The Undying Immortal System

Without having concocted an Improved pill that could even be considered decent, aiming to complete a Superior pill with a high efficacy in only eighteen months seemed implausible.

I wasn't going to let that stop me.

I began to feel more and more that the other disciples here were being held back by a lack of drive to push themselves forward. Most of them spent a lot of time just enjoying themselves. I couldn't blame them. This was a steady, safe life. People here had homes, food, entertainment, and steady work. It wouldn't be wrong to come here and just… live.

That wasn't my calling though. Cultivation, herbs, pills. Those were what my life was about. I needed to stay focused. If this had been my only life, I might have been willing to just settle down here too, but I needed to prepare for the distant future.

Bao didn't have much advice for me. He could only make Improved pills himself, so my alchemy skills had already reached the limits of his knowledge. Cao told me basically the same thing. She was good at teaching cultivation, but her pill refining wasn't anything spectacular. She could make High-Purity Superior pills, but that was only because she had years of practice with them. She didn't have any silver bullets that could help me swiftly improve.

I wanted to find another private teacher, but the ones that could make High-Purity Superior pills spent their time concocting, not teaching. So, I began signing up for public lessons. I didn't have any other choice.

I filled my days with lessons, pill practice, and a mad scramble for contribution points to pay for everything. After a few months of this routine, I improved to the point where I was able to routinely concoct High-Purity Improved pills. This allowed me to fund my activities much more easily.

Advancing to Martial Master had been a boon. Lack of qi was the bottleneck that had kept me from practicing alchemy as long as I wanted, so being able to pull energy from several parts of my body to keep me fueled allowed me to spend much more time at the workbench.

I considered using some of the pills I was making to help further reduce my downtime from lack of energy, but I decided against it. Qi Gathering Pills were great when trying to break through while cultivating, but they weren't designed for efficiently restoring energy during normal activities.

It would have been nice if there were a pill designed for long-term energy recovery during daily activities, but I doubted it existed. All Rank 1 pills were completely useless except for Qi Gathering Pills. I had been told this enough times that I should remember it, but I couldn't help but wish that there were other useful pills.

Something about those thoughts seemed wrong to me, but I put it to the side, it wasn't important.

I just needed to do my best to power through.

On the day of the preliminaries for the outer sect disciple exam, I was mentally and physically exhausted. I had pushed myself right up to the last moment, and it was only after I found myself haggard and worn out at the testing site that I realized I should have rested.

I was fine. I would only need to concoct a single pill. I had the mental fortitude to do that. I could rest when I was dead.

That thought made me chuckle. It was about the biggest lie I had ever told myself.

We were to be tested in batches of one hundred with new groups cycling in throughout the day. Testing sites had been set up in a few areas across the city to make everything quicker and easier.

The place I arrived at looked like it was just a crossroads chosen at random. It was a spacious area with a hundred workbenches evenly spread out across it in a grid-like pattern. There were a few spectators who had just come to watch, but the location I was at didn't draw too much of a crowd.

Once everyone was in place, we were all given a pill recipe and a tray that held several herbs. The recipe described the basic steps needed to concoct the required pill, but it didn't list the pill's name or effects. As I had only made Qi Gathering Pills, I had no way of even guessing what kind of pill this was or how difficult it would be compared to a normal one.

For this competition, the sect had needed to prepare several thousand sets of ingredients. While we did need to pay contribution points for the herbs used in the exam, the fact that so many would be wasted by alchemists untrained in this recipe told me how little value they held. It was only more evidence that, as I had been told, all Rank 1 pills other than Qi Gathering Pills were worthless.

The primary ingredient for this recipe was a strange mushroom. It had a white stalk and a pink cap. Along the stalk and under the cap, there were odd sacs of a bluish liquid. The supplementary ingredients for the pill were what looked like an ordinary stick of wood and some type of blue-green leaf.

Overall, the process was the same as any other pill. Burn away the toxins, mix the energy together, and compress it into a pill.

When I used qi vision to study the herbs before beginning, I noticed an abnormality. Usually, medicinal energy was green, but here it was a strange blue color. I wasn't sure what that meant, but I couldn't worry too much about it at the moment.

I followed the process in the recipe as best I could.

The instructions for preparing the wood and the leaf were simple enough. Remove the thin layer of bark from the wood first, then grind the leaf into a fine paste. I did so and set the results to the side.

The mushroom was more difficult to handle. The instructions said to carefully separate the liquid sacs without bursting them. Then, cut up the mushroom into tiny cubes.

When I looked at the mushroom closely with qi vision, I got an understanding of what was going on. The liquid sacs were packed with medicinal energy and contained very few toxins. The rest of the mushroom was the opposite. It was almost all toxin with very little medicinal energy. Cutting apart the mushroom like this made it easier to target and destroy all of these toxins.

Cleansing the mushroom and getting it to a usable state would be a daunting task. It contained a lot of toxins. So, I didn't do that. The only reason to bother with the stalk of the mushroom was to boost the efficacy of the final pill. That would have been nice, but it would have also drained me of too much of my energy. Instead, I decided to place the stalk to the side and only work with the more potent liquid sacs. I would end up with a less powerful pill this way, but it would be significantly easier to make one that was High-Purity.

