The Pavilion was alive with motion.
Disciples hurried between benches, arms full of roots and herbs, pestles grinding in rhythmic chorus, pill furnaces humming like quiet beasts. It should have been chaos, but there was order in it too; a steady flow of preparation, each pair of hands moving with practiced diligence.
I slid into the current as best I could.
Ingredient baskets had been stacked high along the rear shelves, waiting to be pared down and sorted. I took one without a word and set to work, slipping into the rhythm I knew best: Essence Extraction.
No one else in the Pavilion worked like this. I could tell imdiately. The others sliced and soaked, asuring powders by hand. I pressed my palm over a sprig of wolfsbane and coaxed it free, watching the purple essence pool into a glass vial.
Batch after batch, I worked quickly, quietly, trying to keep my presence unobtrusive.
A disciple passed behind , reached for one of the finished vials, and tipped the wolfsbane essence into a pill furnace already burning hot. I glanced up instinctively to see what they were using it for, then froze.
The qi lines buckled. The surface of the mixture rippled unnaturally.
“Stop—!” I grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back just as the furnace shuddered. The lid rattled, froth threatening to spill over.
I didn’t think. My hands snapped into motion and the Alchemical Nexus spun into being, four rings snapping into place around the furnace. Formations flared, stabilizing the concoction as the bubbling smoothed to a low simr, the fus bleeding harmlessly into the room.
Silence spread across the nearby tables.
I exhaled, releasing the disciple’s sleeve, and bowed my head slightly. “My fault. The wolfsbane essence—extracted like this—it’s far more potent than what you’re used to. In your usual ratios, it will always spill out. I should have clarified.”
The disciple’s face was pale, but he managed a stiff nod. “I’ll… keep it in mind.”
I gave him a quick, apologetic smile and attended to the pill furnace, listening intently. The ingredients strewn across the bench told their own story; bitterroot, crushed white fig, ground willow bark. And now wolfsbane essence, glowing far too brightly in its vial.
I knew the recipe. Not a cure. Just a symptomatic treatnt. Most likely sothing to numb the fever spikes and regulate the blood flow of those touched by the Athyst Plague. Crude but necessary; a crutch to keep them alive long enough for the real dicine to reach them.
Normally, dried root shavings would have been mild enough to bolster the base mixture without destabilizing it. But the concentrated essence I’d provided carried the potency of three doses packed into one. Introduced here, without adjusting the rest, it threatened to poison the furnace entirely.
So I moved.
Pinching sprigs of willow bark, I adjusted the heat, letting the Nexus hum louder as I carefully shifted the balance. A dash of powdered fig to temper the bitterness, a slow spiral stir to coax the bubbling qi into order. The concoction hissed like an angry beast, but it stilled as I matched it motion for motion, nudging it back toward stability.
All the while, I could feel the stares.
Dozens of them.
I steadied the furnace. The Nexus dimd, rings flickering out one by one, until only the faint glow of the brew remained. Carefully, I poured it into five small glass vials, the liquid settling with a faint shimr.
“This batch will still work for relieving plague symptoms,” I said, turning to the disciple, “but it’d be best to separate it. The dosage required will differ from whatever you were making before.”
He blinked at , then down at the vials, pale fingers tightening on the rim of the table. “How… how did you—? Wait, what was that?” His gaze flicked back to where the Nexus had been, the mory of the glowing rings etched into his eyes.
I followed his glance, then exhaled. “That was an Alchemical Nexus. It's like a pre-set formation I can use at anyti to hasten, stabilize, or amplify the potency of whatever I’m refining.”
The murmurs broke loose like a dam. Dozens of voices, all hushed but sharp, rushing from bench to bench.
“He conjured it with no inscriptions…”
“Was that really a formation? Without talismans?”
