Blueprint for Immortality: a Crafting Xianxia

That night, Booker had one goal. Alchemy.

He had a materials box waiting from his quest to create a high-quality, low-toxicity pill. As he closed the door behind him and let his spirit pets take their posts up around the room, Booker kneeled down and summoned the ornate box from the floor.

It rose from a glowing golden stain on the floorboards, appearing first as a shape carved out of golden luminosity and then resolving into a solid object of rich, red-grained amber wood. The outer surface was carved with scenes of gods and cultivators and demons, but the scent was too enchanting to ignore for long, preventing him from getting lost in studying the tapestries depicting great battles and moments of enlightenment. As he pried off the lid, that scent intensified, threatening to overwhelm the cheap incense he was burning to keep his room from becoming unmistakably marked by an alchemical bouquet of sweet, exotic aromas.

Inside there were… treasures…

Booker was only just now learning to truly prize what the quests gave him. Every materials box was a treasure trove, and it was a shame two of them were beyond his current reach, gathering dust and losing potency in a corner of his shack in the city. Those definitely had opportunities he hadn’t explored–

Focus on the present.

Don’t overthink it….

He reassured himself as a slight edge of mania began creeping into his thoughts. He hadn’t slept in days, and the hours spent awake were beginning to add up, even though his body and mind were totally refreshed by the sleep replacement pill. It was simply…

So much to keep going, hour after hour, without any rest or respite.

And if he didn’t stop himself, he’d add even more to his plate, allowing tasks and duties to overwhelm him until he was pinballing aimlessly between them. Most people did – sooner or later, almost everyone got overwhelmed, lost the thread of what they were doing, and let their efforts go to waste, like rainwater sinking into porous ground and wasting the generosity of the heavens. But if he could find a moment of calm, he could recenter himself…

That’s the power of the meditation state…

It’s more than just allowing me to think clearly, with focus and speed.

No, it allows me to think without being chained down by worries and preconceptions. An eye of calm in the storm. A moment to think like I would, if I wasn’t always stressed and overworked and trying to respond to fires in the heat of the moment.

It’s a single point of infinite calm in an unsteady ocean, full of waves and discontent.

He closed his eyes, and felt the presence of the meditation state, already there, waiting for him to realize he’d stepped through that translucent barrier and into the state of pure focus. Waiting to be put to use. For a moment, the possibilities of his own mind stretched out before Booker.

The calm feeling of control set his soul at ease, soothing the aches of overwork.

And he opened his eyes again.

Lifting the first herb out of the box, he examined it.

Sanguine Amber

Intact // Earth Quality

The sanguine fir grows on long-deserted battlefields, holding lonely vigil. Every few years a branch will coalesce a droplet of red amber. This amber is precious in the extreme, as it contains boundless killing will.

Effects:

Longevity 1% (Earth)

Extreme Healing 1% (+)

Rage Inducing 50% (+)

Toxicity and Potency 25% (+)

That’s a… powerful rage. In fact, it might actually be too extreme for most people. And overall, the only effect that doesn’t need a match is Longevity, and all the matches are hard to find.

A valuable component but maybe I should think of alternate ways of using it, instead of as pill fodder.

Golden Palace Royal Ambrosia

Intact // Earth Quality

When certain bees expand their domain past a given size, the natural formations with the cells of wax and nectar direct the powers of heaven and earth, condensing them into an ambrosial honey.

Effects:

Qi Recovery 20% (+)

Soul Cultivation 1% (Day)

Treasure Sensing 20% (Earth)

Mutation 1% (+)

Soul Cultivation, Treasure Sensing, and Mutation…

This is a keeper. No, this is a definite find. Treasure Sensing was already what I was buying ingredients for.

Tideshaper Snailshell

Intact // Dull Quality

The shells of snails that exhibit a minor control over the tides, using tendrils of snaring water to drag creatures from the shore into a watery depth, becoming a feast for the slow predatory snails.

Effects:

Water Cultivation 5% (Water)

Longevity 1% (Water)

Beast Cultivation 10% (+)

Toxicity 10% (-)

Another chaff option. The best property here is water cultivation, which would be useful for someone trying to follow that path…

And longevity, a valuable property in any format…

No, it's best to say this isn’t a chaff option at all, but a very powerful Dull pick that doesn’t suit my current needs. The beast cultivation thread is my best harvest from this medicine…

I can use it as fuel for a watery spirit beast.

