His father smiled. “You feel correctly. As you already know, the Cao Clan has been aggressive of late. They are the ones who pushed for this war against the demons, and they have profited the most from the Li Clan’s fall, including recruiting their patriarch to their side as an elder. What you might not know is that they’ve been widening their web of alliances. The Li Clan used to be the Cao Clan’s greatest ally, so the old structure of alliances is no longer tenable.
“As a result, the Cao Clan has been doing much like us. They’ve been recruiting vassal clans just like us, mostly mid-sized ones and small ones as well. And like us, they have much to offer them. We offer knowledge long lost, and they offer resources. The war on the demon lands has been extremely profitable. Not only have they been able to secure alliances in this way, but they’ve also been able to buy many favors. Moreover, due to the absence of the Li Clan, the Cao Clan has been forced to offer favorable conditions and force a strong economic alliance.”
“A great sect?” Wei Longshen asked.
“They never did get along with the sects,” Patriarch Wei said. “Sects don’t like the army. They tend to fight for themselves and not get involved in prefecture politics. No, instead, they’ve forged some sort of agreement with the Xia Clan.”
Wei Longshen frowned. “But they recruited the Li Clan’s patriarch.”
“You’d be amazed at how forgiving people will be when one’s entire clan is exterminated,” Patriarch Wei said dryly. “Moreover, this is not a solid alliance. It’s a business relationship. Their newest elder came with a lot of useful information.”
“I see,” Wei Longshen said. “They rigged the auctions.”
“They didn’t rig anything,” Patriarch Wei said. “It’s just that the Cao Clan and the Xia Clan by extension have been more aware of the true value of certain assets. Accountants can only do so much.”
“I see the problem,” Wei Longshen said. “This is why you’ve opened up to the idea of a marriage alliance with the Mi Clan.”
“It’s one option out of many,” Patriarch Wei admitted. “You should know, however, that the Cao Clan hasn’t softened their attempts at forming an alliance with us either. Cao Wenji, Patriarch Cao’s main wife, has also been very active in seeking out his future bride. She visits the Mi Clan often.”
Wei Longshen’s expression darkened. “This is the first I’ve heard of this.”
“You should speak to your sister more often, then,” Patriarch Wei said. “Time with family is never wasted time, and you’d be amazed at what you can discover. And before you use me as an example, you should know that I’m not a good one. I’m not a very social person.”
Cao Wenluan and his parents should know that it’s only a matter of time before Mi Fei and I tie the knot, Wei Longshen thought. Are they trying to distract me to slow me down from recruiting more clans and sects?
“It is difficult to say what their ultimate motives are,” Patriarch Wei continued. “But suffice to say that things cannot remain as they stand. That is why you must not only stabilize our weak but growing allies in the near term, you must also speak with your peers in the great sects. See if we can reach some kind of understanding. A new power balance must be found in the prefecture. I refuse to believe they are happy with how the Cao Clan is acting, and it shouldn’t take a huge amount of effort to get them on board.” Then he hesitated. “There is also another option.”
“Something tells me I don’t want to hear it,” Wei Longshen said.
“We can consider joining the Cao faction,” Patriarch Wei said.
“That’s unconscionable,” Wei Longshen said.
“Consider it,” Patriarch Wei said. “Doing so would allow us to consolidate our power in the short term. I’m not saying we need a marriage alliance, of course. I’m just saying we should lend them our support. They hold much sway over the council, the clans, and the prefecture lord.”
“The prefecture lord who wants my friend dead?” Wei Longshen asked.
“He made his choice, Longshen, and furthermore, you can’t help him,” Patriarch Wei said. “Not much, at least. He must fight this battle or die. And if he wins, all the better. The odds aren’t looking in his favor, however, as I’m sure Lixin can tell you.”
“It just doesn’t sit well with me,” Wei Longshen said.
“Nor with me,” Patriarch Wei agreed. “The Cao Clan makes me sick. Even from an administrative perspective. I deal with their chaos and garbage all the time. Our elders in the government can’t stand their officials and officers, and they’re all arrogant and derisive. And then there’s Cao Wenji talking to your mother more frequently, trying to cause strife in our ranks.”
“Is that what she’s doing?” Wei Longshen asked.
“You know it isn’t, but I don’t mention certain things when I know you’ve made up your mind,” Patriarch Wei said. “You’re stubborn, just like I am. Moreover, you’re a grown man now. If there are consequences, you will deal with them.”
“I appreciate the freedom,” Wei Longshen said. “This assassin. I’m still concerned.”
“As am I,” Patriarch Wei said. He reached behind his chair and opened a drawer, retrieving a small wooden chest. He placed it reverently on the desk and opened it. Inside it were two chains joined together by a medallion. His father snapped the medallion in half and gave Wei Longshen one of the chains.
“What’s this?” Wei Longshen asked. He inspected the strange medallion. It was made of a strange black metal covered in tiny runes. It was a rune-gathering-grade artifact. Moreover, it let off a familiar gray light. “I don’t remember seeing this in the vault. Is this spatial power I sense?”
“I will give the other half of the medallion to a trustworthy elder,” Patriarch Wei said. “I cannot prevent assassinations of random people, but I can protect my son.”
“This must have cost a fortune,” Wei Longshen said.
“Ignore the cost,” Patriarch Wei said. “Bond with the medallion.”
Wei Longshen leaked a drop of blood on the item, and information seeped into his mind. “Instantaneous teleportation within five hundred kilometers? That’s insane.” It would take a mid-grade-rune-carving talisman to achieve this, but that would still take nine seconds. Instantaneous teleportation and the barrier-piercing properties he sensed, as well as the anchor link… Well, he couldn’t imagine the cost. The artifact might just be law-stitching grade.
“It requires activation from both bearers to function,” Patriarch Wei said. “Activating the first half signals the second, and activating the second will teleport the wearer the first. It can only be used once.”
“Father…” Wei Longshen said. The gesture moved him. Others might have parents who doted on their children, but Wei Longshen wasn’t one of them. His father had always been a hard man, and his philosophy on child-rearing was that stress was a good thing and falling made you tougher.
“It’s all for the sake of the clan,” Patriarch Wei said, turning away in his chair. “You may leave now.”
“The clan isn’t over if I die,” Wei Longshen said softly.
“No,” his father said, still turned. “But I don’t have much time left, Longshen. I’m not old, but I won’t be around forever. Cultivators seldom die of old age.”
Chapter 12: Speed Learning
Cha Ming’s soul floated in his sea of consciousness, completely immersed in the lake of knowledge that was alchemy. Both subtle and greater truths passed in and out of him, their contents filtered and organized according to what he knew and why he knew them. There were no universal truths, only truths that adapted themselves to each individual.
Nearly two weeks had passed in the outside world. That meant twenty within the Clear Sky Brush, excluding small interludes in which he’d exited for more books, more ingredients, and the occasional breather. He couldn’t afford to take larger chunks of time off like when he’d arrived in the Dripping Blade Prefecture.
Moreover, everyone knew of his soul-bound treasure
now. They knew of Words of Creation, and even his superior soul. Only his Sage’s Sight was unknown to them, and it was this skill that made all the difference.
The last time I tried making the Spark of Iridescence Pill, the flames were too hot, Cha Ming thought. I burnt some key ingredients. I also didn’t properly mix the blueflame grass and the redflame gemstones. The alchemical reaction was faster than I thought. Perhaps including some deep-lake chalk will slow things down enough to fully harmonize the initial components?
He followed that train of thought. His intuition guided him, and his mid-grade-transcendent soul sped it all up. It wasn’t an instantaneous process, but it wasn’t strenuous either. It involved bits and pieces of insight along with a bit of guesswork that turned out to be right more often than not.
The recipe in his mind adjusted. So, too, did its relation to the knowledge in his spiritual sea. A recipe wasn’t just a set of instructions, but a linking of information on many levels. In his mind, he understood it, but in his soul, he felt it. It was anchored there as surely as his runic framework.
The shifting continued for a time, with the recipe eventually aligning itself to his updated knowledge base. The process was greatly aided by the runic foundation he’d made for himself from the knowledge he’d gleaned from the first thousand puzzles on the first floor of Elder Ling’s puzzle tower. Runes transcended runic arts, it seemed, and extended even to unrelated fields like alchemy and herbology.
Let’s try this again, Cha Ming thought. He opened his eyes and saw that Sun Wukong was there, tending his peach tree orchard. He was still tired from intercepting attackers on their way to the demon lands, so he spent most of his time here, lazing about while witnessing the transient beauty of nature.
Concentrate, Cha Ming thought. He first summoned his ingredients. There were a dozen of them, mostly common, save for the core ingredient in forging the pill: the feather of a third-burning Iridescent Phoenix clansman.
Cha Ming summoned his Grandmist flame and began preprocessing the ingredients. He first used his domain to manipulate the ingredients into key groups. This was a two-colored pill that used ice and fire as a theme. Therefore, there were three groups of reagents, the last of which would be used to harmonize them. The phoenix feather was kept separate from all these and wouldn’t be used until the very end.
Some, Cha Ming crushed into powder, others he juiced or mashed into a pulp. Transcendent alchemy wasn’t like mortal alchemy. It was less like chemistry and more like interactive magic. There were chemical processes, of course, but they followed a different logic.
In addition to pure physical processing, which had to use the right concepts or elements, he had to imbue or enhance each ingredient by passing them through a runic matrix aligned with those same concepts or elements. They weren’t difficult to use—any talisman artist worth his salt could generate such things as easily as breathing. They were important, however, in that they regulated and energized components that might otherwise be inert.
Cha Ming shaved a blue branch with his transcendent force, ridding it of poisonous bark that, if not peeled away, would be fatal to demons but only mildly toxic to humans. He used a light flame to evaporate and burn any remnants of the volatile substance. Then he minced the white insides with the gold portion of his domain, not touching it with a physical blade or with his skin. He encapsulated the entire thing in a frigid blue diagram, which maintained the mixture’s cool temperature while also activating the law fragments of frost aurora in the resulting sap. This was not a concept that Cha Ming had mastered, but it was one he could channel with basic runic formations.
He continued processing other frost-aligned materials. A crystalline powder obtained from melting a glacier. A metal congealed by running a pool of blue liquid gathered from a large bulbous fruit through cold Grandmist flames and a spring-freeze-alignment formation. It would maintain its temperature for the next twelve hours, after which it would return to its liquid form, never to assume a metal form again. Every component had its own rules and its own restrictions that he had to account for.
He worked, unperturbed by the occasional mistake, sometimes throwing away botched ingredients and replacing them with new ones. It took hours before Cha Ming finished preparing the ice-based materials, after which he turned to the fire-aligned components. He made more active use of his flames then, as the activities often involved melting or roasting or drying. Once again, he used runes and arrays to prime each component.
Soon, he was done with the tedious preprocessing. Cha Ming took out the transcendent pill cauldron he’d obtained from the Bridge of Stars. It was only an initial-grade furnace, so he had to be careful. It was durable, but the slightest mistake could result in a crack on its thick outer surface. He’d need to purchase a replacement eventually.
He began pouring ingredients inside it, one after another, mixing, roasting, and adjusting temperatures as he went. He also used a feature he hadn’t known about back then—there was an imprinting plate on the outside of the furnace. Using it, he could program runic instructions into the furnace, changing the nature of its walls and therefore the inside of the cauldron. The function was very basic.
Preparation included, everything should have taken a little less than twelve hours. Thanks to Cha Ming’s strong soul and Grandmist flames, however, it took far less time. Two different groups of reagents simultaneously formed two small blobs of liquid. They floated there as he brought the feather of a third-burning phoenix into the cauldron, as well as the deep-lake chalk. The phoenix feather did not burn or melt, but instead dyed the chalk with a three-colored hue.
“Now for the most important step,” Cha Ming muttered. He brought the two blobs together, using the deep-water chalk as a powder that he kneaded into both blobs just before bringing them together. As he’d predicted, it slowed the reaction. Meanwhile, it provided the perfect medium for the phoenix feather. The colors began to swirl and alternate until suddenly, they merged, forming a strange red-and-blue hybrid that wasn’t purple but a mixture of colors. A light iridescent sheen appeared on the surface of the pill.
Success, Cha Ming thought. He’d completed the most difficult part. Now all that was left was to roast it. He raised the temperature of the furnace using his Grandmist flame. The pill, now hardened due to the stable alchemical reaction, expanded slightly with the increased heat. He continued heating it until a small shimmer of liquid appeared, then held the temperature.
The light coating on the outside hissed and burned. The iridescent sheen deepened as many of the more volatile components evaporated. He did this for an hour, after which he banished the gray flame seed from the cauldron and summoned the Clear Sky Brush. He needed to work quickly for this step. He quickly drew a seal on the outside of the cauldron, and as the pill cooled, the runes imprinted themselves onto it.
Energy began to rush into the pill from the Clear Sky World, and by extension, the world outside. It breathed life into the pill, harmonizing its properties as Grandmist did. This wasn’t just a pill for demons , as the original recipe dictated, but a universal pill. Anyone could take it, even a human. He then braced himself for what he knew to be a slim possibility: the appearance of iridescence on the pill seal. He held his breath, hoping, pleading. And naturally, it didn’t happen.
A success and a failure, Cha Ming thought, pulling the pill from the furnace. It was only a single pill, for he was not yet skilled enough to form many at once. He pulled it out and popped it into a jade pill bottle.
“How did I do, Teacher?” Cha Ming asked.
“Passably,” Sun Wukong said. “You could have been faster. The recipe is flawed. Which you should know, since you fixed a few mistakes yourself.”
“The more I learn, the more I’ll correct it,” Cha Ming said. “Think of this as the first draft of a story—it’ll take massaging and coaxing to get it to its most optimal shape.”
“I see everything like a sculpture, personally,” Sun Wukong said. “But I’m a stone monkey. W
e carved things back where I came from.”
“I’d love to chat more, but I need to get going,” Cha Ming.
“Knock ’em dead, kid,” Sun Wukong said.
Cha Ming popped out of the Clear Sky World and appeared in his accommodations on the sixth floor of Shimmerwing City. He was pressed for time and determined to make the most of it. He arrived to a flood of news and messages, which he flicked through, ignoring most, but paying special attention to a few choice messages.
What in the seven hells is going on in the prefecture? Cha Ming thought. Wei Longshen was losing influence? There were exclusive analyses concluding he could only be a necromancer who had a strange attraction to dead bodies? Pity articles for Mi Fei?
He dug a little deeper and realized that around Wei Longshen, people were dying. He was concerned for his friend, yes, but what annoyed him the most was how his affairs were affecting Mi Fei, who was clearly innocent in all this. Hadn’t she gone through enough?
Focus, he told himself. Cha Ming suppressed his irritation as he walked out of his hotel room. It wasn’t his problem. Not anymore. Still, he couldn’t help but feel the itch to act. It would disappear in time, he knew. When the wounds were no longer fresh. Focus. You’re here to learn alchemy. You’re here for phoenix blood.
Cha Ming exited the room. The moment he crossed the threshold, he left a zone of thick heaven-and-earth energy and entered the thick ambient demonic energy that filled the entire city. Huxian, can I borrow you for a second? he sent. He proceeded down the stairs, only to be greeted by someone he’d rather not have to deal with.
“Well, if it isn’t my arch-nemesis, Clear Sky!”
Cha Ming rolled his eyes. “Do we have to do this every morning? You’re a very powerful cultivator in your own right, and I’m prepared to yield.”
“We were born to be enemies, Clear Sky,” the phoenix Lord Dazzling Dance said. “Prepare to meet your maker!” He charged, sword in hand, and everyone gasped in an exaggerated fashion. Cha Ming sighed. He didn’t want to go through the motions, but such was his status in the Iridescent Clan. He literally had an entourage of people competing for the honor of being defeated by him. He moved to hit the man with a light palm to the chest, but then Huxian appeared. The clever fox, seeing what was going on, erected a spatial barrier. It caught the man’s sword, freezing it in place.
Claddings of Light : Book 12 of Painting the Mists Page 20