Chương 162: Alchemy

It took 8 days, and over 5000 doses of lotus milk for Blue Rose to lose her 'sick-by-demonic-influence' look and return to her previous 'sick-but-walking-by-herself' look. On the 9th day, Snowdrop returned from the scouting trip, the talent-scout kind. She only found 2 Sacred Bodies on the first visit, one of them another pink-haired woman in Nascent Soul, called Pella Fu. The other was another white-haired beauty, with the classic Ice Glaze Heart body, but only at peak Foundation despite being 80 years old.

She already had a Daoist name, White-cold Iris, which she chose for herself. Which goes to show that even a Sacred Body cannot develop without a proper cultivation method and resources. Beside these two Sacred Body, Snowdrop has also found thousands of hopeful prospects with rare meridians, being wasted on their home continent. Bronze Petunia housed all the Sacred Bodies inside her protected pagoda beside my lake house, and was training them into becoming proper Flowers.

Sadly, that also included my wives with a Sacred Body, from Siao to Tingling, Umi and Yao and lastly Yeng Ju, the new woman with green hair and a Green Thumb body. And while I wasn't about to debate a Dao King's ability to educate and train low realm cultivators, I still asked Luoli to check and make sure than everyone had proper cultivation methods and a technique to practice that wouldn't harm them in the long term.

Anyway, beside spending 6 hours a day fucking Blue Rose, I also spent 6 hours making pills, trying to learn and complete as many Tier 5 and Tier 6 recipes, then resting in my bubble bath and meditating on the Dao. I felt closer and closer to the Dao, and not by gaining a new level, but instead trying to produce my own Domain. Yes, from the Saint King realm onwards I did have a zone of control around me, but it was weak, and not at all comparable to a Domain.

On the other hand, there was no reason why I couldn't have a Domain right now. Tian had formed not only his Sword Domain at the peak of Great Sage realm, but in his late years he began to approach a new stage, possibly the Sword Realm aura. He was really talented though, especially in regard to the Sword Dao. I wasn't that good, but the Dao insights should still cross over to my new life. Something that Luoli said and lingered in my mind, about karma being transferred no matter how many deaths did I die.

This was compounded by Luoli ease of using arrays as if they were a Domain, flicking her fingers to bend reality at her whim. I was indeed envious of that, but envy has evolved in humans for a very good reason. To make us struggle hard and achieve what the other person had. It was a motivation tool. There was a fat chance in hell I could learn Tier 8 Formations in a short time, but gaining a Domain would likely compensate. Water rose around me, forming sword shapes by itself, but this was still only qi use.

A Domain could make air swords or water swords without using qi, simply imprinting my Dao on the universe. One by one, the water swords fell and turned into waves, until a single small sword remained. I cut my qi off, and the small sword floated for a second more, before turning into a water drop and falling into my bath, but splashing down as if I dropped a boulder. I smiled and relaxed, just as Luoli entered my bath and rested her arms on the opposite side.

"I felt a drop of rain fall. But with my Dao, not my qi. What are you doing, Pef Tian?" Luoli asked with a sneaky voice. I focused my insight and made another drop of water rise and fall.

"Dao training. Tian wasn't good at anything else beside swords. Still, I can't copy his Sword Domain yet." I complained like a victim. Luoli waved off the water splashed on her face.

"Yes. You are not Tian, and his insights do not map properly. Qingshuang had a lightning affinity, which I don't have. I fear it will take me a thousand years to copy her Lightning Domain, and even longer to form a Sword Domain. I don't even have a metal meridian." she explained and made electricity jump from a finger to another. Pef's flower lit up, as expected.

"The sky doesn't have metal either, yet clouds still form lightning. I bet lightning is much easier to make than other elements." I countered with Pef's alien knowledge about charged particles. With a smile, I raised a small cloud from the steam and charged it, until a thin electric current discharged into the water. As a proof of concept, Pef's scientific knowledge always worked, it was just a matter of scale. This story has been stolen from Royal Road.

If you read it on Amazon, please report it Luoli blinked and copied my cloud experiment, struggling a bit until she reproduced it and formed her own tiny lightning bolt.

"The walking storm! If I conjure a cloud over myself, I can direct lightning strikes at will. It's not exactly a Domain, but if it works..." she mused with anticipation. I closed my eyes and nodded. Increase the scale and yes: a Sage could become a thunderstorm, barely using any qi except if the fight took very long. But that wouldn't happen if you stunned your enemies with lightning strikes, much like we did in the demonic ambush.

