Wan Ai woke with a start.
Of course. The answer was so obvious. How could she have missed it?
She rose from her bed, quickly donned a sect robe over her sleepwear, rushed to Zou Tian’s door, and knocked softly.
In her excitent, she’d almost banged on the door, but her boyfriend—and how weird was it still for her to think of soone using that term—was the lightest sleeper she’d ever even heard of. Her simply opening her bedroom had likely woken him.
“Wan Ai?” he called. “What is it?”
Even though her excitent made her want to scream, she kept her voice low. After all, her assistant, Bai Xinyi, was still asleep in the third bedroom.
“I think I finally figured it out,” Wan Ai said. “I’m going to the pavilion. Do you want to co?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “Give just a mont.”
She grinned, still amazed at the simple truth that he wanted to be with her just as much as she wanted to be with him. If she did end up succeeding, she naturally wanted him there to experience the mont with her, and he wouldn’t think of passing up that opportunity.
There were things that ca with being husband and wife that seed so awkward and scary to her, and those activities were part of the reason she was more than content to wait to take the next logical step in their relationship and get engaged. But maybe, those things wouldn't be quite as awkward and scary as she imagined. Maybe it was ti to start thinking about a wedding.
First, though, there was sothing much more urgent to attend to.
As soon as Zou Tian exited his room, she grabbed his hand and practically dragged him from the house. By the ti they reached the Alchemy Pavilion, they were practically running.
As the leader of the pavilion, she’d commandeered one of the solo labs on the top floor as her personal space. No one but she, Zou Tian, and sotis Bai Xinyi ever entered it. To Wan Ai, having such a private place to work was pretty much the only advantage of being in charge.
“What did you figure out?” Zou Tian said.
Since she was now at the peak of Qi Gathering and in the fourth minor realm of Bronze Body Cultivation, her physical conditioning was orders of magnitude better than it had been even a couple of months prior. Even with the run and rapid ascension of several flights of stairs, she wasn’t so much as breathing hard.
“I keep reading the alchemy manuals and following the instructions to the letter, right?” she said.
“Of course. You are quite ticulous in your preparations.”
“Exactly, I am, but I kept doubting myself, thinking that I must be doing sothing wrong. The process is simple. Cut up so mundane herbs that have no qi in them, put them in a cauldron, add a little fire qi, and poof, you’ve got a mortal grade vitamin pill. It’s simple, literally the easiest pill a novice alchemist can possibly make. As long as one has a source of fire qi and a decent cauldron, a mortal could do it. There’s no way I’m ssing up that badly.”
Zou Tian nodded, clearly having to bite his tongue to keep from screaming that he’d been saying that all along.
She cupped her hands. “I am sorry that I did not listen to you.”
He returned the gesture. “Gratitude.”
They grinned at each other.
“I was thinking before I went to bed, ‘That Zou Tian is a smart guy. Probably the smartest guy I know. What if he’s right, and doubting myself is just because I lack confidence?’” She fixed him with a glare. “No. Don’t say anything. I know my faults.”
“I wasn’t going to say a word.”
She cleared her throat. “Anyway, that’s what was on my mind as I drifted off to sleep, and as soon as I woke up, a thought struck . If my inability to create a pill from the herbs isn’t due to anything I’m doing wrong, there must be another problem.”
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“That’s a completely logical conclusion.”
“Master gave us those manuals that he purchased from the Poison Claw Sect. What are the chances that they gave him those to deliberately mislead him?”
Zou Tian didn’t even take an instant to think about it, instead answering imdiately. “Almost none. They had every reason to not do anything to make him angry, and beginning alchemy thods aren’t exactly a secret. I bet we could find books from a dozen different sources on the subject. It would be easy for him to determine that the sect gave him bad information. Such an act wouldn’t be sabotage; it would be pure aggression. Which would make no sense.”
“I didn’t think so, either, aning that a third option is the most likely—there’s sothing wrong with the herbs.”
He looked at her quizzically.
“Think about it,” she said. “These are mortal herbs grown locally, not sothing Master picked up at a store sowhere. Has anyone with any real expertise ever examined them?”
