Pure Jade

by Patrick Laplante

  While the books were being laid out in front of him, Cha Ming was performing quick mental arithmetic.

  “Relax, you’ll find that time flies once you get started,” Lu Tianhao said. “I also suggest that you continue studying talismans, as your experiences in creating formations will benefit you. Truth be told, ninth-grade formations are equivalent to least-grade talismans in terms of complexity.”

  Cha Ming took up residence at the Alabaster Group in order to use the formation practice room at his leisure. For identification purposes, he was supplied with an Alabaster medallion that displayed his rank—junior member.

  Later, he found Luo Xuehua and Dongfang Hao in the communal courtyard. They congratulated Cha Ming on his admittance and decided to collaborate on further devil hunting missions. Apparently, they had a similar arrangement with Luo Tianhao. Despite the split in credit from collaborating, Cha Ming’s ability to identify devils and see them even when invisible was invaluable, and his combat prowess was nothing to sneeze at.

  The next day, Cha Ming procured 120,000 elemental stones. They were priced like mid-grade spirit stones and could be used to cultivate at greater efficiencies for specific elements. The stones were called Vital Emeralds, Fiery Rubies, Foundation Granite, Gold Essence, and Eternal Ice Rock for the five elements. The two other elements Cha Ming was proficient in, wind and lightning, used more expensive stones as focuses. Azure Wind Stones and Iridescent Lightning Stones were the gems of choice. Given the large quantities, Cha Ming acquired them at the commodity exchange. He didn’t change his identity like last time, so the creation of a different account was necessary.

  Finally, Cha Ming began an arduous one-month seclusion. The process of programing a rune into an elemental stone was extremely straightforward—he needed only to paint it like a talisman onto the stone and watch it sink inside. Still, at fifteen breaths per rune, painting twelve each of the ten thousand runes he required for the first through ninth-grade formations took roughly twenty-five days of his seclusion.

  The rest of his time was spent practicing formations. He also continued tempering his soul and mental state, successfully completing several sets of his poetic talismans.

  Katcha!

  Cha Ming’s awareness spiked as his soul broke through a part of its invisible shackles. Instead of a transparent white-colored soul, his soul began to show traces of a transparent green-jade-colored vestment. He knew intuitively that he had achieved half-step resplendent soul realm. His soul force was still incandescent in nature, but his spiritual awareness and control had increased by a factor of five.

  He faintly became aware of a tether that connected him to someone in the distance. It was a black-and-white dot he immediately recognized as Huxian.

  Huxian, can you hear me?

  Only a faint reply returned. It resembled a message: affirmative.

  I take it that your soul isn’t strong enough to converse with me? Affirmative.

  I’m sorry for getting angry at you the other day, Cha Ming said. I don’t know if you know this, but I was a slave only a short time ago. It pains me to see anyone enslaved. It’s just wrong, and I can’t accept it, Huxian. No matter how much power it gets you, it’s not worth it if you need to destroy someone’s will. I hope you can understand that. Grief and sadness came back.

  In any case, let’s talk about this when we can have a proper discussion. Agreement.

  Having finished this important discussion, Cha Ming expanded his incandescent force until he covered the entire city. Based on his prior experience, he assumed it had a range of twenty miles. There was no way to be sure, as the city walls isolated soul force. Transmission jades were required to communicate outside the city. After flexing his proverbial soul muscles, he retracted his incandescent force, dusted off his clothes, and headed toward Lu Tianhao’s office.

  He knocked softly, and the door opened invitingly. Lu Tianhao was at his desk, holding on to an ordinary doll. Cha Ming sat down respectfully and allowed him to finish what he was doing.

  “Do you know why I have this doll?” Lu Tianhao asked.

  Cha Ming shook his head.

