LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 16: Refinement
Booker ducked into an alleyway on his way back to the Sect. In the space of a few minutes, the disguise of the masked physician was bundled away beneath his robes, wrapped around the herbs he’d bought from the market.
He made his way back into the Sect as an ordinary cripple, passing beneath the notice of the other disciples.
Alone in his room, he undertook the work of chopping, peeling, and treating the ingredients that he’d bought from the market. He’d expected it to be more difficult with his left hand, and it was but with the book’s guidance, there was nothing impossible about doing a little alchemy with only one hand.
In his head, there was a ledger of receipts and prescriptions. Hairy wire root and sylvan blossom for headache, 6 silver. Rabbitbane and fire persimmon for impotence, 3 silver. Crowsfoot clover and butterfly wings for bad dreams, 4 silver.
He ran down the list.
All told the ingredients cost me 32 silver. And I’m charging…
128 silver. 400%.
The prices of the market were outrageous. Medicine was being sold at up to 8 times the cost of the herbs used to make it.
Of course, for the normal alchemists, costs were high. The average alchemist had a 2-in-3 success rate, meaning they would have to charge an extra 50% just to defray the costs of the 1 failed pill between the 2 successful ones. When you factored in the costs of maintaining a furnace and all the tools of alchemy, that was another 50%. The value of their own time spent making the pills would add another 50% easily. And to actually make a profit, another 50% was necessary.
All that should have set the cost around 300% of the base ingredients. But in the market, it was common to find alchemists selling pills for 600 to 800% of their value.
By comparison, Booker had none of those costs. He could form pills without a failure rate, and minimal effort. For him the endeavor was basically pure profit.
And it wasn’t just a matter of making more money than other alchemists. He could price his pills lower than they could afford to, and sweep up all the business too.
But that would attract a lot of attention.
Better to keep my prices at something like 400% – something a generous alchemist could actually afford to offer.
In the end, he had assembled eight ‘starter pills’ – rough balls of gently molded ingredients. Taking one into his hand, he summoned the power of Furnace, and as fire wreathed through his fingers a perfectly round pill was born.
He repeated this action seven more times. The last time he’d stretched his capacities, five had been the limit, but now at eight he was only beginning to feel faint. I must have expanded my limits somehow. Maybe it was eating the soul-strengthening pill, or maybe it was uncovering the focus state.
Either way, he finished his work with energy to spare. The last pill he made was the hair-restoring pill for the clerk, and he had a secret ingredient to add:
Seven-Year Flower Syrup
Extract // Dull Quality
A common folk medicine produced by soaking flowers in sugar syrup for seven years.
Effects:
Alluring Fragrance (-)
Additional Effect: Reduce Toxicity by 5%.
When the pill was complete it smelled absolutely amazing, a rich dense mix of spices. And from the combination of the seven-year syrup and his careful work with the knife, the pill was totally free from Toxicity.
Never mind quantity; in this market, nobody can compete with me on quality either.
Sliding the pills into a bamboo tube he sealed it with wax dripped from a candle, and set it aside. With a heavy sigh he stretched his arms overhead. His day had gone largely as planned: Instructor Greenmoon was a nasty surprise, but his plans remained unchanged. He wanted to stay masterless as long as it took to complete Wild Swan’s pill. Maybe by then it would be possible to mend things with Master Ping. Or maybe he would use his alchemy talents to secure a kinder instructor than Greenmoon.
Rising from his chair he stepped into the center of the room, and began to practice his forms. It had been a busy day and he already wanted to lie down, but his days were only going to get more complicated, so if he didn’t follow his routine now, by that same logic he’d be letting it slip constantly going forward. It was worth being disciplined with himself on this matter.
When I’m a cultivator my life will depend on my strength. Practice is going to be everything.
His fists struck empty air, his feet danced against invisible blows. He switched easily from the Mantis clan’s martial forms that Rain had practiced all his life into shadowboxing, his own preferred practice.
