Unintended Cultivator

V12 Chapter 48 – Try Again

Sen looked around at the nervous group of cultivators. He’d summoned all of the alchemists from both the army and the Soaring Skies Sect. They traded wary glances with each other and stole uncertain looks at him. He’d waited to explain why they were there until after everyone arrived since he didn’t like repeating himself unnecessarily. It was only that they were all there and clearly concerned that it occurred to him that they might all think he meant to execute them. He hadn’t meant to build that kind of reputation, but a lot of people had died by his hand or on his orders. Better to break the tension now, he decided.

“I’m sure you’re all curious why I’ve called you here,” said Sen, bringing an immediate halt to the few hushed conversations happening around him.

Employing the same process he used for galehouses and for the buildings back at his sect, he’d created a small hall in the middle of what used to be the Soaring Skies Sect compound. The space the sect had used for serious alchemy just hadn’t been large enough to accommodate more than about six people. It made a certain kind of sense. Large sects had a never-ending need for the basic pills, potions, and elixirs used by qi-condensing and foundation formation cultivations. Those needs could be met by almost anyone with basic competence in alchemy.

Even large sects only had so much work for truly talented alchemists with superior skills, or so Auntie Caihong had told him. Advancements came far more slowly for core cultivators, which meant that those talented alchemists would only be called on from time to time. Supporting more than a few of them didn’t make sense when their disciples could easily handle the bulk of a sect’s needs. Reviewing the skills of the alchemists who would travel with him in small batches would have been tedious and a poor use of his time. Sen was confident that he could assess all of their skills as they worked. Now that he had their attention, he continued.

“The entire army will be relying on all of you to provide healing pills, potions, and elixirs. The problem is that I don’t know how competent any of you are.”

That drew more than angry looks from people who clearly believed they were budding alchemy geniuses. He heard muttering from a few people. He silenced their voices by summoning one of his elixirs from a storage ring and putting it on the stone table in front of him. A few of his elixirs were in clear vials, so he picked one of those. Silence reigned supreme again as they all stared at it. The elixir wasn’t one of his better efforts, in his opinion, but it was good enough to get everyone’s attention.

“This elixir,” said Sen, tapping the corked vial, “is what I’d consider appropriate to help a foundation formation cultivator with a moderately serious injury.”

That drew astonished stares from paling faces. His heart sank. If they thought that elixir was impressive, he didn’t have high hopes for them. Still, he moved forward, hoping against hope that they were better than he expected. After all, they were all he had to work with.

“You will each make a basic healing potion. You may use whatever ingredients you wish from that table,” he gestured at a table piled high with low-potency ingredients, “or from your own stores.”

“Lord Lu,” said one of the cultivators from the capital.

He was an effeminate man who had come from the Golden Phoenix Sect. Sen wondered briefly if the man was part of the cult of people in that sect who harbored unrequited love for Lai Dongmei and prayed nightly for his death.

“Yes?” asked Sen.

“Surely, you don’t expect us to expose our secrets and techniques to those outside our sects.”

Sen gave the man a tired look and said, “Do you honestly think your secrets are that impressive?”

Sen summoned another vial. It contained a healing elixir he’d made to treat injured nascent soul cultivators. The qi radiating from the vial filled the hall in seconds and drew gasps from everyone present.

“I— I—” stammered the man.

“They are not. Nor is there any guarantee that your secrets and techniques are actually effective. I will not have you wasting time and resources that could be better spent making the things we’ll all need. Now,” said Sen, pointing at the table filled with supplies, “begin.”

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Sen maintained a neutral expression while he walked along the tables as the cultivators went to work. Some of them made efforts to hide what they were doing from others, but it was pointless. Everyone was far more worried about what Sen was doing than what the other alchemists in the hall were doing. If they knew that I’m despairing at what I’m seeing, thought Sen, I imagine that they would be much more concerned. Sen had only had infrequent interactions with other alchemists. It hadn’t been intentional. He’d never tried to avoid them. It was more a matter that most cultivator alchemists spent the majority of their time inside of sect compounds.

