117 — Alchemic Chemistry

The past day had me spend hours talking with Yin about her grandfather and reading through the many notes the man had gathered over the decades. Wei Guo may not have shattered the heavens, but he was by no means a meagre man. The notes that I'd made were far more detailed and incredible than the childish messing around that I did with my own projects.

He’d even worked with cultivators, alchemists, and other literary scholars on his travels to research how Qi worked. I recognised one of the names of the contributors as the author who’d written a book about Gu, back at the library. Though I saw no mention of Chi, they had certainly discovered the unity that tied Gu and Qi.

Yet the discovery that interested me most was their attempt to quantify Qi. An unseen mystical energy that was so dependent on individuals that it seemed near impossible. I leaned back on my chair, looking at the notes scrambled around on my desk. Of them, Wei Guo’s book rested at the centre, with my own notes scattered nearby all over. I flipped open the pages, opening the description regarding the measure of Qi.

“Cycle of Qi: The method to quantify an unseen mystical energy such as Qi had seemed difficult at first, but the problems had only increased as we’d delved further into the subject. There were notable variations across practitioners, it seemed like an impossible task to isolate factors without extensive research facilities, and I am no scholar. Luckily for me, my colleagues are, and as I’d been ready to move to my other lucrative ideas that I’d come to them for, they’d cracked the problem.

The solution lay in cultivation realms. The way cultivators absorbed Qi itself, and how it was stored. Without delving too deeply into research jargon, this is how Qi was quantified.

A single unit of Qi, which we name as a ‘cycle of Qi’ is the minimum amount needed to cycle Qi once within the dantian.

Upon hearing of the answer, I’d asked the obvious question on how this was not reliant on the practitioner and the size of their dantian. Yet, it turns out, it does not. No matter how vast, the minimum Qi required to cycle Qi once within one’s dantian will be a single cycle.”

I flipped the pages over, closing the book as I set it on my desk. I’d repeated the experiment with Labby, Zhang and Su Lin using Qi crystals, and had found the experiment to be accurate. The minimum amount of Qi that could be absorbed at any point by anyone was a cycle. It was not a precise measure, as I had no way to measure Qi precisely, but it had been consistent in every test I’d done in the last couple hours.

I lamented not having the research notes of the scholars he’d worked with, but perhaps I could locate them and find the notes eventually.

For now, my focus had shifted on redoing my notes on my pills, and checking how they measured up with this new unit in place. One big thing had been taking a test for purity, to check how much Qi each pill possessed, and how pure it was.

I’d taken to comparing my basic Qi gathering pills, with Celestial Dew, the far more difficult version of the same kind, running tests on them.

“Entry 43: Purity test.

Process: Take two bundles of pills of both kinds that weigh the same. Measure weights for both using a simple weighing tool. Dissolve both types of pills in separate containers and boil away the water and Qi, leaving just the residuals behind. Weight again, comparing differences. Repeat multiple times with different groups of pills.

Results:

1. Qi Gathering pill:

Qi value: 125-150 cycles.
Qi purity: 20-30%* (Approx)

2. Celestial Dew pill:

Qi value: 1800-2000 cycles.
Qi purity: 75-80%* (Approx)”

I wasn’t sure how helpful these measurements would be for the general purpose of establishing a drug network, but they were certainly a beginning to a completely different take on Alchemy, and I couldn’t help but smile at how it’d taken building upon the work of someone from earth who’d come before me.

An interesting point of measurement that I’d also gathered was that my dantian contained a bit over celestial dew pills worth of Chi. And that the measurements of cycle remained accurate across Gu, Qi, but for Chi, they were doubled. So the minimum amount I could gather in my dantian for Chi was two cycles.

And by that measure, I had nearly five thousand cycles of Chi, and five thousand cycles of Qi and Gu respectively. Labby, on the other hand, had around twelve hundred cycles of Qi in her dantian, and a brief talk with Yan Yun let me know that I was curving well above the average in Qi capacity. ‘Borderline monstrous’ is how she’d phrased it.

On a whim, I’d written down the details on my notes, as game notes.

“Character Sheet:

Name: Lu Jie
Age: 20 years

Realm: Fourth realm (Second Spirit Circle)
Chi capacity: 4827/5000 cycles

Key Traits:

First Law of Cultivation: Duality of Chi
World spirit tree: Becomes a big world tree upon world quest completion. Probably.

Skills:

English - Fluent
Azure-Jade script - Fluent
Alchemy - Junior level
Fire Bending - Decent
Sending - Good
Stepping - Decent

Bonds:

Labby - Cute rat spirit. (Third realm)
Twilight- Tiny bloodroot spirit (Second realm)
Sheldon - Big tortle of doom (Seventh realm)”

I smiled at the stupidity of it all, and put the notebook aside. Fooling around aside, I did have some tasks that I had to finish. The primary of which was developing a method that I could use to consistently create a large number of pills with.

