9 Creating A Pill

The moment Louis got home, he told his mother that he and Amelia would be eating lunch late, possibly right before Shea and Clara came to visit. Amelia stepped on his heels on more than one occasion as the two sprinted to their rooms. Amelia must have been curious that she was let in on another one of his secrets while a new fire kindled within Louis, one that was awakened by reading alchemy books but could only be lit by actually concocting a pill. It had been so long since he had crafted a pill that he felt his skill must have gotten rusty.

Amelia hopped onto the bed, next to the nightstand, and sat there, gripping the clay orb that Louis had given her. She started practicing, so she could calm down until the show actually started. Louis threw the blankets on the floor onto their bed, beside Amelia. They were there to cushion their fall, if Amelia ever fell off, as she frequently did, but they could put it back later.

Louis gathered some of his water qi into his hand. The qi called upon the water within the air and would condense into water droplets, then a levitating puddle above his hand. Then he poured the water into the marble, continuing until the marble softened a bit. Then wrapped his right index finger with wind elemental qi and pressed it against the softened marble, cutting through into it.

The first order of business was creating a wind-water qi pocket array. Originally this would be a tier four array in his old world, but the people in this world focused far too much on elements, ranking this type of array as two stars. Although the four main elements would be ideal in creating a harmonic and balanced qi pocket, Louis had no efficient access to the two elements. He needed the qi pocket to compensate for his lack of the fire element. He would use wind qi to create a fire while using water qi to maintain the formation so he could concoct pills. Just like he could use his water qi to gather the water within the air, he could use the formation to gather water and wind qi within the air to divert his burden.

There were two types of arrays, each with their own ways of setting up. The first type of arrays were formations that require a steady qi source and remained in one spot most of the time. These arrays were simpler to make and only required channels, which are lines used to direct the flow of qi through. The second type of arrays were more mystical, not only requiring channels, but also runes. There were many types and sets of runes, each created by groups of people for their own groups, they wouldn't mean anything even if used by other people. The runes themselves weren't important as much as the intent and thought behind them. The ancient people, heard only through tales, called these runes soul contracts, since what powered these runes was not qi but the spirit.

The wind-water qi pocket array had three basic components: the water pocket array, the wind pocket array and the outer array that combined and balanced the two elements. The water and wind pocket arrays were the hardest part of these arrays, since collecting water and wind qi alone wasn't enough to balance the array. Instead, a subsection of each elemental pocket array required a purification array to purify the element and the main elemental array to collect qi from the surroundings and the purified qi. The outer array would then circulate the wind and water elements in its outer perimeter. However, the resulting qi within the outer perimeter wouldn't have any element after combining. The water-wind qi pocket array took nine one yard squared tiles, which took half of the remaining floor space.

Louis then drew runes around the outer array, writing the chinese characters of protect at the four cardinal points, both on the inside and outside of the array. Halfway between each of the cardinal points as well as at the four cardinal points of the inner circle, he drew the characters "open." Then he drew two lines as a passageway from that opening towards the center of the circle, where all eight lines would meet. On each side of the passageway, he drew the characters "flow" as well as the character "condense" at the center of the circle.

It took him two hours to complete the circle. Amelia was sleeping, faced down with her arm hanging off the bed. Drool was coming out through the big smile of her mouth. Louis smiled. He took much longer creating the array than expected. He brought a blanket and covered Amelia and took the clay orb. Although he only spent a third of his qi, he exhausted a major part of his spiritual energy and he needed to restore both.

By the time he recovered his qi, Amelia was back with reinforcements, not only in food and orange juice, but with Clara and Shea. Louis could already feel the exhaustion weighing into him already. His sister was already a handful, but the three of them together formed an unbeatable team, which was why his mother always stayed close with Elaine whenever Clara and Shea visited. Furthermore, the two maids, Tiara - the older maid with blue hair - and Silva, were also sitting on the bed with the former five. All of them stared at Louis as he restored his qi, which took nearly fifty percent longer than usual.

"Are you ready, Louis?" Melissa asked, putting down the picture book in her hands. Elaine and Melissa had been taking turns reading as they had waited.

