BOOM!
"Senior Sister! My cauldron blew up again!?"
BOOM!
"Senior Sister! Where did we put the Grade-2 herbs again?"
BOOM!
"Aaah~! That's the third cauldron now, somebody get me a spare, quick!?"
The scene inside the Goddess Alchemy Palace's main hall looked less like an alchemy workshop and more like a battlefield. The cluttered cabinets and shelves had been temporarily cleared away and replaced with rows upon rows of refining tables. Every full disciple of the Palace had been handed a mountain of equipment and raw materials, all so they could turn them into medicine to fill these still-empty shelves.
"Materials coming through! Does anyone need more supplies!?"
The back gate stood propped open almost permanently these days, as junior disciples who were not yet skilled enough to refine medicine themselves ran errands for their overwhelmed senior sisters instead. Some hauled in armfuls of herbs, others helped carry off cauldrons that had just exploded to swap in fresh ones.
"We're out of Dewbranch Grass over here!"
"Coming through, please!"
"This firewood's almost out... Could you go fetch more from the storehouse for me?"
Su Lin, passing through the hall, stopped to take in the scene with a strange feeling she could not quite put into words. Not since she had become a disciple of this Palace had she truly understood, until this very day, what an "Alchemy Palace" was actually supposed to look like.
She watched her junior sisters rushing about in a frenzy. But instead of irritation, every face was lit up with the joy of having work to do. Compared to the quiet loneliness of before, they would take this chaos any day.
"Senior Sister! Do you have a moment to help us check our refining method over here...?"
A disciple tugged at her sleeve just then, eyes brimming with anticipation. The area she pointed to was a section set aside for disciples who wanted to properly study and practice real alchemy. The medicine they produced here would not be sold — it was kept separate for training purposes. Once they passed evaluation, they would move on to help with actual production alongside the frazzled alchemists working outside.
"Of course. Let me take a look."
Su Lin followed the girl over. In that corner, nearly ten disciples wore grim, soot-streaked faces as they struggled through their first attempt at refining Restoration Medicine.
Su Lin hid a small smile at her junior sisters' antics. In truth, these girls could already refine Restoration Medicine perfectly well — it was the most basic pill nearly every alchemist had trained on at some point.
Yes — if it were an ordinary "Restoration Medicine," that is.
They had once been proud of it, too. Any disciple of the Goddess Alchemy Palace could refine it in their sleep, given the right materials.
That was, until Lady Bai happened to watch them refine it for the first time, and her expression had twisted into a deep frown.
"...Are you all joking with me right now?"
That was all she had said.
Before disappearing for less than a minute, then returning carrying little Grandmaster Tang Yeye's half-asleep body like a rag doll.
And then something unbelievable happened.
The medicine little Grandmaster refined turned out to be at least twice as potent as anything the rest of them had managed to produce!
No special ingredients were used at all. Every component had simply been picked up from that same row of tables. Even her cauldron was the same mass-produced training model everyone else used!
What happened stunned even Luo Qingyan, the current Alchemy Empress herself. One glance at the whole process was enough to make her eyes go wide, and she turned to Bai Fanxian, practically vibrating with excitement.
"Her qi control, her flame handling, the entire ratio of materials, all of it's different?"
"...From where I'm standing, the rest of you are the ones who've been botching it into something barely worth calling medicine."
Only Luo Qingyan caught the second half of what Bai Fanxian had said, and it was, in fact, entirely true. Her recipes had once been recognized as unrivaled in her era, second to none, and passed down exclusively to disciples of the Goddess Alchemy Palace. But thousands, tens of thousands of years had inevitably warped that knowledge, degrading it into what they saw now.
"If we're just talking potency, this is even better than what Wild Bloom refines!?"
No one knew who had said it, but everyone silently agreed.
One of the reasons the Goddess Alchemy Palace had fallen on hard times was that Wild Bloom Sect had muscled in and stolen their share of the market.
