SFS - Chapter 22 (Patreon)

AN: Chap 1/2. Second one coming in a bit.

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I fell asleep… it wasn’t intentional! Crane was just so boring and dry when he talked about all that Qi stuff. It was like he’d memorized the driest manuscript in the world and regurgitated it out onto me instead of giving me anything actually useful. Seriously, that guy made for a terrible teacher, and his words were like a sweet lullaby…

Right, it was because of my injuries! The medicine made me tired. It definitely wasn’t because my attention span had totally been ruined by my desperate flights for survival, yip. I could sit down, be silent, and listen as well as anyone else if I really put my mind to it. I just… I hadn’t put my mind to it yet. Beauty sleep mattered more.

I got the important stuff, anyway. Crane drilled all of that into my poor, overworked brain while I sat there unable to run away. Qi, Fundamental Energy of Heaven and Earth, blah blah blah, yip yip yip. He was right on one thing, though. If I ran out of Qi in the middle of a fight, I’d be dead.

Anyway, falling asleep was what brought me here… still laying on the stupid altar while I waited for my stupid body to heal from its stupid injuries. No one else was around. Heizen’s scent was heavy like he’d just been here. The medicine really must’ve been making me drowsy if I didn’t even notice the bird coming by.

My ears twitched toward the door. This was exactly what I was talking about. My hearing was just way too sensitive to sleep through someone approaching. Boots clopped down the hall just outside of the room. I knew who it was before the stitched woman even turned the corner.

”Ah, you’re awake.” She shuffled over to me, and patted my side lightly. “Heaven blesses you, Little Snow. The crow found everything I needed.”

”Can I watch you make it?” I asked lightly. Crane had given me a very basic rundown on different jobs that used Qi. Alchemy was one of them, and it sounded cool. Especially now that I could actually follow what was going on. 

Graft’s hand froze just before she could ruffle my ears. She sunk back for a moment, and two of her arms crossed while the third reached up to rub at her face beneath her hood. “It’s a boring process. Are you interested?”

“Yip.” I was interested in medicine in general, and pill concocting kind of went with that. Both times I’d been injured, I’d only been saved by Graft’s kindness. It infringed on my noble pride to constantly be in need of others.

“Can I carry you, then?” She slipped her third arm back into her sleeve, and stood up a little straighter. “My chambers are far for the injured.”

”Um… sure.” I stood up to give her easier access. She wrapped her warm hands around me, and whisked me into the air. Her movements were gentle though, as if afraid of reopening my wounds.

I settled into her arms, though my tail stayed rigid behind me. I didn’t like being held like this. Something about being carried around was deeply, deeply uncomfortable… or maybe that was just because I was injured every time I was picked up. And it was kinda demeaning, in a way? 

We left the main hall behind and exited out into a courtyard. Rain poured in from the open cliff face to the west of the temple, and lighting flashed above an endless sea of fog. A slight tremor flowed down my spine at the sight. It was just… wrong. Unnatural. The old scholar called it the Heaven-Earth Illusory Fog Array, yip? What’s an array?

 I didn’t have long to be pelted by the rain before we slipped into a side building of the Forlorn Temple. Graft unlocked a door, and carried me into a small room filled with the intensely bitter scent of medicine. A fire crackled off to the back of the room, and smoke flowed out of a makeshift chimney made of oxidized copper tubing. 

“Don’t mind the mess.” Graft brushed aside a bunch of items on a table and set me down. She quickly moved around to tidy things up. “I don’t get many visitors in my chambers. Not pleasant ones, anyways.”

The healer grabbed a bucket and dipped it into a small pool at the back of the room. She set the bucket of water onto the open fire, and it quickly started to warm up. She left it there to boil, and instead pulled a bunch of plants off of racks all around the room. All of them freshly carried Heizen’s scent. 

“Not every part of these will behave.” She pulled a knife and carefully started to cut apart the various plants. For the most part, the stems and stuff were discarded. She picked up a piece of jade-like grass and held it out to me. Little black specks dotted the grass. “You see the contamination here? Exposure to this mountain’s air is poisoning the natural Renewal Grass.”