"Yeah. I just need to activate the arrays, then I can start." Louis said, gathering the first set of fire qi replenishing pills.

"Activate the array? You learned how to make arrays after the first day of lessons?" Elaine asked.

"No, I learned this from reading array books for a couple of years." Louis took out the first batch of pill ingredients from the box, carefully looking at each ingredient before putting them onto a cloth beside him. "And arrays doesn't reach a high cultivation but high spirit strength and energy, as well as the technical knowledge."

"You did say that you're soul is stronger than normal. Just how strong is it?" Elaine asked.

"About a third of mothers and probably much less for you."

"Probably?"

"Your soul is too strong for me to properly judge." Louis said, putting the boxes back into the bag with the rest of the ingredients." He pointed to the outer circle. "Don't enter the circle while I'm concocting pills."

"You're letting all of us watch you concoct a pill?"

"Not so much let, as much as all of you barged into here," Louis muttered.

"Could you repeat what you said."

"I said of course. You're all family." Louis said, sitting down. "From now on, no talking. I'm starting.

Louis activated the array by pouring his water and wind elemental qi into their respective arrays, slowly at first, then quicker as the channels began to brighten up with qi. First the two elemental arrays began to collect qi from the surroundings, the innermost third of the array with dark blue and silver qi for the water and wind arrays respectively. Then qi poured into the middle cylinder - whose base also took a third of the circle - sinking to the ground as the dark qi became translucent like water and liquid silver respectively. The qi got brighter in color as it rose up the cylinder. Once the middle section filled up, the purest qi fell into the outer cylinder. Both water and wind cylinders poured water into the outer ring at the same rate and the qi fused when the water and liquid silver met, turning into milky-colored qi. Finally the milky-colored qi passed through the "open" character and travelled down the path to reach Louis. The moment it did, Louis sighed in relief. The first stage, and most dangerous stage, had been completed.

He reabsorbed part of the milky-colored qi to restore some of his expenditure and used another part to create a right before him. His left hand controlled the fire's size and temperature while his right hand grabbed the first ingredient and threw it into the flame. Despite the fire's gentle heat, the first ingredient instantly burst into flames while its qi fell towards the center of the flame. Louis threw the second, third and fourth ingredients one after another. Once the four groups of qi met, Louis raised the heat of the flame quickly, until the four groups merged and the black impurities within it seeped out. He pushed the final ball of qi to the side as he returned the fire to its original temperature. He threw into another four ingredients, repeating the process.

Louis threw the last two ingredients in and formed the final the orb. He tripled the flame's heat this time as the three orbs began to fuse. Once impurities within the final orb seeped out, the orb nearly halved in size. Louis slowly brought the temperature down bit by bit, each ten seconds, before putting out the flame with water. The final pill was a small, dark red pill, little bigger than a marble.

Success. Albeit, the pill was the lowest rank of an one star pill. It was so bad that it was almost deemed a failure despite the successful shape. The qi within the pill was pitiful, he had burnt too much of the pill, especially the first eight ingredients, and the four stages of cleansing went no better.

As he put the pill down and began to restore his qi to his peak, he relaxed. A deep breath in. A deep breath out. After fifteen minutes, his qi was back to full capacity, though only an eighth of his spirit energy remained. He then stopped the array, letting the qi within it return into the air.

Before Amelia could open her mouth, Louis threw the pill to his mother first.

"Hey, you promised to let me play with it first." Amelia said, reaching for the pill, though Melissa used one hand to grab her while using the other hand to feel the pill.

"This pill seems much smaller than the ones I normally use to cultivate with." Melissa said.

"The qi content seems a bit low too." Elaine said, leaning in for a closer inspection.

Louis shrugged. "I messed up a bit. I wasn't used to controlling fire, so I burnt some of the ingredients and didn't cleanse it as well as I should. However, it's still considered a low quality one star pill." Louis snatched the pill from Melissa then tossed it to Amelia.

Shea and Carla took this opportunity to start touching the pill too. Although Shea had seen pills before and consumed a few herself, she had never seen anyone personally concoct one. Louis quickly left the room and ran to the dinner table for a late lunch. As he was finished eating, everyone came out of his room, so he ran back into his room and fell asleep.