I had thought that, after Old Yau left, a portal would appear to take us back to the Palace. Instead, Emperor Chan sat down across from me, in the seat that Yau had just vacated.

“Fang, we need to talk.”

I nodded silently at his somber tone.

“In the past, we discussed the ascension to Martial Sovereign. Is it fair to assume that you understand what it means to be a Bloodline Tier cultivator?”

“Yes. There might be a few details of the higher realms that I am unfamiliar with, but I know the basics.” I steepled my hands as I looked Emperor Chan in the eye, guessing where this conversation was headed. “And, I am familiar with blood essence, but I only know that it allows people to join a new clan. I don’t know the details of how, exactly, it accomplishes this.”

Chan took a deep breath. “And the urgan?”

I blinked. “No… What…”

Chan lifted his green right hand and stared at it. “My people, the urgan, are half-breeds. Half human, half urgamal. Haven’t you ever wondered how this was possible? How a human and a plant could have children?”

“Not… really. There are any number of oddities in this world. What’s one more?”

“Maybe so, but humans having children with plants isn’t one of them. No, the origins of the urgan are much simpler. To join the Temple of the Herb Saint, you must absorb blood essence from one of its clans. This changes you. Absorbing any blood essence changes you, but with human blood essence, these changes are barely noticeable. If you absorb urgamal blood essence, however…”

Chan paused to take a deep breath. “You will still be human, but your children… Your children will be urgan—with their physical features dictated by the clan whose essence you absorbed. My grandfather joined a clan of those vine creatures. Mandakh’s ancestor joined a clan of tree monsters.”

“So, the reason the urgamal look down on you…”

“Our ancestors were the best the human race had to offer,” Chan said, with a mix of anger and resentment in his voice. “The urgamal pulled them into their clans and treated them well—while they were alive. After they died, however, the urgamal cast aside any of their descendants who didn’t measure up.”

“I see.” I looked Chan straight in the eye. “And why are you telling me this?”

“To let you know what it means to join the Temple. What it will mean for you, and what it will mean for your descendants. I understand the allure of the Temple, but going there is a mistake.” Chan let out a resigned sigh. “I doubt that I can convince you of this, but please, listen to my advice. Before going to the Temple, leave behind a remnant of your human Bloodline. This will give any children you bear in the Temple a place to retreat to.”

Looking at Emperor Chan, I saw a deep, abiding pain in the man’s eyes. “Is this what happened to you? Is this why the urgamal referred to you as a traitor?”

I caught a flicker of surprise in Chan’s eyes, but he quickly shook his head, dismissing it. “N… No. My grandfather didn’t leave a clan behind. After I came to this domain, I had to seek out the Chan Clan on my own. By absorbing their essence, I severed my connection to the urgamal. I might still be urgan, but my children will have a chance to grow up human.”

As I thought through everything Chan had said, my mind stuck on one crucial point. “As soon as I join the Temple, I’ll be required to absorb an urgamal clan’s blood essence? Are you sure about this?”

“Before you join.” This question caused a glimmer of hope to appear in the man’s eyes. “Before being accepted into the Temple, you must first advance to Martial Sovereign. This can only happen after you have absorbed the blood essence of one of its clans.”

“What if I ascend using energy from an outside clan?” Glancing around the empty-looking room, I thought about how much I was willing to reveal. “The Su Clan may not be able to compete with the Wong Clan, but it can raise a Sovereign.”

Chan shook his head. “No. Only members of one of the urgamal bloodlines are allowed to join the Temple. The only way to get around this requirement is to somehow be chosen as the next Saint without having joined the Temple. This might be possible, but it’s… unlikely.”

“I understand. Thank you. I’ll need to think on this. But please, stop playing matchmaker. I have my own thoughts on this matter, and due to the particulars of my situation, I do not plan to have any children in the near future, understood?”

Chan nodded with a slight blush.

Shortly after my conversation with Chan ended, we stepped through a black portal that had appeared at the exit onto the balcony. When I saw what was waiting for us on the other side, I couldn’t help but flinch.

The portal had deposited us at the entrance to the Palace of the Herb Sovereign. To reach the Wong Clan, we had needed to pass through several relay points controlled by four different Martial Sovereigns. The person who sent us back, however, had done so in a single hop. Was this within the capabilities of a Martial Spirit, or had Ancestor Wong decided to make a move personally?

