Just as the HUMPH, like a clap of thunder in broad daylight, echoed above the Non Intoxication Tavern, Kuyi Tulan, the chief Gold Alchemist of the Alchemy Workshop, was descending the stairs from a guest room on the second floor of Lubin Tavern.
Kuyi Tulan stretched lazily. Every morning in Guru Mountain, he would procure a bottle of low-quality fruit wine to sample. This wine was brewed locally, without any special techniques. It looked murky and tasted bland. Yet, he would still pick up a bottle resolutely every day. Perhaps even he himself didn't know for how many consecutive days he had been drinking this bland fruit wine.
Kuyi Tulan was not a drunkard, much less a wine taster; he was simply interested in the impurities in the wine. In his view, anything containing impurities deserved close scrutiny. After all, he was an Alchemist, possessing a natural sensitivity to the exchange of matter.
