Sect Leader’s Rise to the top! - Chapter 73

Kai heated the furnace to the temperature described on the Beginner cultivation notes. He then carefully put the ingredients into the furnace.

His first result wasn’t as he expected. Instead of the mixture turning into a bright green liquid as described, it turned into a foul-smelling purple liquid. Kai knew it was a failure and cleaned out the furnace to try again. Kai had been prepared to have failures seeing as this was his first time, so he simply started again.

An hour passed and Kai was rapidly using up his ingredients. “I’ve used almost half my ingredients and still have no successes…do I not have the aptitude for alchemy?…or maybe it’s this crappy furnace?…”

Kai didn’t know the reason for the constant failures but he knew that he was wasting a lot of resources and needed a better way of doing this.

Kai re-read the instructions to make sure he didn’t misunderstand anything, then tried again carefully. This time, Kai decided to extend the time in between adding the ingredients into the solution to see if anything would change. To his surprise, when he added the last ingredient, the liquid slowly turned green and Kai was overcome with joy.

“Good, OK, next step!”

Kai condensed the liquid by adjusting the heat while stirring the liquid until most of the moisture had evaporated and only a small amount of thick green sludge remained. This step was particularly tricky, however, Kai got it right on his first try. He then poured it into a pill-shaped mold and monitored it as it hardened. After a set amount of time, Kai pulled it out to see the results.

[Beginner Healing Pill] [Grade-1] [Qi 13]

“Haha, I did it!”. It took more resources than expected, but I finally did it!”

Kai carefully put the pill into a porcelain pill bottle that he had prepared beforehand and then quickly corked the top so that it would remain fresh.

This one success invigorated Kai as he started the process again. When Kai had gone through all the ingredients, more than 3 hours had passed. Kai had managed to create 5 [Beginner Healing Pill]s after over 100 tries.

“This is a 5% success rate. If this is always the case, then I would be losing money if I sold these at the market rate of 5 silver…”

“Let’s be positive. The fact that I can even create pills means that I at least have the aptitude for Alchemy which is good. Now I just need to practice!”. Kai slapped his cheeks softly and sent another messenger scroll to the association for more ingredients, but quickly realized that he was running out of money.

“My disciples are still only hunting [Slime-Vine] which is good for their safety and combat experience, but it’s terrible for my wallet. I’ll need to move them to a more profitable hunting ground soon…”

As Kai was thinking this, he heard a knock on the basement door, followed by Old Lao’s calm voice. “Master, miss Mei Lee is here to see you…”

“Perfect timing!” Kai thought as he jumped onto his feet. Mei Lee was a rich girl from an affluent family who didn’t even hesitate to loan Kai 2000 gold. If she was here of her own free will, then she couldn’t blame him for trying to extort some more benefits out of her.

Kai walked up to the first floor then told old Lao to let her in. The interior of their building had been cleaned and was now well decorated with simple yet elegant furniture. There was also a counter at the front of the entrance which would serve as the new shop front when he was ready to open up shop. The shop front had various glass cases and shelves along the entrance. Towards the back of the first floor, was a set of sofas facing each other. This was where Kai planned to have meetings with important customers and was also where Kai was currently seated.

Old Lao lead Mei Lee to the sofa then left to fetch them some refreshments.

“Well then miss Mei, it’s good to see you again. To what do I owe this pleasure?”, Kai asked curiously.

“Mr. Kai, my apologies for coming by unannounced so late in the evening. I wanted to personally inform you that my family has completed the preparations for the auction. It will be held tomorrow evening and we wish to invite you as our guest of honor…”

Kai was at a loss for words. Didn’t they just want to have his Qi-Crystal in their auction? why would they suddenly ask him to be the guest of honor?.

Mei Lee saw the confused look on Kai’s face and continued explaining. “To be completely honest, I am from Huang City’s Lee family. You met my uncle today, he is known as Craftsmaster Lee and is also the current head of the Lee family.

Kai had already deduced that Mei Lee was likely related to the Craftsmaster Lee that he had met, so her confession was not too surprising for him. What Kai didn’t know was why the Lee family had their sights set on him.

“To believe you are part of that same family, what a small world indeed”, Kai said with a small smile on his face while hiding his true thoughts.

“Well then, Miss Lee. What exactly does your family want from me?. I prefer people who can be straightforward and honest…”. Kai said this as he sat back in his chair.

Mei Lee observed Kai’s body language before she spoke again. “My father was an Internal cultivator who was meant to be the next family head. However, he met an…unexpected death”.

“The man you met today, my uncle. He is actually my father’s uncle, meaning he is my great uncle. He is the last remaining internal cultivator in our entire Lee family born over a century ago and has long since reached the peak of his cultivation and is now on the decline…”

Kai listened to the story in silence until she was done and was able to put a picture of what was going on together in his head. The Lee family was essentially in trouble. Their only powerhouse is an old man who doesn’t have long to live and has no successors. Once he dies, the other families will start scrambling to devour the remains of the unprotected Lee family.

This was an instant reminder to Kai about the cruel and unforgiving nature of this world. The strong took what they wanted and the weak could do nothing but curl and die. Once the old man died, the Lee family would essentially die with him.

“So where do I fit in?”, Kai said, wanting her to get to the point. He now understood their situation but didn’t know where he fits into this picture.

“We’ve heard about what happened between you and the Qin family. The Qin family is one of Huang City’s top combat-oriented families and is highly regarded in terms of their swordsmanship. They have powerful internal cultivators holding the fort with some of their younger generation being talents who have already having won spots within the Twin-Lion’s sect. Because of this, they have quickly grown to prominence within Huang City. They’re not a family to be taken lightly, especially if you consider their unforgiving and brutal nature…”

“However…you walked into the heart of that very same Qin Family and caused them great embarrassment, the left completely unscathed. What is even more surprising is that they haven’t made any known attempts to retaliate against you…”

Kai was surprised that the Qin family he walked into was actually that powerful. He remembered that the old men were all internal cultivators, but their cultivation levels were nothing to write home about. Kai agreed that the only spectacular thing about them was the sword-Qi that they produced which gave even Kai a sense of danger and made him get serious.

However, what Kai was more shocked at was the level of detailed information that she had gathered around that one encounter he had with the Qin family. He highly doubted that the Qin family told anyone about what happened since it must be embarrassing for them. The only logical explanation was that there were spies within the Qin family, but this wasn’t any of his concern so he ignored it.

Mei Lee saw that Kai was still silent and took it as a sign to continue.

“We want you to declare yourself as a friend and guardian of our Lee family. it would only be a formality but would help our Lee family greatly. We would of course be willing to compensate you and your hidden backers well for the trouble…”

Kai heard this and was surprised yet again. Since when did he have hidden backers?.. What kind of rumors were people busy spreading about him?.