While the answer to this question wasn’t too important, my scalp tingled at the thought of a Martial Ancestor spying on my conversation with Emperor Chan. If he had decided to turn against me…

In any case, we had made it back to the Palace. Chan had given me a lot to think about, but I had plenty of time to decide what to do with this information. For now, it was time to get to work.

Sitting in the small cultivation chamber that was attached to my workshop, I took out my new pill furnace and set it down in front of me.

Rank 9. Even if it was only a ‘basic’ Rank 9 item, it was still Rank 9. I had only been planning to acquire a Rank 8 furnace. If it were Rank 8, I would have been comfortable performing a few questionable experiments since I would eventually want to replace it with something better. But now…

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If I needed to, I could re-run this life and get Emperor Wong to craft me another new furnace, but I didn’t want to waste the opportunity in front of me. I needed to do this right.

Unfortunately, though, I still hadn’t been able to find any information on a Pill Cicada Pill or any herbs that contained ‘esoteric’ energy. While I could imbue this furnace with moon spade qi, this would be far from optimal. I needed to do better.

There was only one place left for me to turn to.

Putting my thoughts in order, I did my best to ask the questions that would give me the information I needed. “System, how much would it cost for me to purchase a Rank 6 Pill Cicada Pill?”

Cost 65 credits.

“What about a Rank 7 Pill Cicada Pill?”

Cost 6,500 credits

Those should only be basic, zero-patterned pills. So…

“What about a one-patterned Rank 7 pill?”

Cost 65,000 credits.

Taking out a piece of paper, I jotted down a series of numbers. Each rank multiplied the cost by 100, and each pattern multiplied it by ten. So, two patterns equaled one Rank. Therefore…

“What is the cost of a four-patterned Rank 4 pill?”

Cost 65 credits.

As expected, the same as a basic Rank 6 pill. So, a nine-patterned Rank 4 pill should cost 6.5 million credits. Purchasing something like that was obviously not going to happen, but maybe there was a better way.

“How much for the herbs needed to concoct the Rank 6 pill?”

Cost 65,000 credits.

“And, how much for two sets of such herbs?”

Cost 65,500 credits.

So, 500 credits for the herbs, 65,000 credits for the recipe. This was a bit out of reach, but considering how extortionate the System usually was when it came to information, 65,000 credits wasn’t actually that bad.

Did I need a patterned pill? From what I had been able to learn from Emperor Chan, adding patterns to a Cicada Pill didn’t change its effective Rank. Martial Lords had to use Rank 4 Cicada Pills. Higher-patterned Rank 2 or 3 pills wouldn’t function properly. More patterns just caused the pill to tear out a larger chunk of a person’s soul. Because of this, most people used pills with only a single pattern. This nullified the effects of the pill’s toxins while also minimizing the soul damage that the pill caused.

I could see the wisdom in this path–for other people, but not for me. Using a high-patterned Cicada Pill would mean losing a larger chunk of my soul, but I would be able to fix it back up with only a few years of soul cultivation. Making my new furnace as powerful as possible was far

more important.

“System, I want to purchase several sets of herbs for making Rank 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 Pill Cicada Pills. Spend a total of 660 credits on this. First, give me an equal number of sets from each Rank. Then, spend any remaining credits on as many extra sets of ingredients as possible. Send everything to one of the jade boxes in my inner world’s treasury.”

Purchase confirmed. 491 credits remaining.

Nodding in satisfaction, I stood and headed to my alchemy workbench.

Perfect Rank 1 Pill Cicada Pill, 200% Medicinal Efficacy, 9 Pattern. Value: –

The System had placed a rather high premium on its herbs–selling them for several times the cost of a pill–but I couldn’t deny their quality. The System hadn’t just given me the ingredients for a basic pill. It had given me everything–all of the herbs needed to concoct a Perfect nine-patterned pill, all of them tied together with a sympathetic bond. Because of this, even though several of the herbs were entirely new to me, making a Perfect Nine-Pattern Rank 1 Pill Cicada Pill with 200% efficacy had been as easy as breathing.

