12 Trouble Brewing

The sun had long risen, Monday was long here and, with it, school would like it always did. Louis started the morning by completing three high grade Water Qi Replenishing Pills, as a preparation for the day to come. Just as he expected peace and quiet, however, he saw Shea and Carla had eaten two Water Qi Replenishing PIlls while cultivating on Amelia's bed. Meanwhile, Amelia stared at him like a starving wolf finding the first prey. Louis looked at the pill for a moment before sighing as he threw it to her. Amelia devoured it in a moment as Louis rubbed his forehead as he left the room.

At the end of the hall, Melissa, Elaine and Brian just came out of Melissa's room. All of their faces were long and drawn out, the bitterness within their eyes revealed for all to see. It only lasted a moment for Melissa and Elaine, who immediately adopted smiling faces as soon as they saw Louis. Brain adopted a more neutral yet contemplative look.

"Done concocting pills already, Louis?" Melissa said, picking him up.

"Yeah. They ate all of them already, so I'm done for a while." Louis said, hugging her. "Aren't big sisters supposed to be at school right now?"

Melissa shook her head. "No, since they are leaving on Sunday, they get this entire week as break, so Shea and Carla will be sleeping over until then."

"I won't have any pills left if they stay that long." Louis said, putting his head onto her shoulder. "Amelia already ate the wind elemental pills I made yesterday and the fire pills ingredients have all been used up."

Melissa brought him to the living room, where she and Elaine sat on a couch, opposing Brian on the other couch, separated by a coffee table.

"We were just going to talk about that." Elaine said, patting Louis' head. "Since they have been taking your guidance already and you can concoct pills, can you concoct some pills for them to take for their trip?"

"You would need to buy some pills for them. I can concoct a few, but they have already eaten me dry. I only have one set of water qi ingredients and five sets of earth qi ingredients left." Louis paused for a second. "I don't think that they will make much direct cultivation progress in Moonling City. They will breakthrough past the next checkpoint soon and they will need time to consolidate."

"Breakthrough? To what level?" Melissa asked.

"Shea is going to reach the second realm soon while Amelia and Carla are about to reach late stage of the first realm, if not today, definitely by the end of the week."

"That quick?" Melissa asked.

"You don't know, mother?" Louis asked, looking at her, with a surprised face. He turned to Elaine. "You should know roughly right?"

"I only know that they control qi better and Shea is breaking through soon, since she was excited and telling me before." Elaine said.

Louis frowned. Things were definitely suspicious. Being able to understand differences between each realm was definitely simpler than they had made it out to be. All one needed was to test their physical strength or amount of qi, even soul strength if they really wanted to find out. The latter two might not be viable for kids, but the first one was definitely feasible. However, it did seem that Shea only got stronger and more flexible from their basic exercise, not from cultivation, while they must have severely underestimated the progress of Amelia and Carla.

The two cultivation techniques that Louis modified for his big sisters all improved elemental affinity and the soul, so there had to be some measurement for that. His modifications must have created some misunderstandings. In that case, he must find something else that could signify progress.

"The qi of my big sisters will change color every three layers, or when they enter a new stage." Louis said. "The qi of Amelia and Carla have already changed color twice, becoming a shade lighter, while Shea's qi changed color twice."

"Our qi doesn't change color, even as our elemental affinity increases." Elaine held her two palms a few inches apart. Dark blue qi flowed between her two palms, exuding a purity that Louis' qi hadn't yet hoped to achieve. "Show him, dear."

Brain did the same thing. His qi was dark blue, though its purity was discernibly impurer, though its density was somewhat higher, due to a higher realm, rather than quality. Louis frowned once more. Things were making less and less sense. The purity levels were extremely high, but it seemed to have little to do with the actual qi and more to some, other factor that he couldn't figure out at this point.

"Well, I don't know." Louis finally said. "But, big sisters will be fine. It's just a color difference."

"Let's get to the main point of this talk: what is the witchcraft are you doing? Where did it come from?" Brian said, wrapping his qi around Louis.

Louis sunk into his mother's lap and felt his body pushed into the seafloor, threatening to flatten to a muddy mixture. However, within the next moment, a wind element dispersed Brian's qi.

"I don't recall resorting to force. He has been helping his sisters, not hurting them." Melissa said.

