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She wasn’t exactly happy to be delegated these responsibilities, but she still accepted the task. With the pettier parties taken care of, she gave me a rundown of some of the bigger clients available. We set up a meeting to discuss these offers in detail before entering negotiations, but when it came time to decide how to proceed with these negotiations, it was not Manager Bai who came to talk to me. It was Alchemist Li who I hadn’t seen since my registration exam when I first entered the city.

“Su Fang, how have you been? Has Eight Flower been treating you well?” he asked in a grandfatherly manner.

“Alchemist Li.” I bowed to the older man. “Thank you. I have been very well.”

“Come and sit, let’s talk about your future,” he said, guiding me to sit in one of the conference rooms. “I have been paying close attention to your progress. It seems you have made great strides in filling those gaps in your knowledge.”

“Thank you, Alchemist Li.” I cupped my hands in salute to him. “I have done my best to learn what I can here. There are many new herbs to explore.”

The older man took out a small pill bottle, poured out the pill inside, and held it up to the light.

“You have indeed been progressing very well,” he said in admiration. “I must admit, your ability to mend medicinal energy has even surpassed my own, and I’ve been studying for centuries.”

That comment made me wince internally, but I tried to hide my reaction.

“So, what are your plans?” he asked. “You’ve reached the peak of Grandmaster Alchemist, and you are only a few decades old. How do you plan to move forward?”

This was something I had thought about for a long time, and while I had made my decision, it still made me anxious.

“I’m going to compete for the position of Water Groom.”

Alchemist Li stroked his beard in thought. “Your friend is the Water Flower, right? It’s not a terrible choice. You will have a solid position as a Lord, and with your skills, you may reach Peak Lord by the end of your term. As long as you are willing to do the necessary work, that is.”

I wasn’t sure how to reply to that, so I kept my silence.

“There are other paths open to you if you wish to take them,” he said meaningfully.

“Yes,” I agreed. “Manager Bai has informed me of the new King’s offer. I would become his direct subordinate, and in return, he would use a special technique to share a portion of the karmic energy he receives. allowing me to ascend to Lord.”

Alchemist Li nodded. “The new Eight Flower King is a powerful alchemist in his own right. He isn’t quite as skilled as you are, but his blessing more than makes up for his deficiencies. Right now, he is only a Grandmaster like you, but with the karmic energy of his new position, he will quickly rise through the Lord realm and ascend further. I doubt his alchemy skills will keep pace, I expect him to stall in the mid-Pill Lord stages, but if you prove yourself a valued ally, you may be able to ride his coattails during the next King selection in twenty years.”

“It’s not the right fit for me,” I stated firmly. “I’ve looked into the man. His connections are all downward, to people below him. Following him will only be placing chains on myself that won’t allow me to rise beyond early Lord.”

“What do you want, then?” asked Li. A small smile was hidden under his beard.

I felt a weight in his question. This was a time to be clear. “I want to become a Pill King and a Formation King, and I want to become a true city lord with actual authority so that I can test certain ideas I have for city development.”

Li nodded at what I said, but a resigned expression crossed his face. “I would offer you a position as my disciple, but I could only teach you a bit of alchemy, and the city lord position I could arrange through the Pavilion would only be a nominal one.”

I wasn’t sure how skilled Alchemist Li was, I had only ever heard him referred to as Alchemist, no one ever mentioned his realm, but I had the feeling he was far beyond me. Thinking this, I began to speak to voice my wavering conviction and offer to accept such a position, but he waved me off.

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“The timing isn’t right,” he said ruefully. “I don’t have much time left, so there may not be another chance, but I can feel that now just isn’t the right time.” He tapped his temple with two fingers.

It was his blessing. His blessing gave him some type of knowledge about timing events properly. It was an interesting blessing for an alchemist to have, and I could see some great potential benefits depending on the specifics of how it worked.

“For now, I’ll do what’s proper for an old man like me when meeting a young up-and-comer like yourself and give you three gifts.” He grinned widely. “First, do you know what separates Ruler Tier alchemy from Warrior Tier alchemy?”

I was thrown off by his change in topic but quickly regained my balance. “Not exactly. The most I have been able to learn is that Ruler Tier alchemy requires a Profound Rank spirit fire.”

Li shook his head. “No, not right. You can get by with worse in the Lord realm, though you won’t be happy about it.”

He took out a small cauldron and a strange herb from his storage bag.

“This is a Rank 4 herb,” he said, holding it up. “It can be refined into a somewhat basic pill by itself. Please, go ahead and try it.”

A bit worried, I approached the cauldron and got to work. I approached the task as I would with any Rank 3 pill, but when I closely examined the medicinal energy, I was stunned. It existed only as small flecks suspended within a sea of toxins.

I started to burn away the toxins carefully. It took significantly more energy than I was used to, but it was manageable by relying on my fire seed. At this point, based on the way he talked, I wasn’t worried about Alchemist Li being greedy for a Yellow Rank seed, so I used it freely in front of him.

My control and power were sufficient to refine this herb, which surprised me. This would mean I could begin making at least some Rank 4 pills. However, the moment one of the flecks of medicinal energy was freed from the toxins, it fluttered into the air and dispersed. Thinking this was a bad coincidence, I freed another bit of energy, but it also fluttered away and vanished into the air.

After my third attempt, I put the herb down in defeat and looked at Li.

The alchemist grinned at me. “Alright,” he said, “now, punch me.”

“What?”

“Punch me as hard as you can. Don’t worry, you can’t hurt me. Put all your strength behind your fist and punch me anywhere you want.”

I was confused, but I was willing to follow his command. I balled a first and punched directly at his chest.

Halfway to its target, my fist froze in the air. I could neither move it forward nor backward.

“This is the difference between a Warrior and a Ruler,” the old man said. “After forming a core of karma, the Ruler is connected to the world on a fundamental level, and this provides them with some amount of control over it. I am not using qi to hold you in place. I am using only my will and my connection to the world. To be a Pill Lord, you will need to be able to impose your will onto herbs while concocting to prevent them from dispersing. Otherwise, you will never be able to make anything beyond Rank 3.”

I looked at the ruined herb that was still sitting in the cauldron. If he could use his ‘will’ to lock my body in place, then he could also use it to lock down the medicinal energy and keep it from dispersing, but wasn’t there another way?

“Won’t high enough affinities be just as good?” I asked. “If it’s just a matter of keeping the medicinal energy from dispersing, affinities should also work.”

Li rubbed his hands in excitement. “Yes, they should, but that’s its own problem. From my tests, I estimate you need a Peak five-star affinity for Lord-level pills, Peak four-star for King-level, and Peak three-star for Emperor-level, and not just for fire affinity either. You will need this level of affinity for each element of medicinal energy you want to be able to use. Far easier to just raise your cultivation, wouldn’t you say?”

In the short term, I couldn’t help but agree he was right, but long term? Affinities were something I could have from the beginning, long before I could raise my cultivation level to match.

“My second gift is this,” he said, pulling out a thick, worn book. “It has many of my thoughts and recipes regarding Rank 4 alchemy. It should be of great help to you in the near future.”

My eyes widened in shock. “This is too precious. I can’t take it.”

“Then throw it away. I no longer have need of it, and I am giving it to you,” he said, placing the book on the table and dismissing it from his thoughts.

Both reluctant and greedy, I picked it up and carefully placed it into my storage bag. My only regret was not being able to carry such an important text with me into future lives. Since it was Rank 4 knowledge, my mental library couldn’t store it, and the book was far too large for the limited storage space in my soul.

“Finally,” he said, taking out a jade box and placing it on the table, “to do proper alchemy you need a proper spirit fire. It will take some adjustment to get used to a simple spirit fire instead of that seed of yours, but you’ll find this one to be much more suitable. It’s the fire-based Three Thousand Flames Spirit Fire. With this, you won’t be able to pull off some of the tricks you can with your earth and water flame, but you also only need to worry about finding a way to improve your fire affinity.”

I stared at the box. “What level is this spirit fire?” I had to ask.

Alchemist Li just gave me a simple smile, stood up, and began to leave the room. Before he did, he turned back and tossed a small coin at me.

“If the time is ever right, come to the Pavilion’s main branch in the central region. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around, but when you do, just show them that coin and ask to see Pill Emperor Li.”

Stunned by his words, I barely noticed when he disappeared from my sight.

After Emperor Li left, my first thought was to suicide and immediately go to search him out and become his disciple. That feeling only lasted for a second before I regained my composure. Such actions would be meaningless.

Emperor Li was relying on some kind of blessing in his dealings with me, and if it didn’t want him to accept me as a disciple now, simply restarting probably wouldn’t change that.

His gifts significantly boosted my chances of completing my plans for this life. I would wait a few years, take over North Lake City, and see about transforming it into a haven of peace and prosperity so that it would produce karmic energy as fast as possible for me.