Chapter 92 - Preparing For The Banquet

Several days later, four small emerald green flames and a single large azure flame danced around the tortoise-legged cauldron in Ao Wen's new alchemy lab. With smooth and practiced motions, she accepted the tray of porcelain bottles from Wu Lin and began to guide a stream of milky liquid into each bottle in precisely measured amounts. "Finally, Pure grade," Ao Wen breathed with a sigh of relief. For the past several days she'd been concocting mortal medicines using her emerald green flames in combination with both her azure and crimson flames. While she had yet to make use of all three flames in a single trigram arrangement, the purity of her concoctions had become much easier to maintain with the addition of the emerald flame. At the same time, the emerald flames were considerably more difficult to control and any attempt to use a large emerald flame in a fire arrangement resulted in a scorched ingredient. Clearly, she had a long way to go to bring this new flame up to her high standards. 

"I'm still amazed at how many bottles of medicine you manage to produce from the supply of herbs we've given you," Wan Yue said, taking the tray of completed medicines from Ao Wen and setting them next to several additional trays. "I've never seen an alchemist produce medicine in such large batches before, much less medicines of this quality."

"Even my master can't do what she's doing," Wu Lin said, shaking his head at the sight of hundreds of bottles of completed medicine that Ao Wen had piled up over the past few days of her 'practice.' "At most, I produce six to ten doses per batch when concocting in bulk. Master doesn't concoct more, but almost always has a yield of nine or ten doses per batch. Novice Ao's Eight Trigrams Flame Control Art is astounding in its ability to support batches of twenty-four," he praised. 

"This is nothing," Ao Wen said with a shake of her head. "This is only a Master grade flame control art. The Blessed version of this that my Senior Brother Huang and Senior Sister Qi trained in is called Eight Trigrams Four Paths. Using that art, Senior Brother could manage four cauldrons at once for batch concoction," she explained. "I just hope that all of these will be useful to the people of Turning Leaf this rainy season."

In the alchemy lab, Ao Wen had accumulated a sizeable stockpile of common mortal medicines. Fever reducer was a common need anywhere but she had added medicines for wet cough, loose bowels, and a number of other common maladies that afflicted common people in town when rains continued for days on end the way the current storm had. Issues with mildew and swamp foot became common among those with lesser means during the rainy season and she wanted to reduce suffering where she could. Tonight, as part of her welcoming banquet, she would present five thousand bottles of mortal medicine to be gifted to people in need by the Zhang family for as long as the supply lasted. Of course, Ao Wen intended to make more before she left Turning Leaf town, but mortal medicine, even of the highest grade, only had a shelf life of a few winters at best. It wouldn't be possible or reasonable to create too large of a stockpile. 

"They'll be very useful," Wan Yue said as she gazed at the medicines Ao Wen had prepared as her gift. There was no tradition of an incoming Guest Alchemist presenting any kind of gift, rather, it was the Alchemist who most frequently received gifts from others so it had come as a surprise to the Zhang family when she said that she wanted a large supply of mortal herbs to make into medicines for 'practice' and that she'd be gifting the results of her practice to the common folk. Over the next several days, Wan Yue and Wu Lin watched as she worked through several different recipes for common remedies that the people of Turning Leaf Town rarely had the opportunity to use. Most common folk made do with housemade remedies and suffered through minor ailments during the rainy season rather than seeking the expensive services of an alchemist, but to Ao Wen, this was considered part of the 'Public Good' maintained in areas her old sect held sway. "It may not be well received by everyone though," she cautioned. 

"I don't think Master will care," Wu Lin said confidently. "He won't even touch mortal medicines unless someone is offering an extraordinary resource or payment for it. He's left all of that to Novice Mao and me for years now. Most of these are going to be given to people who couldn't afford to pay Alchemy Consortium rates anyway so it's not like it will actually hurt business."

"I wasn't thinking about the Alchemy Consortium," Wan Yue said, shaking her head at Wu Lin's limited view of the world. "Though Alchemist Wai may create trouble on behalf of the Consortium on principle since Alchemist Ao isn't a member of the Consortium. I was actually more worried about the only other place in Turning Leaf town where you'll find alchemists."

"The Holy Light Abode?" Wu Lin asked in surprise. "Why would they have issues?"

"The Holy Light Abode likes to position themselves as a sort of Holy Guardian over the common people. While the Association of Loose Cultivators maintains a presence here, it's the Holy Light Abode that projects the power of sects into the smaller mostly mortal towns of the world. Common folk in need have climbed the long steps to their gates to beg for treatment for centuries and they provide aid not only from alchemists but also from Spirit Healers. Don't mistake their remoteness for a desire to be withdrawn from the world and its troubles. If they wanted to be withdrawn but close to town, they'd be a few days away in the mountains on the far side of the forest where they could gain real isolation. They want to be close enough to town that they're constantly present in people's minds but far enough away and difficult enough to reach that it forces mortals to endure some hardship to seek out their aid. That which is obtained too easily is valued less."

"Does that really have anything to do with me though?" Ao Wen asked. "I'm only staying for a few months longer then I'll be out of everyone's way. Even if I spent every day making medicines it's not like they would keep forever. Eventually, it will all run out and things will be like they were." 

"That's actually part of the problem," the older woman explained. "You're going to change the way the common people think things should be done and then you're going to go away. When you're gone, the charity that the Holy Light Abode once provided will seem lesser than what it was seen as before. The people will no longer see them as generous but as stingy when compared to you." Wan Yue could already see it happening and that assumed her husband didn't make a move to hire a replacement alchemist to follow Ao Wen's example of concocting for the 'Public Good.' If this action increased the people's trust in the City Lord's governance the way the Zhang family collectively thought it would, it was very likely that the tradition would continue long after Ao Wen's departure.

"I don't want to cause problems," Ao Wen said, brows furrowed in concern. "Should we abandon the idea?" She hated the notion of not giving away the medicines she'd prepared but if it made things worse in the town overall, maybe they would need to be used differently or taken with her when she left.

"It's actually a good problem to cause," Wan Yue explained. "I know that you won't be staying long but as a Guest Alchemist and a second stage cultivator, you occupy a position of much greater power than you did just a few weeks ago. You should understand a bit of what goes with that power and how to use it responsibly."