“I’ve never seen sothing like that—”
I raised a hand. “It’s not entirely mine. The Nexus isn’t sothing I created from scratch. It’s sothing the Interface taught . Honestly…” My voice dropped. “…I’ve never been very proficient in the standard formation arrays. Too much reliance on this shortcut has left lacking in the fundantals.”
And then the sound of soone coughing cut them dead.
Instructor Xiao-Hu erged from behind the rows of furnaces, his expression severe, his eyes sharper than I rembered.
“You understate yourself, Kai,” he said, voice clipped but steady. “The Interface does not reward without reason. That much we’ve learned in this Pavilion this past year.”
I swallowed hard against the tightness in my throat. The words should have comforted . Instead, they stung.
I bowed low. “It’s good to see you again, Instructor. Did you just finish with your class?”
“Yes.” His tone was curt. Then his eyes snapped to the disciple beside , and his glare was like a hamr blow.
The young man stiffened.
“What alchemist worth their salt,” Xiao-Hu asked coldly, “swaps out an ingredient in their recipe without thorough research? Do you think herbs are toys? That lives will bend to your mistakes?”
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The disciple shrank under the weight of the words, his face burning with sha.
I almost pitied him. Almost.
Xiao-Hu’s scolding was nothing new. He’d been demanding even when I trained here, but there was a new sharpness in his words now.
He turned his gaze back to the vials. “If this concoction hadn’t been so volatile, if you had finished it as-is, the end result would have looked stable. Different dosage, different burn. And the patient? A child, an elder—it wouldn’t matter. They would pay the price for your sloppiness.”
The disciple’s throat worked, but no sound ca.
“Chen Guo,” Xiao-Hu barked. “Go to my office. We’ll discuss this shortly.”
Chen Guo bowed stiffly, eyes down, and all but fled the Pavilion.
Xiao-Hu’s cane struck the floor again as he turned back toward . “Now,” he said, his expression unreadable. “Show this Nexus of yours. In full.”
I placed my hand flat against the workbench, focusing.
The Alchemical Nexus spun to life again, four rings igniting in sequence, orbiting the air above the pill furnace like constellations caught in glass. Lines of script crawled along their edges, glowing faintly as they rotated.
Xiao-Hu leaned closer, cane braced against the tiles. His brows knit. “I don’t recognize these inscriptions. They aren’t from any formation lexicon I’ve studied.”
I tilted my head, the words coming to as easily as breath. I raised a finger to one rotating glyph.
“This one ans ‘Harmonize Essence and Vessel,’” I murmured. “It balances the flow between cauldron and ingredient. And this…” I gestured, willing the Nexus to shift. The ring’s glow deepened to gold, the characters reordering into a different pattern. “…this reads ‘Amplify Core Potency.’ It strengthens the dicinal properties at the cost of stability.”
The room was silent again. Even the bubbling furnaces around us seed muted.
Xiao-Hu’s eyes snapped toward . “How can you read this?”
The question cut deeper than I expected.
I froze. My mouth opened, then shut. For a mont, I truly didn’t know. For as long as the Nexus had been mine, I could feel when it shifted, sense what each inscription ant even though the language was nothing I had ever studied. That wasn't normal. How could I—
The realization hit like a splash of cold water. My Reading Skill. After it had evolved from Accelerated Reading, it beca Mind's Eye Reading. It's what allowed to read ancient scripts, like the ones in the ruins where I activated the Interface.
“I…” My throat was dry. “…It isn’t the script itself. I think it’s intent. aning. A skill I gained— it lets interpret what it wants to say, even if I don’t recognize the characters.”
I could feel the stares again. The whispers, sharper this ti.
Xiao-Hu didn’t flinch. He studied the Nexus for a long mont longer, eyes flicking across each ring as if morizing the shifting text.
At last, he straightened, his face returning to its usual stern mask. “This is no simple toy. Whatever its origin, this Nexus deserves study. Thoroughly. If the Interface granted it, then there is knowledge here worth preserving.”