Fool’s Pill

Intact // Dull Quality

When cultivators of the modern era first arrived in the Verdant Mist Valleys, they discovered these abundant seed-pods, which promised easy cultivation. Only the indigenous peoples warned them that the seeds would grow inside them, sapping their longevity to grow new trees from their bodies when they died.

Effects:

Cultivation Boost 20% (-)

Longevity Sapping 1% (-)

Beast Cultivation 20% (-)

Longevity Sapping 5% (-)

The next ingredient was a small seed-pod, the shape and size of a fig, with a narrow neck and round body that rattled with dry inner seeds. The outer rind was green and covered with backwards bending spikes. It was distinctly sinister, when you knew what Booker knew.

Considering it's such a slow killer, only sapping a little longevity, I don’t even think I can use it as a poison. It doesn’t have any qualities I could refine either. A pretty bad draw. Spirit beast fodder for sure.

Abyssal Squid Ink Sac

Extract // Earth Quality

The membrane around the organ the light from surrounding sky and earth, creating the ink within.

Effects:

Light Devouring 20% (-)

Additional Effect: Increase the effect of Light Devouring for each Night property in the ingredients. Lose all effect if any Day properties are included.

Light Devouring extract…

He lifted the enormous, completely black organ sac from inside the box, feeling ink press out of the thin membrane and drip sludge past his knuckles. It was large enough to provide several doses, taking up nearly a third of the locker-sized box.

This is definitely a bit of a strange ingredient, but I can work with it. Some simple binder with the Night property and a bit of Potency, and I think I can make an instant darkness pill…

Instantly the pages in his head began to flip past, revealing to him a half-dozen recipes for exactly that kind of pill. The most alluring used a Night property Maddening Scent effect to weave through a disorienting aura.

Mad Ox Musk Gland

Intact // Dull Quality

The gland of an ox maddened by the Frenzy. Contains traces of massive toxicity.

Effects:

Toxicity 50% (-)

Alluring Fragrance 15% (+)

Madness Inducing 25% (-)

Rage Inducing 25% (-)

Toxicity Effect: This ingredients toxicity properties are extremely difficult to remove through cutting techniques.

The next large object was fist-sized, flattish lump of organ meat shrouded in a caul of white fat and slippery, purple-red membrane.

Now this…

It lures beasts and drives them into a frenzy? I can do something with that.

And the Alluring Fragrance is a dead match for the Paintbrush of Omens.

Serpent’s Lacrimal Gland

Extract // Earth Quality

Used by executioners to dull their emotions and forget the humanity of the meat they butcher. Effects can become permanent over time.

Emotion Dulling 10% (-)

Additional Effect: Additional Effect: Balance: Add 20% Toxicity and Potency. (If you have at least one complete elemental wheel for each ingredient with the Balance tag, you gain the Balance effect.)

Smaller and distinctly paler than the musk ox gland, Booker only spotted the bean-sized snake gland when it tumbled free of a roll of bone-white bark he was lifting up to examine.

Hmmm. The main effect is… distasteful, but might be useful for snapping myself out of a daze. I certainly don’t want to think about the situations it would come in handy, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

As for the Balance property, it’s good, but a long way away. This one might just stay in storage for the time being…

As for the bark itself, it was a nice find for a simple reason…

Beggar’s Bark

Intact // Dull Quality

Frequently used to make a thin soup known in the valley regions as starvation gruel, this bark both amplifies hunger and replaces the need for food.

Effects:

Toxicity 10% (-)

Food Replacement 20 % (Earth)

Allergic Reaction 10% (+)

Toxicity and Potency 5% (+)

Additional Effect: Enhanced metabolism. Mildly increases the effectiveness of spiritual food.

It’s another Earth-aligned ingredient…

I think I have enough to fully commit to it – my next spirit beast will be earth-aligned. As for the Sanguine Amber, that’s the only thing I’ll leave out. It’s valuable as pill materials, and I don’t want an uncontrollable beast for this. I want the delicacy and intelligence I got with Snips.

