From the perspective of Zhuge Su Yeon
The ancestral hall still exhaled the scent of incense, thin smoke crawling across the ceiling like thoughts uncertain whether to disperse or remain trapped.
The murmurs of negotiation with the patriarchs Yuan He and Tie Xuan had already dissolved, leaving only the heavy silence of the ancient wooden walls.
My hands, however, did not carry the weight of politics.
They carried a book.
The title gleamed in golden characters, exaggerated like a merchant trying to sell cheap cloth with flashy embroidery:
Art of the Pill of Natural Qi Cultivation.
A glamorous name, perhaps even too pompous for something that intended to be discreet.
Yet the strokes were carved in black jade, and each letter seemed to breathe along with my pulse.
I leafed through it slowly.
The paper was rough, uneven — not just ink and fibers, but a receptacle that absorbed Qi.
As if each page had been tempered through years of patience, waiting for hands that would not tremble.
It was not the first alchemical manual I had read.
The black castle had gifted me with entire shelves of recipes, some so advanced they would never dare circulate within the small White Flame Empire.
Earth-grade perfect techniques, formulas that would make even sect masters of neighboring lands drool like dogs before a bone.
And yet, I had not brought any of them with me.
Not because they were useless.
But because, in the wrong hands, they would be nothing but gunpowder given to children.
I sighed, a dry trace of irony threading into my breath.
The manual in my hands was not a whim, nor a luxury.
It was a choice.
The system had charged twenty thousand points — a sum that could buy countless techniques capable of driving half the empire into madness just by hearing their names.
Twenty thousand points, when I could have simply brought from the black castle a hundred ready-made formulas, free, waiting only for the patient touch of hands.
And yet, this was the book I purchased.
The reason?
Simple, and at the same time, complex.
Auxiliary professions always seemed to me like a world apart.
A vast ocean divided into archipelagos of specialties, each island with its own rules, traditions, and madness.
My plan for Mei Xue, for example, was simple — or at least as simple as one can plan in a world that insists on stumbling over its own clichés.
She would be shaped in concealment and teleportation formations.
For that, I had already given her some basic manuals, but also something more precious: the Heavenly Veil Formation and the Two-Point Portal Formation, the latter found on the dusty shelves of the black castle.
Not just any gift; a foundation.
But even among so many auxiliary professions, one always stood apart.
Alchemy.
Not because of any supposed hierarchy among the arts.
No profession was inherently superior to another.
A blacksmith could forge swords that changed destinies; a beast tamer could turn monsters into living walls.
But while one could pass an entire life without wielding a spiritual blade or ever stepping into a formation… few would cross life without swallowing at least one pill.
And that simple reality made alchemy not merely a profession.
It made it a necessity.
A necessity that filled coffers, inflamed ambitions, and inevitably attracted obsessions.
Thus, within alchemy, there were common divisions: cultivation pills, emergency pills, healing pills… and within them, even more specific branches, where alchemists lost themselves in labyrinths of experiments and failures.
That was where I found the problem within my own clan.
The system, always cold and infallible in its diagnoses, pointed to someone.
A name almost erased from the genealogy.
One who, ironically, bore the greatest alchemical talent of the Zhuge clan.
But instead of reverence, she received isolation.
Almost a pariah among her own.
The reason?
An obsession.
She had refused to follow the "safe" paths of alchemy, those that produced common pills — the kind that poured rivers of energy by force into a cultivator's body, helping them break through barriers.
Useful, yes, but treacherous as well.
In time, they left residues: unstable realms, impurities entrenched in flesh, hidden burdens whose gravity revealed itself only decades later.
That was why even rich clans did not dare push their young geniuses to the top solely through pills.
Sooner or later, the price was collected — in blood or shattered Qi.
But this alchemist did not accept the easy path.
Her passion — or madness — was another:
pills of natural evolutionary cultivation.
Recipes that did not pour energy in brute force, but amplified the cultivator's natural potential.
They allowed the absorption of Qi more purely, more deeply, without the corrosive side effects of common formulas.
The promise was grand.
But the difficulty of their creation… absurd.
Not just for the Zhuge clan.
Not just for the White Flame Empire.
Even the black castle — which I suspected once belonged to a sect far beyond the borders of this small empire — held not a single recipe of this kind.
At that point, I understood.
It was natural that others isolated her.
What use is talent without results? Obsession without outcome?
I sighed, my fingers brushing the cover of the book like one caressing a newly revealed secret.
"Of course… for them, a fatality.
For me, only an investment."
An all-powerful system would not allow me to waste that spark.
And this book in my hands was proof of it: a manual of recipes for natural evolutionary cultivation pills.
Not just a handful of rare formulas.
But the spark of a change.
With it, I would not only train a brilliant alchemist for the clan.
