That night I briefly meditated to make sure all of my cultivation seeds were fully established, as well as reinforced the Balance seed from the goat meat, though I could tell that the seed wasn’t complete. This might be because it was poorly prepared, because the meat was previously dried, or because the meat came from a weak blood. I would have to run some tests to figure that out. After that I finished and decided to work on talismans. I would have preferred to exchange qi with Xiao again, as it would help him advance to my cultivation level faster and would give me another sample of his speed seed. The last time he gave me some qi through the link, the cultivation seed was higher quality than when he gave me some in the hidden realm. I wasn’t sure if it improved with major levels or with any significant advancement through the level, but I wanted to test if it would improve any after the slight improvement he got from me transferring qi to him. If so, the link’s unique ability to allow you to send qi slowly to your partner might be its best feature.
Could such a link work between human masters and disciples, allowing a master to rapidly advance the cultivation of his followers? What if the disciple was a rootless mortal? Could the people of this world have yet another overlooked way to create rootless cultivators through a modified servant contract?
By the time I thought about it the moon was already at its peak, and I knew that the Qin family was likely asleep, outside of Jiang and Five. I checked on them and could tell that they were tired, both mentally and physically, but it seemed that they were holding up better than they were when we got back from the hunting trip. Either the meal break or detox pills had helped significantly, though I wasn’t sure which. If I was curious I could go and ask them, but it wasn’t that important, so I decided against it.
Still, I wanted to test if the connection could be used in such a manner, so I took a weak copy of the speed root I got from Xiao and tried to send it down the link to One. Because I had been willing to spend so much money just to keep him from losing a leg I had the strongest connection to him out of all the humans, so this connection would likely perform the best. While I did manage to send a trickle of qi down the connection, the seed which was included in it was completely destroyed long before it reached him. I tried again, this time with a full strength generic mind seed, the kind that tried to refine the easiest parts first. By the time I had sent in enough qi to start causing him pain from having too much, I could tell that a tiny fraction, less than 1%, of the seed had made it through. Once it arrived I knew that the excess qi would be absorbed by the seed to improve his mind, though I wasn’t sure how it would be improved or by how much.
The connection between Xiao and myself was stronger, which could account for the difference, but we were also physically closer during the exchange. Both times Xiao had given me a seed he had rubbed against my cheek. At the time I assumed it was a sign of affection, but if the strength and quality of the seed was linked to distance it might be an instinctive way to transfer the seed. Perhaps it was even the way parents aided their children in cultivation. It was known that the children of intelligent beasts developed faster than the children of unintelligent beasts of the same race, so it was possible that their intelligent, high level parents were transferring qi and cultivation seeds to them to speed up their development.
Realizing that I couldn’t do anything to test these ideas without a bonded creature, and that the caterpillars likely wouldn’t work for this purpose due to them being under a swarm contract instead of a normal one, I decided to delay this study for now. Now that I thought about the insects, however, I pulled them and all of the food I had offered them out of storage. I examined all of the plants. While most had at most been tasted, the spirit cabbage leaf, a common spirit vegetable Ding bought from a street vendor, had at least been nibbled on a bit. Their favorite, however, was the Crescent Leaf Mint, which was almost completely consumed and even currently had a worm on it. I would have to tell Ji Cha about this when I gave half of these to him tomorrow after the test.
After giving them a few drops of water, in case they were thirsty, I put everything back in the beast bag, then got out my talisman materials. I had decided to make myself a large number of talismans, so that I wouldn’t be short on them if they were needed, so I spent the rest of the night making level three Called Tribulation talismans.
The next morning as the sun rose I put away all of my talismans, now having over three hundred of them in my bag. If you purchased level three talisman paper in a store it would likely cost ten stones per paper, and would at least double if a good effect was on it. That made the street value of all of the talismans I just made total over six thousand stones. In reality, it had only cost me the complete lion and one coyote hide, plus their blood. All of the work had been done by me. This meant that, if a cultivators became proficient in talisman crafting, they could save thousands by going on a hunt.
