"I can tell you have even more questions now. We should have more than enough time to clear up all the confusion here."
"But first, I want you to do exactly as I tell you, without questioning it. Start the process of making the pills again."
When she heard me say this, she was a bit baffled by everything going on. She looked completely speechless, and it took her some time before she finally regained her clarity and nodded at me.
She started the process again, and I helped her a little by processing some of the medicinal ingredients. In no time, everything was ready for her to take the next step.
She opened the lid a little bit hesitantly, her hand shaky. Seeing her like this, I was aware of her nervousness and couldn't help but say:
"You know, I don't want to give you false hope before we confirm that everything has worked out. Even so, although your hesitation is justified, I wish you could believe in yourself a little more. So I'm going to state this clearly: the many times you failed at alchemy before weren't entirely your fault."
Just as I finished saying that, she turned toward me and gave me an even more baffled, questioning look. I nodded at her slightly and, with a solemn demeanor, pointed at the cauldron behind her and said:
"Just do as I ask, and soon the results should be clear to both of us. As for whether you truly possess a Special Physique or not, just do your best and leave the rest to fate."
"I'm confident that you do possess special qualifications and circumstances, but what you need most right now is to stay calm and believe in yourself a little more."
"Don't worry about the results. As long as you do your best, whatever happens afterward, you don't have to worry too much. Wi Jon has already accepted you as a disciple, just as you wanted."
After I finished saying all this, she turned to me again while holding the lid of the pill cauldron. I saw that her eyes, clouded with confusion, were starting to clear, and she nodded at me as if to say she understood.
Focusing back on the task at hand, she turned her back to me and began placing the Medicinal Essences she had refined and processed into the cauldron.
"Good start. Now do as I tell you, and follow the instructions closely. Close your eyes and feel what's happening inside the cauldron. If you don't hear my voice, or if there's a step you find yourself unable to make out, just stop everything you're doing and I'll repeat it. Understand?"
As if unwilling to waste even a second of her precious time or mine, she immediately nodded, closed her eyes as she had been told, and began to feel the heat inside the cauldron.
"You can start activating the array, but don't use too much heat at the start. Slowly increase the heat and the flames inside the cauldron. Also, adjust your breathing. Use your Blood Qi to interact with the array, and channel it through the circulation routes I'm about to tell you."
She didn't do a thing at first, not until she heard me guide her on which routes she should circulate her Blood Qi through. After that, she started refining the Medicinal Energy, increasing the heat and the cauldron's flames according to what each ingredient required.
Soon I told her to change the circulation routes of her Blood Qi, all the while keeping an eye on everything happening inside her body. Her possession of a Fire Spiritual Body was now truly confirmed.
This special physique granted excellence in controlling flames to whoever carried it, making that person a born alchemy genius, but only so long as they already had good control over their Blood Qi or spiritual energy to begin with.
All the details I had about this physique originated from the seal in my mind. This was the first strange body constitution I had come into contact with and actually been able to recognize.
Lu Hua should also have a similar, yet in essence slightly different, type of body constitution. Ji Xi, too, should be undergoing a transformation that would grant her a new bloodline and an inherited special physique once the process was over.
But unlike the other two, whose special physiques I still had no clue about, Liu Ru Yu's had been easy for me to recognize. Maybe because it was tightly tied to alchemy, or maybe just by a twist of fate.
Either way, I knew what I was dealing with in her case, and what I needed to do. The problem with this spiritual body lay in the fact that, without enough control, the person might end up consumed by the flames instead of controlling them.
The severe Blood Qi loss she had suffered before was very much related to her inability to control the flames resonating with the fire inside the cauldron.
My method was now helping her control her Blood Qi, and as a result the flames should stay in harmony and the process should go smoothly. Today might be the day a genius alchemist was born.
Guiding her verbally, having her circulate her Blood Qi through specific meridians according to a certain diagram, allowed her to stay focused and in control of everything going on inside the cauldron. Closing her eyes let her sense everything happening within.
Then the time to condense the pill finally came. The moment of truth had arrived, and the step she struggled with most had appeared. Her hands grew hesitant for a second, and nervousness began to creep into her heart.
Sensing this, I couldn't help but put a hand on her shoulder and infuse the spiritual energy of fire into her body, which made her calm down instantly and regain her focus.
It seemed that failing to get past this step time after time had left her a little doubtful of her own efforts, and might even have planted seeds of doubt in her. Seeds that could later fuel dark thoughts and give birth to Inner Demons.
But as she calmed slightly and heard me comforting her, telling her to remember what I had said about simply doing her best, she reacted well. I saw her hands begin to form gestures and seals, and soon the array was under her control again.
The flames were burning fiercely hot. Not hot enough to burn the Medicinal Essences inside the cauldron, but hot enough to fuse them together and, at last, help condense the pill.
After a few more seconds passed, she finally opened her eyes. The shaking cauldron began to settle, and the second it became completely still, the lid opened. From inside, eight balls of light suddenly shot outward and landed in the tray I was holding.
I sensed an intense gaze lock onto me and could tell how excited Senior Sister was. But seeing the tinge of pink on her cheeks, I remembered that my hand was still on her shoulder and instinctively pulled it away in a hurry.
Her gaze still hadn't left me. Or, to be more accurate, it hadn't left the tray in my hands. Her eyes shone with great interest, like two lanterns on a foggy night. Seeing her like this, I waited a few seconds before opening the lid of the tray and finally displaying the results of her efforts.
Inside the tray, eight pills had cooled and were now as hard as rocks. Eight Fasting Pills, all of them high-grade. The pills were a bright grey. Any dark shade on the surface would have meant they were only medium quality.
