Chapter 123: Eureka

Anji and the kids—Chun, Bo, and Jian—hefted bundles of wolf pelts onto the ground with a dull thud. She saw the motes of dust in the late afternoon light at the weight of them. Zi Wen, Hong Yi, and a few of the older villagers crouched nearby, sorting the furs into neat columns based on durability, rarity, condition, and usefulness. Their fingers sifted through the blood-matted hides with an ease born of repetition, though even they paused occasionally at the stench—some pelts still clung too tightly to the remnants of beast flesh. The stink clung to Anji’s skin, turned her stomach, made her breathe through her mouth. She didn’t like it. But she stayed. After all that Chen Ren had done to help preserve her sect’s legacy, this was the least she could offer in return. Every skin, every pelt, every bit of work she could do—it gave her hands something to busy themselves with. More importantly, it gave her mind something else to focus on. Anything but him and his training. The head. Wang Jun. His voice had become something she dreaded now—sharp rebukes, cryptic metaphors, and bitter curses about her inability to grasp the basics of soul cultivation. Sometimes, his words bit deep enough to leave her questioning it all. But then she would remember Qing He’s calm voice, gently pushing her doubts aside. “If Wang Jun truly believed you were a failure, he wouldn’t waste breath on you.” She understood where Qing He was coming from. Still, the lessons were cruel. The progress had been slow. For mortals, sensing the soul—let alone the energies around it—was near impossible. That was what the head said. And she had no choice but to believe him. But she had to do it no matter how hard. And when the doubts crept in, when the darkness of her own thoughts began to wrap around her, she’d found that work—mindless, physical, exhausting work—helped. As she moved to turn and get another batch of the pelts, a howl split the air. Screams followed it. Her body tensed before her mind caught up, spinning to look toward the village’s makeshift rampart. Shadowed figures moved along the barricade—villagers, weapons in hand, shouting commands into the growing panic. Another beast had found its way into the Meadow. Zi Wen sighed beside her, already rising to his feet and brushing fur from his trousers. “More work for us,” he muttered. Then, a smirk. “But at least, we don’t have to carve it up. That’s Chief Muyang’s job. A very dirty one with all the beast blood.” Anji nodded, wiping the sweat from her brow with the back of her sleeve. “Shouldn’t you be on the wall? That howl didn’t sound like a weak one.” Zi Wen only shrugged as he grabbed another bundle of smaller furs. “Li Xuan’s there. I don’t know what’s going on with that guy, but every time I watch him fight, it’s like he’s using the beasts as training dummies. Doesn’t matter if they can bite a man's head off.” He chuckled softly. “Little Yuze’s with him too, so I’d say we’re safe.” Hong Yi let out a low grunt and muttered, “I’d rather be on the wall than sorting through blood-soaked pelts.” Zi Wen snorted, not even looking up. “You said you were free when I asked.” “I thought you needed to consult me on something!” Hong Yi snapped, brushing off his hands in disgust. “Not throw me into menial labor.” Their bickering earned an eye-roll from Anji, but before she could say anything, a tug on her robes pulled her attention downwards. “Can we go to the wall and watch too?” one of the children asked, wide-eyed. “No,” Anji said flatly, narrowing her gaze. “I told you already. Xiulan will have my skin if I let you anywhere near the wall.” “But Brother Zi Wen said it’s all safe…” Little Bo whined, pouting. But Anji knew it was all an act. “Forhim, not for you lot,” Anji said sharply, straightening up. “You think getting into proximity of a creature that could eat you in one bite is fun? Stay here and help if you want that extra bowl of soup.” She was about to scold them further when an explosive blast echoed through the village. The ground trembled faintly, and she flinched along with the others, heads whipping toward the wall. But she saw nothing there. It looked the same with men shouting over the sound of gunshots and lightning that probably came from Li Xuan. “You’re looking in the wrong direction,” Zi Wen said calmly, brushing a wisp of fur from his tunic. Anji turned her gaze, following his line of sight—her breath caught. Smoke billowed out of the sect building and she immediately understood what the blast was. Of course, she should’ve guessed. Her thoughts scattered again as Zi Wen nudged Hong Yi with his elbow. “So? How many is it now?” “The third one today,” Hong Yi grumbled, squinting through the smoke. “You guessed right.” Zi Wen held out his hand smugly. “Where’s my money?” Hong Yi crossed his arms. “There