The recipe that Emperor Chan had given me used ten different herbs to create a six-patterned Rank 3 Saber Aura Pill.

The core of this pill was a pair of entwined herbs that contained saber energy. These two herbs were each empowered and altered by different metal-based herbs, and these two metal-based herbs were, in turn, empowered by earth-based herbs.

A basic Saber Aura Pill could be made with these six herbs alone, but doing so would leave unsightly gaps in the pill’s structure. Adding two more metal-based herbs and two more earth-based herbs patched these gaps, allowing the creation of a six-patterned pill.

This much was easy enough to understand, but there was only so much that I could learn about a pill’s structure by just reading a recipe. So, to get started, I bought a few cheap sets of the six core herbs and experimented with concocting a basic, unpatterned Saber Aura Pill.

Several of the herbs used in this recipe were new to me, but other than the two that contained saber energy, none were particularly special. So, making a bog-standard zero-patterned pill was straightforward. Unfortunately, though, I was only able to get the herbs to fit together properly by leaving behind an unhealthy amount of toxic energy. I also couldn’t properly cleanse the saber herbs without a saber affinity, so my first attempt at this pill resulted in worthless Mid-Purity rubbish.

After crushing this failure and sending its remnants to fertilize the gardens of my inner world, I went out and bought several more sets of herbs.

Now that I had a firmer mental image of what I needed to create, properly matching herbs to create the necessary structures was much easier. After a few more attempts, I was able to reliably concoct High-Purity pills, and a few more after that, I was able to imbue my pills with their first pattern.

Going further than this, however, proved to be rather difficult.

The saber herbs were a problem. Since I had access to pill qi, I was able to shape and purify these herbs without needing to worry about contaminating them with other types of energy. However, my reserves of pill qi were limited, and I couldn’t rely on the support of my furnace’s formations, since they were powered by fire qi.

There was also an issue with the metal herbs. They didn’t fit. Even after trying dozens of different combinations, I couldn't find any good matches between the saber herbs and the metal herbs. No matter what I did, there were always large gaps that needed to be filled with toxic energy. If these herbs had been grown in sympathy with each other, these gaps wouldn’t have been quite as large, but naturally, the saber herbs and the metal herbs just didn’t want to go together.

Both of these problems could have easily been solved with a saber-based spirit fire. Such a spirit fire would have been able to cut out all the unwanted toxins with ease, and with the help of my pill qi, I could have transformed the fire and used it to bind the saber and metal herbs together.

Since the members of the Chan Clan were mostly all saber cultivators, they likely possessed a saber-based spirit fire. However, even if they were willing to let me borrow it, there was no way that they would let me bind a portion of its energy into a random pill. Using a spirit fire like that only made sense if one had access to the original seed, and from everything that I had seen, I doubted the Chan Clan would have one of those.

In any case, since I was intending to make this pill in front of a large audience of fellow alchemists, relying on a spirit fire that few people would have access to would be less than ideal.

Deciding to tackle one problem at a time, I focused on the issue of cleansing the saber herbs.

First, I crafted a simple Rank 1 furnace. Then, I inscribed it with a formation that was supposed to produce beams of pill qi instead of the usual fire qi. However, the lines of my inscriptions proved to be just as ineffective at directing the flow of pill qi as normal meridians were. The gathering formation worked well enough, but all of the energy leaked away before I could put it to use. There might have been some formation equivalent to toxic meridians that could fix this, but if there was, I didn’t know what it would be.

Admitting defeat, I changed tack and focused on the problem of the metal herbs not fitting properly.

Leaving my workshop, I went to the Palace’s Emporium and purchased the best sets of herbs they had. Thankfully, while Saber Aura Pills weren’t overly popular, there were enough saber-cultivating herbalists in the Palace that sympathetically-bonded sets of the six core herbs, while expensive, were readily available.

Upon returning to my room, I studied the herbs in greater detail and was thoroughly impressed. I hadn’t noticed much of a difference with Rank 1 herbs, but the Palace’s Rank 3 herbs were a clear step up from anything offered in the Halls.

Taking the worst of these sets, I tossed them into my furnace.

While these herbs weren’t entirely pristine, they were close, and I was able to eradicate the majority of the toxins from the saber herbs without needing to spend too much energy.

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As for the metal herbs, at first sight, they looked rather strange, as if their stems were covered in tumorous growths. However, these physical deformations also altered the shape of the medicinal energy’s structure, allowing these metal herbs to perfectly mesh with the saber herbs.

With only the slightest bit of effort, I folded all six herbs together and concocted a three-patterned Saber Aura Pill.

Making this pill was satisfying, but it highlighted the challenge ahead of me. The recipe that Emperor Chan had given me was unique, unknown to anyone in the Palace. Because of this, buying a full set of high-quality, specially grown herbs wouldn’t be possible. Instead, I was expected to somehow make a six-patterned pill without relying on the power of a sympathetic bond.

This would be difficult, but if my competitors could do it, I was confident that I could as well.

