12 Perfect, Really

And so a whole week passed.

Raden broke through Peak Qi Gathering, finding himself unable to progress in the Soul path since low compatibility issues.

He broke through lv.3 alchemist too, despite never having touched a pill in his entire life.

But today was the day. And what a glorious day!

'What a glorious day indeed!' "Ahah!"

He entered that familiar door in that familiar house.

He would concoct his first pill.

"Oh, I see you pretty confident young boy. Where does it arise from?" Ai Bai asked him.

'From the fact that I've recently broken through lv.3 alchemist....' "From my soul! Ahah!"

"..." He watched Raden dumbfounded. "Ahhh...Well, let's see if you really can meet your expectation."

He passed him a pill recipe.

<<Recipe of lv.1 'Soul Tempering Pill'>>

<<Low Earth Grade Book>>

'So the system considers recipes as books...'

Then he read again the recipe name, and again, and again.

'!'

Raden knew that recipe. It was infamous for being the most difficult one to concoct between rank one pill.

"Ahah, boy! Let me see your talent."

'H-he...This is my first pill!'

"You should start, in three hours I should go to the Council of Teachers."

He first took a cauldron and filled it with water.

"Water? Do you think you can do it on time? The condensation process will be quite a pain too."

"I know what I'm doing..." Raden responded annoyed.

"Ahah, if you say so..."

Then he fired some logs and started making the water boil. Since he couldn't speed up the process with Qi he had to wait for roughly half an hour.

Raden took the herbs that his master prepared and began refining them and completed that process in five minutes, really fast, considering that he had to refine more than six hundred herbs!

Then he started putting them one after another in the cauldron. It was a really burdensome process since a misplaced essence or wrong timing would completely ruin the recipe.

Some droplets of sweat were starting to form in his face.

"Oh? Are you sweating? You seemed pretty confident early one why are you putting so much effort in a mere rank one pill?"

'...' 'Do you have something against me?' Raden thought helpless.

It continued for an hour. Raden was feeling for the first time the fatigue of true Alchemy.

Then there was the last stage pill condensing. It was consisted in making the medicinal essence fuse together and merge into one pill.

He took some sugar and versed it carefully on his mixture: too much or too less would compromise the final result! At this point, the Essence would stick to the sugar and start binding together. Since the quantity of water, the essence was quite dispersed and so crystal wouldn't form easily, he had to do something.

And so he decided: opened the lid and made the vapour exit. He had to let the water disperse until it became double the size of the Essence.

Usually, an alchemist would do the opposite: add water to the solution, but he decided to boil the essence with water, to achieve better uniformity for each essence in terms of temperature, so he had to do the opposite.

He turned off the fire and reclosed the cauldron.

'It should be it'

One minute after he opened and found a big crystal.

At that point, he had to take the crystal and make it into the shape of a pill. You had to take that crystal and with a Qi Art cover it with a strate that would prevent its medicinal effects from dispersing. And you had to do it while it was hot.

Ai Bai staid silent: even him would not disturb him in such an important moment.

He put all his Qi into his hands, both to protect them from the scorching hot and to use the Qi Art. He took the crystal and started making it rotate at an enormous speed. A Qi Gathering cultivator couldn't make use of his Qi voluntarily out of his body, but there was an exception: the Qi Blood. It was actually very simple to do, still painful, and the Qi was impossible to control once exited.

Actually, the reason why the Qi Cultivators couldn't take out their Qi was because, since it was not 'theirs', it would swiftly dissipate in the world without them having control making them lose a bit of their Cultivation. Blood could be used as a medium to storage Qi and would maintain those proprieties outside, so it was used.

'Myriad Thoughts!'

In that week Raden was able to reach comprehension in that Technique, allowing him to control the speed of his thoughts: essentially making the world slower or faster at his pleasure.

He was able to do that smoothly and then...

<<Congratulations! You forged a Perfect Rank One Pill>>

<<You became a de facto lv.1 alchemist!>>

He fell to the ground from the exhaustion, and closed his eyes.

He made it! Perfection, he achieved Perfection!

**********

He woke up.

"Idiot! You didn't have to overforce yourself while making a pill!"

"But that's the Path of Alchemy, isn't it?"

"Idiot! Don't say it in such a heroic manner! Overexterting oneself causes internal injuries!"

"Really?!? You could've said this before!"

"That's true." Ai Bai scrolled his shoulders.

"There's a way to resolve those isn't it?"

"Yeah, by cultivating the body you could."

"Phiuuu" He sighed in relief.

"I still think that you don't understand what does it means..." He said helplessly.

"Ahahah! Do you like my pill?"

"It is surely impressive...for such a young age concoct a perfect pill"

Raden felt something off with his last phrase. 'Ahhhh, who am I to invade his privacy?'

"Where do you think I'll arrive in the tournament?"

"If you really started learning alchemy one week ago...In the top three"

"Ahahah! Beautiful!"

"Yeah, but you'll have to create at least a lv.3 pill to do so!"

"What?!?"

"Yep...actually the strength difference between alchemists in the tournament is massive."

"Why?"

"Because low-level alchemists are beautiful cannon-fodder to entertain and show the strength of the most talented ones." He put it cruelly.

"Ah...That's quite sad..."

"That's the Path of Alchemy." He said, almost as if replicating what Raden said before.

"Well, of Cultivation too."

"Kinda. Ahah! Well, since I don't want to be embarrassed by your lack of social skills, so see you tomorrow!"

'Wait, what?' 'Does he want to skip the depressive parts of the discussions?'

"Goodbye then."

"Ah, if you became a Green Student I might consider giving you some herbs and a cauldron to train by yourself."

"Yes!"

He exited with another objective in mind.

'Well, it's beautiful to not have to be too proactive!' "Ahah!" 'I love being a protagonist!'

'I should definitely challenge it before tomorrow, so to minimize time wasting.'

'Today I'll break through Qi Manifestation!'

And with his newfound resolve, he set off himself toward home.

'Wait a minute, where is my 'Soul Tempering' pill?'

'Shameless!'

'Well...'

'I didn't actually have a use for that since I'm at the peak, but still...'

'Shameless!'