If I thought about it, though, that was a bit of an exaggeration. Around the city there were only level one and two spirit beasts and demon beasts, and few people would use the demon hides to make talismans because their hides were tainted with their malice, which would effect the mind of those that used them if they were weak minded. For that reason I couldn’t risk selling any demon leather talismans I made, nor could the shops. This meant that the limited number of beast hides, mostly from domesticated spirit beasts, would need to be split between the clothing shops and talisman shops, plus any that the other industries might occasionally need them, driving up the price. When the rarity of the material was considered, as well as the fact that supply was far below demand, it wasn’t surprising that it had such a high profit margin.
I used the cleaning technique to clean myself off, then went to get breakfast. There all of the people were talking about the upcoming trials. Apparently, someone had decided to make a spectacle of it and invited several local apothecaries, as well as a member of the Chamber of Commerce to watch the proceedings. The Ji family had billed it as being a way to show off eight of their young prospective alchemists. Those that were attending would be told that the other two that were participating were former cultivator slaves who had already been signed up for the testing when the family received an offer to purchase them, so they were allowing the two to still participate, even though they aren’t still part of the family.
Personally I didn’t care that they were hiding the fact that this was my idea and wanted to publicly protect their image by showing that their candidates were better. I only cared about embarrassing Ji Terron and showing Jiang and Five what they can accomplish, helping out their self esteem. After all, self esteem was something that was taken from them when they were slaves, and which they should regain if they were going to be free people once I released them. I could remove the chains from their wrists, but it was much harder to remove the mental ones.
Once breakfast was over I went to the courtyard where the trials were being held. In the courtyard were ten stone tables with ten identical ceramic cauldrons on them and ten equal piles of level one spirit wood underneath. From the design of the burn box I could tell that these could be controlled by either fire control techniques or by opening and closing vents, so both Jiang and Five could use them properly. To keep things fair, the contestants would draw numbers in name order, which would assign them a cauldron. This prevented any contestant from getting special treatment. All of these things could be double checked by the alchemists in attendance or the man from the Chamber before starting, to insure that there were no attempts to cheat.
As two of my slaves were participating, I got to sit on the stage with the honored guests. Once there I greeted everyone, including Mo Lin, who was one of the alchemist guests. The Ambassador, despite being an honored guest of the family, wasn’t an honored guest for this contest, and so was seated out on one of the three wooden bleachers that had been assembled overnight, watching with the other people from town that wanted to view the contest. Many who wanted to become alchemists came to watch these trials, so that they could know what not to do when their time came. Still, the Ambassador was allowed to speak with the various honored guests before the proceedings began, so he was able to make an impression on the man from the Chamber of Commerce.
At eight o’clock a bone gong was rung, sounding higher pitched than a brass one, and the Ambassador excused himself, then went to the side to sit with the Qin family and a few members of the Ji family. Soon, the ten contestants walked into the testing area. Only the puppy and lion from my pets seemed to be with the Qin family, as Xiao was riding on Five’s shoulder. I didn’t see the snake.
After explaining the rules once more to the contestants, they started stepping forward to draw numbered wooden tiles from a box. When Jiang reached into the box I noticed that she had something wrapped around her wrist. Most people would assume it was a bracelet, but I knew it was the snake I hadn’t seen before.
When everyone had drawn they all went to the cauldron listed on their tag. Ten numbered wooden carts were rolled over to where they were standing and the tops of the carts were removed to reveal ten herbs within. They were all given three sheets of paper with the names of three pills on them, and would need to pull the ingredients from the box, then place them on the papers. Five looked a bit confused by her second one, pulling the other two first, but then thought of something and pulled them. Jiang just looked at them, smiled, then started pulling the ingredients. Once one minute had passed the assistants retrieved the carts and returned with them to the front of the VIP section, where the three judges sat behind three mahogony tables. These judges were all well known alchemists in the city, none from the Ji family, so there was little chance of any cheating.
