After hours of deep, restorative rest, Li Xuan awoke. The 'Wood Heart Sutra' had worked silently within him, the small reserve of wood-nature Qi slowly mending his strained meridians. The profound, bone-deep exhaustion had receded, replaced by a familiar, impatient energy.
He sat up and found three people waiting silently in his room: Master Feng, who stood by the bed with the deference of a servant; a respectful Young Master Lu Wen; and the arrogant apprentice, Chen, who had clearly been dragged here against his will.
"Master, you are awake," Feng said, his voice full of relief.
Li Xuan ignored the pleasantries. "I am going to create a pill," he announced, his voice still weak but sharp. "Feng, I will need your help." He then glanced towards the door. "And call your disciples. All of them. The salesgirls, the apprentices, everyone. Tell them to gather in the main workshop."
Feng blinked. "All of them, Master?"
"All of them," Li Xuan confirmed, a cold, hard glint in his blurry eyes. "It is time for them to broaden their horizons."
Twenty minutes later, the main workshop was crowded. A dozen or so apprentices, including a pale-faced Meili, were gathered, muttering amongst themselves. Why had their master summoned them on the orders of a beggar boy?
The atmosphere changed when Master Feng entered, respectfully walking one step behind Li Xuan, who was being supported by Lu Wen. They led him to a chair at the head of the main alchemy station. Li Xuan sat down and looked out at the skeptical faces.
"Feng," he commanded. "The ingredients."
His servant quickly laid out the herbs: the Starlight Petal, the Sunstone Powder, the Eagle-Eye Fern dew, and the pinch of Silvermoon Moss. Li Xuan picked up the Starlight Petal. "Chen," he said.
The arrogant apprentice flinched. "Yes?"
"Tell me the properties of this herb," Li Xuan ordered.
Chen sneered, eager to show his knowledge. "Starlight Petal is a mid-grade Yin attribute herb, used in cooling salves. It must never be mixed with potent Yang herbs." It was a perfect, textbook answer.
"Wrong," Li Xuan stated simply.
The room went silent. Chen's face turned red. "What? That's what all the ancient texts say!"
"The ancient texts were written by fools," Li Xuan replied with a casual, cosmic arrogance. "They saw that water puts out fire and wrote a rule, never thinking that steam can move mountains. The Starlight Petal is not a 'Yin' herb. It is a 'receptive' herb. It doesn't cool; it absorbs and amplifies."
He went down the list, systematically dismantling their entire understanding of alchemy with a few, simple sentences. By the time he was done, the entire room was silent, the apprentices staring at him with a mixture of horror and dawning awe. He had revealed a higher, more profound truth of their craft.
He leaned back in his chair, a bored expression on his face. "Before we begin, are there any other… primitive questions you wish to ask?"
For a moment, no one dared to speak. Then, a young apprentice at the back timidly raised her hand. "Master Li… why does my Qi-Stabilizing Draught always come out cloudy?"
"Because you add the Binder Root at peak heat," Li Xuan answered without even looking at her. "You are cooking the impurities into the mixture. Add it during the cooling phase. Next."
Another apprentice asked why his pills always cracked. "Your cooling process is too fast. You are shocking the spiritual matrix into a brittle state. Let it cool naturally. Next."
He answered a dozen simple questions with a bored, brilliant clarity that left the apprentices speechless. He was solving problems in seconds that had plagued them for years.
Then, a new voice, trembling with a desperate, fervent energy, cut through the room.
"Master!"
It was Feng. The old man stepped forward, his eyes shining with a fanatic's light. "This old servant… I have questions that have haunted me for fifty years. Questions the texts have no answer for. May I ask?"
"Speak," Li Xuan said, a flicker of interest in his eyes. This might be slightly less boring.
What followed was not a question, but a tsunami. Feng unleashed a lifetime of doubts, a torrent of the most complex, paradoxical problems in alchemy.
"Master, how can one refine a Fire-Core Crystal without its Yang energy overwhelming the Yin-attribute of the Glacial Water needed to contain it? The energies always annihilate each other!"
"You don't contain it," Li Xuan answered instantly. "You starve it. Introduce a third, 'hungry' element like Void Dust right before the energy clash. The Fire-Core will be so busy trying to burn the Void Dust that it won't have the excess energy to fight the water. You are thinking like a warrior, not a strategist."
Feng staggered back as if struck.
"Master!" he pressed on, his voice growing more frantic. "How is it possible to forge a Soul-Nourishing Pill without a living spiritual ingredient? The pill is always dead!"
"Because you are building a house without a foundation," Li Xuan shot back, his voice sharp. "You add the physical herbs and expect a soul to appear? You must first create a 'vortex' of pure spiritual energy in the cauldron, a 'home' for the soul to be born into. You are trying to capture a ghost in a jar that is already full of air. Empty the jar first."
Feng's face went pale. The answers were so simple, yet so profound, they were shattering his entire reality. He asked his final, most desperate question, the one that had kept him a Rank 2 Alchemist for thirty years.
"Master… how do you balance the 'Will' of the alchemist with the 'Nature' of the herbs? My will always crushes them, or their nature resists me!"
Li Xuan looked at the old man, a flicker of something that might have been pity in his eyes.
"You don't," he said quietly. "You don't balance them. You convince the herb's nature that your will is the most logical path for it to achieve its own, perfect state. You are not its master. You are its guide to perfection."
Guide to perfection…
The words echoed in Feng's mind like a divine mantra. A lifetime of mental blocks, of struggling and fighting with his ingredients, shattered. He didn't just understand. He saw. He saw the Dao.
A powerful wave of spiritual energy erupted from Master Feng's body, knocking over several nearby tables. A brilliant, clear light enveloped him. The silver embroidery on his alchemist's robe, which depicted two flowers, began to glow. A third silver flower slowly, miraculously, bloomed into existence on his chest.
He had broken through. After fifty years of stagnation, in five minutes of conversation, he had become a Rank 3 Alchemist.
The entire room stared in absolute, silent shock.
Li Xuan watched the old man's breakthrough with a completely unimpressed expression. He let out a quiet sigh.
"Are we done with the theatrics?" he asked, his voice laced with boredom. He then gestured to the workbench.
"Now, let's begin. My eyes aren't going to fix themselves."