“Your reasoning is sound, but I don’t understand what could possibly be so wrong with them. These are common herbs grown and used throughout the world. Why would the ones here in the village be any different?”
“Weren’t you telling about a strange phenonon where more people than would be statistically probable born here in the village have a Nature aspect?”
“Yes,” he said. “No one knows why. The suspicion is that it has sothing to do with either the mountain or the Orange Vigor Spirit Wood, but we don’t know for sure. Master could surely figure it out, but he hasn’t deed it important enough to investigate.”
“What if these herbs have a Nature aspect?”
“They’re mortal grade. They don’t have qi, aning no aspect.”
She shrugged.
“Senior Brother, Senior Sister, and Kang Lin have all seen these herbs, both cut and growing. If they contained qi, they would have noticed.”
She shrugged again.
He sighed. “Master keeps saying that anything can and will happen, so we should expect the unexpected.”
“Right. So if they do have a Nature aspect, adding Fire qi, which is antithetical to Nature, it would turn the materials in the cauldron into a gooey ss. Which, as it turns out, is exactly what is happening.”
“Okay, so why are we here? What’s your plan?”
“Uh…”
She honestly hadn’t thought that far in advance. Upon waking up and a probable cause to the issue hitting her, she’d simply wanted to go to her lab. Where she would… Do what exactly?
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Well, it sounds like we need two things—soone with the expertise to examine the herbs to prove your theory, and assuming it checks out, a way to … add a different type of qi to the materials? Or sothing like that.”
“Yeah. I think so.” She paused. “That ans we need Master.”
“Yeah, he’s definitely the only one who can do a proper analysis of the herbs and definitely the easiest choice for an alternate qi source as well.”
Ugh. Master was so important. His ti was too valuable to spend helping her figure out her problems.
“Maybe we don’t need to bother him,” she said. “I’m still months away from Foundation Establishnt. We can go to Vermilion Incomparable Rain Town, right?”
“Wan Ai…”
“No, I’m serious. They surely sell these herbs there, and those shouldn’t be tainted with qi. I bet Peng Zhen can tell us exactly where to buy them! If I can make a pill with those herbs, we’ll know for certain that the ones grown here are the problem.”
He looked at her with an expression that was fond and exasperated at the sa ti. “Or we can simply ask for Master’s help. Think of it this way—we have to either ask him to assist us or we have to ask for permission to make the journey. Which would you prefer?”
She used her best pouty face. It almost never failed.
“Pick,” he said. “One or the other.”
Almost never and never were two different things.
“Fine,” she said. “We’ll go to him in the morning and ask for his assistance.”
“Why wait? I’m sure he’s up. We can just call for him, and I bet he’ll appear.”
Her jaw dropped. “Call? Like yelling out his na?”
“Yeah.”
“You think he’s listening to us?”
It was Zou Tian’s turn to shrug. “To our conversation right now? Doubtful. He’d probably not want to invade our privacy like that. But I’m sure he heard us running from the house to here and then up the stairs. We weren’t quiet, and I’m sure it piqued his interest. I bet he’s listening closely enough that he can respond if sothing happens that requires him.”
That answer was much better than what ran through her mind when Zou Tian ntioned his plan. For a mont, she thought that Master literally listened to every word they said. Which would have been so, so embarrassing.
“We cannot do that,” she said.
“What do you an?”
“We can’t summon him like he’s our servant or sothing,” she said. “He’s the sect leader. We must go to him in his office and make a formal request for his assistance.”
“Why do you think that?”
“He’s the sect leader!”
“Yes,” Zou Tian said. “And if he were any other sect leader, I would agree with you wholeheartedly, but he’s not. If we go to him, he’ll just ask why we didn’t just call for him. I guarantee it.”
Wan Ai was a simple village girl, an orphan. Her only knowledge of sects before Master arrived in the village was from stories she read and tales people like Guang Yin told. Sect leaders were powerful, influential people, more important than the richest rchants or even royalty.
She had to admit, though, that their particular sect leader didn’t seem to be one to stand on ceremony. “Fine, but you can call for him. Not .”
Zou Tian grinned. “Master!”
And just like that, the sect leader appeared in the room.
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