He rapped his cane once against the floor, the sound ringing like a verdict. “But not now. Elder Zhu has requested your presence in his office.”
The Nexus flickered once, then dimd to nothing as I withdrew my will. The silence that followed was heavy, weighted with both curiosity and unease.
I bowed my head slightly. “Understood.”
And without another word, I followed where Xiao-Hu pointed, every pair of eyes in the Pavilion still pressing against my back.
The halls of the Pavilion were familiar. Yet as I walked, it felt like years had passed since I last traced these steps. Perhaps because of what I had seen since. Perhaps because I was not the sa boy who blew up an alchemical formation and got soot all over himself.
I reached the carved door at the end of the corridor and paused. My pulse beat heavier than it should. I lifted my hand, pressed the wood once, and pushed it open.
Elder Zhu looked up imdiately. He sat behind his desk scattered with scrolls and jade slips, his silver hair catching the lamplight. For just a mont, warmth touched his expression.
“Kai.”
I bowed deeply, my head nearly brushing the floorboards. “Elder Zhu. I hope you’ve been well.”
His smile faded, giving way to sothing heavier.
“That depends on what you an by well. I’ve read Feng Wu’s letters. Your work in Gentle Wind Village… and what you achieved with the Athyst Plague.” His eyes sharpened, weighing as if the words themselves demanded proof. “You found a way to make a cure all on your own. Using the Bloodsoul Bloom seeds as a component, yes?”
I inclined my head. “It’s true.”
He leaned forward slightly, fingers drumming once against the desk. “Then I want you to collaborate with us. Show us how it’s done. If the results are promising, we can coordinate with the Alchemy Association when we convene in Crescent Bay.”
The words hit like a hamr. Teach them?
I forced my voice steady. “Who would I be working with?”
Elder Zhu’s gaze didn’t waver. “The instructors, the first-class disciples. I'll be participating myself.”
A weight pressed into my chest. Xiao-Hu. These exceptional cultivators with decades in the field taught almost everything I knew. Ford the bedrock upon which my alchemical knowledge was built. Now I was to instruct them? The thought twisted my gut.
But I closed my eyes, exhaled once, and let the doubt pass. If there was one subject where I could stand without sha, it was this. Alchemy had carried further than strength alone ever could.
I straightened and t Elder Zhu’s eyes. “When do we start?”
His answer was imdiate.
“Tonight. We'll be departing for Crescent Bay in the morning.”
SCENE BREAK
Teaching a class of first-class disciples and the head of an Alchemy Pavilion wasn't sothing I thought I'd ever do in my lifeti.
But as I stood in front of the sharp-eyed cultivators analyzing my every move, I was forced to improvise.
The Dawnsoul Bloom pulsed faintly under the lamplight, its petals spread wide as the gathered alchemists circled it.
They prodded and asured. But the plant did not shrink from them. If anything, it seed content. So long as they fed it with anything—a chunk of at, a drop of essence—it opened like a child tasting sweets for the first ti.
A first-class disciple leaned closer, brows furrowed. “Did you notice any differences depending on what essences you extracted into it? Variations in behavior?”
I shook my head. “Not that I could tell. It absorbed indiscriminately. I think its root trait wasn’t preference, but appetite.”
The questions ca sharper then, pressing from every angle.
I expected it to feel like Xiao-Hu’s lessons: strict, one-way, with playing the student role as he cut away my ignorance. But here, with instructors and disciples who had likely catalogued a hundred plants I’d never seen, who had brewed formulas I’d never dread of, it wasn’t about authority. They weren’t looking to for certainty. They were trying to wrestle the unknown into shape alongside .
When Elder Zhu stepped forward, he plucked a vial of essence I’d extracted and tipped a single drop into the soil at the Bloom’s base. The petals flushed faintly gold, qi rippling outward.