"You're right. We took the joke too far." Elaine said. "Let's go back to the pills. What do you require to make some more pills? High grade pills are rare and can't be casually bought for a trip, even for our daughters, so your skills would be extraordinarily helpful."

Louis took many fast, shallow breaths and his mind started racing. He wasn't expecting much from Brian, but how Elaine was treating him put him on guard. He always thought she was gentle, benevolent and nothing could take that away, but she was unusually callous today. That scared him. He revealed his skills because of his trust but they might had misunderstood that for ill intent, foreign and experimental. He cultivated a different technique, so he was on another boat, seemingly putting his eggs into a different basket.

Was he wrong? Louis shook his head. He wasn't in danger yet. They only had suspicious and Brian was awfully tolerant towards his mother, unless she was nowhere near strong enough to oppose him. It was best to promise what he could in the meantime and sort things out later.

"Their cultivation levels are roughly similar. If you solely want to help them cultivate, I can craft a weaker version of an one star breaking realm pill, which would provide higher purity qi, so they don't have to purify the qi before absorbing it. The ingredients are about three times more expensive than the pill ingredients I bought before, but each one can last a day, while the high grade can double the cultivating speed for one session."

Melissa placed him on the floor. "Alright, write the list and I'll get it later. Why don't you go to your big sisters?"

Louis walked slowly back to his room, not because he wanted to stay here any longer, but he didn't want his nervousness to appear by running. He took each step slowly and carefully.

He was naive. Way too naive. He was too flashy with his help and his alchemy was too sudden. He had thought reading books for two years would assuage any doubts, but he was only five years old after all. He forgot about that, since despite his younger age, he always acted like the older brother. His knowledge may be great, but his strength was immature and so was his age.

Bad. It was bad. Too much attention and he didn't know the motives of Brain or Elaine, especially Elaine. Her smile was too picture perfect. Her mask was too good and her intentions even harder to grasp.

When he walked into the room, his three sisters were cultivating, none the wiser. He wanted to go up to his sisters and hug them, perhaps fall asleep and wake up thinking that this was all a bad dream.

Louis shook his head and clapped his face. He walked into the bathroom and splashed cold water onto his face until every inch of his clothing was soaked and his body started shivering. He had to pull himself together.

It was a big early, but he had to make that meridian cleansing pill. He needed to be stronger soon. His sisters would be safe, they were loved, but he couldn't trust Brian. Brian looked at him as an insect, never bothering to talk with him ever since he could remember. It didn't make it easier now he couldn't whole-heartedly trust Elaine either. One day, he may have to disappear and he may have to leave his sisters behind. He might not be welcomed here.

Louis stripped his clothes off and jumped into the bucket. He was still panicking, the chilling waters couldn't cool his heating mind, mere drops of water onto a forest fire, only enraging it further. His head submerged within the buckets depths for a minute, until his thoughts began to slow before he lifted his head and took a breath. His teeth clattered as he slowly lifted his shivering body out of the bucket.

He needed to get stronger. If he could look after himself, even just a bit, he could be fine. The meridian strengthening pill could do just. Although he spent a lot of time researching pill formulas, he spent much more time researching the particularities of each material for one to three star ingredients. Although he didn't have all of them, he could slip some in the ingredients list. The ingredients he had available now could make the budget version. He wanted to test it, before improving his skills bit by bit. All of the pill ingredients he bought in this batch were for his experiments, but the pills were much easier to concoct than he thought, even with his weaken soul and cultivation.

The meridian cleansing pill, however, was a purely theoretical pill. He only had blueprints from his olden days as an alchemy emperor, but with none of the materials. The materials he had were all he hadn't touched before, while he had a basic idea what would happen, nothing was certain before he tried.

Louis took a deep breath. That's it. Focus on alchemy, nothing else. It's what you are best at. New materials are simply a new challenge, not an impossible ordeal. He grabbed some new clothes from his dresser and gathered the materials. There were a little more than three times the materials than the normal elemental qi replenishing pills, consisting more of two star alchemy pills rather than one star pills (the price and rank of alchemy ingredients comes from how easy it's to produce them and how much qi they have within them).

He took ten minutes to calm down and meditate, separating all his worries from himself. Who Elaine was and what she intended to do didn't matter now. Neither did Brian. All that mattered was this pill and concocting it successfully. With that in mind, he started.