Half-complete Pill
The numbers on the shelves denoted the alchemist level. A level five alchemist possessed Body Severing Realm cultivation at the very least. Readers wouldn’t understand what they read if it was above their level, anyway.
It didn’t bother Mu Yu. He strolled toward the shelf labelled “six”. Suddenly, the scenery changed, and energy pushed him back. He saw the shelf again. Put simply, the formation restricted him from even seeing the cover of rank six pill manuals.
“Petty,” grumbled Mu Yu. “Elder, may I ask where Speed Alchemy is?”
“Another one of you wants to see Speed Alchemy? I threw it away already.”
“You threw it away? Can you just throw books here out? You could have given it to me. What a waste.”
“Young man, you won’t master alchemy if you try to take shortcuts. The book should’ve been burnt long ago to save you young ones from dreaming of becoming alchemists overnight instead of investing time and effort properly.”
Speed Alchemy, as the name suggested, taught alchemy in express format. Ku Mu never named any downsides to it. Presumably, the consequences weren’t worth fretting over if Mu Yu didn’t need to become an alchemist.
Mu Yu headed back to the entrance, where the elder was, and requested, “Would I be able to trouble you to share with me the risks involved when learning it? It would help convince me to give up on it.”
The elder raised his head and had a long, hard look at Mu Yu. “Who is your shifu? I don’t recall seeing you anywhere. You must have a gift for alchemy to be permitted in here. Why do you want to take shortcuts?”
Though unsure of the elder’s cultivation, out of respect for an elder, and assuming his cultivation was superior, Mu Yu courteously expounded, “I have no intention of taking shortcuts. I am purely curious. If there is harm in learning it, it is surprising to know it would be kept here.”
“The author of the manual was once called our grandmaster’s Pill Ancestor. In his later years, he authored the book, recording his lifetime-worth of knowledge. Unfortunately, nobody has been able to fathom the true alchemy principles recorded. Everyone treats it as a shortcut to mastery. If you follow the methods introduced, you will easily create even rank four pills. That being said, you won’t be able produce pills of higher rank, and your cultivation will plateau for the rest of your life.”
Mu Yu said inwardly – that’s crazy. What would Ku Mu want him to learn from it for? What, was he planning to sacrifice Mu Yu’s cultivation for something? On second thought, that was improbable. The elder wasn’t a hero, but he wasn’t a villain. Moreover, he felt stupid for even suspecting that for a second because it would result in all the elder’s teachings being for naught.
“Only one person has grasped the teachings in the manual. Sadly, that runt, Ku Mu, refused to learn properly and departed without revealing what he learnt. If I meet him again, I’m going to belt the knowledge out of him.”
Oooohhh, that’s why he told me to fetch it. He knows how to work around the drawbacks. Ah, Good Ol’ Gramps,”
“My shifu is Eternally Youthful Ku Mu. He was the one who sent me to here for the book.”
“That runt is back? Time for a beating!” exclaimed the elder, getting up and zooming off.
He’s not going to break Gramp’s legs is he? I should hurry back.
Mu Yu halted after only a few steps. “I guess I’d be too late even if I ran full-pelt back now. I love how they love using ‘that runt’ to address people. Wait, why am I happy that Gramps calls me a runt? Whatever. Try my luck it is, then.”
Turning around, the sight of rows and rows of shelves came into sight again.
Haha, try my luck, I said. I must be out of my mind. Let’s just pray the elder takes long enough for me to find it.
Mu Yu needed fifteen minutes to go from the end of one shelf to the other.
“Daoist Lie Yang’s Handbook, Qiu Tian’s Lost Manual… I can’t do squat with manuals for level three alchemists.
Mu Yu saw a door with “Half-Complete Pill” written on it at the end of the row. Curious what it was all about, he tried pushing the door. Since it wasn’t locked, he sneaked inside. It was rather murky inside the room that wasn’t too large. Luminous pearls on the wall acted as lighting, albeit barely. There were tripod pill cauldrons the size of chairs arranged in the middle. They were old, thick and heavy, but there was spiritual energy coming from them.
At close range, Mu Yu could see a different coloured pill hovering in each cauldron. Around the pills themselves were herb juices or powder. The text on one of the cauldrons read, “Reversal Pill, a pill capable of winding one’s physical condition back twenty years. This old one was unable to finish the last step despite his best efforts in this lifetime. I pray someone in a future generation can complete my formula so that I may rest in peace.”
The anguish and regret came through in the text. The formula was written underneath. The reason the creator couldn’t finish it was due to gui herb and liaozhi clashed, yet they were mandatory components. The liaozhi to be mixed in last still hovered around the half-complete pill.
Mu Yu found the other half-complete pills faced issues of their own. All of them were conjured from ideas that could be classified cheat items. For instance, if logic held its weight, rewinding one’s physical condition twenty years without any side effects would mean another twenty years of life, obviously. However, the upgrades during the twenty years would remain twenty years later if not have improved, meaning the consumer would continuously break previous records at their previous age.
By the looks of it, the room was a storage room for all half-complete pills over the course of history.
Xiaoshuai read the formula for reversal pill and then praised, “The inventor of this pill is a genius.”
“I’m baffled as to why the lizoazhi and gui herb clash. I’m pretty sure I can combine them perfectly,” said Mu Yu, returning to the cauldron.
“You, an unqualified alchemist?”
Mu Yu: Another day, another round with this joke. Does he never get tired of this?
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