could be more. If it ends up being four or five, I’m not paying. You said three exactly.” Zi Wen scoffed. “You guessed two” “And I was wrong. Sect Leader Chen is clearly more talented at blowing things up than I gave him credit for.” Anji gave both of them a flat look. “I should’ve expected this from you two. Instead of helping him out, you’re placing bets?” Hong Yi shrugged. “Us helping out won’t do him any good. He’ll figure it out. He always does.” Anji didn’t argue. They were right. Whatever Chen Ren was building—testing—creating—wasn’t something anyone else had ever attempted. Not even the great sects had dared touch this path. Alchemy had always been a domain of the gifted—cultivators, blessed by affinity and talent, hoarding knowledge like gold. And now here he was. Trying to bring mortals into the fold. To many in the empire, even the suggestion would be heresy. Sure, she’d seen alchemists in her sect rely on arrays when they needed speed—channeling qi through inscribed formations to cut corners when time was tight or effort was lacking. But that wasn’t what Chen Ren was doing. He wasn’t trying to make pills faster. He was trying to make them accessible To let mortals handle the refining process—and have the arrays take care of the qi-based steps. It sounded impossible. More than impossible. Anji had studied alchemy, and even she had never heard of arrays like that—probably not even Qing He. Ones that could split the burden, isolate the essence binding from the physical process. Yet Chen Ren was trying—she could tell from the blasts. She felt it was both admirable and stupid. But then again, most of Chen Ren’s ideas were like that. Anji sighed, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear as she turned to Zi Wen. “What do you mean ‘he’ll figure it out’? Do you really have that much confidence in him?” “Of course I do. That man figured out how to make perfumes without needing to deal with the sects. I still don’t understand how that works,” Zi Wen replied without missing a beat. Hong Yi nodded, arms crossed. “If it’s about money, I feel like that man could climb a mountain with a broken leg and call it necessary for a business opportunity. You don’t need to worry. This is just his tribulation.” Anji blinked. “Tribulation?” “Every cultivator has one,” Hong Yi said matter-of-factly. “The way of the ruthless heavens. Some get soul demons. Some get lightning trying to burn them to ashes. For someone like him? It’s figuring out new ways to make money.” Zi Wen snorted with laughter. “Exactly. You’ll see. He’ll overcome it—then dump a whole mountain of work on us.” Hong Yi simply nodded. But Anji wasn’t sure it would be so simple. If Chen Ren succeeded—if he really made it work—alchemy itself would never be the same. Not just a faster pill-making process, not just a clever shortcut, but a fundamental change in who could even do it. Mortals. That alone would make the alchemy clans and sects in the empire froth at the mouth. They’d kill to keep things as they were. she reminded herself. He just wanted to make money. That was all. Still, the weight of what he was attempting… It made her uneasy. She exhaled slowly. “I hope he passes this tribulation,” she murmured, looking up towards the sect building. *** Chen Ren, covered in soot, frowned at the still-smoking cauldron in front of him with a single thought in his mind. He wasn’t even joking. He’d buried himself in books, scrolls, and even half-rotten alchemist notes, memorizing every scrap of information he could find. Cauldron types, herb properties, refining conditions, success factors—theories layered upon theories. He had even collected every array known to support pill refinement. After weeks of testing, adjusting, and occasionally cursing the heavens, he had narrowed things down to a handful of arrays that might work. But “might” didn’t cut it. Making pills only using arrays wasn’t the issue. He could do it—once, maybe twice. It was sustaining it that was the problem. The real bottleneck was essence extraction. Even for the most basic, mortal-grade pill, the ingredients needed to be heated, coaxed, and broken down until their essence bloomed—and then that essence had to be fused with qi. Not just any qi—controlled, precisely molded qi. That was what formed the pill core. In theory, he could encode the process into arrays. He had. But in practice? Every time the array activated, it drained qi like a starving beast. And since it didn’t pull qi from a cultivator, but from the array’s own limited store, the formation became useless after a single use. Worse, if the balance tipped even slightly, the array malfunctioned—and the cauldron exploded. He glanced at the cauldron. Blackened, cracked around the base. It somehow survived the third explosion today. Even if he managed to squeeze out a single pill, he’d have to redraw the array again, recharge it, and hope it didn’t blow up again. At this point, it would've been easier to find a few dozen alchemists, lock them in a room, and ask them to make pills the old-fashioned way. But that wasn’t an option. Not for him. Not for this sect. From what Chen Ren knew, only the most Established sects—those with hundreds of disciples—could afford to run proper alchemy workshops. Not for efficiency, of course. They called it training, but in truth, it was nothing more than a glorified Chinese sweatshop. New disciples were thrown into rows of furnaces and cauldrons, refining pills endlessly for the benefit of the sect. He could never do that. Even if it were an option, Chen Ren wouldn’t take it. He believed in labour laws. In dignity. He didn’t crawl out of poverty just to become the kind of man who shoved others into it. Which left him with more holes in his plan than he liked to admit. Standing before his battered cauldron—cracked, reeking of charred lotus root—Chen Ren flipped through a stack of alchemical manuals he hadn’t touched yet, desperate for a new angle. The books were meticulous, each diagram a testament to centuries of tradition. But the more he read, the more one thing became painfully clear. All of this was designed for cultivators.Every step. Every style. Every technique. And then the thought struck him—so obvious, so simple, he actually froze with the book half-open in his hands. That was the flaw. He wasn’t thinking far enough. He wasn’t supposed to tweak their method. He was supposed to throw the whole thing out. His eyes narrowed. Slowly, he set the book down and reached for a quill and a blank sheet of paper. If he was going to do this, he needed to start from scratch. He scrawled the words at the top of the page. Underneath, he drew three simple bullet points. Essence Extraction – Heat herbs in a cauldron until their essence is released.Qi Containment – Use personal qi to hold the essence in place, preventing it from dispersing into the atmosphere.Compression & Shaping – Apply pressure to form the pill. He stared at the list. That was it. That was alchemy, reduced to its skeleton. He’d been trying to have arrays take care of step one and step three—extraction and shaping—while assuming step two was too advanced without a cultivator’s direct input. But the real issue wasn’t the complexity of arrays. It was the entire foundation of the process. Alchemy, at its core, assumed the presence of qi. Without it, the process collapsed. It wasn’t designed to run without a cultivator standing at the center. He could already handle the first part—extracting the essence. With the right temperature and controlled heat arrays, even a mortal could manage that. The real issue was trapping it. Once the essence rose into the air, it dispersed far too quickly—lost before it could be molded. That was the part cultivators handled instinctively, with qi as a net, sealing the essence mid-air. Chen Ren didn’t have that luxury. He needed a new net. He scratched his head, staring at the three bullet points he’d jotted down. Step three—shaping the pill—was ironically the easiest to hand off to mortals. After all, essence was vapor. Air And back on Earth, there were plenty of ways to capture vapor, convert it, shape it—hell, there were entire industries based on it. He just had to apply what he knew. Excitement began to hum in his chest as his thoughts spun faster. He cleared his workspace, dust flying up from the chaos of books and broken quills. One by one, he started pulling out manuals, sorting them into piles. He wasn’t looking for theory anymore. He was looking for replacements. Three new steps. Three new methods. Something that mimicked the outcome of traditional alchemy—but used entirely different means. And then— His eyes widened. Of course He shot up so fast the stool clattered to the floor behind him as an idea formed. Notpills Chen Ren tore through the shelves, fingers flying over worn spines, until he found a thick manual he had completely dismissed before: Herbal Liquids and Spiritual Suspension—A beginner’s guide to potion brewing. He flipped page after page until his eyes landed on the passage he needed—ink faded, margins yellowed with time. A slow grin crept across his face. “I don’t know if this’ll work,” he muttered, almost laughing now, “but if it does…” He sat back down with a thud, pulling a clean sheet toward him, and began to write and soon found himself stating at the three new rules. He exhaled, the words staring back at him like a challenge thrown at the sky. “Water,” he whispered. “The solution was water all along.” His fingers twitched to begin testing it immediately. There’d be failures. A lot of them. But this—this was the path forward. One that might just change alchemy across the empire.