River of Fate: Emerald Alchemist, page 17
“Are your recipes really locked to just your heritage,” she asked hesitantly, “or is there something you could teach me from it? If it truly transcends the alchemy of the empire, its value is priceless.”
“We can figure that out in our alchemy discussions,” Verse said. “I’m not sure yet. But whatever you learn, you’ll have to keep it to yourself. It will be dangerous to you if people find out what you know.”
“I know,” she said quickly. “I’d love to compare techniques with you. When can we start?”
“I’m just starting on the heritage myself,” Verse said with a laugh. He didn’t want to give her the wrong idea. “For all of its promise, I’m not that advanced as an alchemist yet. I need to practice.”
“Right, that’s why you came to Boreas,” Vesana agreed as she glanced away and frowned. She seemed disappointed that the secrets of the higher realms wouldn’t appear in front of her immediately, but then she shook herself and focused on him again.
“Time...” she said. “Well, I’ll be here for years unless something goes wrong. It’s supposed to be where I grow into my potential. So, we have time. You can always tell me in the future. I want to know everything!”
“What about those alchemists who’ve been kidnapped?” he asked as he redirected her attention. “Do they have time?”
“Maybe.” She hesitated. “Well, they’re probably safe enough for a little while, although I don’t know what sort of conditions they’re living in. If the Crimson Shade Sect wants them for their work, they should still be alive and treated somewhat reasonably.”
“Then we need to look at what Renzer is doing,” Verse said. “He’s the one hiding this information from the guild and kidnapping the new alchemists for the sect. So, that’s something you’ll need to keep an eye on. We need to find an opening to act. It would be best if we could intercept another new alchemist that he kidnaps and catch him and the sect in the act.”
Ideas flickered through his mind, but there was one big problem too.
“The trick is having enough force to do anything about it,” he added. “I’ll have to see what resources I can gather to help. This isn’t going to be solved tomorrow, unless you want to announce what’s happening to the entire city. Then, I might be able to pull in some support from the empire here. A little, anyway.”
Unfortunately, he doubted the empire would care much about this problem. From their perspective, the sect hadn’t done anything that serious. Kidnapping some brand new alchemists wasn’t good, but they hadn’t killed them and if the rumor of an antidote was true, they could still free them.
At most, the sect would get a slap on the wrist.
In reality, the empire probably wouldn’t even have time to deal with them, given the size of other issues.
As for Renzer, the empire would say it was the guild’s job to punish him. He was actively kidnapping members of his own organization and selling them to a sect, but again, they weren’t dead.
It would be easier if Vesana wanted to make the issue public, since then some attention would fall on Renzer and the guild, which would force him to stop, but she wanted to keep the guild’s name clean. That was the real sticking point. He tapped his fingers on the table as he considered what to do.
“Renzer is the main problem,” he said eventually. “Without him, the sect wouldn’t dare to steal the guild’s alchemists. He’s hiding it from them.”
“That’s true,” Vesana agreed. “The guild has enough influence to keep them in line normally. He really is a plague on our name, the bastard.” She muttered to herself for a moment.
“Alright, try to look for another alchemist coming in,” Verse said. “We need to intercept him or her the same way you found me, even if it causes some trouble. Then we track them, record what they’re doing, get some evidence, and get away safely. We can use that information to tie up Renzer, one way or another. You can acquire some tracking talismans or other methods to use that won't be noticed?”
“Yes, of course. I have some funds. And I know a guild enforcer or two who would be interested, for sure,” Vesana agreed. “That...would actually be a good way to solve it too. If I report a corrupt branch manager, the guild will give me a good report, as long as I don’t offend too many people or make it obvious to the public. Renzer has some backing or he’d never have been appointed as a branch head, but not enough to get out of that. I just need some decent evidence, or a recording on a formation disk of him doing it.”
Verse relaxed a bit, since it seemed like she didn’t want him to rush straight into the Crimson Shade Sect and start slaughtering everyone. This was a more reasonable path.
“How did you know what he was doing with the other alchemists?” he asked with a frown. “Did you investigate before?”
“A few months ago, I heard about heritage alchemists coming to register with the guild, but then never appearing, so I started paying attention,” she said. “I asked Renzer about them, but he told me they’d changed their minds and gone back to their original sects.
“That was suspicious, since there were four of them, so I looked into their sects and found out they’d never returned. After that, I heard some rumors about the Crimson Shade Sect being in discussion with the guild for heritage recipes. That sect has a huge reputation for kidnapping people.
“I also knew about Renzer’s background with them, since I looked into him when I was appointed here. They’re the main reason he got this position, or someone with his qualifications would never have made enough contributions to the guild. I suspect they’ve been giving him recipes and pills for a long time.
“The rest of it was just putting together some pieces. Once I knew he was lying to me, it wasn’t a stretch to see what was going on.”
“So no hard evidence yet,” Verse concluded. “Alright, that’s what we’ll focus on. Carefully, though.”
