of ingredients for a Meridian Builder Pill. Your pills are of sufficient quality now that they are worth taking. Only use a single pill per meridian, though. The pill will add toxins to the meridian you use it on, so you will want to use them as sparingly as possible, but a single High-Purity pill per meridian is not enough to worry about."

"Thank you, deacon."

After leaving the pill hall, I went straight to Elder Mu's technique hall.

While I had been looking forward to visiting this place, I hadn't been allowed to go inside without permission. Today, Deacon Liu had finally given me permission.

Like everywhere else in the enclave, the technique hall was also inside of a room carved into the mountain, so it was still basically a cave, but unlike the pill hall, some amount of effort had been put in to make the place feel more welcoming. Instead of the ground being bare rocks, wood flooring had been installed. There was even a red-painted wooden wainscoting around the room to add some color to the environment.

Near the entrance, an elderly woman with iron-gray hair sat behind a desk. She wore plain deacon's robes and was reading a thick tome. In the middle of the room, there were several desks where disciples could sit and study techniques. Large bookcases packed with various scrolls stood along the left and right walls. The shelves on the left held the Rank 1 techniques, while those on the right held Rank 2 techniques.

When I entered, I approached the deacon.

"Name?" She spoke in a clipped tone, and her eyes only briefly left her book.

"Su Fang."

The deacon glanced at a scroll on the side of the desk. "You're permitted to read one Rank 2 manual each month. Unlimited access to Rank 1 manuals. You are not allowed to take anything out of this room."

I waited for her to say more, but nothing else was forthcoming. That being the case, I walked away to begin looking through the technique manuals.

My pretense for coming here was to study a Rank 2 technique for improving pill efficacy, so that was where I started. Since I could only look at a single Rank 2 manual each month, I would have to be satisfied with that one.

The number of techniques in the library was ultimately limited, but there were still a few dozen different manuals neatly sorted into fighting, alchemy, and cultivation techniques, so it wasn't hard to find the one I was looking for.

Reading the manual was the simplest part of learning a technique. After that, I would need to practice it countless times until it became second nature. For me, though, just reading a technique had the far more important effect of adding it to my mental library.

I had already learned that the mental library ability I had purchased was not nearly as powerful as I had hoped. The main problem was that it did not record techniques I knew, it only recorded what I read. If I read a manual but skipped over a few words, the words I skipped over would not appear in my copy. If I was reading too quickly and read a word wrong, then the wrong word would appear in my copy. Thus, I had to spend an inordinate amount of time carefully reading each word to ensure I obtained a flawless copy.

The manual I was interested in was the Rank 2 Pill Empowering Technique. It would allow me to infuse earth medicinal energy with fire qi. This had to be done carefully, in a controlled way, to ensure that every part of the earth energy was raised evenly. Essentially, my fire qi would function as a sixth herb at the start of the chain. If everything were done perfectly, it would add up to an extra 20% to the pill's final efficacy, but that assumed no losses at any stage of pill production.

I carefully read the manual three times to ensure everything was copied over correctly. After that, I returned the manual and looked through the Rank 1 techniques.

I wanted to copy everything, but that would take time. I first needed to focus on what would give me the most immediate benefits. I skipped the fighting manuals for the moment. Learning to fight would eventually be necessary, but I didn't need them while in the sect, and I had no real desire to pursue that path. Every time I thought about fighting, the memories of my previous deaths in the Su Clan flashed through my mind.

I also skipped over the pill techniques. They might be helpful, but I could easily make any Rank 1 pills I wanted with what I already knew. I would still copy them when I had time in the future, but they weren't a pressing concern.

Instead, my first focus was on the cultivation techniques. To be fair, these also wouldn't provide me with any immediate benefits, but they held the most importance for my next life. The library had a complete set of Peak-Yellow Rank 1 techniques. There was one for every basic element. The mental effects on some of them might be suspect, but simply having the option to use them would be extremely nice.

I did not jump to copy those techniques, though. Instead, I focused on three others. There were two Low-Profound techniques and a single Mid-Profound one.

The two Low-Profound techniques were both for cultivating fire qi, and they had rather simple effects. They maintained the perfect qi purity of a Peak-Yellow technique while adding a single extra benefit. The first made qi denser, increasing its overall power. The second made qi easier to control. As Low-Profound techniques, these additional benefits were minor but definite improvements.

The Mid-Profound technique was something completely different. When cultivated, the qi purity would be roughly the same as a Mid-Yellow technique, and it provided no benefits to the qi itself. Instead, this technique allowed one to cultivate both fire and wood qi simultaneously. However, the total qi in the body wouldn't change, so a cultivator of this technique would only have half the fire qi of someone who cultivated a pure fire technique.

This technique had very clear drawbacks in both quality and quantity of qi, but the benefits were equally clear. It would allow me to use wood qi. This would help with my alchemy, allowing me to enhance more pills and cleanse a wider variety of toxins more easily. One of my biggest problems was isolating my spirit fire so that it didn't harm the medicinal efficacy of pills. Wood depletes earth, so wood qi would help me form a perfect isolation layer against the Cold Mountain Fire.

It also gave me a starting point to begin learning herbalism. I wasn't willing to commit lifetimes to that pursuit yet, but setting up a small garden on the side wasn't out of the question.

The most valuable benefit, though, was that through the elemental cycle, I should be able to use the wood qi to significantly boost the effectiveness of my fire qi. That would need time and effort to accomplish, but it should be doable.

Importantly, after checking, I found that the technique hall had the Rank 2 versions of each of the Profound-Rank techniques. They were still only Low- and Mid-Profound techniques, but after this life, I might have enough credits to upgrade one of them to Peak-Profound.

With a new goal in mind, I sat down and got to work copying the valuable Rank 1 techniques.