With it, I would lay the first stone of an invisible wall: the strengthening of the Zhuge Clan.
The name of the target of my plans was Zhuge Qian Ruo.
A woman of the clan, thirty years old.
An ungrateful age.
Too old to be treated as a promising disciple, too young to be granted the authority of an elder.
Suspended in the vacuum of hierarchy, invisible by convenience.
Her cultivation remained at the first level of Spiritual Refinement, the same as Yui Lan.
Not for lack of talent, but by choice.
Alchemists, after all, were not measured by the strength of their meridians, but by the stability of the flame in their furnaces.
I had seen her before, wandering the clan corridors with her face buried in pages.
Always with her nose in books, her steps automatic, like someone who lived more in theories than in sunlit rooms.
Someone dedicated — perhaps obsessed — with her passion.
And therefore, isolated.
Until this moment, I had never exchanged a single direct word with her.
But now, with the weight of this book in my hands, conversation was no longer an option but an inevitability.
I rose from the ancestral chair and left the hall behind.
The silence of the clan stretched like a veil, broken only by the occasional rustle of servants sweeping away snow brought in by the winds.
My steps were firm but unhurried; after all, the future I carried had no haste.
It awaited only the right moment to reveal itself.
The clan's side library was not hard to find.
Small, cold, almost always abandoned — except by her.
I pushed open the wooden door.
The smell of old parchment and dust rose like an invisible wall.
And there was Qian Ruo.
Sitting before a narrow table, lit only by a trembling lamp.
Her face slightly pale, her posture bent over a codex already worn with time.
Thin fingers, stained with herb powder, turned pages with the delicacy of someone afraid a breath might tear the paper.
She did not notice me at first.
Her world seemed restricted to the lines she read.
I approached silently until my shadow fell across her book.
Only then did she lift her eyes.
And when she looked at me, her surprise was unmistakable.
"P-patriarch…?"
Her voice came hesitant, as if unsure whether to call me that or simply apologize for existing.
I kept my expression calm, giving no space for embarrassment.
The book in my hands gleamed beneath the lamplight, golden characters reflecting on the wooden table.
"Zhuge Qian Ruo."
I pronounced slowly, letting the name rest in the air like one leafing through old memories.
She lowered her eyes, almost shrinking into the seat — the reflex of someone ignored for years because of her own passion.
I placed the book on the table.
The sound was discreet, yet carried the weight of something that did not belong to that small library.
Art of the Pill of Natural Qi Cultivation.
The characters shimmered under the trembling light.
Her lips trembled.
Her tired pupils expanded into a discrete flame, impossible to hide.
I let the silence stretch before speaking:
"I have heard… certain things about your unusual taste in alchemy."
My words were neither accusation nor praise, merely statement.
"During my journey, I came across this manual. I believe it may be… of interest to you."
I withdrew my hand from the book, leaving it between us like a frontier to be crossed.
She lifted her gaze, fingers hesitating in the air, as if afraid that the mere touch would dissolve the reality before her.
I added nothing more.
Offered no promises, no speeches.
I only left the weight of the choice in her hands.
Qian Ruo hesitated for just a moment.
Then her fingers finally closed over the manual.
The pages, still rigid from time, opened before her like an ancient breath.
At first, she leafed through slowly, as if afraid to break a relic.
But soon, the cadence changed: the turning of pages quickened, her eyes devoured the lines with ravenous eagerness, and within minutes she was completely immersed.
The glow in her eyes betrayed the inevitable.
Even my presence, a few steps away, had vanished from her awareness.
But I did not mind.
I was in no hurry.
I clasped my hands behind my back and simply waited, the silence of the library filled only with the delicate sound of paper yielding to her rhythm.
Time passed.
Half an hour.
An hour.
Only then did she lift her face, as though surfacing from a deep dive.
Her lips parted, and a whisper escaped — more to herself than to me:
"…This changes everything."
I seized the opening, my voice calm, almost absent:
"So it is useful?"
She flinched, recoiling slightly.
It was obvious she had forgotten me entirely.
"Useful is too little…" she answered, her breath still caught in excitement.
"With this manual I can advance in every aspect of my research. It won't be long before I am able to create true natural evolutionary cultivation pills."
I did not respond immediately.
I observed the newly kindled fire in her face — a flame that years of isolation had not extinguished, but which now had fuel to burn.
Yet intensity was not part of my nature.
Her enthusiasm did not demand reflection from me.
Only a counterweight.
After a long silence, I spoke:
"That is good.
Then I will leave the manual in your hands… while I await your results."
She stood up, nearly stumbling over her own chair, and bowed in gratitude.
I merely gestured lightly, without formalities, and left the room.
The corridor was cold and silent.
Behind me, Qian Ruo's eyes had already plunged back into the pages.
I smiled faintly.
Another piece had been placed on the board.