And it’s not enough to be ‘kinda good’ or try ‘sorta hard’.
This world is full of people who’ve practiced martial arts from day one.
A normal amount of dedication won’t pull me ahead. I’ll need to be superhumanly dedicated to make up for the fact I’m not superhumanly talented.
He moved until the sweat on his face was heavy and dripping down through his eyebrows, splashing against his eyes, blinking away the saline that pooled on his lower eyelid. He wiped it all away and sat down, breath heaving unsteadily in his chest.
As his breathing steadied and his pulse slowed, Booker found himself drifting in the post-exercise calm, when the adrenaline of the workout was just starting to fade off but still lent a sharpness to his thoughts. In that state, he tried to find his focus.
It was more difficult now than it had been in the hospital bed. His state of immobility-enforced concentration was now replaced with all the distractions of living a more-complicated-than-usual life.
But slowly he was able to let the tension shed from his shoulders, let his breathing flow clearly through his body, and reach a moment of focus. It lasted only for as long as it took Booker to notice he had entered the focus state.
Like I thought. It gets harder if you’re actively seeking it; the realization you’ve found it will usually break you out of it.
But if you turn your attention to something else, you can slip into focus naturally…
Alright, book. Teach me about the herbs for the Seven-Times Purified Charcoal Pill. But only the ones that are likely to grow near the Sect.
The green book’s pages flipped open.
It landed on the page for River Nerve Mandrake, a rare red-rooted mandrake that could scream in pain when it was plucked. Booker winced, but read on. The mandrake grew at the edge of rivers, where someone’s body had landed after floating down the water. When a village was slaughtered by bandits and the river turned red, in three or four months there’d be a crop of River Nerve Mandrake, and it would sing from one plant to the next.
Booker grimaced but noted the name down. He’d have to check again at the library, but he was pretty sure the Sect knew of such a common root.
Unfortunately, that was the last of the possible ingredients that he could call ‘common’. Everything else was difficult to lay hands upon. There were marrows from the bones of ancient pseudo-dragons, the tears of sacred serpents, trees of thousand year heritage, and other incredibly rare sources for Meridian Cleansing, but all of them were at the peak of what the book called Dull-Grade. In short, they exist at the peak of this Sect’s lower levels. They might exist in the Sect’s vaults, but they might not…
For the first time, Booker took out one of the true treasures he’d collected. The seal of authority from the Upper Sect disciple, the cultivator who had descended to fight the demonic ape, only to find a dead infant ape and an exhausted cripple who claimed to have killed it with a firework.
In retrospect I wonder if I already had Martial Intent then… He might have seen right through me.
Either way he gave me this.
If I’m unable to get the herbs from the Sect’s repositories, I’ll cash it out immediately to try and get the herbs sent down from the higher Sect. That’s something I could never achieve otherwise, so it’s definitely a worthy use.
One problem it can’t solve, though.
My master.
I’m not sure what to do about that.
For a long time, Booker tried to enter the focus-state by pursuing the matter out, arguing this way and that, but he never found a resolution that seemed fitting or a chance to enter the focus-state.
He lay down, letting sleep wipe his troubles away.
— — —
He awoke the next day to the ringing of the bell.
It was a harsh, cold morning. The breakfast crowd was assembling in the freezing cold cafeteria to receive their daily dollop of congee. Mist hung in the courtyard outside his door, and the metal knob was covered in frost. Icicles dangled like hanging swords from the edge of the rooftops.
As the students assembled for breakfast, he spotted Little Snake through the crowd and made his way over.
“Brother Little Snake, how have you been.”
“Brother Rain! I heard you were back on your feet!” The little disciple’s face shone with enthusiasm. “You have to come back to the fighting ring – people know your name now, and want to bet on the Iron Cripple..”
“I can maybe do something like that.” Booker scratched his neck. He’d taken it unhealthily far last time, but fighting did let him shed his stress.