The plan was straightforward, but there were pros and cons to waiting for another heritage alchemist to appear, so they could catch Renzer in the act. It relied on the right opportunity. The main advantage was that it gave him some time to grow.
He had no confidence in facing a Primal Spirit cultivator right now.
For that, he needed to have some allies or talismans to help, at least enough to escape. The Azurewind Guard’s market came to mind. There were a lot of single-use talismans for sale through their channels, and some of them were more than capable of letting him escape from a Primal Spirit cultivator.
Unfortunately, they were expensive.
That brought him back to the other reason he’d come to the guild. They continued discussing the plan for a few minutes, but eventually he turned the conversation to where he wanted.
Funds for alchemy practice.
“I’d like to sell the guild copies of a few recipes from my heritage,” he said at last, “but I want some resources in exchange for them, whatever you can get. No one else can make them without my cultivation method and a jade affinity, but you can still research them.”
“Done!” Vesana said quickly, nodding her head in an instant. A flash of her strict guild personality surfaced as she studied him. “What sort of resources? And what recipes can I have? Those pill descriptions are amazing!” Then she stopped herself, shaking her head suddenly.
“No, wait...we still need to talk about your heritage, and I need to fix it for you. Then we can decide on that.” Her words trailed off into a mutter as she began to think out loud. “Rank 7 is too much. Maybe 6? No, 5 is safer. 5 is good. Yes, 5. That’s where it has to end. Absolutely no higher than that or it will get too much attention.”
A few minutes passed as she planned out something, and then she picked up the jade slip he’d given her, which was still lying on the table.
“Rank 8 and 9 herbs are legendary treasures,” she said as she studied the slip and shook her head. “I can’t believe you have recipes for them. They’re mythical wonders of the world. For alchemy, apparently they correspond to immortal pills.”
There were a few details in the slip, and here and there a main ingredient was mentioned in the description. Without the full recipe, it wasn’t very useful, but it was enough to give her an idea of what she was dealing with.
She studied the slip for a moment, as if memorizing it, and then with a graceful motion, she pulled out a similar jade slip from her robes. She held the two slips side by side as she transferred information between them. Then she clenched her hand around the slip he’d given her, crushing it into white powder.
“There!” She grimaced as she bit off the word. She was staring down at the dust in her hand, but action had been decisive. “That will have to do.”
She shoved the new slip across the table at him, and then she got up and began pacing around the room, muttering to herself again. It seemed to be a habit, or just her way of thinking out loud.
This time, she was going through the names of the pills as if she were trying to memorize them. As an Aligned realm cultivator, her memory was perfect, so it must have been a habit left over from when she was younger.
Eventually, she came back to the table and grabbed her glass. She hadn’t finished all of it, and now she downed it like liquid courage. Her hair had fallen loose from the pacing and combined with her temper, it gave her a sense of unbridled beauty. Before he could ask her what she was doing, she turned away again and started pacing around the room, refusing to look at him.
She was still struggling with the change to her world view.
Verse reached out and touched the new jade slip on the table. It was a copy of what he’d given her, but all mention of pills at Rank 6 and above had been removed. Only the Rank 5 and below were left.
She’d also scrambled a lot of the information, leaving holes in it like things had been lost over time. Now, if you didn’t know what it was supposed to say, it was very confusing.
“Alright, let’s talk about the heritage and resources,” Verse said with a nod. He would let Vesana deal with the guild. She knew it better than he did, and what she’d said was reasonable enough.
“Tell me more about the issues with it. It’s only 22 recipes. I thought it would be a small one compared to some of what the guild has.”
“You really don’t know the value of this heritage,” Vesana said as she stared at him. “Even beyond the matter of those insane ranks. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be talking about it so calmly.”
“What do you mean?” he asked. “Is there something else that makes it stand out?”
“You think it’s a small heritage?” Vesana laughed bitterly as she looked down at her empty glass. It was like his words were a heavy blow to her, and she suddenly poured herself another drink and swallowed the contents in one go.
She shuddered as the energy of the wine roared through her. It highlighted her skin with more rosy color as beads of sweat appeared on her forehead. Almost instantly, they turned to frost and dissipated into the air.
When she set the glass down, she was calmer.
“22 unique pills would be a strong heritage for a large alchemy clan,” she explained. “There are clans founded on just three or four unique pills. The rank is the main issue, yes, but that quantity is not small, especially once you take into account their variable ranks.
“There are only a handful of recipes for pills at Rank 6 in the empire, much less Rank 7. Those correspond to the Dao Echo and Divine Essence realms, what I thought was the absolute peak of cultivation. At least until you arrived.
“Not only did you bring descriptions of pills for Rank 8 and 9, two realms that don’t exist, but you have complete recipes for everything under that. Twenty-two Rank 6 pills alone would double the number of recipes at that rank in the empire, at least for those in the guild’s common knowledge. At Rank 7, it would be more like quadrupling it.