  “It was my daughter’s. My daughter and my wife were killed by devils while I was out tempering myself. It’s ironic that I never deigned to take care of their menacing presence before then. And by the time I started caring, it was too late. I had already lost everything.” The older man sighed. “That’s why I spend my life fighting against devils and doing all I can against them.” He put the doll down gently, then focused on Cha Ming. “Have you accomplished everything?”

  Cha Ming nodded. “I’ve infused twelve of each rune I know into elemental stones, and I’ve memorized every formation in these books.”

  “Very well,” the man said. “Show me.” The office suddenly disappeared. It was as though they were in a different dimension. “This is my domain,” Lu Tianhao’s voice said, echoing in the darkness. “I am in complete control here. You don’t need to care about damaging things.”

  The man waved his hand, forming one of the most elementary first-grade formations with twelve brown stones. Twelve stones were usually the minimum requirement for a formation, and there were few exceptions. “Break it.”

  Cha Ming thought for ten breaths before thinking of the optimal counter formation. He laid it down and poured a minutia of energy required to activate it.

  “Too slow!” Lu Tianhao yelled. He threw out yet another twelve brown stones in a different arrangement. “Break it!”

  Cha Ming thought once more before taking out the optimal counter. “Too slow again!”

  They continued the process for six hours, shifting between various formations. Every time, Cha Ming was berated for being too slow.

  “Let’s take a break,” Lu Tianhao said. “We’ll start again shortly, but this time I want you to use the first formation you think of that could possibly counter my formation, even if it’s not optimal. In a battle of formations, breaths matter. Think about it: I wasn’t reacting at all while you were breaking my formation. How many more formations could I lay down? Ten? Twenty? Any response that takes more than one breath is garbage unless you have a huge advantage.”

  A few minutes later, Cha Ming stood up once more to resume. Twelve blue stones flew out. They made a completely different formation than the ones he was familiar with. However, it looked like one of them. Without thinking, he threw out twelve brown stones and activated a formation. The blue formation broke in less than a second.

  “Good. Next.”

  Twelve green stones flew out, forming another unknown formation. Cha Ming threw out his first guess. It didn’t break the formation, but this time Cha Ming was prepared for such a result. He threw out his next best guess, which shattered the formation.

  “Good response. Keep it up,” Lu Tianhao yelled.

  Whenever he threw a formation out, Cha Ming would break it in one or two attempts. Some would take three. As time passed, the number of attempts required shrank. Cha Ming gained an understanding of what generally worked and what didn’t. Some formations were effective at breaking dozens of others, while some failed repeatedly or only broke one or two formations. He was quick to discard these as useless for breaking formations, and instead focused on the more effective ones.

  Before long, one thousand formations became two hundred, and two hundred became fifty. Out of these fifty, he used thirty or so the most but used the remainder in a variety of special cases. It dawned on Cha Ming that breaking formations was not as difficult as laying them down, and that precision wasn’t as important. Instead, power and general effectiveness were the key. The flexibility of specific runes was another key component. For example, out of the thirty-six formations, many of the runes were transferable. Out of the remaining fifty, all the runes were recycled. Cha Ming quickly became aware of the core-breaking runes.

  “We’ll stop here for the day,” Lu Tianhao said.

  The last minute of Cha Ming’s first twenty-four hours of instruction had passe
d. Lu Tianhao waved his hand, and four thick books flew from the shelf and landed in front of Cha Ming.

  “Learn as many of these least-grade formations as you can before returning,” he instructed. Then he retrieved another book. “To form them, you’ll need to either condense sigil focuses or infuse formations into formation flags, depending on your preference. As for the stones you just produced, you can just use them to cultivate or something. They are garbage now.”

  Cha Ming’s face twitched, but Lu Tianhao ignored him. “It’s your choice whether to condense sigils or produce flags. Sigils are more flexible but less effective. They rely on your comprehension to substitute for prepared formations. Flags, however, are more precise but far less flexible.”

  Another book landed in front of Cha Ming. “Since you will likely try to condense at least a few sigils, here are some elementary combat formations. This will fulfill my first promise to you about a movement technique. There are a few combat formations in this book that you can use to greatly increase your movement speed.”