Drinking or fighting… I have a habit of overdoing it…
“Listen, Little Snake. How much of your rice ration do you have?” Novices and disciples got a monthly ration of spiritual rice. It was small, but enough to eat only spiritual rice for one week out of the month, as long as you ate sparingly. The effects of spiritual food were much less obvious than cultivation pills, but there was said to be an effect of helping you break through your own barriers and achieve a step forward in cultivation.
So the ration was intended to give each student a week a month to prepare themselves to break through.
“Uh, nothing.” Little Snake admitted, shrugging. “There was no rice ration this month.”
Booker paused. He’d never heard of that happening before.
“I guess I’m not that in tune with the Sect’s gossip.” Booker said, rubbing his chin slightly. “Did anyone say why there was no ration?”
“Rumors all over.” Little Snake replied. “Some say bandits on the road caught the grain wagon. Others are saying it disappeared out of the storehouse, or that it’s some squabble between the Central Sect and the Eastern Branch.”
The Eastern Branch grew almost all of the Sect’s food, but lacked the strong city that Central Sect controlled. As such it was considered a rural outback full of hick half-cultivators. To say they resented that image was no small understatement.
The footing of this Sect is really unbalanced. A strong push could send everything tumbling.
“I’ll see what the other cripples have to say.” Booker said. “But if you can find anyone who still has their full week of rice, tell them I’ll pay for it with medicine or cold hard silver.”
Little Snake nodded. The breakfast line was coming together now, and Booker was obliged to shuffle to the back with the other cripples.
But this time when he made his way to the massive iron serving cauldron, the chef there chuckled, reaching into a smaller pot of fresher congee and spooning it generously into Booker’s bowl. He tossed in pickled greens, chunks of bacon held together by grease, and the much-sought-after poached egg atop it all. “Chen Jie says the Iron Cripple eats like a patriarch today.”
“Kh.” Booker snorted. “That’s such a hard nickname for doing such a dumb thing.”
But he glanced back in line, catching Chen Jie’s eye, and nodded his head gratefully.
As he took his seat, he smoothly slid Sister Mei’s bowl aside and pushed his own bowl, loaded with extras, in front of her. Her eyes lit up. “Ooo, thank you. Elder sister greets her junior brother’s gift with appreciation.”
“It’s nothing. Uh, but… I don’t want to lead you on.” Booker said. “I’m not interested in romance.”
“Lead me on? You’ve been colder than a stone wall, I could’ve used some leading on at least.” She rolled her eyes. “But you strike me as someone worth being friends with.”
I appreciate the honesty. Sister Mei strikes me as someone who attaches herself to power, but she isn’t a bad person. She really is my friend – even if her friendship comes with conditions. “Sister Mei’s friendship is no small gift.” He said.
“See, that’s what I’m saying.” She stabbed the egg and mixed the runny yellow yolk down into her congee. Booker felt his stomach revolt at the thought of skipping out on the best bowl of congee he’d seen in weeks.
Patience, patience. I’ll be able to find spirit food somewhere else.
The alternative was going hungry for a full week. And while that was strictly possible, it was incredibly draining in terms of energy after the first few days, leaving the body running at a deficit. It wasn’t very compatible with the lifestyle Booker was leading.
Moreover…
The book didn’t give him quests for no reason. There was always something to be learned in the act of following the quest, be that studying a book or experimenting with pillmaking. If the book wanted him to eat spirit food for a week…
There must be some benefit to that even before completing the quest.
“Sister Mei, do you know why there was no rice ration this month?” He asked, consigning himself to sitting while everyone else ate, despite his rumbling stomach.
“Nobody believes them, and they’re due to be whipped, but the cripples guarding the grain warehouse say the rice was delivered just fine, then somehow vanished during the night.” Sister Mei said, waving a finger to the air. “I think if they were lying, they would have better lies than that. A cripple knows not to be without an excuse when trouble rolls downhill.”
“Indeed, with the way things fall, we learn to duck and cover.” Booker agreed. “Who were they?”