Even if I could get a proper set of all ten herbs needed for the six-patterned pill, I could at least start with a proper set of the core six and just tack on the remaining four, right?

This was what I thought at first, but I soon discovered that the mutations in the core herbs that helped them fit together also made them resist the inclusion of additional peripheral herbs. Ironically, the worse a set of herbs was for making a three-patterned pill, the better it was for making a six-patterned pill.

Even knowing this, after using up all of my recently purchased herbs, I had only been able to concoct a single five-patterned pill. Everything else had maxed out at four patterns.

As a new Grandmaster Alchemist, being able to create a proper five-patterned Rank 3 pill should be considered impressive, but would it be enough for me to place in the top five of the upcoming competition?

I would be facing Pill Lords and Pill Kings. Even if they were only able to concoct a few common three-patterned Rank 4 pills, they would be able to defeat my five-patterned Saber Aura Pill without much difficulty. From what Emperor Chan had said, I might have a leg up in terms of uniqueness, but if the Chan Clan was willing to hand over a valuable recipe to a complete outsider, what might other clans be willing to do for their top scions? I couldn’t allow myself to underestimate the legacies of clans that may have existed for untold millennia.

So, what should I do?

The obvious solution was to go to Emperor Chan and request a set of proper herbs.

This recipe had come from the Chan Clan, so they had to have people who were growing the herbs that were needed to concoct it, right? In fact, if the Chan Clan were smart, then they would have a stockpile of such herbs ready to go, waiting for the moment this recipe became public knowledge.

This was the obvious solution, but I didn’t like it.

If the only reason I did well in this competition was because of the knowledge and resources that had been handed to me, my future in the Palace would be tied to the Chan Clan—in people’s minds, if not in reality.

So, if it wasn’t possible to make a six-patterned Saber Aura Pill using only the herbs available in the Palace, maybe I should try to develop an entirely new recipe. Even if it was somewhat less valuable, the added uniqueness should more than make up for it.

What type of pill should I try to make, though?

I knew of at least a dozen different beast alchemy pills that would allow me to clinch first place easily, but those were far too dangerous to pull out for a silly competition between kids. No, I needed something that would be valued, but it couldn’t be valued so highly that it got me killed.

Making another trip to the Palace’s Emporium, I spent a full day going through all the pills they had on offer, both those readily available and those that could be requisitioned. It wasn’t long before I realized that something obvious was missing. After checking with one of the attendants, I found that, indeed, no one in the Palace was capable of making the pill that I had in mind.

This didn’t mean that it was entirely unique, but it should be unique enough. So, I placed a giant order for hundreds of copies of all the herbs I needed, then went back up to my workshop to prepare.

What was the connection between alchemical pills and herbal teas? At first blush, aside from them both being made from medicinal herbs, the answer seemed to be practically nothing.

To make an herbal tea, all one needed to do was chuck a few herbs into a pot and add water. Sure, some herbs worked better if cut up first, and others worked better if slightly bruised, but that was it. There was no burning away of toxins, and there was no careful melding of medicinal energies. Instead, herbs were carefully selected so that their toxic energies canceled each other out and the energies of the herbs melded together on their own.

Also, as I had already found out, while normal alchemy recipes could be used to brew herbal teas, the results were… less than pleasant. Instead of canceling each other out, the toxic energies usually fed off each other, causing them to become more potent, not less.

Still, while recipes for alchemical pills couldn’t be directly translated into herbal teas, I had a feeling that I should be able to translate a recipe for an herbal tea into an alchemical pill—as long as it was good enough. After all, the effects of a tea had to be coming from somewhere. All I needed to do was extract the important bits, meld them together properly, and condense the result down into a pill.

My recipe for highest-quality Beauty Reviving Tea contained 20 different Rank 1 herbs—none of which were present in the more common Rank 0 Beauty Pill, which was only effective on mortals—so I expected that mixing them together properly would create a strong Rank 1 pill.

The idea of competing against Pill Kings and Pill Lords with a lowly Rank 1 pill was almost laughable, but the more I thought about it, the more this seemed like the right move.

The Palace’s Emporium only sold three-patterned Rank 0 Beauty Pills, which were only effective on Martial Disciples. Nothing better was available. A higher-Ranked cultivator could still enjoy the benefits of these pills by abolishing their cultivation base, but after they ascended past Martial Master, the effects would begin to wear off.

If I could make a Beauty Pill that was effective on Rulers, while it might not be the most valuable pill on the market, it should at least be in rather high demand. When combined with the utter uniqueness of such a pill, this should be enough to see me safely through the competition.

Still, while I was relatively certain that my herbal tea recipe could be transformed into a pill, I had no frame of reference for what the structure of such a pill might be, and I only had a little over two months to figure it out. If necessary, I still had Emperor Chan’s Saber Aura Pill to fall back on, but once the idea of designing a new Beauty Pill lodged itself in my mind, I couldn’t imagine entering the upcoming competition with anything else.

So, after receiving a massive shipment of thousands of herbs, I got to work.