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The house she had brought me to was in a corner of the enclave with several small homes. The place wasn’t large, but it met my needs. It was clean, it had well-made wooden floors, the walls were covered in a smooth chalk plaster, and several windows allowed natural light. The only problem with the place was a complete lack of furniture.

“It’s good,” I said, “but what about a bed and things?”

“You have to buy those yourself, of course,” said Jiao with a small laugh. “You can’t expect the sect to just give you everything, right?”

“I guess not, but…” I had to think about how to phrase my worries. “When I was given a place in Elder Mu’s enclave, I was warned that anything I did, including adding furniture, would cause other disciples to challenge me for ownership of the place, and if I lost, I would lose most of what I put in there.”

“Really?” asked Jiao. “Were you given one of the top places to stay or something?”

“No, it was a tiny hole in the ground.”

“Strange. Still, you don’t have to worry about that here. Not with this place at least. There are luxury residences that you can challenge for if you want, and the living conditions are a bit better, but it’s mostly about establishing your status. This is just a basic home, though, so you won’t be challenged over it. Feel free to make it as lovely as you wish. As long as you have the points for it, at least.”

After a short discussion, Jiao left and allowed me to get settled. I needed to decide what kind of furniture to buy, and I needed to move my nice cultivation mat over from my place in the village, but that could be a job for future me. Instead, I needed to take stock of where I was and what I needed to accomplish.

I thought back to the list of goals I made at the start of this life. I had obtained good Profound-Rank cultivation techniques for both Rank 1 and 2, but they would be useless without the matching Rank 3 technique. I had gotten the earlier ranks from Elder Mu, and with him out of the picture I wasn’t sure if I could find a copy of the Rank 3 technique, but I needed to try.

I had learned to use my fire seed, and I could make Rank 2 pills exceptionally well. Now I needed to move forward and learn Rank 3 alchemy, and I wasn’t sure what twists that would involve.

I had learned a lot about the Wastes and the political pressures surrounding it, but it would be good to get more information on the topic.

As far as information about the fight at the Su clan, I had learned TianLei was a member of the Tigers and was thus related to a rich, noble family somewhere around here. So, it was possible the fight had nothing to do with the sect but was some kind of power grab by these noble families. Those events would occur in 60 years, and I wasn’t sure I would be in the sect at that time.

The only goal I had made absolutely no progress on was finding a spatial spirit fire seed. I needed to keep my eyes and ears open there.

Did I need to add any goals?

I needed to clean out the faction’s technique hall and visit the Martial Peak to pillage what I could there. I regretted not being able to store Rank 3 techniques in my mental library, but the cost to do that before this life had just been too extravagant.

I also wanted to keep an eye open for any information I could get related to auctions of valuable goods, hidden treasures uncovered, or any important discoveries. I needed some basic information gathering for things that might be of interest to me later. Doing this would be a hassle, but there was no reason I had to do it myself. If I was allowed to leave the sect freely, I could use my alchemy abilities to hire people to collect information for me. It shouldn’t even be that hard, since I was mainly interested in open, freely available news about the recent past. I would just need to sort through the information to find the bits I could use.

Learning Rank 3 alchemy would be a major time sink, so I didn’t want to add too many goals, but one final item I decided to short-list was at least learning information about joining the Flowing Mountain Sect. I wouldn’t put my hopes on moving up and claiming a city this life, but I did want to know the requirements so I could consider pursuing that path in the future.

I took out my mental journal and jotted down some notes.

1. Get the Rank 3 Profound technique
2. Learn Rank 3 alchemy
3. Get more information about the area
4. Learn about the Su Clan?
5. Look for information about spatial fire seed
6. Pillage techniques (faction, fighters, more?)
7. Gather valuable intel
8. Learn more about the Flowing Mountain Sect selection

Satisfied with my plans, I put them all aside for the rest of the day and got busy with decorating.

“Alright,” said Jiao, “so, Grandmaster Alchemy.” She began tapping her chin with one finger while thinking about how to explain. “There isn’t much to say about it. Let’s just get some ingredients and get to work.”

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“Wait… what?” I asked.

“Yeah, you got the basics, really, it’s just more of the same. Nothing much changes between Master and Grandmaster. Burn away the toxins, combine the energy, compress into a pill. Boom, you’re done.”

“Then, why did Elder Tao say I would need support to learn it? I should just be able to do it now, right?”

“Sure,” she said, “as long as you’re good enough. Go ahead.”

I wasn’t quite sure what that meant.

“Wait here a moment,” she said before running off somewhere. It took a few minutes before she returned with a box in hand. “I got some herbs. Let\'s grab a cauldron and see what you’ve got.”

We walked into one of the private work areas, and Jiao pulled out the herbs she had brought.

“These are for a Rank 3 Regeneration Pill,” she said. “It’s one of the easiest pills, so it’s a good place to start. Basic sequence of metal, water, wood, and you’re done.”

I picked up the herbs and began to get started, but when I looked at them in qi sight, I was stunned.