“Brothers Ming and Wei. They’re being held in the seventh-east courtyard.”
The courtyard where the Sect’s enforcers keep their living quarters, and the punished are kept in stockades.
“I might have to pay them a visit and hear their story.” Booker said casually.
“Mm, be careful. The enforcers think of us cripples as a mass of sticky hands and thieving eyes.” Sister Mei immediately cautioned. “If they see you they might grab you as a conspirator. It might be better to visit them after.”
“I’ll be careful.” Booker agreed. “But is there any promise of them surviving until ‘after’?”
Being whipped is a pretty fucking brutal experience that can leave you bed-ridden for days. That’s when a normal person is doing it. A cultivator could easily kill you, and it would be a torturous death.
“No, but with two of them… maybe one makes it through.” Sister Mei didn’t slow eating her congee, but her eyes were briefly downcast.
“Maybe I can tip the balance. But keep that between you and me.” Booker withdrew from the table, walking quickly out of the hall. His schedule had just gotten one more stop on an already busy day. He made his way back to his rooms and pulled out the medicine boxes he’d stored there. They were still full of plenty of riches Booker had yet to use.
Earth-Sea Spirit Blossom
Powder // Dull Quality
Grown only on delta islands formed by a river joining the sea, these rare flowers carry the blessing of both the ocean and the land.
Effects:
Qi Recovery 15% (-)
Beast-Bone Meal
Powder // Dull Quality
Powder made from grinding the bones of vicious beasts. Frequently used to bind together cheap pills.
Toxicity and Potency 5% (-)
These were ‘trash’ pulls he’d gotten from prior boxes. Both of them were reasonably useful, but weren’t much more than filler.
Concentrate of Stone Lion Liver
Extract // Dull Quality
Produced from the organs of a mountain-dwelling stone lion, a powerful predator that consumes the power of earth.
Effects:
Body Strengthening 10% (-)
Additional Effect: Earth-Type Cultivation Boosts contained within this medicine also provide Body Strengthening equal to their full value.
This was an actual prize, something he thought had the potential to be overwhelmingly valuable to him. Body Strengthening was a route to power that didn’t rely on his crippled cultivation. If he could accumulate enough of it, he’d be able to fight on even terms.
The only restriction was it required Earth-Type Cultivation Boosts from other ingredients to shine.
And Booker had precisely none of those.
Wind-Song Palace Razorgrass
Intact // Earth Quality
Growing in delicate, glass-like stalks, this tough grass is sharp enough to cut through skin with ease. When the wind rises, it cuts against the grass and produces beautiful, mournful music.
Effects:
Cultivation Boost 10% (Metal)
Cultivation Boost 10% (Sky)
Sharpened Perception 25% (+)
Toxicity 15% (-)
Azure-Sea Coral Dust
Powder // Earth Quality
A root prized by wild bulls for its… stimulating effects. Hunters use trained steers to root out clusters, selling them to cultivators.
Cultivation Boost 10% (Water)
Blue-Fire Glassfruit
Intact // Earth Quality
A translucent fruit, the structures of pale blue luminescence within resembling a frozen candleflame.
Qi Recovery 20% (-)
Cultivation Boost 10% (+)
Body Strengthening 10% (Fire)
Fire Resistance 20% (+)
These were all the Elemental herbs Booker had gotten from his prize boxes.
And besides those…
Green Banded Mushroom
Intact // Dull Quality
Named for the green and brown rings around its puffball body, this mushroom is famous for its ability to instill cultivation in the wild pigs that dine on it, leading to it being called ‘Demon Boar Pustule’ in some provinces.
Qi Recovery 10% (+)
Toxicity 20% (-)
Cultivation Boost 5% (+)
Potency 5% (-)
Petrified Amber-Bound Mosquito
Intact // Earth Quality
A tiny insect preserved in hardened tree sap, like a crystalline window into the nature of the past. Contains decades of accumulated qi with a nature born of passing time.