This left me with dozens of leftover sets of Rank 1 herbs, many of which contained energies that I had never seen before–I wasn’t even sure if some of them even existed in this world. I wanted to use these herbs to perform a few experiments, but having a few extra Cicada Pills around would be useful once I took my clan out of storage, and I doubted that I had enough spare herbs to learn anything useful. So, I stuffed the extra herbs away in my treasury and just made a note to look into setting up an herb garden once I was out from under the Palace’s watchful eye.

Refocusing on the task at hand, I pulled out a few of the higher-Rank herbs and, over the course of the following day, turned them into perfect Rank 2, 3, and 4 Cicada Pills.

Then, I went back to my cultivation chamber and consumed an Energy Expulsion Pill, which turned me back into a simple Martial Disciple 1 with an inactive core.

Could I have immediately taken a Rank 4 Cicada Pill? Maybe, but in the Heroes Domain, cultivators normally built up their weapons by taking a Cicada Pill at the Peak of each realm. This may or may not have been the best way to forge a bond, but this was the path walked by the strongest cultivators in the domain, so this was the path that I would take as well.

After giving my body a moment to stabilize, I pulled out my crescent moon spade, swallowed a Rank 2 Moon Spade Attunement Pill, and cultivated as quickly as possible, reaching Peak Disciple after only a couple of days.

Having advanced so rapidly, my foundation was less than perfect, but that was fine. The pill qi in my body was absolutely pure, and that was all that mattered.

I pulled out the Rank 1 Pill Cicada Pill and swallowed it. Then, I closed my eyes and focused on my soul. Tʜe sourcᴇ of thɪs content ɪs novel✦fire.net

Near the center of my inner garden, I found a massive cluster of bright red dahlias that had petals formed from flickering flames. These were the flowers that represented my soul’s connection to alchemy, so these were what I sacrificed to the Cicada Pill.

Emperor Chan’s Rank 2 pill had only needed a single petal to help me form a bond with my moon spade, but that had only been a one-patterned pill. This Pill Cicada Pill might have been of a lower Rank, but it had the full nine patterns. So, when I directed its energies towards the dahlias, it didn’t just stop after a single petal. It didn’t even stop after an entire flower. No, it wasn’t satisfied until it had devoured a full three flowers.

Considering that there were hundreds of dahlias in this patch of flowers, losing three of them wasn’t much of a sacrifice. However, I would need to be careful when using pills of a higher Rank.

After grabbing a large chunk of my soul, the Cicada Pill wove itself into my pill qi. Then, the energy flowed out of me as it poured into my new pill furnace. Much like what had happened when forging the bond with my moon spade, nearly all of this energy left the furnace shortly after it entered. Only a fraction embedded itself within the furnace's walls, imbuing the object with both pill qi and a fragment of my soul.

When this process was finally complete, I collapsed to the ground, drained of all my energy and returned to the status of a mere mortal. Then, after giving myself a few minutes to recover, I began cultivating once more.

Over the next several months, I spent nearly every waking moment in my cultivation chamber, leaving only to eat, sleep, and give my weekly alchemy lectures.

Upon reaching Peak Master, I consumed a Rank 2 Cicada Pill and sacrificed six of the dahlias in my soul to further empower my pill furnace. When I reached Peak Grandmaster, I took a Rank 3 pill and sacrificed twelve dahlias. At Peak Lord, I had to sacrifice twenty-four.

This had left a sizable patch of barren ground near the center of my soul, but with a bit of time and effort, I would be able to regrow these flowers, making my soul stronger than ever before.

After taking the Rank 4 Cicada Pill, I ended my mad rush forward and returned my focus to cultivating properly. To take a Rank 5 pill, I would need to ascend all the way to Peak King, then sacrifice my entire cultivation base. However, with certain deadlines quickly approaching, I didn’t have enough time to accomplish this, so I instead focused on rebuilding my cultivation base with a solid foundation.

When I finally completed my breakthrough to Martial King, there were only a few days remaining in my fifth year as the leader of the Palace’s young alchemists. After spending these few days consolidating my cultivation base and getting a better understanding of what my new, soul-imbued furnace was capable of, I stood up, dusted off my robes, and left my apartment.

It was time to see how the elders would judge my efforts.