I leaned forward to sniff at the grass. It smelled like every other piece of grass I’d seen, though I could definitely detect the bad parts. “What makes this different from normal grass?”

“Renewal Grass?” She paused mid cut, and instead sliced down a blade of grass. A slightly sweet scent was released. “It’s a conduit for Qi. The blades trap it, and the Qi enhances its rejuvenate properties.” 

Ah, right. Crane said something about that, I think. I was in between, um, blinks when he got onto the topic. ‘Qi flows through everything, Snow. Some things are just better about channeling it than others. Humans, animals, plants—even some types of rocks.’

I nodded my head sagely, and glanced around at the other plants scattered around the room. Most were sealed in bottles and cases, but I had no doubt the rest of this stuff was spirit plants too. If Qi could enhance my abilities, like letting me turn ethereal, then naturally it could reinforce a plant’s abilities. 

“The preparation is almost down.” Graft cleaned off her knife and set it beside the butchered plants. “My pill furnace is a little shabby, but it’ll do the trick.”

A large, round furnace sat off to the side of the room. Copper pipes lanced around to the heavy piece of stonework, but the pipes were entirely silent. Instead of messing with that, she carried over a bundle of coals from the other fire and set them under the crude pill furnace.

I blinked, and Eye of the Recorder shrouded my vision. The flows of Qi throughout the room instantly became visible. There was a lot going on, so I just narrowed down my focus to Graft.

A flow of Qi moved around her body. It was dark like those corrupted by the Ophidian Blight, though lacked the dull distortion aura that they had. It fed into the coals rapidly, though the flow of Qi slowed as the coals warmed. A pale flame flickered to life just under the body of the furnace.

The dark Qi pooled in her palm, and was released with each hand seal she made. Her simple gestures seemed to convey so much more as each one changed the flow of Qi and manipulated the pill furnace. The flames inside danced to her tune, strengthening and weakening alongside her hand seals.

Her control was impressive, and drove home something else Crane said. ‘Anyone can have Qi, but not just anyone can control it. Red, clear, murky, blue—it doesn’t matter. It’s all lethal in an expert’s hands.’

“This is where most people fail. Be patient with the burn, or your efficacy will plummet.” Graft took a deep breath, and then her third arm shot out to the prepared Renewal Grass. The jade-like tips of the grass fluttered in the air, and she dropped them directly into the furnace. “This decides what the pill will be.”

Even while she spoke, she didn’t look away for a moment. Her hands constantly flipped between different hand seals, and she released more and more Qi into the furnace. The furnace was large, and I could barely see through the bright flames flowing around the furnace’s view ports. The Renewal Grass slowly melted away into a jade liquid. 

HSSHHH!

Finally, she flicked her hand upright with her palm facing skyward. Little bits of discolored material floated out of the alchemy furnace and burned to ash. The ash was blown away with a wave of her hand, leaving a transparent green fluid floating in a ball just above the pill furnace. The jade fluid was quickly poured into a small glass vial and set to the side.

“Is Qi Manipulation a requirement?” If so, I wouldn't be able to do this anytime soon. After watching Zeteoh move stuff with his Qi, the Record had, what—.003% of the technique learned?

“I’m not that ancient.” Graft laughed and pointed out the deep grooves scattered around the alchemy area. Qi subtly pulsed through the lines and spread out across the entire room. “This is an Alchemist’s Array. It allows a pale imitation.”

My ears flattened to the sides of my head, and I carefully watched the array. I’d long wondered what the Heaven-Earth Illusory Fog Array that trapped us here actually was, and it looked like I finally had my answer. Did the Imperial Army engrave a massive pattern around the entire mountain range? How did that even work?

The silver cuff throbbed lightly, and the Record flowed out and flicked to a new page. The shifting script of the thorn tome etched into the pure silver.

[Collecting Record… 5%… 10%…]

[Partial Record: | Basic Alchemist’s Array |]

Bleh, boring. My attention shifted back to the vial of jade liquid before the Record could finish, and I moved closer to sniff at it. “Is this it?”