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Jiang had three fairly easy ones to identify, anti-toxin, Bone pill, and Pain pill, two of which she had made multiple times yesterday, and so had no trouble with. Five’s were a bit harder. While her first was a mind tempering pill, and I was fairly certain I could tell which ingredient was the Crimson Jade Grass, the next was a qi gathering pill, and the last was a satiation pill. While the last wasn’t difficult to make, and was widely considered the easiest of the level one pills, the middle one was considered quite difficult to make, being one of the hardest level one pills to make. To the surprise of many gathered there, she had realized that if she used a heavy yang qi gathering herb like Sacred Fire Sage, she could balance it with an extreme yin herb, blue ice lilies. According to many commentators, she had most likely gotten confused by how to handle the extreme yang properties of an ingredient, but then remembered that you could balance it with an extreme yin ingredient.
The last two pills weren’t actually standard recipes for the simple fact that there were many known ways to make them, unlike the other pills which had a few common formulas, with one way being consistently superior. In the case of the last two, it was more about understanding the principles the pill was based on and creating a new formula from what you had available. With dozens of possible ways to make roughly equal pills in both cases, the true test was in creating the formula.
After all of the ten had been judged and passed, with only a few of the ji family people making mistakes like forgetting a single ingredient, the herbs were corrected and they were given mortars, blue meadow bee honey, and medicine boards so that they could make pill embryos. In truth any spirit bee honey could be used, or even some fake honeys which were made from gathered nectar of spirit fruit trees and other flowering plants, as long as the honey was the same level as the ingredients. Different ones just aided different properties of the pills, and this variety happened to be the kind this branch of the Ji family produced the most of.
The group was given thirty minutes this time, and they began immediately. The eight Ji family members either ground the ingredients separately, then combined them after measuring, or measured the ingredients then ground them together. It was immediately obvious that Jiang and Five were using unorthodox techniques, however, as they ground some of the ingredients, then poured the dust onto a sheet, before using the cleaning technique on their mortar and grinding the next batch. When they were done, they poured the second set of dust out onto a second sheet, then cleaned their mortar, and put some honey in it. After that the two of them made hand signs, Five being only slightly slower than her mother with the first batch, and a pale glow appeared above the mortars.
I could only tell that the glowing area was circular from my angle, but assumed it was a taiji symbol from the fact that this method matched the description Mo Lin gave me of the technique. Small amounts of both powders started flowing into the glowing area, where they would mix together before falling into the bowl. The two continued this until all of the powder was in the honey, then mixed it until it was the consistency of dough before transferring it to the medicine board and rolling it into pills.
An old Buddhist monk that sat beside me nodded and stroked his beard. ‘Excuse me, sir.’ I sent telepathically while bowing towards the man beside me, not wanting to disturb the others, ‘but you seem to know what is happening. Can I bother you for an explanation?’
He looked over at me and bowed as well. ‘That woman and the young one use the Taiji Refinement art. Furthermore, they seem to be quite competent with its use, using a formation to draw qi from the air to premix the ingredients rather than using their own qi, as they are only at initial and early level one. This allows them to save qi, but causes more mental strain.’
‘Then that was what that glow is. So you have used this technique before?’
The monk nodded. ‘Of course. Most of the alchemist monks in this area learn it as their first refinement art. I assume they got this technique from one of those.’
‘I purchased this technique for them from Mo Lin.’ I said. ‘It seemed far better than the standard version from the Alchemist’s Path.’
The monk nodded. ‘Then you are the new master I heard about?’ I nodded. ‘It is indeed a superior method, but far more difficult. Most would not buy such a technique for a slave’s first, and few buy it as their first refinement art due to this difficulty.’
‘I believed they had the potential to learn it, though I wasn’t sure how quickly. I only knew that their fire control skills were good enough to refine pills before they began their training.’
The monk nodded. ‘I wasn’t just talking about the difficulty of learning it, but of your willingness to spend so many stones on your slaves before they had proven themselves.’
In nodded with a smile. ‘Well, I was also getting it as a gift for a friend back home, but I wanted to give them the best chance to succeed. I will be returning home soon, and want to make sure that they can support themselves.’