“What the hell?” I asked.

“Rank 3 herbs,” said Jiao. “Get to it.”

The herbs she had given me were the nastiest things I had ever seen. Not in regular sight, though. In normal vision, they were perfectly normal plants, but in qi vision, they were living nightmares.

Normally, herbs would be a core of medicinal energy surrounded by a layer of toxins, and you only had to burn away the toxins. Working with Rank 1 herbs, I had learned that there were flecks of toxins mixed in with the medicinal energy, so it was nearly impossible to completely cleanse it, but that was just a matter of a few flecks here and there.

These herbs were demonic Rorschach tests. The toxins and medicinal energies twisted upon each other in random ways. There were some globs of medicine stuck in layers of toxins, but also some globs of toxins stuck in layers of medicine.

There was no way to utilize all the medicinal energy in these. Some of it had to be destroyed just to access the toxins it was protecting.

“Don’t just stand there,” said Jiao. “Get to work.”

I set my mind to the task and began.

The herbs she had given me had been mostly contaminated with metal-based toxins. Even the toxins in the metal herb she gave me seemed to be mainly metal-based. That seemed odd, since from what I knew, the herb should have absorbed that energy, but I didn’t have the herbalism background needed to understand it.

The fact that it was all metal-based, though, made it a lot easier to deal with. Fire melts metal, so my fire qi, which had just gotten an upgrade and was easiest for me to control, would be excellent here. I focused my qi and sent a strand to start its work.

Nothing happened. The qi just bounced off the toxins.

I increased the strength of qi, then doubled it, then doubled it again. Finally, the toxins started to evaporate, but the drain on my qi had become very noticeable. I could complete the pill at this rate, but it would take a lot out of me.

I continued slowly until finally the first area of medicinal energy was nearly exposed. I wasn’t used to performing alchemy with this intensity of qi though, and a small strand of my energy split off and hit the metal-based medicinal power. In a flash, all the medicine in that entire region vanished. While the toxins had become significantly more robust, the medicinal power had become equally as fragile.

At that point, the metal herb was waste material, so I put it down.

“Try the next one with your spirit fire,” suggested Jiao.

My spirit fire was earth-based, and it was usually a poor idea to use earth against metal, but I followed her advice. At first, the spirit fire had no effect, but the more I opened the floodgates of my soul, the more powerful it became. Usually, earth would make metal stronger, but there was a breaking point where earth overwhelmed it.

“What are you doing?” asked Jiao. “Use your qi to control it properly.”

I had never practiced using my fire seed like spirit fire users did. I had developed my own ways of manipulating it that were impossible for people without a fire seed, and they had worked well in Rank 2, but maybe Rank 3 would take more.

Instead of just controlling the direction and intensity with my soul, I began to also use threads of qi to empower and direct it. This combined force would have been complete overkill in Rank 2, and it likely would have ended with instantly turning the herb to ashes, but for Rank 3 it was what I needed. With both methods combined, the fire started cutting through the toxins like butter.

My lack of control with this method was my undoing. While it cut through the toxins cleanly, the intense power contained within also completely vaporized the medicinal energy whenever it even got close.

“Let’s put the third herb away for now,” said Jiao, “I think you’ve learned what you needed to.”

I looked at the herbal remnants in front of me. “I’ve learned that I’m completely incapable of Rank 3 alchemy, but how does that help me?”

“Now, it’s time for you to go to the technique hall. There are a lot of helpful techniques in there that you need to start using. I watched you during the Inner Sect Challenge, and you didn’t use any techniques when concocting besides Empowerment. That’s normal at your level. You haven’t needed them before, but now you do.”

I thought about all the alchemy techniques I had copied down in my mental library. I had dozens of them, but I never even considered using them because I didn’t see the value. Why use a technique to help me see, or one to help me control the flow of qi, when I could do everything without them?

Without a strong advantage for Rank 3, I would need to rely on those techniques to help bridge the gap. I hoped that eventually I wouldn’t need them, since they added complications to the process, but I already knew the truth. Eventually, I wouldn’t need them for Rank 3, but things would only get tougher from there. Once I advanced again to Rank 4, I would need those techniques and better, so it would be best to get used to using them now.

“What do I need to access the technique hall here?” I asked. “Rank 3 techniques must cost a significant amount of contribution points.”

“For the faction, it’s free. You can access any alchemy techniques you want, but you may be limited if you want to look at other techniques. The higher-ups want you to focus on alchemy. The sect’s hall has a larger selection of techniques, which will cost, but you should hold off. The faction library will have most of what you need, and you should only need to go to the sect to fill in the gaps.”

“Alright,” I said, “I guess I should start studying.”

“Just a recommendation,” said Jiao, “go back and make some Rank 1 and 2 pills. Create a foundation with the techniques there before trying to use them on Rank 3. It will be easier with the reduced qi demand.”

I nodded. “That makes sense. That’s what I’ll do. Thanks.”