But the pills in front of me weren't glistening, nor did they have any dark shades on their surfaces, which could only mean they were high-grade in quality.
When I finished appraising the pills, I handed them to her, waiting for her to come to her own judgment before I told her the good news. She was sniffing quite hard, and as the tray landed in her hands she could barely hold it, her hands were shaking so badly.
Luckily, she didn't drop them. As she took the tray, I could see tears beginning to gather in her eyes. Seeing such a scene play out in front of me, from such a strong-willed person no less, filled me with awe.
I wanted to say something comforting, but she suddenly turned toward the window and knelt, raising the tray high toward the sky. In a grieving voice, she said:
"Father, Mother, your daughter has finally managed to make a pill, but you aren't with Yu'er anymore."
Hearing that, I didn't know what to say. I only felt my chest tighten from the tense atmosphere and the situation I was in.
Liu Ru Yu had lost her parents at a young age, and they seemed to have already expected her to become an alchemist. Paying her respects, and answering her parents' wishes in this way, could only be described as fitting.
I didn't dare even breathe loudly, so as not to spoil the moment. But in this world, even grieving was short-lived. After paying her respects and crying her heart out, she finally seemed to remember where she was. She stood, kowtowed before me, and said:
"This might sound inappropriate, but I hope Master will grant me the opportunity to learn under you. I am truly grateful for what Master has done, and I hope I can learn more under your guidance. Please accept my gratitude. I selfishly hope to be accepted as your disciple."
Seeing her show this much humility had already made me reconsider her and see her in a new light. But hearing what she intended, I thanked God I wasn't drinking anything, or I would have choked.
"You should stand up. I accept your gratitude, but the other request I'm sadly unable to grant."
"You have already been accepted by a master, on my own recommendation and with my blessing. Going back on that now wouldn't make either of us look good."
"And before you mistake this for me looking down on you, allow me to say this. In these regions, your talent in alchemy and the related fire arts could be said to be second to none. So it isn't that you lack talent."
"It's just that, as I mentioned before, my path isn't one you should walk with me, not to mention how dangerous it is. You need to learn alchemy through a refined and indulgent process. I'm not sure my own path of alchemy could grant you anything close to that, so I really can't take you as a disciple."
The effect of my words was instantaneous. Her face went a little pale, and she squeezed her hands, trembling. But as she heard what I still had to say, the tension finally eased. Taking advantage of these strange swings in her mood, I said:
"Aren't you curious to know the quality of the Fasting Pills you made?"
Her eyes, which had dimmed a little, shone brightly again. She started sniffing the pills and squeezing them slightly. After she seemed to have tried every method she knew without being able to judge them clearly, she looked to me for the answer.
I told her the pills were high-grade, and that they might almost have reached top-grade if she had not lost her focus for a second during the condensation stage.
Slight as that mistake was, this kind of mistake can still reduce a pill's effectiveness and quality.
After she heard my appraisal, she was so dumbstruck that the tray fell from her hands.
I reached for it in a hurry and saved it before the pills touched the floor. Using my Soul Power, I caught them effortlessly, and in time.
I gave her a bit of a show with my Soul Power, but she was still in shock from what I had said and completely unresponsive for a while. Perhaps because she was breathing the medicinal aroma still hanging in the room, she finally came back to her senses.
I could see how many questions were plain in her eyes. Even though I knew I was not the one who should be answering all of her doubts, I waited for her to ask whatever she had in mind.
Just as we were gazing at one another, locked in some strange staring contest, the door was slammed open. The one who dared to do it was none other than the owner of the room, Wi Jon.
His eyes filled with disbelief as he looked at the tray of Fasting Pills hovering behind me. He pointed a shaky finger at me and said:
"You were showing her how to make Fasting Pills, yet you made eight pills from one set of ingredients. How is that even possible?"
The shock on Wi Jon's face was plain. As for why he had barged in like this, the reason could not have been simpler. His hand had been forced.
He had smelled the aroma the pills gave off, come in, and demanded answers. Seeing me controlling the pills like that, he assumed I was the one who had concocted them. It shocked him, because he had never thought I would do such a thing. Or perhaps he was simply bewildered that I would do it while guiding his newest disciple.
Either way, I had no intention of letting the misunderstanding stand. Handing him the tray, I said:
"I told you before that sooner or later you would start boasting about her achievements, but even I didn't expect it this soon. Here. Those pills were made from the set you handed out, but you're wrong about who made them. It wasn't me. She made them."
At that, Wi Jon nearly lost his balance and looked about to faint. Luckily, he caught himself. He looked at me, then at her, and his eyes went wider than I had ever seen them.
He was about to speak, but I cut him off and handed him a list I had compiled earlier: seeds, medicinal materials for Flesh Tempering Pills and Organ Quenching Pills, and other healing and recovery ointments and pills. I asked him to run the errands for me.
He understood what I was doing. He wanted answers too, but I told him he would have them later, and only if Liu Ru Yu wanted him to. It was not that I distrusted him with what I was about to say. What I was going to say was of great importance, and it called for caution.
It was also a way to take the measure of his character. The man was an alchemy fanatic. If he refused to comply, he was most likely harboring evil intentions. Luckily, it seemed I had been the one overthinking.
Wi Jon took the situation in stride. Shocked as he was, he still meant to see it through.
He did not even wait for the money for what I wanted bought. He took the parchment and stepped straight out, leaving Liu Ru Yu and me to talk.
She had little to say to either of us, but I still had a great deal to say about her peculiar situation. So I came out with what I had in mind.
"Regarding your Special Physique..."