I spoke into the silence. “That’s the key. The Dawnsoul Mist Bloom antidote I developed wasn’t just dicine. The plant passed down one of its core traits: hunger. The cure isn’t fighting the corruption head-on. It redirects the hunger to devour only the plague’s energy, leaving the body intact.”
No awe. No reverent silence like in the Pavilion earlier.
Instead—
“But how do you guarantee it won’t strip the patient’s qi reserves as well?” one instructor demanded.
“Have you tested it against other bloodborne toxins?” another pressed.
“What of dosage variations in children? Their qi channels are weaker—wouldn’t the ‘hunger’ overwhelm them?”
The barrage nearly staggered . Not derision, not disbelief, just relentless probing. They tore into the gaps in my reasoning, challenged my phrasing, turned my own explanations back on until I had to clarify, defend, or admit I hadn’t considered that angle.
It was nothing like being the only expert in Gentle Wind.
It was harsher. Fairer.
And strangely reassuring.
My mind split into threads.
One followed Elder Zhu’s careful hand as he dripped a asure of essence into the Dawnsoul Bloom’s soil. Another tracked Xiao-Hu’s clipped words as he argued with an instructor about dosage tolerances. Beneath it all, a quieter part of replayed every experint I’d done back in Gentle Wind.
The plant glowed faintly, qi shivering across its petals as if satisfied with the offering. My mind raced. What if the hunger could be focused further, its appetite pared down to specific traits of corruption?
I began to outline adjustnts aloud, almost without realizing it. Swapping out willow bark for powdered beast marrow to anchor a person's qi channels. Introducing a sliver of black iron essence as a stabilizer; I’d always avoided using tal in the past but now saw it fitting neatly into place. For every suggestion, a counterpoint rose from one of the instructors: too volatile, too costly, too slow to cultivate. Their resistance sharpened , forced to adapt mid-sentence, shaping the cure not as a solitary revelation but as sothing living, sculpted in many hands.
And in that crucible of voices, I felt sothing loosen inside .
'Even now, I've always carried the burden alone.'
Back in Gentle Wind, alchemy had been mine alone to bear. I had beco the village’s top expert by default—and I wore that weight as though the Interface demanded it of . Every crisis, I carried without pause. And yet—here, surrounded by experts who challenged rather than accepted... my dao of alchemy wasn’t diminished. It was multiplied.
Elder Zhu leaned closer to the Bloom, eyes intent as the gold sheen bled through its petals. “So it is not resistance,” he murmured, “but redirection. A hunger turned inward, devouring only what we command it to.”
His words anchored mine. “Yes. The cure is less a wall, more a shepherd’s crook. We guide the hunger, keep it from straying. That’s why cultists can withstand the plague; the corruption couldn’t spread, because the Bloom within them was already feeding on it.”
The room fell into a rhythm of exchange. Questions beca refinents, refinents beca possibilities. For the first ti since the Interface went silent, I felt like I had direction. This is what I should have done all along. Not hoard knowledge, not wrestle every problem in solitude, but bridge what only I can do with what others know better.
For a heartbeat, regret pressed in. If I had taken Elder Zhu’s offer back then, if I had stayed under his wing instead of returning ho, perhaps I would have reached this point sooner. Perhaps I wouldn’t have wasted so much ti stumbling through my own arrogance.
But I crushed the thought before it could fester. Gentle Wind had needed . Without those desperate days, without Xin Du and the others showing their immunity to the plague, the thought to use the Bloodsoul Blooms might never have occurred to at all. Scarcity, mistakes, even my stubborn solitude... those had carved the path to this mont.
I centered myself, feeling the Bloom’s faint pulse through the soil. The murmurs died down, eyes fixed on once more.
“Then let’s continue,” I said, steady now, stronger. “We’ll refine the antidote step by step. I’ll explain the extraction process in full, and together we’ll anchor it into sothing that can be reproduced beyond what I have now.”
And for the first ti, standing before elders and instructors, I didn’t feel like an imposter.
I felt like a bridge.
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