No, that undersold it. It would be more accurate to say Wild Bloom had swallowed up nearly the entire medicine market whole!
Every medicine they refined outperformed the equivalent from anyone else. Fortunately, their prices ran just as high, which was the only reason the city's other alchemy sects had managed to survive at all, selling cheaper, lower-grade medicine instead.
"Your yin qi control has improved so much..."
"Heh heh."
Tang Yeye beamed at the praise, her head patted by her own lady. Ever since she had broken through to Grandmaster, her yin-yang imbalance seemed to have eased considerably. Refining something this simple posed no problem at all.
"In that case, I'll leave teaching all of them to you."
"...!?"
Bai Fanxian smiled faintly at the girl's frozen expression. As if she did not know this little disciple's habits by now. Tang Yeye immediately tried to wriggle out of it by invoking her sister.
"Can I go ask Sister Hui'er to help instead?"
"...Let your sister be for a while."
No one knew quite why Bai Fanxian had refused. She gazed out toward the distance, her Heaven Sense reaching for Hui'er's presence. Right now, the little girl stood in a daze at the spot where a small wooden house once stood. Bai Fanxian had noticed for a while now that Hui'er always wandered over there whenever she had free time, seemingly without realizing it herself.
Bai Fanxian could sense something slowly taking shape within her.
"...Understood."
Though she made a show of reluctance, Su Lin knew perfectly well the girl would do her best regardless. Fortunately, the current Alchemy Empress, Luo Qingyan, was right there as well. After watching Tang Yeye refine a few more batches, she would be able to help teach the rest of the disciples herself.
That was how it had gone. About a week later, most disciples had adapted to the new refining methods. Only a handful still needed more experience and practice, which was exactly what Su Lin was helping teach right now.
"Understand now? Once you're used to it, this method will actually feel even easier than what you knew before."
"Understood, Senior Sister!"
Su Lin waved farewell to her juniors, who turned back to their diligent refining. As she made her way through to the herb garden out back, she came across another group of children helping replant the herbs that had once run so scarce.
"How's it going — need anything else?"
"Oh! We're fine, Senior Sister! That fertilizer formula Lady Bai taught us works wonderfully!"
One disciple answered briskly, pointing out how visibly the herbs had grown. The Goddess Alchemy Palace's herb fields had nearly doubled in size by now — every stretch of ground had been converted into planting space, except for the front courtyard, which they had left alone so as not to alarm visitors.
"Good to hear."
Su Lin nodded. She raised a hand to feel the unusually dense life force gathered in this garden, since it sat at the very heart of the Border. Tending these herbs had become one of the most fought-over duties among the Palace's disciples. Simply working here all day steadily raised their cultivation, nearly as effectively as intense training would.
"But it seems there've been some strange rumors about the forbidden area out back..."
"What rumors?"
Su Lin was caught off guard. She had spent the past week mostly running herself ragged managing the main hall, which had only recently started to look organized, leaving her little chance to catch up on outside news.
Besides, wasn't the forbidden area out back only accessible to the Empress and Lady Bai these days?
"I'm not sure myself... but disciples who've passed by there say they keep hearing this awful wailing sound, along with a strange atmosphere..."
"You two are talking nonsense. Get back to work."
Su Lin sighed and shooed her junior sisters back to work. She still had a storehouse to check on, but she could not help glancing toward where the Palace's forbidden area stood.
The Empress hadn't come out in days now...
...What in the world was going on in there?
.
.
.
"Hah... hah... I... I can't take any more of this."
"I'm... about to break too."
Ragged breathing, barely coherent, drowned out every trace of quiet in the room. Waves of heat had soaked their clothes through with sweat until the air itself felt thick enough to need airing out. Grandmaster Lu Qing wiped the sweat pouring down his forehead with his sleeve, meeting Luo Qingyan's eyes beside him — she was in no better shape.
What kind of situation was this, exactly?
BOOM!
"Aaargh!?"