Cultivation Boost 10% (-)
Longevity Increase 1% (+)
Qi Recovery 20% (-)
Potency and Toxicity 10% (+)
Crimson Dew Snapdragon
Intact // Dull Quality
Flowers born where blood has been shed. Frequently gathered around slaughter houses.
Painkilling 25% (-)
Qi Recovery 10% (+)
Toxicity 20% (+)
Potency 10% (+)
Hellsheart Lily Extract
Extract // Earth Quality
The pollen and nectar of a lily that only blooms at the heart of demonic corruption within the land.
Demonic Cultivation 10%
Additional Effect: Change any Cultivation Boosts to Demonic Cultivation of the same value.
Fragrant Mountain Peach
Intact // Dull Quality
A rare peach from a tree that gathered wind-swept energies of the heaven in its branches, high atop a mountain ridge.
Moderate Healing (-)
Potency 5% (-)
Toxicity Purge 10% (-)
Alluring Fragrance (-)
The last one was such a treasure Booker had trouble not eating it right away, just to see how it tasted.
But there was one more thing: Booker had bought herbs from the market place the first time he’d visited. They were Greentoe Root, Balmflower, Weaver’s Nettle, and Old Oak-Eye Berries. The Balmflower in particular was a strong painkiller.
Balmflower
Intact // Dull Quality
A flower prized for relieving suffering. Toxic in large doses.
Painkilling 20% (-)
Potency 5% (-)
Toxicity 20% (-)
Toxicity 10% (-)
Now, he mixed Balmflower with Stringent Nettle from the garden, creating a mixture that would harden the skin and toughen the body against pain. But that mixture had a high toxicity. He could cut the poisonous stamen away from the balmflower to remove part of the Toxicity while the Stringent Nettle’s own Toxicity had a negative interaction with the 10%, neutralizing it. But he also wanted to add in Crimson Dew Snapdragon to further the painkilling effects.
Adding in Green Banded Mushroom would neutralize the 20% Toxicity while adding Potency. He would cut away the Balmflower’s native Potency to keep it from negating the Potency of the Green Banded Mushroom, while cutting away the Allergic Reaction from the Nettle. The Crimson Dew Snapdragon would even activate the Stringent Nettle’s Potency. He then added Beast Bone Meal for filler.
He did all this and portioned it into two piles.
The end result was two vibrant green pills that smelled of moss.
Stringent Nettle (Peeled)
x
Balmflower (Chopped)
x
Red Dew Snapdragon
x
Green Banded Mushroom
x
Beast Bone Meal
=
Rhinoceros Invulnerability Pill (Dull)
24% Potency // 13% Toxicity
Effect:
Toughens the skin and grants great resilience to pain. Has a minor regenerative effect on Qi.
Booker smiled, but there was one last touch.
The actual whipping would happen at dusk the day after the investigation concluded. He didn’t have the luxury of delivering the pills five minutes before the event – that was when they’d be most tightly watched. But the book had a trick in it…
Painting a pill with wax to delay its effects!
Many alchemists had encountered this problem before, and they solved it by coating the pill with just enough wax or resin for it to survive an hour or two in the belly as that outer coating dissolved away.
Dripping his candle into a shallow dish, Booker applied the finishing coat with a paintbrush.
When it came to alchemy, the book really was priceless. It didn’t just contain the recipes, but the techniques and tricks of generations of alchemists.
Standing up, Booker slipped the two pills into a vial.
Now I just need to go get Snips…
— — —
Returning to the courtyard where the medicine dealers did their business, Booker strode up to them, nodding to the disciples who stood on all sides warily observing him for signs of trouble. He bowed his head respectfully to the three dealers. “Junior brother greets his Elder Brothers and Sisters.”
“See? Obedient as anything. I don’t know why you think he’s mouthy, Yuxuan.” The girl immediately declared, taking no time in ribbing the blonde-headed young man.