The first test pill, as always, had been simple Qi gathering pills. I’d gathered batches of herbs of various kinds, spirit grasses, and then created the pills using normally alchemy methods. With a way to measure purity with some accuracy now, the data collected had allowed me to find the best herb to use, which turned out to be the current one in usage.

What remained now, was to initiate step two. I pulled out my drawer full of spirit grass, and set them on the table. Taking out a mortar and pestle, I began to grind up the herbs into paste, using Qi infused water, at near saturation levels to create a paste.

I crushed the herbs, creating a slurry. After I had a big bowl of spirit herb juice, I took the contained and poured it into my cauldron. A flick of my wrist had a flame rising at its base, as the liquid began to bubble.

The difficult part came here. I brought over the lid for the cauldron I’d had one of the villagers get for me. It was a cauldron lid, with a hole in the centre. In that hold, I’d set in the other apparatus I’d specifically made. A metal pipe that after rising above a certain level, angled down sideways, to allow the condensing steams of Qi to flow and gather.

Lastly, I’d gatherest Frost touched lilies, and add them to a metal tray, where I’d then freeze the liquid into pills.

Picking up the apparatus, I began to set up my cauldron, carefully placing everything in place. The metal pipes clanged around, jerking as I screwed them in, and stepped back. Without much time to assess the setup, I moved on to the liquid now almost boiling.

Letting my Qi flow into the cauldron, I raised the heat of the flames and within moments, I felt wisps of Qi flowing out of the cauldron and rising through the pipes. I guided the Qi wisps, letting them gather, and flow naturally as they cooled down, while I managed the flames at certain levels.

In a minute, I saw the first drop of Liquid Qi drip into the beaker, a pale green and gold liquid brimming with purified Qi. Five minutes later, I had a beaker filled with the liquid, as nearly all the water had faded.

Taking out the porcelain bowl, I looked at the liquid rising up. Powerful wisps of Qi tingled my nose rising from the liquid and a bright smile flashed on my face. Walking to my cooling tray, I placed the liquid in, letting it spread throughout, and put the tray in shade.

Walking back, I sat down folding my legs and began to meditate, as I waited for the liquid to cool. While I did not need to cultivate and gather Qi as regular cultivators did. It did not mean I could not.

I let Chi flow from the world around me, into my spirit. Each breath had the energy swirling and growing in my dantian, feeding itself to the spirit tree that rested in my soul.

I took in a breath. The tree rustled, soaking in the Chi. I let the breath out. Vitality spread through my body, as one cycle completed itself. I took another breath, and the cycle began anew again. A calmness spread through my soul and before I’d realised it, an hour had passed.

Opening my eyes, I walked up from my place on the floor, and went to the tray. What lay there were little crystals filled with Qi. I felt my heart racing with excitement, as I shattered the crystal, breaking them into small chunks. Taking a bundle out, I paired them against my regular Qi gathering pills and began to run tests.

Taking two equally weighted samples, I mixed them in an equal amount of water, and began to test them for purity.

As the flames boiled the liquid away, I weighed the samples again, before working on the maths. My eyes widened in surprise, a massive grin splitting my face across in two, as I read the results for myself.

“Entry 51: New Qi Gathering Pills Test

Results:

1. Old Qi Gathering pill:

Qi value: 125-150 cycles.
Qi purity: 20-30%* (Approx)

2. New Qi Gathering pills:

Qi value: 180-200 cycles.
Qi purity: 60-80%* (Approx)”

Having followed a process similar to the one needed for celestial dew, but replacing the process with distillation and tools instead of human components, I’d seemed to create a less concentrated, but extremely pure version of regular Qi gathering pills.

I looked at my tray of shining green tinted crystals, and struggled to call them pills anymore. But by all means and purposes they served the exact same purpose.

Yet, that wasn’t even the cause of my joy. The fact that these pills could be made was a big breakthrough, but even bigger was the fact that this pill could be made by a mortal.

The thought itself made me burst into laughter. With the burner, Qi crystal, and the distillation setup, I’d managed to simplify Alchemy into a simple distillation process. Into Chemistry.

Now you didn’t need magic, to perform science on magic.

Taking my pouch of celestial dew pills, I began to formulate plans. If I could come up with similar alternate production methods, and then device tools to scale them up…

Ideas flooded my mind, rapidly coming and going on all kinds of things I could do. But for that, I would need scholars, alchemists, and engineers. People who would be willing to work with me and help me bring these ideas to reality.

And even before any of that, I needed to get people, likely someone from Taizhou and make them into a cultivator, who could work on these alchemy projects. No, not even that. The first thing to do that remained, was a meeting with the Lord, to show him the results of my experiments, and ask him for the resources needed to begin our plan.

With a thousand ideas and plans in my mind, I gathered my Qi gathering crystals, and set back to work again.

There was a lot of work to be done, if I wanted to start a Drug Empire.