The books that had those subjects in them was either quite vague or were just completely incomprehensible, the first book that fell into my hand was a book about Alchemy, but it was both similar and different than the Alchemy back in my old world .
Here Alchemy was able to allow someone create magical Pills that have a huge different amount of uses, some pills can help increase practice, some other can help in healing, some can directly enhance the foundation of the Practitioner, some can even heal a person on the verge of death back to life .
Alchemy wasn't using chemicals to achieve that, but in fact it was using herbs and plants that were quite special in their properties, mixing those special herps in a specific way and using a special Technique, you then will be able to make use of those special properties and squeeze them into the pill they wanted to make .
But that was easy in concept, but quite difficult in practice, the Alchemy wasn't just putting the ingredients in and waiting for the results to come out, no it was a job that only a few people can have the talent to be able of learning and doing .
The alchemist need to focus on all sorts of things while concocting the pill, the heat of the cauldron that the pill was being concocted in, the quality of the materials, the ability to extract the essence of the materials, how to deal with any and all sudden accidents while concocting the pill, how to deal with different kinds of Heaven-earth Treasures and a few other things more as well .
Concentration was very important for the pill concoction to succeed, the technique used in extracting the essence of those herbs, the compatibility between the herbes and how to keep all of this in balance, during the process of concocting the pill the one responsible must stay in high alert all the time and to be quick to respond to any change that happens in the cauldron .
Even the slightest change in anything regarding the cauldron or the heat it's under, can end up in making the concocting of the pill to fail, either getting a poor quality pill that had ton of impurities in it and will harm the person who use it more than helping him, or the pill won't form at all and due to how unstable the ingredients inside the cauldron were, it might explode as a result .
Reading all this from the book in hand, the things that I wasn't able to understand only increased more, most of the information was incomprehensible to me, but I still tried to memorize everything that I had read nonetheless .
If I were to summarize what I had learn, I learned what Alchemy was, how it was done vaguely, the items needed before I can start concocting pills, a pill concoction technique was needed, together with a pill cauldron, a special kind of wood called the Green Vined Wood, that wood was needed for starting the fire needed .
The most important thing to have was a Pill Recipe for the pill I'm trying to make, it was like cooking, you can't just put everything you have in the pot and hope that it will cook something good on its own, that was the most important thing to have, because without that Pill Recipe, I might risk the cauldron exploding, not only that but there will be loss of too many precious materials to count as a result by then .
So all in all, at least for me I think that it was really not worth the effort no matter which angle I looked at it from, it just seemed to be completely wasting precious time and burning a lot of resources, all that for what, earning a few amount of money that might not be able to cover the expanses .
That was my truest opinion on this, this was a risky job, you might be able to gain something from it, but only if you were able to concoct pills that were of high quality .
The pills were graded according to the percentage of Medicinal Effect that they still have and the amount of impurities contained in them, the grades of the quality of the pills were as follow :
Low-grade Pills have 10 to 30 percent of Medicinal Effect still in them, but also have from 70 to 90 percent of impurities in it, making it being described in the book as more of a poisen than a Medicinal Pill .
Mid-grade Pills have 30 to 60% of Medicinal Effect in it, but it have a 30 to 40% impurities, it could be consumed but consuming it on a regular basis might damage the Practitioner's body and foundation .
High-grade Pills have 70 to 90 percent of the Medicinal Effect, only 10 to 20 percent of impurities, with a strong external or Internal Technique, the amount of impurities could be dealt with in a short period of time, can be used on a regular basis, but cautiously deal with the strong Medicinal Effect in it .
Lastly the Peak-grade Pills, those pills have zero impurities in it and have their Full Medicinal Effect still intact, that grade is used to describe the highest quality a Pill can reach, the person who wrote that book seemed to be quite the funny guy, his words regarding those pills were :
Eat them or I will come to eat you and them .
He seemed to have a short fuse too, the pill wasn't only graded by their quality but by Tiers as well, there were 10 Tiers in total from what I read, they were put in a descending order, Tier 10 pills were the start of that order and were consisting of those pills of the lowest Tire and 1 was the highest, the Flesh Tempering Pill was a Tire 10 High-grade pill, the Blood Qi Nourishing Pills were actually a Tire 9 High-grade Pills .