Moving the squid ink gland to his desk and placing it on a cloth to soak up the leaking ink, he took the beggar’s bark, the royal ambrosia, and in a last moment decision grabbed the fool’s pill as well for an extra kick of potency. Sadly, a lot of his other herbs were still out of reach, in the apartment Booker had kept in the city. With time running short before the moon rose and the spirit beast refining process had to begin, there was no time to retrieve them.

Instead Booker set about preparing everything he had to the best of his ability. He laid them out on a cutting board, but he didn’t reach for the shiny new alchemist’s knife on his belt, or the old kitchen blade that had left so many scratches and scrapes on the cutting board.

The Lao-Hain man had said his cutting technique lacked spirituality with the knife. On instinct, Booker knew that was because he’d abandoned the blade he felt a connection to, the blade his master had given him, after killing Hu Bao. But…

I had to. Even if I’d kept that knife, I’d broken the ideology of pacifism that gave it to me…

That knife meant something because it came from a man who thought about alchemy, and cultivation, spirituality and life… Because it represented something, something I wish I could believe in too…

But I don’t really have it in me to follow that path…

I can’t give up.

This dream of cultivation has me gripped, and saying now that growing old and quietly studying alchemy is enough, that I can be a humble and kind person and be satisfied at heart, when other people decide my fate and the fate of the world around me…

No.

I’m not humble, is the truth. I want to win.

And going down that route… it feels like giving up.

My old life was… happy, I suppose…

But how often have I even thought about it since coming here?

Cultivation…

Maybe I ended up here because it was always somewhere inside me, that arrogance. That belief in myself that goes beyond reason.

My connection to the knife, to alchemy, isn’t the old man’s way, a path of non-violence and healing. But it’s not Zheng Bai’s way either.

My spirituality…

The thing I feel most about alchemy…

It’s control. It’s the safety, the sanctuary, of being in absolute control. Knowing absolutely what to do, how my hands should move, what herbs I need, what their effects combined will be. The book has gifted me an incredible talent, and it’s not pride I feel, but safety.

I never feel in control – I’ve felt like a pinball being sent flying from one extreme situation to another from day one – except when I’m practicing my alchemy.

It brings me peace.

“Dialyze.”

He held out his hands, and summoned forth a disc of floating water, swirling slowly as spiral ripples shivered through the crystal clear surfaces. The purpose of Dialyze was to cut – to cut with water, to divide and separate between things. As he rotated the water faster and faster, the stillness of the outer surface became complete even as he drew the edges out thinner and thinner, until they were frothed white with furious speed.

With a flick of his hand he bent the circle into an uneven bow shape, and sliced the beggar’s bark apart with the ease of a hot knife passing through butter. There was no resistance whatsoever, the water simply bending around the surface it touched and spraying off a faint mist of vaporized water as it sawed through in a heartbeat. That should have meant he had no delicacy, no sense of touch to guide the movements of the water knife…

But it was just the opposite. He could feel, when he closed his eyes, the exact shape of the blade. The exact and microscopic grains of the surface it sawed through were laid bare for him to judge, cutting to within a hair’s fraction of the exact depth he chose.

And it was more than that. Leaving the cut beggars bark out on the table, Booker stepped outside and gathered some poison purging grasses from the garden. Dirt clung to their stringy roots as he pulled them out of the ground.

But with a wave of his hand, cold water washed over them, peeling away the dirt with that same microscopic precision. It scoured perfectly, washing everything clean.

Next he drew that water into a spiral, and tested another application of the water blade. The grass had a tough outer stalk that needed to be peeled. Normally, a blade had to have a set curve but since he could adjust the water as he chose, he could simply wrap the knife in a perfect spiral ribbon of water winding around the grass’ outer stem…

And cut the entire pith-white center out in one smooth pull.

Booker grinned silently, letting the crystalline blade of water dissipate. Despite his victories, a clear empty sensation was beginning to emerge in his chest, like something was being drank up greedily to manifest the water with such precision and speed.

But I understand now…

Furnace is obvious…

And Dialyze is my knife.

I’ve been given all the tools I need.

And it has the supreme spiritual connection to me, because it’s part of me, a manifestation of a cold, water-touched soul…

The cuts he’d made were razor-smooth, without any kind of ragged edge. It was clean and efficient. Booker couldn’t help but flex his fingers and feel the soft joy that doing ‘magic’ would always bring him, a reminder that this world was full of wonders he’d always appreciate, having come from a land without any kind of miracle to call its own.