A deafening explosion tore through the moment, and the shifting atmosphere sent a faint tremor through the entire underground chamber. There was no doubt the escaping energy was reaching all the way outside, and was exactly what had sparked those rumors.
"The two of you are hopeless... Even the little ones out there have more fighting spirit than this."
Bai Fanxian strolled in without a hint of hurry, watching Grandmaster Lu Qing's ash-black face with a smile tugging at her lips that made the old man's eyebrow twitch. He glanced at Luo Qingyan, whose expression had gone tense, since she still had a cauldron sitting in front of her.
And inside it, a Grade-6 medicine sat boiling away!
If she lost focus for even a fraction of a second the way the old man just had, the pill she was forming would blow up in her face too, without question!
"I'm... going to take a short break..."
Ever since Luo Qingyan had learned Bai Fanxian's true identity, Grandmaster Lu Qing no longer had to keep up appearances when they were alone out of sight. He let out an exhausted sigh and quietly circulated his qi to recover his strength.
It had been three or four days now since Bai Fanxian had dragged the two of them down here.
"Grade-4: fifty-two pills. Grade-5: eighteen pills. And Grade-6: three pills..."
With one flick of her wrist, Bai Fanxian sent the pile of pills beside the old man floating up and arranging themselves in front of her. She swept her gaze over them, roughly gauging their completeness and potency, before sending them down into the white bottles waiting behind her.
"You two should have mastered refining Grade-6 medicine by now, shouldn't you?"
"...Please don't talk about it like it's easy."
Grandmaster Lu Qing gave a dry laugh. From the very first day he had been dragged in here, Bai Fanxian had dumped an enormous pile of materials on him and driven him relentlessly to churn out high-grade medicine in bulk.
Grade-5 medicine, he could just about handle. But Grade-6 was pushing past his limits, forcing him to strain and draw on Bathin's power just to get by. It was no different for Luo Qingyan — even having reached Ancient Sage, she still could not produce a successful Grade-6 pill every single time.
"Guk!?"
Rumble...
Luo Qingyan gritted her teeth one final time. Her qi surged out to wrestle the nearly-finished medicine back under control. The clash of power raged in midair for a long moment before finally settling, and she let out a sigh of relief.
"That makes five..."
"Well done."
Bai Fanxian flicked her wrist again. This time, the pills sitting beside Luo Qingyan lifted into the air as well, drifting past Bai Fanxian in a neat line before settling into the waiting bottles. She had refined only slightly more than Grandmaster Lu Qing, in the end.
"This should be enough."
"Luo Qingyan, go tell the children it's time we reopen the Palace's doors."
"...Yes!"
Luo Qingyan nodded eagerly, beaming. It had been a very long time since a single customer or visitor had come through the Goddess Alchemy Palace's doors.
"...And spread the word that we have plenty of high-grade medicine to sell."
This, after all, was exactly why Bai Fanxian had locked the two of them down here in the first place — to make them spend every waking hour churning out the medicine none of the disciples could refine on their own!
"Understood! Even with only eight Grade-6 pills, that alone is worth a fortune..."
Luo Qingyan grinned. In the present era, one could hardly find anyone left who could refine Grade-6 medicine at all. What existed now were mostly heirlooms passed down from ancient times, or the rare, occasional story of a Tier-5 alchemist accidentally producing a Grade-6 pill by sheer luck.
Which meant even eight pills was more than enough to call "plenty"!
But—
"...What did you just say?"
Fwoosh!
Bai Fanxian's third flick of the wrist came without warning.
"While you two were busy making a mess of yourselves in front of the cauldron..."
"...I wasn't exactly sitting idle myself."
The moment she finished speaking, hundreds of Grade-6 pills materialized behind her, swirling through the air as though they were alive. They shone with a radiant glow, each one pressing out an aura so overwhelming that the whole room trembled — even Luo Qingyan, an Ancient Sage herself, felt every hair on her body stand on end!