“Even at the lower ranks, adding that many unique pills will stun the market. I don’t see a lot of pills in your heritage that are designed to help cultivation, which is the main thing people want, but the utility pills and battle pills you’ve brought still make it extremely powerful, even if their effects are only middling for their rank.
“The majority of alchemists don’t have access to that many pill recipes. Most specialize in a handful of pills, and certainly less than ten. They tend to change them as they go up in rank, focusing on whatever makes them profit and the materials they can get easily. The rest, they trade for.” Vesana shook her head as she looked at him, waiting for her words to sink in.
“So, that’s what you don’t understand, obviously. It’s not a small heritage, it’s a huge one! You’re in the top echelon of heritage alchemists with just the Rank 5 recipes and below, and obviously at the absolute top if you include all the ranks. That’s why when you register it with the guild, you have to stop at Rank 5 pill descriptions.
“It pains me to say it, because there’s so much knowledge there for the guild to study, but it’s just not safe...even my own parents would be willing to kidnap you for one of those recipes, and they’re among the top hundred alchemists in the entire empire!”
She reached out and poured both him and herself another glass of spirit wine, although the rose tint to her skin had yet to fade. Instead of drinking this one, she held it in white-knuckled grip. It was obvious that she was fighting with herself over what to do.
She wanted his recipes, but at the same time she knew how much trouble they would cause.
All of her choices boiled down to protecting the guild and ensuring its stability, even if it clashed with her own desire to advance the craft. At the same time, she was willing to set that aside if she could study the recipes and expand her own knowledge, which was why she wanted to follow him, so her choices were both protective and a little selfish.
It wasn’t a bad combination.
At any rate, it aligned with his own desires.
He kept his composure as he picked up his glass. He had been so wrapped up in creating the heritage that he felt it was natural to include the full descriptions of all the ranks. He hadn’t considered that 22 pills was a lot for them, nor the limits of the empire’s cultivation system.
He’d been keeping it simple, but he ended up still making something that didn’t belong in the empire. It made him laugh for a moment, but the tone was bitter.
“The world really has fallen a long way,” the shrine agreed. His words came at the speed of thought, making it easier to hold a conversation with him at the same time as the one with Vesana. “But you aren’t bound by these limits, so don’t worry about it too much.”
“It's like standing on a beach and staring up at a tall cliff,” Verse replied. “It would be easier if I were in a boat and the tide could carry me to the top. The empire is the boat, and the world’s knowledge is the tide. Right now, I’m stuck fishing in the tide pools. Without you, I’d be there for a very long time.”
“But you found me, and I’m going to turn you into a proper dragon,” the shrine said cheerfully. “If you can gather information from her, I’ll spend some time thinking about human alchemy. Maybe there’s a way to make a few recipes work for them. It could be useful in the future for gaining allies. I just don’t know how they do things.”
“Let me know what you come up with,” Verse agreed. The shrine sent back a pulse of agreement, but then it fell silent. Meanwhile, Vesana had returned to pacing.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” Vesana was muttering, and her hair was messy from where she kept running her hands through it. It wasn’t clear if the word was targeted at him or herself, or perhaps the empire for its lacking cultivation.
It sounded like she was angry at the world for not following her wishes. It would only have been more perfect if she was stamping her feet at the same time.
The wine was probably getting to her.
“I think she likes you,” the shrine said with a laugh. “That's my fault. I didn’t think the empire was so weak as to not have any recipes past Rank 7 or I would have warned you. The cultivation realms that match Rank 8 and 9 must have been lost over time, or perhaps the humans never developed them in the first place.
“They were sometimes called the Divine Soul and True Dao realms, or just the immortal realms as a group together. Admittedly, even the Elder Races never had that many people at the True Dao realm. It’s difficult to reach. I've heard there might be even more past that, but it's only a rumor.”
Despite the seriousness with which Vesana was reacting, the shrine wasn’t bothered. He only cared about Verse and finding his old master, not the difficulties of the empire.
Verse just nodded. He hadn't expected the empire's cultivation methods would stop at the Dao Echo realm either. The Jade Scripture in his memory was complete through the True Dao realm, and it had some material that seemed to point even higher, but at the moment it wasn't something he could comprehend.
The words sounded in his mind, but they meant nothing to him. Understanding more would have to wait until he reached that realm.
After a few more minutes, Vesana pulled herself together and came back to the table. She collapsed onto the couch again and looked at him.
“Now, I have to decide what to do with you,” she complained. “I still need to register you. But I can’t give you a rank as a heritage alchemist that matches your real legacy. I wish I could.”
“What’s the rank for ditch digging?” Verse asked with a laugh. “If I can’t even tell what the cultivation realms are in the empire, clearly I’m not cut out to be an alchemist.”
He was enjoying teasing her, and the words made her scowl at him.
“Don’t be an even bigger idiot!” Vesana growled as she smacked her palm onto the table. “With that heritage you have the potential to be a legendary alchemist. Don’t you dare waste it!”
“So, how does the registration work?” he asked. “What’s the normal procedure for a heritage?”