There was a knock at the door, snapping him out of the meditation state once more. He blinked and realized how deeply he’d been in thought for the last hour, phasing in and out of the meditation state for a minute or a few seconds at a time.

Making sure not to open the door so wide that anything but his bed in the corner could be seen, he peered out cautiously, and then stepped out into the hallway. One of Caihong’s lackeys had come to deliver the ingredients he’d won in his gambling match – the ingredients for a Treasure Seeking pill, and the blood of a suitable beast contained in a glass vial.

Exchanging thanks and tipping the delivery boy five liang, Booker stepped back inside. Taking a heavy earthenware jar that had been holding dead flowers sometime in Rain’s past, he set it on the center of the floor. With ink on his finger he traced out the same runes and designs that he had used when creating Snips, surrounding the jar with a strange script of runic characters that squirmed across the floorboards.

Froggie and Snips gathered at the edge of the design, looking apprehensively at the jar. Booker supposed they must have recognized the ritual.

Into the jar, he poured the finely-cut beggars bark, the ambrosial honey, and the ingredients for the treasure sensing pills.

If this works like I hope…

The beast that’s born from this will be able to sense treasure a mile away.

Finally, he cut his hand and grimaced as the blood dripped free from his clenched fist. Popping his last wound closing pill into his mouth, Booker held back the groan of pain until the flesh had knit shut, leaving a second shiny pink line across his palm in an ‘x’ with the first.

As soon as the blood made contact with the monstrous blood within, the mixture began to shiver, foam, and bubble. Living tendrils of shiny, jet-black material rose up and petrified in place, becoming a hard, coral-like foundation. The base writhed with white suds and black, deep slime, but squarish lumps of smooth edged black material like a fine obsidian were rising up, and soon, the outer layer was totally solid.

It didn’t totally resemble the process that had eventually yielded Snips, but Booker wasn’t at all worried. He’d actually been looking forward to this experiment – and with further testing what did and didn’t work when it came to spirit beasts.

To take Snips as an example, then… He was created with a top class technique, a good sample of blood, and some of my own, mixed with various toxic reagents.

The technique and the blood are the same here…

Does that mean the hardening is from the Earth-typed ingredients I added? It would make perfect sense.

I think I added a good deal more reagents to Snips, though… We’ll have to see whether that results in a weaker creature…

Marking these thoughts for later, as if he was inscribing them on blank pages within the green book, he returned to the other study he was making with this time. The study of the meditation state.

Today had been a good day on multiple fronts.

I definitely beat my old best time tonight.

Actually…

I kept slipping in and out of meditation state, but that didn’t seem to be a problem. In fact, as long as I stayed reasonably focused and mentally prepared for the focus state to return, once I catch ahold of it I seem to be able to return again and again…

Moreover, with each return, I stayed in the state a little longer…

The overall shape was something like a bell curve, with brief moments of focus at the beginning and end, and unbroken stretch of nearly two minutes at the center. So if that’s true…

Instead of directly trying to force the window of meditation to grow larger, I should focus on trying to access it fluidly, many times over, and let that naturally extend how long the meditation lasts.

But…

If an hour of slipping in and out of focus got me to a little less than two minutes…

What would reaching an hour take? Is that even possible?

Considering it, he shook his head. Maybe that was why old masters seemed to spend days or weeks away from the Sect, meditating in silent isolation. Maybe they were chasing increasingly large windows of the meditation state, in the hopes of seeing through their cultivation’s final flaws.

Frankly, he’d assumed that was some weird esoteric bullshit he’d never understand but–

He was beginning to respect the willpower it must take.

With the spirit beast foundation bubbling and boiling away, Booker moved to his desk, addressing the massive squid organ-sac lying on the cloth. Transferring it to a bowl, he took up the kitchen knife and split the outer skin apart with its point, sliding his hand down as points of black swelled up behind the knife’s path. The ink poured out, but the veiny skin was left behind.

Taking that, he divided it four ways, chopping apart the rubbery, half-see-through gray meat with the palm of his hand on the back of the blade.