  Cha Ming bowed respectfully before exiting Lu Tianhao’s office. He didn’t return to his residence right away but proceeded to a different part of the residence courtyard.

  It was time to meet Mo Tianshen, the reason that Cha Ming had come to the Alabaster Group in the first place.

  Chapter 24: Mo Tianshen

  The sun was shining brightly through a large open window in the Alabaster Group’s residential quarters. This was also where the Grandmaster Alchemist Mo Tianshen spent most of his time, as the sunlit area was the only convenient place for him to grow most medicinal herbs. A good twenty-five percent of the courtyard was off-limits for just this reason. It wasn’t a physical demarcation, but rather an understanding that cultivation could cause the medicinal herbs to wither. Angering a core-formation alchemist was considered a career-limiting move.

  Cha Ming was seated outside the alchemist’s office, waiting for him to finish whatever work he was doing. There was a convenient button just outside the door that allowed Cha Ming to leave a message without causing any noise or disruption. The alchemist would let him in once he read it.

  He waited for an hour before an explosion echoed across the courtyard. Black smoke puffed out from the office, which doubled up as a workshop. After a few breaths’ time, an alchemist walked out, coughing and wheezing. He was a graying man with long hair tied in a topknot. His green alchemist robes were covered in thick soot.

  Cha Ming looked down awkwardly, avoiding any eye contact with the obviously embarrassed alchemist. Patting sounds ensued, and so did the sound of a bucket of water being poured. A roaring flame indicated that it was safe. Cha Ming finally looked up to see the grandmaster alchemist in tip-top shape.

  “I presume you are Cha Ming?” Mo Tianshen asked. Cha Ming nodded. “Come on in then.”

  They walked into a workshop, which was filled with various beakers, vials, powders, and tiny balls Cha Ming could only assume were medicinal pills. Some medicinal herbs were growing on a shelf, while others were either drying or soaking. The place smelled like a cross between a botanical garden and a funeral home.

  “What can I do for you today?” the alchemist said, picking up a tiny brown sphere from the table. He also picked up a green vial and a dropper, which he used to douse the small sphere with varying amounts of the green liquid. With every drop, the brown sphere glowed brighter. A glistening secondary coating appeared, but it ultimately crumbled. The alchemist shook his head in dismay and moved on to the next sphere. “Well? I don’t have all day.”

  “Grandmaster, I’m looking for someone to make me medicinal pills to advance my cultivation,” Cha Ming said. “I’ve been embargoed by the Alchemists Guild due to my participation in the internal politics of the Jade Bamboo Conglomerate. In addition, my element configuration is special, making it difficult to find a sufficiently skilled freelance alchemist.”

  “I see,” the alchemist said, proceeding to the next batch of spheres. “Why don’t you go to the Obsidian Syndicate?”

  Cha Ming frowned. “Not only is it against the rules, but I don’t think it’s worth it to do business with them.”

  “Excellent,” the alchemist said. “So, you agree that some things are more important than advancing your cultivation.” Various drops of a red viscous liquid fell on some metallic spheres. “Do you know what I’m doing with these experiments?” he asked.

  Cha Ming shook his head.

  “I’m creating hope,” the alchemist continued. “These pills are all extremely low-leveled pills. Quite frankly, I could be making a fortune making core pills. However, I’ve determined that the worth of what I’m doing here is far greater than anything I could accomplish in the upper echelons of society.

  “My current talent-infusion pill is at its eighth iteration. It costs me ninety silvers to produce it, yet it only gives a ten-percent chance to infuse one with first-grade cultivation talent. Many people think this is already pretty good, but I know for a fact that this price point is too high for ninety-eight percent of the population. If that’s the case, no amount of time will make it so that cultivation talent is widespread enough for the mass-scale projects envisioned by the king.