”It could be taken as is.” She lightly patted my head with one of her hands while the other two prepared the furnace for something else. “Fusion enhances its properties further.”

I sat back and watched her burn two other kinds of spirit plants, purifying the essence of the plants and removing any and all impurities. Soon, she had three vials of slightly glowing liquids set down on the table. Her Qi expenditure in just this level was through the roof. It dwarfed the tiny amount I had. 

I didn’t have a cultivation technique, though. ‘No technique means no recovery. Even Cinder, the Unyielding, was eventually brought low by attrition. If such a legendary pirate could fall, then what about you?’

No idea who Cinder was, but Crane repeatedly hammered home how important even a basic cultivation technique was. Trying to live as a spirit beast without one was downright suicidal. Right, once she’s done, I’ll look at that Red Tithe Technique once more and try to figure it out.

She gently picked up the three vials and held them up into the light. Then, without hesitation, she poured all three into the furnace. They merged into a discolored blob of floating liquid that churned and bobbed unsteadily. My fur stood on end, and my tail puffed up slightly behind me.

“It’s about to fall apart.” Just before the concoction could destabilize entirely, she lifted the boiling bucket of water off the fire with her third arm and dumped it into the furnace. “I would’ve liked to use spirit spring water, but boiled water works in a pinch. Resources are low, anyways.”

Her other two hands never stopped making seals, and the liquid started to spin gently inside the dimly glowing pill furnace. The bright colors of the different herbs diluted into the water and the massive blob turned a uniform shade of washed out green.

”This part is tricky.” She carefully pulled a vial of a metallic substance from a hidden pocket of her robes. It glowed with a faint silver-cyan shade. She held out the vial toward me to get a better look. “Blue Mercury—it binds it all together.”

She pulled out a small drop from the vial, and quickly stashed the rest of it back into her robe. The drop of metallic liquid flicked into the pill furnace, and the blob of liquid erupted with wild Qi flows. It’d been tamed by the addition of water, but the much larger sphere of liquid started to go wild once more

Graft slammed the lid onto the alchemy furnace and her hands flashed through dozens of hand seals in quick succession. Although I couldn’t see inside anymore, the wild Qi flow of the ingredients was grabbed and guided through her efforts, condensing into a smaller and smaller ball.

The next half-hour was a battle of Graft controlling the pill furnace while the liquid and Qi flows inside continuously tried to destabilize. Her quick reactions and deep focus showed a mastery of the craft that I didn’t quite expect when I first asked if I could watch her make the pills.

Just when I was starting to get bored and shift around, a heatwave erupted from the furnace and washed over me. My attention narrowed onto the source of heat. One of Crane’s more annoying points droned on in the back of my head. ‘Without focus, you’ll end up as a scarf for some lady.’

An addictive floral scent drowned out the voices, and Graft pulled the lid of the furnace off. Instead of the liquid blob, seven pills gently floated out of the pill furnace and dropped into a prepared bottle. An eighth, malformed pill fell off to the side on a rag.

”Are they done?” I sniffed at the bottle curiously, and a sweet fragrance washed over me. Just before I could gulp down one of the pills, she snatched the bottle away from me and put a cap in it.

“Yes, but these are crude.” She stuffed the bottle into her robe and moved to prepare a new set of ingredients. Graft once more skillfully wielded her knife to cut apart the herbs into usable parts. “Too many impurities snuck in.”

”And that’s bad?” My head flopped to the side, and my ear perked up. It sounded bad. We were trying to avoid those, right?

Graft patted my fluffy ears and moved to collect more materials for the pill furnace. “If you care about your recovery slowing. They weaken the efficacy of a pill, and can cause nasty side-effects if too many are taken.”

”Yip, we should make more.” I was out on any side-effects. I was already worried about growing scales at any moment, and I didn’t need something else worming away at the back of my mind.

I sighed softly and settled down to watch her work again. While she prepared, though, I stared at the Basic Alchemist Array to let the Record finish its job. If nothing else, I got that out of all of this.