Once he had four generous segments, he put one aside to be stored for later, and diced each of the remaining three into a slippery portion of rice-paper-thin shavings. Mixing in a dash of bonemeal, he rolled them into balls with the palm of his hand. Already the blackness of the remaining ink – the book suggested in this pill’s recipe to leave a trace behind instead of fully washing the membrane – was sinking into the mealy gray surface of the pill.

“Furnace.” Blue flame billowed from his palm, his hair fluttering back as blue light illuminated the space.

When it cleared, the pills had hardened into glossy black spheres each the size of a fingernail. Booker picked one up, the surface still hot, and crushed it experimentally between his fingers. Instantly a black depth of space expanded, like the night sky was suddenly contained within his apartment. Total blackness, deep and starless and consuming, filled the space and obscured every aspect. There were no silhouettes, no sense of anything but the position of his hands and the security of the floor underfoot.

Sky-Devouring Darkness Pill

5% Potency // 4% Toxicity

Effect:

Instantly consumes the surrounding area with darkness when crushed.

Ingredients:

Abyssal Squid Ink Sac

Beast Bone Meal

“Stay calm everyone.” Booker said, as he heard Froggie start to croak in panic.

After a moment the darkness ebbed. Silhouettes faded in, then solid shapes, finally colors. Light slowly bled through the black.

When things were back to normal he carefully packed the remaining two darkness-bombs into a roll of gauze, placing them in his bag alongside the grenades and satchel of blinding powders.

That’s one surprise to keep in my back pocket.

He stretched, pacing around the room with his hands in his robes. He had an idea of what trouble he could get up to tonight, and his better sense was telling him to stay out of it. To have a relaxing night in…

Quest: Repairing Your Life

Goal: Create a Seven-Times Purified Charcoal Pill and use it to repair your poisoned body.

Reward: Materials Box

Quest: Break the Thread

Goal: End Zheng Bai’s Influence Over You

Reward: Materials Box.

Quest: A Birthright Recovered

Goal: Reclaim Rain’s heritage amulet at the auction in 3 days.

Reward: Materials Box.

Quest: Right the Wrong

Goal: Hunt the Murderer Behind the Boy in the Wall.

Reward: Materials Box.

Quest: Rendering the Fat

Goal: Extract valuable materials from 5 (5/5) beasts or monsters.

Reward: Karmic Pill.

Quest: Purification of the Body.

Goal: Eat nothing but spiritual food for 7 (7/7) days.

Reward: 10-Hour Practice Token.

Quest: Conquer the Stone

Goal: Break 1 (0/1) of the practice stones used by the cultivators to test their strength.

Reward: Karmic Pill

Quest: Recover the Hospital Deed

The hospital’s land rights have been lost on a wager at the Pearl Gambling House. Recover them.

Reward: Master Page

One last thing…

The karmic pill.

He held his hand to the desk, and a small golden patch of light appeared, the hexagonal box rising up out of the luminous stain before the light faded away.

It was carved with eight demons, and out of black ash wood.

As he opened the box a velvety red scent of licorice wafted out.

Sin Purgation Pill

31% Potency // 17% Toxicity

Effect:

Forces sins and heart demons out of the body. Acts as a laxative.

Ingredients:

Judgment Thorn Apple

Gu-Bred Red Centipede

Cloud Liquor

Pureheart Oak Blossom

A laxative? Booker grimaced intensely.

Karmic pills huh. This is two times I’ve spun the roulette wheel and landed on something nasty – it’s starting to not feel like an accident.

Lifting out the gray-white pill, which was swirled between the two colors like a marble and grained with a faint rough texture, Booker examined it.

Judgement Thorn Apple. Gu-Bred Red Centipede. Cloud Liquor. Pureheart Oak Blossom.

One by one, the pages came to mind. Each of these, every ingredient, was a rare and precious elixir in its own right. The ingredients were simply so valuable…

Maybe I should break it down with Dialyze. I could make something interesting…

But assuming these two draws aren’t just bad luck...

Maybe there’s something I need this for. The crucible pill… It helped me take my bodily strength to the next level.

Frowning, he dropped the pill into a bamboo vial and stored it away. He was building up quite a supply of interesting alchemical tricks – powders, poisons, and pills. Not to mention the odd grenade. There was something reassuring about having so many tools at his disposal.