Pef's memories also pointed to a way to produce fire, and even explosions, by water dissociation into oxygen and hydrogen. Qi wasn't the perfect tool for crafting a rocket engine though, but Formations could do it.

"I need all the knowledge you have on Alchemy, Luoli. You must be at least a Tier 7 Alchemist, going by what I found in the time pyramid." I asked while taking out the Tier 7 cauldron and making it float on the bubbling water. My purple-haired wife frowned, thinking about something.

"Alchemy is a waste of time, husband. Especially for a little Sage. Even for a Dao King, to be fair. Plants are very limited in what they can do, even the rare Tier 8 plants. I know you want to explore Body Cultivation through Alchemy, but after Tier 5 it's basically a net loss. There are people upstairs that wasted billions of years and countless resources, and never reached Tier 9, not to mention Tier 10. The Jade Emperor sold his nine-tailed fox for a Tier 9 Golden Trillium, and failed his Triple Lives pill.

And it gets worse from there." she advised me with a sad voice. I already guessed most of what she was saying. But there was a reason why the Bodhi Lotus had brought me here. There was a reason why I had three flowers in my soul, and a blue lotus in my Dao Grotto. Karma flowed into my new life, but I wasn't a sword idiot now.

"I've met the nine-tail fox in the pyramid. And the stone lotus invited me to return and get a Blueflame Azalea for my wife. The only reason I would do that, is if the flower would somehow help Blue Rose become an Empress. Plus, I do want our Flowers fighting in the Blood Wars to become immune to Tier 5 weapons. They won't need to carry heavy Tier 5 shields, if their bodies are as strong as a Tier 5 weapon."

I argued back, playing with two water drops, making them merge and split, then collide like tiny neutron stars. Mostly to make Pef happy with his science experiments. Luoli glared at me for no reason, then floated in my arms and pressed her forehead to mine.

"This will hurt, a lot. Remember you asked for it, my dear husband." she promised as her Alchemy knowledge began flowing into my mind. The early stages of Alchemy weren't so bad, mostly because Master Wushang has already beaten that knowledge into Tian's empty head. Tier 5 and 6 were bad, even with the Alchemy insights I got from drinking Buzhou tea. Plus, the techniques and recipes were completely different from what I learned or invented for myself.

But the Tier 7 knowledge was indeed excruciatingly painful, complex and most of all, massive in scope. Millions and billions of combinations, failed pills and why they failed, low-grade pills and why they were only low grade, and so on. A normal cultivator would need a million years to learn and practice all this, and still fail many pills afterward. The Purple Empress was built different. She was ruthless to others, but also to herself.

She would train with the same recipe for centuries, and when she could refine a Supreme pill she began again, failing on purpose just to see what happened, and how. It was partially a form of the scientific method, but also a form of insanity. A quest of knowledge, perhaps. She wanted to know, why only the petals worked for a certain pill? So she used other parts of the plants, roots, stems, leaves and so on. Most often the pills failed, exploded or mutated the users into deformed monsters.

Growing 26 legs for example. Or horns and tails, onto beasts that never had them. Live practice, and many of those beasts now roamed the wide Central Continent, sometimes being eaten, but most often eating humans and other animals. It was no wonder the Million Flowers had no Tier 7 Alchemist. If that is what it took to become one, most people would faint long before. Or puke their guts out, rip out their eyes, and then faint. I took out a bottle of Indigo Wine and drank it all, trying to wash off the bad taste.

It worked but only for half.

"Never meet your heroes, they say. Our ancestors did some bad stuff in their glorious lives." Luoli sighed and stole my wine bottle.

"I only showed you the truth. That's what real Alchemy is about. And Quingshang was quite modest in her works. You may find that other Alchemists went much further for their pills. Not only using plants and animals, but human babies and souls and worse." she said in a tired voice. I have seen such experiments with my own eyes already, so I knew it could always get worse.

"Yeah. I know. This is why Mei had her Blood Hall back home, and why she and Xueyue will build another one here. Blood research may prove vital in duplicating bloodlines, and maybe even Sacred Bodies. We will need a billion willing test subjects too, but the Blood Wars will provide lots of demonic cultivators." I explained with a dry voice.

"Willing?" Luoli asked rethorically, and waved her empty bottle at me.

"Sure. They joined a demonic cult, they will be willing volunteers. It's not like we can use innocents, right?" I argued heroically. Luoli sighed and wrapped herself around me.

"My head hurts, take me to bed. And tomorrow, I want milk." I floated into my bed and rested with Luoli in my arms. She was indeed a great wife to find. I saved a million years of alchemy research for a bit of pain. Okay, a lot of pain. Too much pain, and my head is killing me. I better sleep.