  “For that, I need at least twenty-percent success and a material cost of only ten silvers. To do this, I need to be very selective about using low-grade medicinal herbs. I need to involve mortal chemists in the eventual mass production, and it needs to have very minimal involvement with traditional professions. No one with a qualification of third-grade alchemist or higher will ever want to produce this pill, because it simply doesn’t pay enough.”

  The alchemist then looked Cha Ming in the eyes. “Which leads me to my next question. Is your cultivation speed more important, or is the improved livelihood and prosperity of fifty million citizens in this empire more important?”

  Cha Ming wasn’t sure how to answer this question. He knew that his struggle was important, but it implicated five million people at most. “There are people dying,” Cha Ming said. “I need to get stronger to help them.”

  “That is admirable,” the alchemist said gently. “Therefore, you can understand why I don’t want to divert time away from my experiments. No one else wants to do what must be done, and only my apprentice and I bother with it. Without widescale prosperity, the citizens are helpless against the upcoming turbulent times. Even if they survive, the empire will take centuries to recover.” Mo Tianshen continued to perform his experiments as Cha Ming sat down, brooding. It was quite difficult to make a selfish case in the face of that reasoning.

  After thinking hard and not finding a solution, Cha Ming decided to observe Mo Tianshen’s experiments. He had always been a problem solver, and this puzzle could potentially change the fate of an entire nation. He felt an itch that he needed to scratch.

  “Are you trying to solidify a coating atop an existing pill?” Cha Ming asked casually.

  “Something like that,” the alchemist said while dripping another solution. “These aren’t exactly pills; they’re compressed powder pellets that are easily generated by apprentice alchemists or apothecaries. It contains all the active ingredients required in an effective medicine, but these ingredients are not available enough for human absorption. In addition, there are various pill toxins that make it so that one cannot take it more than three times. With this coating, I am hoping to provide a compound that can dissolve the active ingredient while also destroying the pill toxins.”

  As he said this, the last batch of pills was coated. The alchemist took out a press and began manually pressing batches of various powders.

  “Why does it need to be a coating?” Cha Ming asked.

  The alchemist continued to work while patiently answering his question. “It needs to be a coating because both the activating ingredient and the counter ingredient to the toxins will ruin the pill if exposed for too long. In fact, the ingredients were originally part of version three, which had four-percent efficiency and could be used fou
r times. I speculate that if the pellet, the activating ingredient, and the counter ingredient are introduced at exactly the same time, the efficacy will be much higher.”

  “Why can’t the liquid be taken separately?” Cha Ming asked.

  “You really like to ask questions, don’t you…” the alchemist said, not slowing his pace in the slightest. “Well, I could perform these experiments with my eyes closed, so no harm in explaining. You see, if the liquid is taken at the same time, it will react quickly, but the solid pill will dissolve slowly in the stomach. Thus, only three percent or so of the pill is enhanced by drinking the liquid, and the rest is not. I need a coating that dissolves at the same rate as the pill.”

  Tricky problem, Cha Ming thought. Would a textured coating work? No, it seems that it’s a stability problem. The coating reacts with the pill. It needs to be applied in a dissolvable, stable way. However, this would also affect the chemical makeup. Is there a way to affect the physical properties without affecting the chemical makeup?

  A half hour passed as Cha Ming thought through various scenarios. During this time, Mo Tianshen was able to complete his next batch of pellets. He also continued the process of applying different drops from different vials.

  “May I try something?” Cha Ming said after a sudden epiphany.

  “What do you wish to try?” the alchemist asked.

  “I wish to try applying the coating in the shape of a rune,” Cha Ming said.

  The alchemist’s hands paused. “I tried one hundred first-grade runes in the past,” the alchemist said, sighing. “It didn’t work.”

  “Then it’s convenient that there are another nine hundred runes of the same level remaining,” Cha Ming stated.

  Frowning, the alchemist placed a vial in front of Cha Ming. “How many runes could you form that are compatible with this liquid?”