Returning to the alchemist shop

After breakfast, Collin spent a little over an hour cultivating before having to stop. Today he was going to start practicing alchemy, or according to the manuals, ruin a lot of spirit herbs. It would take time for a new alchemist to learn to use heat to extract the medicinal properties of the spirit herbs instead of burning them to ash.

On the first floor of the villa was a circular room, it had shelves that wrapped around a table in the center of the room. This was the alchemy room, but in truth while it was fully functional it was meant more for show than actual use. Today Collin would be one of the few to use his alchemy room for alchemy.

The lone table in the room was covered in array patterns extending from three circles. After sitting down, Collin placed his alchemy cauldron in the largest circle in the center of the table, then placed his hands on two smaller circles towards the edge of the table. Flowing a small trickle of his internal energy into the two circles, the array patterns lit up and flowed to the larger circle and started to heat up the alchemy cauldron. Using the arrays on the table, a small tendril of spirit energy lifted the lid to the cauldron before a spirit herb was tossed inside.

A light blue flame wrapped around the herb to start the extraction process, but the herb was immediately reduced to a charred mess. Using two spirit tendrils, the lid to the cauldron was lifted and the charred spirit herb was removed and tossed into a bucket of water. This was the recommended method according to the alchemy manuals Collin had read. The process was more draining than Collin believed it would be, taking a third of his inner energy for this attempt plus the metal drain of controlling the various arrays.

Collins plan for the next several days was to practice alchemy then meditate to recover before starting the cycle over again. The newer cultivation theories believed that cultivating was like building muscles, using the muscles over and over again was far more effective than sitting around thinking about using them while in a deep meditative state. Collin had bought lots of cheap spirit herbs for this practice, and he wasn't afraid to ruin all of them if it got him closer to success.

At the end of the second day and dozens of failures he was successful. It wasn't a perfect extraction; it was cloudy and only half of what it should have been, but it didn't matter it was a successful first step. He spent his third day slowly getting better, Collin was confident that in another few days he would be able to claim complete success. The next thing he would have to do is learn how to extract the medical essence from two herbs, one at a time and then both at once.

On the fourth day after eating and meditating, Collin donned his faceless servant costume and headed to the market. His first stop was to several shops that sold cultivation techniques and spells, he wanted to get skills that would allow him to strengthen his body, some basic weapon techniques, some movement techniques, and something to strengthen his defenses. Shops like these would never have the best techniques and spells, they were already owned by the powerful clans and sects and never be available to anyone else. Then again beggars can't be choosers.

Looking at the names of the techniques available, they mostly have names with heavenly, divine, or celestial and some had all three in the name. It was a common thing in the second cultivation era to use such ridiculous names for everything. As someone who was born in the fourth era, Collin was like most others and felt distain reading the names.

As a weapon skill he chose the celestial star slaying sword technique, and for his movement technique he chose the heaven shattering steps, and for defense he chose the divine armor technique. Collin also wanted to buy a selection of spells with the wood attribute, but they only had one. The spell would allow one to greatly increase the growth rate of any low-grade spiritual herb, but after a few hours the herb would wither and become useless. He bought it along with six non-attribute spells and a body cultivation technique, all eleven items cost him three-hundred and eighty-two spirit stones.

Collin then proceeded to go shopping in two other stores and spent two-hundred and thirty-one spirit stones. He bought some cheap weapons, cultivation supplies, and information on the local powers and nearby resources. All the information that he knew was from his clan, it was incomplete and very biased to his clans wants and needs, and all but useless to a rouge cultivator like him.

There was only more stop Collin was going to make, he was going to the alchemy shop. He needed more herbs to practice alchemy, and he wanted to see her. She was a possible solution to most of his problems, he wanted to learn as much as he could from her to increase his chances of joining the alchemists guild.

The moment he walked into the shop he saw her, and she saw him, and he felt her divine sense wash over his body. Her eyes only saw the faceless servant costume, but to her divine sense he was standing naked right in front of her. It was the first time he felt someone scan him with their divine sense, granted she could have scanned him the first time he walked into the store and as a mortal wouldn't have noticed.

It was not like he could do anything, the badge on her chest showed her to be a Foundation Establishment alchemist which means she is a Foundation Establishment rank cultivator or higher. Collin has been a cultivator for about three and a half days, he had weapons he didn't know how to use, techniques that he hadn't learned yet, and spells he wasn't powerful enough to use. He went from being happy to feeling like he was screwed.

"So, you refine an alchemic pill dantian, interesting." She said before looking at a book on the counter in front of her.

"How did you know?" He asked.

"You ordered large amounts of spiritual herbs needed to learn alchemy from the beginning, but you ordered the exact amount of the four spirit herbs needed for refining an alchemic pill dantian." She didn't even bother to look at Collin as she spoke.

Collin wanted to scream at himself for being so stupid, why wouldn't a trained alchemist know the four ingredients to refine an alchemic pill dantian. Most alchemists learn every pill recipe that they can get their hands on even if they will never make them.

"It's interesting that you survived, most die." She said finally turning to look at Collin.

"How did you know it was me who bought the spiritual herbs?" He asked.

"Well, this shop is run by the Alchemist Guild, most people who be too afraid to send little kids to buy things here. They would think that we would see it as an insult and react negatively."

Collin was tempted to find somewhere to hide, all his planning and care not to raise anyone's suspicions, was all for nothing. He was most likely one of only a handful of people dressed like faceless servants this young, making him stick out.