After all of the ingredients were prepped, I placed everything into the pill furnace and began scanning them for toxins. I immediately noticed that the energy of the leaf was very easy to damage, so I needed to protect it. The toxins of the wood needed high heat to remove. The ones remaining in the mushroom were difficult to target without hitting the mushroom's medicinal energy.

There were dozens of small complications. It was challenging, but I did my best. Through sheer grit, I didn't allow my concentration to fail. Finally, when I was reasonably satisfied with the purity of the medicinal energy, and I felt that doing any more would simply be putting its efficacy at risk, I forced the pill to coalesce.

When I heard the light tink of a pill hitting the bottom of the pill furnace, I relaxed. I had made the pill. I wasn't sure how potent it was or if it would be good enough to allow me to pass the test, but I at least had something, so I went to turn it in.

I wasn't too interested in whatever pill this was, but I decided to analyze it for fun.

High-Purity Rank 1 Purifying Pill (Water Qi), 43% Medicinal Efficacy. Value: 67 silver.

As I looked at the result, I couldn't help but mutter to myself.

"That's cool. Too bad it was a useless Rank 1 pill."

Again, when that thought popped into my head, I couldn't help but feel that something was wrong, but I didn't know what.

After submitting my pill, I had to wait a day for the results. 43% efficacy was bad, no question, but I would be surprised if too many people did significantly better without practicing that pill specifically, and I doubted anyone had done that.

Having finished my part of the exam and needing a break, I had a peaceful dinner with Bao. I had been so focused during this time I had barely seen him.

After we sat down to eat, Bao couldn't help but ask about the competition.

"So, how do you think you did?"

I sighed. "I don't know. I did the best I could."

"Ah, don't worry about it. Everything will be fine. Honestly, look at me. I'm a few years older than you and I'm not even close to ready to become an outer sect disciple. Just settle down for a few years and take it slow. You'll get there eventually."

I thought about what he said. Was it worth working so hard? It would all happen eventually anyway. If I didn't pass this time, I could just try again next year. No reason to worry about it. It would be good to just take a couple of years and, like he said, just live.

I had wanted to push myself, to do alchemy and cultivate, but the more time I spent here, the more people told me to relax, the more I felt compelled to follow their advice. Maybe I was on the wrong path.

"Maybe you are right. I pushed too hard to get everything done early, and it might have all been pointless anyway. If it doesn't work out this year, I'll take some time off."

"That's the spirit! There are tons of things we can do around here for fun. Just you wait."

After eating, I went back to get some rest. In the morning, I was informed of my results. I had passed. I was in eighty-fourth place, but I would be able to compete in the finals.

The finals were held in the same stadium where I had watched them during my first year in the sect.

The night before the exam, I was nervous. I was so worried about what my results would be, but thoughts of that conversation I had with Bao calmed me. The results of this one competition didn't matter. If I failed, I could just slow down and live a life of gradually improving my craft. That thought cleared my mind and allowed me to approach the exam without worries about the future.

There was nothing special about this test. All I had to do was create five High-Purity Superior pills. I had the skills necessary to do that. I just needed to make their medicinal efficacy as high as possible. I didn't need to worry about anything else.

Superior pills needed three ingredients: blue peonies, astragalus root, and schisandra berries.

I had lifetimes of experience with blue peonies. Maximizing their potential was easy.

I had less experience with astragalus root, and balancing its energy with the peony was difficult. However, over the last eighteen months, I had used them countless times in Improved pills. I might not have been as expert with them as I was with peonies, but that wouldn't be a problem.

The main difficulty lay in the schisandra berries.

Standing in the middle of a packed stadium, I silently watched as many of the competitors began to peel the berries. This reduced the initial pill toxins that they would have to be dealt with, and it made the refining process easier, but it was a trap.

Their strategy was not much different than what I had used in the preliminaries. They sacrificed a bit of the pill's efficacy to make the refining process easier. However, in this competition, efficacy was king. Everyone would be able to make High-Purity pills, so we had to maximize efficacy everywhere possible.

Peeling the berries reduced the amount of toxins one had to deal with significantly, but it also removed a good deal of medicinal energy. By leaving the skin on, my pill wouldn't be as pure as it would be otherwise, but it would still barely qualify as High-Purity. With the extra medicinal efficacy from the berry skins, I should be a large step above many of my competitors.

I worked slowly and methodically.

People began to finish and turn in their pills to be judged. I didn't care. Speed didn't matter.

After each pill, I rested and cultivated to restore my energy. I needed to be at my peak at all times.

One hour stretched to two. Two stretched to four.

Finally, I finished my last pill. I reflected on my memories of the first competition I had watched. My skill level wasn't anywhere close to the abilities of those alchemists. All I could hope was that it was good enough.

I checked my pills: 91%, 86%, 84%, 89%, and 90%.

I laughed. A total of 440. I had done my best, but I knew that score wouldn't be competitive. Maybe it was time to live a normal life for a while.

I knew my results, but I still stood with the other contestants as we waited for the winners to be announced.

First place had a combined 492 points of efficacy. Second had 487.

Then, they announced third place.

"Su Fang, a combined efficacy of 486."

While the other winners cheered, I just stood there. I didn't know what the others' results were, but I knew mine definitely wasn't 486.

I had succeeded. That was good, right?