Taking the grasses he’d gathered from the garden for their poison purging properties, he diced the inner white of the stalks and crushed it down to a rough, fibrous pulp with the blade’s flat. Now he mixed in other antidotal herbs from the markets, dicing and grinding and finally muddling the the two together in a thick stone mortar, until there was a white-peppered green paste, wet and grainy.

With this mixture he made his next set of pills. Six lustrous, beetle-green oblong pills.

Poison Spitting Pill

12% Potency // 2% Toxicity

Effect:

Causes the body to instantly reject poisonous elements. Effective only for a few seconds before the poison is too deeply distributed to be returned.

Ingredients:

Rude Nettle

Saw-Edged Wiregrass

Beast Bone Meal

Collecting them into another vial, Booker drummed his fingers on the table.

The idea was gaining traction in his mind.

It was a dangerous idea…

But letting Zheng Bai’s toadies walk all over him…

No, letting Zheng Bai always have the choice of when and where to pick her fights, while he was totally reactive, getting surprised and taken off guard every time…

That was no way to live.

He needed to throw a wrench in her works, one she couldn’t attribute to him.

Booker turned back to Snips and Froggie and said, “Keep watch over all this stuff for me, okay?” Keeping the herbs in his room couldn’t be a long term solution, but right now, he didn’t have anywhere better to hide the precious materials for his alchemy. Leaving the two of them as guards was a decent compromise.

As he stepped out into the hallways it was late, and many disciples were either making their way home or leaving to go get drunk in the bustling city beyond. Booker kept his head down and made his way slowly to the alchemy labs, where he had practiced with Master Ping.

It felt like a long time ago.

As he waited for a gaggle of apprentices to finish leaving, the only other people in the workshop were a few teachers and apprentices laboring to finish up some project or another…

Well…

Most people would have only seen them. Booker saw the crippled attendant raking the ashes out of the furnaces into wooden buckets. While others worked, completely ignoring the presence of the ash-sweeper among them, Booker’s eyes followed the cripple through the room.

When he lifted both buckets onto a yoke and carried them out, Booker followed him from a distance.

It has been a while…

But the binder Zheng Bai used for her Blue Heaven Pills, is alchemical ash.

Where else would she be getting it?

At an unseen distance, he watched in a darkened cattle yard where an oxen was being hitched up to a cart. Other attendants were loading ash-filled buckets covered by cloths onto that cart, bound for a disposal in some garbage dump where the toxic substance wouldn’t poison the Sect’s meticulously cleaned earth and water.

But it never makes it there…

As the wagon rumbled out onto the streets, Booker vaulted a wall, fully disguised as the masked alchemist. He followed them by side paths and winding alleyways, until they went through a gate and out of the city. Booker followed, wandering through the warm, firelit streets and the crowds of eager people pushing their way into Mantis City.

Outside, the scene was darker. Hills rose in the velvet midnight beyond any glimmer of fire, blending into the night as if they were cut from the same cloth as the space between stars. Fir trees bent their whip-thin branches and rattled their tiny green blades in the wind.

Halfway to the dumping grounds, the wagon halted.

Three figures stepped out of the darkness, wearing rough-cut clothes and work boots, carrying knives and hatchets on their belts. They could easily have been bandits, looking at their ugly and scarred faces through the flashes of firelight provided by a lantern in one of their hands.

But they greeted the cripple with familiarity – “Quiet night?”

“We’re being followed.” The man said.

Booker had already stepped out of the treeline – he knew he’d be caught as soon as they left the city and the safety of the crowds. In his hands, he held a grenade. His thumb was pressed to the wick…

There was a second and a half on that wick, precisely.

“Who are you, then? Scared to show your face but brave enough to fuck with us, that’s a thin line. I’m betting you ain’t on it – I’m betting you had no idea who you were fucking with.” The head of them sneered, taking in the mask and the dark attire. He tilted a head and brought a scar-knuckled hand up to the sword on his belt. “I’m telling you to piss off now.”

“I know who you are.” Booker said. Fire flicked up on his thumb, lighting the wick and bringing their eyes to the grenade. He saw the instant math going on behind their gazes – terrified little minds putting together the fact that they were standing next to a wagon full of toxic, volatile ash. “I’m telling you – run.”

And as he flung the grenade towards the wagon, all five of them scattered in opposite directions.