The acrid smell of ozone and incinerated herbs filled Bai Xiaofei's private lab. It was a scent she had come to know with a self-loathing so pure it was almost a physical sickness.
She stood amidst the wreckage, her silver-white robes stained with soot, her porcelain-perfect face a mask of cold fury.
In the center of the room, her high-grade cauldron was cracked. On the floor, the blackened, smoking residue of what had been a hundred-year-old Frost Jade Ginseng was scattered like ash.
It was her fourth attempt. And her fourth, spectacular failure.
The "Ice-Heart, Fire-Core Pill." It was a paradox, a theoretical nightmare. To refine it, one had to simultaneously process the most volatile Yang ingredient with the most delicate Yin.
Her "Volatile Yang Spark" constitution, the gift that made her an unrivaled master of fire alchemy, had turned against her.
The moment she'd tried to introduce the Frost Jade Ginseng's cooling essence, her own internal Yang had flared uncontrollably, incinerating the delicate mixture from the inside out.
She slammed her fist onto the stone table, her knuckles cracking. "Impossible!" she hissed.
But it wasn't the pill that was impossible. It was her. This formula, this single sheet of tattered parchment, was a mirror held up to her deepest, most humiliating secret: she was a fraud.
A half-genius. A master of Yang, but a complete failure at Yin.
This failure was a death sentence.
Her mind flashed to the sneering, lecherous face of Young Master He Jian. Her family, the Bai Clan, saw her only as an asset.
They had poured resources into her, expecting her to become a high-grade alchemist and a source of prestige. But their patience was wearing thin.
The ultimatum had been delivered by her father three months ago: "If you are not a sect-certified Second-Grade Alchemist by the Centennial Assembly, your value as an alchemist is null. Your value as a bride for Young Master He, however, is at its peak. Do not fail us."
The Centennial Assembly was just two months away.
And the certification exam was a test of mastery, not specialization.
The elders would present her with a random Second-Grade formula from the registry—it could be a Yang-aspected Berserker Pill, which she could brew in her sleep, or it could be a Yin-aspected Moon-Glow Pill, which she would incinerate just as she had the ginseng.
It was a gamble she could not afford. Failure meant being married off to that giggling, talentless fool, to become a broodmare for a man she wouldn't deign to spit on.
The thought of his pudgy hands on her was enough to make her want to swallow poison.
This impossible pill... it wasn't just a puzzle anymore. It was the key. If she could master this, she could master anything.
She could conquer her flaw, pass the certification, and seize control of her own destiny.
And that clumsy, brute-force swordswoman, Su Linyue... she had the formula.
For two days, Bai Xiaofei's pride warred with her desperation. Pride lost.
She didn't run. She stalked. She found Su Linyue in the Alchemy Pavilion's public library, poring over a simple text on herb identification—the work of an apprentice.
Bai Xiaofei glided to a stop in front of her table, her shadow falling over the book. "Junior Sister Su."
Su Linyue looked up, her expression as cool and placid as a mountain lake. "Senior Sister Bai."
Bai Xiaofei tossed the scorched, tattered parchment onto the table. "This trash. This child's fantasy of a formula. Where did you get it?"
Her tone was that of a superior demanding an answer, but her eyes, sharp and obsessive, betrayed the desperation underneath.
Su Linyue didn't flinch. She was a Foundation Establishment expert, and she was done being intimidated.
She calmly placed her hand on the parchment. "I found it."
"Liar," Bai Xiaofei hissed, leaning closer. "A formula for a pill that could revolutionize alchemy, and a Qi Condensation-era cripple just found it? The same day she miraculously recovered? What a coincidence. Tell me. Now."
Su Linyue met her gaze. This was the moment Gu Xuan had prepared her for.
"You're right," Su Linyue said, her voice dropping to a low murmur. "It's not mine. I am... holding it for someone."
"Who?"
"An archivist. A researcher. He believes the formula isn't flawed... just incomplete. He thinks he's found the key to the stabilization sequence."
Bai Xiaofei's blood ran cold. An archivist? A book-duster? A nobody had solved a puzzle that had shattered her best cauldron? The insult was almost as staggering as the hope.
"He's lying," she snapped. "It's impossible. The Yang energy will always destroy the Yin."
"He says the formula is read incorrectly," Su Linyue replied, her words precise, reciting the script Gu Xuan had fed her.
"He says you can't suppress the Yang. You have to ground it. He said... 'The fire cannot be contained by ice; it must be tamed by the sea.' He believes he's found a way to use a... a vessel... to absorb the volatile spark at the moment of fusion."
A vessel? Tamed by the sea? It sounded like the profound, cryptic ramblings of a master alchemist, not a lowly archivist.
It also, infuriatingly, made a twisted kind of sense.
Bai Xiaofei's mind was racing, her arrogance battling her desperate, clawing need. A solution. A solution.
"This archivist," she said, her voice a low, dangerous hiss. "I want to meet him."
Su Linyue finally allowed a small, cold smile to touch her lips. "I thought you might."