The monk smiled as well. ‘I suppose you would tell others that you didn’t want them to lose you money while you were away, or didn’t want to risk them needing to go into debt, as you would have to cover it, but I sense there is more to it. You seem reluctant to think of them as slaves. You have yet to refer to them as your slaves, and seem to see them more as friends. Though it doesn’t seem that you are attracted to the mother. I suspect that you don’t approve of the act of slavery, and are merely playing a role.’
I sighed and sat back in my chair. ‘My homeland only allows criminal slavery, not debt slavery, and I don’t see why one should be treated as inferior to me simply because they or someone in their family is bad with money. This family was sold because the father had a gambling problem, which he has since recovered from. That isn’t something that should cost his family their freedom, especially those that weren’t even alive yet when he went into debt.’
‘Quite wise.’ the monk said and sat back in his chair. ‘If you wish to continue this discussion somewhere less public, feel free to come by the local temple and ask for me. My name is Wanbo.’
‘Li Kev.’ I said. ‘I do have a matter I need to bring to your attention when the trial is over, so I will speak with you later.’ After all, the dead demonic cultivators and their human material items needed to be brought to the temple’s attention. The monk nodded and returned to concentrating on the trial.
The second set of pills Five made was more difficult than the first, while Jiang had a much easier time. Because the pill had extreme yang ingredients mixed with extreme yin ingredients, the ingredients had a much greater chance of conflicting. The Sacred Fire Sage was from a class of spirit plant called Rapid Gathering plants, that only drew in small amounts of qi during their main growth cycle, if any. One would think this caused it to barely qualify as a spirit herb, but such herbs had a special property. At some point in their lives, usually at death or when they reached the end of a reproductive cycle, they would rapidly draw in qi, converting it into their elemental affinity, storing it withing themselves. This would allow them to temporarily reach an entire major realm higher in strength before exploding from the excess qi which their body couldn’t handle. This explosion would either kill the predator that killed them without harming their nearby kin, such as with the Sacred Fire Sage, or would cause their seeds to spread over a large area, like with its cousin, Three Color Sage.
I had only briefly scanned the contents of the herbology books, but that type of herb stood out to me, as weaving such herbs into paper was also mentioned in the talismonger book as a way to make talisman paper draw in qi to fuel the effect at a higher level. This type of paper was just difficult to make, as you would need to suppress this ability so that it didn’t activate prematurely, so it was rarely seen in modern times.
In the case of pills, though, the effect could be used to allow the one that took the pill to rapidly refill their qi from the environment rather than just absorbing the qi stored in a pill. While the amount of qi they would absorb from this was several times what a standard recovery pill contained, the rarity of such herbs drove up the price, and the fact that these pills could overfill your body with qi if you took too many made it rare for people to use qi gathering pills of their level, preferring instead the safer and cheaper qi recovery pills.
In Five’s formation, which she had allowed to slowly rotate vertically due to the difficulty of handling these ingredients, the gathered viewers could see the yang ingredient gathering in one half and the yin ingredients gathering in the other, only slowly mixing in the middle. She was obviously struggling to keep the two from combining too swiftly and having unfavorable reactions. After ten minutes, however, she eventually mixed all of the ingredients, then rapidly mixed in the honey and made the pills.
With only five minutes left, and many of the other alchemists having already finished their preparation, she quickly ground all of the satiation pill ingredients together, not bothering to separate the yang and yin components as there was little variation either way, then mixed in the honey and made pills. Just seconds after the last pill was placed on the tray the gong was rung, ending that phase of the testing.
The judges looked over the thirty sets of pills the various alchemists had created and, while a few were slightly malformed from being mishandled after being made, none of the test takers had failed this step. They seemed most impressed by Five’s second batch, as the extreme yang and extreme yin ingredients had been blended almost perfectly, a fact which made the final product far better quality than the average pill embryo. If she could properly refine these in step four she might be able to produce high or even master quality pills.