As for other Pills Tiers and examples of them, sadly the book pages were either tattered beyond measure or the pages were torn, making continuing to read this book an impossible task, but I didn't make it bother me much, if it wasn't mentioned in this book then surely there will be other book that mention this .
I let go of the book in my hand and put it back on the shelf it belonged in, even though I was a bit curious about continuing to browse through the Alchemy books searching for more information about other precious pills and there uses, I continued to pick books from the same bookshelf .
But just my luck I guess, the other books on that bookshelf were either about herps or again about poems, I can guess already that Master seemed to be poetic, but no matter how I looked at it this was still a bit too much .
But luck seemed to be faintly smiling at me again, this time the book I found was about Refining Weapons, the book talked about how Refiners or Forging Masters were tempering the alloy or special metals and materials to create weapons of highest quality, swords, spears, knives, daggers, all kinds of stuff .
What different a weapon from the other was the skill of the Forging Masters and the materials used in creating that weapon, those weapons were graded into a Ascending order of Ranks unlike with the pills, but they were graded in a similar fashion in quality from Low-grade quality to Peak-grade .
In a fight scenario, the poor quality weapons tend to be handicapped fighting against a higher quality weapon of an opponent, risking the destruction of the weapon at the first exchange even, a warning to always spend a good amount of money on both the materials and the the fees given to the Forging Master, the warning was in every page, it made me suspect that the author of this book was one of those Forging Masters .
Removing those useless thoughts, I continued to read the book in hand, it was now talking about the ranks and the grades of the weapons, Rank 1 weapons were all normal Weapons that was well crafted for normal battles but nothing more, then from level 2 to 10 .
The difference between most of those weapons was in the increase of the ability to Channel Blood Qi and the Sharpness of the weapon's edges and the most important aspect was Durability, all this was tightly connected to the skill of the Forging Master and the materials he used in refining the weapon .
That was another vague way to describe a blacksmith, I could understand what the level of materials had to do with the blade becoming of higher quality, but how will the skill of the Forging Masters affect the Rank or the grade of the weapon that was being refined, was completely obscure to me .
Putting the book back before even finishing it as it was beginning to talk about more and more obscure things that I wasn't able to wrap my head around, not only that but I wasn't even able to understand the symbols written in the book anymore .
Some of the those weird things were about the close relationship between the weapon and its wielder, if that relationship was nurtured for a long time, there was even a chance that the weapon will gain spirituality, if its grade was high enough .
Not only was this the only obscure thing that I read, there was also mentioning of the fact that some of those weapons forged out of the Treasures Of Heavens And Earth might have enough spirituality from the beginning that should allow it to decide on the person who it wanted to serve .
The treasures mentioned here were special minerals, that formed naturally or fell from the skies like meteorites, reading those things made me doubt my rationality a bit,so I decided that it was better to let go of pursuing this matter for now .
I began to look through the shelf for a book that had information about the internal affairs of this world, like the detailed map about this region or the relationship between the dynasties or things like that .
But I kept bumping into books that were describing the effect of various plants and herbs, I still hadn't found neither a Pill Recipe, nor a book talking about how to concoct pills in details, even if I found all those I would be still struggling to find a Pill Concocting Technique, that can't be able to succeed without .
So seeing these books, I browsed all of them in a hurry, storing all their content in my mind, even though I wasn't interested in following the path of Alchemy, I still believed that knowing about those plants and herbs were crucial to not get scammed, knowing the value of those herbs will hopefully allow me to identify those herbs in the wilderness and being able to differentiate between those that were edible and those weren't .
I couldn't help but widen my eyes at how many herbs and plants were mentioned in the books I browsed, the amount exceeded 1000, each book seemed to mention the discovery of new herbs or a new usage of an already discovered herbs .
The numbers of herbs I had stored in mind have become a thousand, I had a thousand type of herbs stored in my mind together with their usages and effects, some of those effects I read was enough to shock me speechless .
There were some herbs mentioned that could help someone achieve a breakthrough to the next layer and it won't even shake his foundation at all, herbs that could be use to enhance Blood Qi of the Practitioner and there were herbs that could actually awaken Blood Qi, they were called Blood Grass .
There were even herbs that once eaten directly or used in alchemy can help heal the wounds, recover stamina and even increase the body's ability to withstand hunger for 3 days and nights .
