Vindicator’s Wrath - Chapter 27

Hong Wu presented her sect token to the blue robed disciple sitting at the kiosk near the entrance of the Hall of Craftsmen. