River of Fate: Emerald Alchemist, page 10
Second, and the much smaller section of the list, there were temporary missions. Those ranged from everything from eliminating bandits, to scouting out a problem area, to escort missions, to eliminating a rare beast that had appeared, to crafting missions, like building a rare formation on demand or taking a job for someone who wanted to hire an alchemist to concoct a specific medicine.
Basically, if it existed and could turn a profit, the Azurewind Guard offered it. He hadn’t expected that the organization would be so all-encompassing. This wasn’t just a guard force...they had to be one of the largest trading houses in the empire.
“Even a guard force has to support itself,” the shrine said meaningfully. “I’m not surprised. Wherever profit exists, someone will spring up to seize it. The Azurewind Guard probably has one of the largest mercenary forces in the empire too, with many powerful individuals traveling across it all the time. It’s no surprise that they’ve found this way to take advantage of it.”
“It looks like there’s more than one option when it comes to selling pills then,” Verse said as he rubbed his fingertips over the badge. “The Alchemist Guild must be one of their main competitors, and the White Cloud Auction House too. It’s just that the guard has a much more focused harvesting power.”
There probably weren’t many other organizations that could encourage thousands of Aligned Adepts to gather resources for them. Those cultivators also had to support themselves, which made them a willing pool of labor. It was no wonder the guard had turned into a trading house.
He continued to search through the badge’s options and before long he found a section that was directly for buying and selling items. The mission area had rewards of various sorts, with everything from cultivation resources to contribution points from the guard as rewards, but this section was purely about money.
Ressa hadn’t been joking when she said that some families made their living as traders with the help of a silver-ranked badge. There was an entire marketplace inside, as well as an area to calculate transport costs, which would be deducted from the final sale.
With this badge, he could basically buy and sell anything across the empire. The economic power of the Azurewind Guard was no joke.
There were merchants buying and selling beast cores, pills, spirit stones, talismans, artifacts, rare metals, live beasts, weapons, armor, hides, high quality food, bulk grains, common and uncommon ores, gems, wine, spirits, and far rarer things like living elementals, natural treasures, beasts with specific bloodlines, medicines, poisons, and more.
There was even a section just to hire laborers in the local area, and options in case you wanted them to build a house or to do other tasks.
He scanned over the list of available artifacts and saw that there were items for every realm from Energy Gathering to Inspired Aura. Then there was even a restricted section for things higher than that, which he would have to reach the gold rank to be able to see. From the names of the items, they were fairly standard for their tier, but it was still a surprise to see so many available.
It was the single largest list of wealth that he’d ever encountered.
A temptation to gather it all nudged at his heart, and he rubbed at his chest as he laughed. He had many memories of dragons desiring gold and treasure, since legends were full of those stories, but that was the first time he thought it might apply to him.
Still, it was tempting.
Dreams of producing legendary pills and seizing control of the Azurewind Guards markets and making them offer up all that they had to him for a single pill danced through his mind. Eventually, he laughed and pushed the thought away.
He spent a few moments browsing through Aligned artifacts to see if there was anything he could use, but eventually he shook his head. He had enough to buy one perhaps, but the cost was steep. Right now, it wasn’t worth it. Maybe once he built up his wealth some more he could look into it, but for now it was best to spend his money on alchemy materials.
With that in mind, he set the badge to the side, but his mind stirred by the possibilities it held. He’d been planning to sell any finished items to the Alchemist Guild, but the badge had opened new avenues. Now, he could turn them in for mission completion that would give him contribution points or various resources, sell them directly to the guard, or sell them to the guild. It just depended on what was a better deal in the moment.
It also meant he wouldn’t be trapped by a bad trading arrangement, if the guild for some reason tried to pressure him. He wasn’t expecting that from them, but it was always good to be prepared. Rekan’s inheritance really had given him new options.
He considered the possibilities as he planned out his next steps, until eventually the shrine’s voice interrupted his reverie.
“When you’re finished playing with that badge, let’s go fix the formation.” The shrine’s impatience was mixed with enthusiasm, making it clear how much he was looking forward to messing around with the house’s wards.
He hadn’t had a chance to do much while he was trapped underground. Now that he was out in the world again, he wanted to take full advantage of it.
“Alright, we may as well.” Verse stretched, breathing deeply of the natural energy, but then he stood up and dusted off his robes. The badge went into his soul space, where he planned to keep his most important items.
As he headed toward the formation room at the back of the house, Leaf let out a grumbling hiss from where he was lying. Only one of his eyes was open as he tracked Verse’s movement. Other than that, his scaly hide was invisible as he blended into the bamboo and the leaves of the courtyard. He was clearly annoyed that Verse was leaving, but he didn’t feel like moving himself. It was obvious where the elemental would be spending his time.
“It’s just the back of the house,” Verse said with a laugh. If the elemental had his way, they’d both end up living in the courtyard. “I might like nature, but I don’t plan to sleep out here. Why do you think I ordered all that furniture? I’ll be back soon.”
With that, he headed through the private cultivation room to the formation area. He’d come to Boreas to practice, so he might as well get started.
Chapter eight
First Steps in Alchemy
Three days later, Verse wiped the sweat away from his forehead as he examined the new circle on the floor of the formation chamber. He’d had to carve the channels with pure spiritual energy and then fill them with carefully balanced elemental aspects, which required a very fine control of elemental power.
Formations were no joke, even ones of this level. They required a fine touch. The main thing, however, was that he didn’t have much practice with them. It would have been a lot easier if he’d been used to manipulating elemental energy like this.
Formations were basically patterns that channeled elemental energy. They could be used for more complex types of energy too, but elemental ones were the most common.
Technically, the original Rank 2 formation here was called a “Flowing Water Seal”, while the one he’d built around it was a Rank 3 “Stoneguard Seal.” The first one was primarily Water based, and to make it more efficient here on the stone foundation of the house, he’d used a more powerful Stone-based one to ground it. A little bit of Wind, for whatever reason, had also been necessary to balance the energy between the other two elements.
There was one point of pride for him in this creation, at least, which was that he hadn’t used any tools, just pure focus. If a formation master had seen that, they would have been stunned by his potential.
“Good work, hatchling,” the shrine approved. “Now you’re on a dragon’s path. The elements shine through your scales. Tools are for weaklings who can’t do it themselves.”
Verse just shook his head, holding back a laugh. Tools would have made it a lot easier.
“It’s good it only needed Wind, Stone, and Water for this one,” he said. “Those are all part of jade essence and my elemental affinities. If it needed Shadow or something, it would have been a lot more difficult.”
The reason a formation master would have been shocked was that everyone knew formations required tools. That was how they were able to balance the elemental lines for their formations. They needed to prepare in advance and have the right spirit stones and focal artifacts to allow them to manipulate different elements, which they then built up into the correct structure.
Most people only had one or two elemental affinities of their own, but a formation master needed to use dozens, depending on what exactly they were working on. It was said that an alchemist needed herbs and time, but a formation master needed a thousand arms.
They relied on tools to make up for their limits, and on more tools to balance out their energy so they didn’t make a mistake.
He didn’t have any of those tools, and he hadn’t wanted to spend even more money to get them, so he hadn’t bothered. He’d gone with pure force of will. The shrine’s estimate on the time had been accurate, but it hadn’t been easy work, even with a guide telling him exactly what to do.
“This change has upgraded the wards here to the middle of the Aligned Realm,” the shrine announced. “The expenditure of spirit stones will be about the same though. The efficiency went up with the Stoneguard Seal, but the expenditure for a Rank 3 formation is higher than a Rank 2.”
“At least that puts everything in order and we’ve cut off the city’s ability to spy,” Verse said as he wiped the sweat away. He summoned a strong current of air to cool himself off as he walked toward the courtyard. “Now it’s time to focus on the real reason I came to Boreas.”
“Finally!” the shrine said approvingly. “You’ve studied all the concepts, so let’s see what you can do, hatchling.”
Without answering, Verse settled down in the center of the courtyard. The sky was layered with sunlight and silver clouds, and he could smell the dense spice of dozens of herbs across the area.
Even in just three days, the herbs he’d planted were larger and the Wood energy had increased by another twenty percent. It wouldn’t be long before the density of spiritual energy in the courtyard was multiple times higher than the surrounding area.
Leaf really had done something special here.
The original gathering formation here was still functioning, creating a current that gathered the energy toward the center, but the amount that it was dealing with was much stronger than it had been designed to handle. Before long, he would have to enhance it too. Carving the stabilizing lines deeper so they could handle more energy would be a good start.
Just this alone was a good reason to improve the wards on the house, since the higher the energy here, the more desirable this location would be, but that wasn’t the main reason he’d fixed up the formation before starting alchemy.
Dragons didn’t do alchemy the same way as humans.
He concentrated on the emerald energy of his bloodline, gathering it slowly from his veins as he began to cycle it around his soul space. A low and resonant roar sounded through the courtyard, making Leaf lift his head as he stared at Verse with bright eyes.
Wood energy from the courtyard and Stone from the earth below him gathered toward Verse in response to the roar, turning into a spiral of energy that merged with his own. It felt like his soul space inverted for a moment and then a sphere of emerald energy formed between Verse’s hands.
Under his careful control, the energy swiftly took on the shape he wanted, coalescing into a small emerald cauldron. It was a foot across with a fat belly, four legs, a lid that covered the top, and carvings of dragons and clouds around the outside. The lid was slightly off-kilter and the carvings were still rough, but it was clearly an alchemy cauldron.
He studied the result, and then he dismissed it before he began the summoning process again. This was a technique the shrine had taught him to create a soul-linked cauldron. In fact, it was an inversion of his soul space. He drew in natural energy from the environment with his bloodline, cycled it through his soul space, and then projected it into reality.
This was a soul cauldron.
Dragon alchemy was a reflection of the natural world. As his understanding of his dao improved, so would his cauldron. When he was strong enough, his cauldron could be the size of a mountain or woven from starlight and moonlight.
Its qualities would always reflect his own path.
Regular alchemists spent a vast amount of resources to get the best cauldron possible to support their work, seeing it as a necessary investment. If they could get one that was a higher tier than the herbs they were using, it would give a lot of advantages to their success rate and the strength of the medicines they made.
He didn’t have the advantage of using a cauldron above his realm, but the natural advantages of a soul cauldron more than made up for it. Alchemists needed to have fine control over the process happening inside the cauldron, and there was no better way to do that than by using a soul cauldron.
Everything that happened inside was within his grasp. Even now, he could sense the Wood and Stone energy he’d gathered flowing through the material, making the cauldron stronger by the moment. The dao could be infused into the material more easily than by any other method, and the waste from the process was minimal.
Theoretically, if he let a soul cauldron improve for long enough, it would turn into a real physical object in the world. Then, even if he removed his soul energy, it would still be there. The shrine had told him legends of an entire volcano being shaped from that method once.
A dragon had used a natural magma flow to heat the bottom of a soul cauldron and worked in the area for centuries. By the time he left, the entire land had turned into a volcanic caldera. The lip of the cauldron had turned into the surrounding mountains.
The shrine might have been teasing him, but given the levels of strength he knew were in the world, he didn’t doubt that it was possible. He wasn’t planning to create a volcano anytime soon, but the story helped him to get into the right mindset.
On top of that, alchemy was a type of cultivation. The more he used this soul cauldron, the stronger his soul would become. Soul strength was a core foundation for advancing through cultivation realms and there were few good ways to train it.
As it improved, so would his speed of thought, spiritual sense, awareness of the world, ability to sense the dao, resistance to illusions, and more.
A new emerald cauldron formed between his hands. This one had a lid that fit slightly better, but the carvings were still rough. After he examined it, it shattered into shards of emerald light that sparkled like dew in the courtyard.
He focused his spirit and let out a long breath as he shaped another one. A bit more effort should be enough to get the lid to fit, and then he could get started. The carvings would take more time, but they weren’t as essential at the beginning.
In fact, they weren’t really carvings. They were reflections of his understanding of the dao of alchemy and of his soul space, altered somewhat by his inner vision of those concepts. That was why they were dragons and clouds. A dragon for alchemy and a cloud for the soul space.
As his understanding improved, they would change.
He was in search of perfection and wasn’t willing to create a subpar cauldron, so it ended up taking him five more tries to get the cauldron lid to fit. By the time it was done, there was a strange fatigue in his spirit, one that made him want to take a nap.
He pushed the feeling aside as he held the cauldron between his hands and closed his eyes to meditate. This was just the beginning of training alchemy. There was no way he was going to let a cauldron exhaust him before he even got started.
It was helpful that his soul was already strong. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to try making a cauldron more than once every day or two.
“New alchemists sometimes take weeks to form their first cauldron,” the shrine said as he watched. “You’re just starting, but you have good discipline, which is an advantage. For all their strength, dragons often lack that quality. It comes with being one of the most powerful beings on the planet.”
Verse looked down at the cauldron between his hands. The carvings were still rough, but the lid fit seamlessly now. It was a deep emerald and solid to anyone else who might be looking at it, but to him it was transparent. A flow of Wood energy was swirling through the carvings and making the surface glow, while Stone from the ground below him was slowly hardening the material.
He still needed to heat it up, but Fire was his strongest element. The only difference for this one was that he wasn’t going to use pure Fire, but rather Emerald Flame. The soul cauldron and Emerald Flame were the basis for all of the recipes that the shrine had taught him.
Alchemy required Wood and Fire as its major daos.
Wood was needed to manipulate the herbs as materials and bring them to their peak state. Then Fire was necessary to enhance and combine them. As the most energetic element, it was capable of improving their quality and burning away impurities, but too much would destroy them instead.
Some people thought those were the only two important elements, but he knew the others had their place as well, like Water for balancing innate properties and supporting combinations, and Earth to lend stability and endurance to an effect.
The other elements weren’t as essential in every recipe as Wood and Fire, but they were required for specific pills. If used well, they made alchemy more effective. Alchemy was a reflection of the world. Ignoring any of its aspects would lower your success rate.
Many of the shrine’s lessons had been on foundational theories.
With a shift of palm, he created a layer of emerald flame beneath the cauldron, which began to raise the temperature inside. Before long, the cauldron reached the required threshold and released waves of heat that radiated outward, like a Wood-fired sun at the center of the courtyard.