“Caihong, you know absolutely nothing about this loathsome vermin, which is all the better for you. He’s not worth your breath wasted speaking to him.” Yuxuan spat out, glaring daggers at Booker.
“Temper, temper. This much hate and you’ll be accused of having an unnatural fixation on him.” Bowl Cut chided with a mocking tone. “Or do cripples turn your wheels, Yuxuan?”
“My ingredients?” Booker asked, impatiently. Their perpetual jabbing at each other was tiring just to watch.
“Right.” The girl – Caihong – looked past him and nodded to a thug. The disciple stepped up and shoved a sack into Booker’s hands. Looking inside, he saw his ingredients were there, although not particularly well-treated. They had been lumped into a pile.
“You still haven’t told me what they’re for.” Caihong said, leaning towards him.
Because I don’t intend to. But Booker caught the look in her eye and considered his words carefully. In the end, the more he resisted giving a partial truth, the more likely she’d be to decide she cared enough to have his secrets ripped out of him.
“I’m using them as fodder to learn refining.” Booker said in an even, steady voice.
As far as she knows, that answer makes perfect sense. All of the ingredients are low-cost medicines with an elemental attribute: the ideal fodder for refinement training.
“Is that all?” She let out a disappointed sigh. “And here we thought you might be interesting.”
“Well, Elder Brothers and Sisters, I’m sorry to disappoint.” He turned and stepped away. I see what my master meant by parasites in the Sect. These people aren’t just exploiting the Sect, they take every opportunity they can to dig into new hustles. They’re not onto my secret at all, they’re just probing to see if I have any income streams they can get their hands into.
— — —
Once he’d collected his ingredients, Booker went to his room and carried out the medicine boxes. At first, he was worried about walking the halls with such a wealth of treasures on him, but the more he thought about it, the more totally unnoticeable a cripple carrying a non-descript chest was.
Sure enough, nobody even looked his way as he hauled the two boxes out and set them on a cart he’d rented. They rolled off into the city and Booker was smiling, feeling the wind of the early morning in his hair and smelling the rich aromas of the city’s cookery stalls heating up their little clay ovens.
On the way, they stopped in a market and Booker bought a load of fresh pottery clay to add to the cart. When they arrived and Booker paid the cart driver, he slid the boxes into his little apartment.
It was a huge relief off his mind to no longer have incriminating evidence sitting around.
Froggy, however, seemed a little concerned by the move. The yellow-backed frog had slowly been growing his missing leg back, and had learned to move around the room on only three legs. Now he gazed warily at the new apartment, staring at the shadowy, cobwebbed corners of the room. His tongue flickered out along his rubbery lips. Booker could almost tell what the creature was thinking.
“You’ve got your work cut out for you here, yep.” Booker said, sitting down on the bare floor.
His belly was empty, but he still had plenty of energy for what came next.
It was time for refining.
Refining was an alchemical process that took one property and exchanged it for another. The possible new properties were drawn from a pool that depended on the original property, with different possible outcomes depending on the uncontrollable minutia of the heat and freshness of the ingredients and a million other small factors that made it basically random.
But one thing was definitely true – more refinements meant better possible properties.
It also meant you needed a better technique: weaker techniques could only refine a few times, with high probabilities of losing the ingredients at every step. The Thunder Neutralization Jar was a massively valuable treasure in and of itself – it let a non-cultivator refine up to the 3rd level! The amount of value you could draw from low valued ingredients and relatively weak workers was immense: you could simply brute force common ingredients into gold.
But that’s not here or now.
Here and now, I need to get my refinement rate up to 50 or 60% so I have a reasonable chance of reaching the third refinement stage.
He eyed the clay oven in his backyard, grabbing wood and tinder from the woodbox to throw inside. A snap of his fingers and the thought Furnace lit the oven, setting the fuel ablaze and making huge flames lick up to the ceiling. As he waited for things to burn down into manageable coals, Booker grabbed the first hunk of clay and let his hands run over the solid, soggy mass, shaping it into a ball.
How hard could this be?