All of that meant that he’d never had a real chance to evaluate other alchemists. It had deprived him of any opportunity to understand just how much better his training had been. Not that most of the alchemists in the hall were doing anything explicitly wrong. There were countless paths to make a healing potion, but they tended to share some commonalities in ingredients and methods. He was seeing those ingredients and methods on display.

What made him despair was everything else they were doing. The inefficiencies. The unnecessary ingredients. Even if he discounted his advantages, he could see most of the cultivators actively undermining their own efforts in one way or another. However, he said nothing. It was always possible that the end results of some of these potions would surprise him. He was talented and well-trained, but that didn’t mean he knew everything. He might learn something here today. There could be underlying interactions between some of the ingredients that he didn’t know about or hadn’t considered. Sen was open to the possibilities, but he wasn’t brimming over with hope.

One by one, the cultivators finished making their potions and pouring them into vials. A few who finished quicker looked around with smug expressions, although Sen had no idea why. Their potions were nothing to be proud of. Then again, none of the others who took longer produced anything noteworthy. He waited until they had all cleaned up their work areas before he addressed any of them. Sen started with the man from the Golden Phoenix Sect.

“Are you a metal cultivator?” he asked.

“No, Lord Lu,” said the man with a baffled expression.

“I see. Then, why did you use a metal-attributed ginseng root?”

“We always use metal-attributed ginseng roots,” said the man.

From the discomfort on his face, this was clearly one of the secrets he’d been worried about exposing.

“I believe you. But why? What does it bring to the potion?”

Sen knew that the man didn’t have an answer. If he could have answered the question, he wouldn’t have used that ginseng.

“Let me guess,” said Sen. “That’s the formula that’s been passed down to you?”

“Yes, Lord Lu,” said the man, his face darkening with anger.

“Let me see it,” said Sen, holding out a hand.

“The potion, Lord Lu?”

“The formula,” said Sen.

The Golden Phoenix Sect disciple ground his teeth so hard that Sen could hear it. In the end, the man walked to where Sen stood, summoned a small book, and opened it to a specific page. Sen took the book and scanned the formula. He knew what the problem was immediately. Whichever alchemist who initially wrote that formula had been a metal cultivator. That would have allowed them to use the metal-attributed ginseng to do some interesting things to the potions. Minimally, they could have reinforced certain healing properties. Unfortunately, that could only work for metal cultivators and ones who got specific instruction on how to perform such reinforcements.

For any non-metal cultivators, adding metal-attributed ingredients would diminish the healing properties of the potion. Sen flipped through a few more pages of the book, glancing over the formulas. The Golden Phoenix disciple grew angrier and angrier when he saw how deeply unimpressed Sen was at those formulas. Shaking his head, Sen closed the book and handed it back.

“Those formulas are useless for you. You’re wasting metal-attributed ingredients you can’t do anything with. On top of that, you’re making weaker potions. The formulas were written for metal cultivators.”

Before the man could move past his spluttering and voice outrage, Sen started giving similar treatment to a few cultivators he’d seen committing similarly egregious errors. After that, he addressed the entire group.

“All of you are using more ingredients than you need to for a basic potion that you don’t intend for a specific person,” said Sen and held up four fingers. “You can achieve the same results or better results using four common ingredients.”

To prove his point, he collected four ingredients from the table, all of them without a specific qi attribution. Then, he did what they had done and made a potion. Sen knew better than to try to make the potion the way they did. Countless failures when he’d been training with Fu Ruolan had taught him the pointlessness of that. What he did do was keep his interference to an absolute minimum. He prepared the ingredients as the other cultivators would have, and added them to a cauldron. There was no attempt to make it the best possible version of a basic potion. In fact, he aimed to make it the least impressive version he could. Something that they could all reasonably replicate using their methods. When he poured his finished potion through a cheesecloth and into a clear vial, it was met with utter silence.

Handing the potion to the nearest cultivator, he said, “Look at that and pass it on.”

He waited until everyone had a chance to get a look at his version of a basic healing potion. Most of them wore complicated expressions, like they didn’t know how they should feel about what they’d just seen.

“Now,” said Sen. “Try again.”