There were mentioning that age of the plant or the herb determine the potent medicine energy inside of it, I had yet to see a book talking about how to rank them, but it must be there somehow, the age determined how powerful the medicinal Energy inside the herb, 1 year old was weaker 10 years old were and on and on in that order .
The bigger the age of the herb, the powerful the medicinal energy inside will be, the herbs that I currently know of were quite a huge number of herbs, the most interesting to me currently was a herb that could help in enriching my Blood Vitality, but that was still no where to be found .
There was one thing that baffled me a bit, after searching for so long here, I still hadn't come in contact with any book that mentioned Immortals at all, there were some mentioning of some spiritual herbs and some special conditions where even there would be a strange metal of unique characteristics being found, but other than those weird things, I didn't found anything else that implied that they exist or not .
It was weird because this shouldn't be the case at least in my opinion, the looks that Master had gave me earlier in the Hall seemed to imply that he at least had a vague idea about these kinds of stories about Immortals and the likes .
So if he was collecting all these kinds of poems, then these stories should be of interest to him as well, so either he or maybe I had yet to found a book mentioning them, reaching that conclusion, I continued to search through the shelves in front of on a book that mentioned them, but there were just too many books in front of me .
Finding what I wanted was like finding a needle in a haystack, it was troublesome to the extreme, I had learned about tons of stuff, but what I came here for was still nowhere to be seen .
Finally after finish browsing through another book of herbology, I finally found a book that seemed to be talking about the state of the world around me, starting with the rise of the current Qin Dynasty and the fall of the previous one, the fall of the previous dynasty did actually happened overnight .
A Monster Disaster hit the Gu dynasty, swarms of Beasts thirsty for the blood of the people directly swarmed the capital where Emperor Gu was stationed, it happened all of a sudden and the loss that befall the capital and its people was minimal due to the interference of General Of The South Qin Tu, but the Gu Emperor was found, or at least what was left of him in the belly of a Demon Beast .
The Generals after the Emperor fell, all wished to become the next emperor, so they fell into conflict with one another, the one who came out victorious was General Of The South Qin Tu and he declared himself as the new Emperor after he defeated the other 3 Generals .
Only the General Of The North Zu Chi didn't accept to bow his head down to the new Emperor and he fled from the capital and took most of his corps members with him, those who stayed behind were all executed on the spot, the general's family members were also executed, those that were found at least, then the North General was labeled as a rebel and he was to be hunted down without mercy .
Then the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty fell as well, but this time it wasn't because of getting eaten by a Demon Beast, he died at old age of 314 years old, leaving behind a fractured family and dynasty, the Qin Dynasty almost fell due to the Internal strifes that began to appear among the princes and even the princesses over the throne .
Those fight ended in the favor of the 23th prince's favor, he was said to have a monstrous talent in Martial Arts, using his wit and strength, he was able to collect followers from every angle and directions, then overnight, he was able to slay the crown prince and declared himself as the new Emperor, weirdly enough the book didn't go in details about what exactly happened, it ended with a piece of praise for the new Emperor Qin Jun .
And with that the book was over, I once again put it in place, but this time I didn't go and pick another book, I was in the middle of trying to clear my thoughts regarding what I had just read, politics weren't of no interest to me, especially not bloody ones like I had just read about, killing a whole family because a member of that said family went against you wasn't something that I wanted to read about .
But there was no point on crying over spilled milk I guess, I wasn't troubled much by the mention of dying people from over than a few hundred years ago .
What was troubling me was the thing that devoured the Gu Emperor and made the dynasty collapse, that Demon Beast, I already got exposed to the term Ferocious Beast, yet I was suddenly exposed to a new term, Demon Beast .
I didn't get any details on that Demon Beast from the book I had finished, all I can guess was that it was stronger than the Ferocious Beasts at the least, after all it was able to sneak into the throne chamber and kill the Emperor .
Another reminder of how dangerous the things living in this world were, not only the people were dangerous, but even the creatures in it could be able to kill me, as if that wasn't enough shocking, I got another shock from seeing at what age did the first emperor passed away .
He lived for over than 3 centuries, there were mentions of a few herbs that could cure diseases and prolong life, but not one had mentioned anything about increasing the life expectancy of someone to make him live 3 centuries, wait a second here, I had heard the name Jun somewhere before .
YES, I REMEMBERED NOW, BACK AT THE BATHHOUSE .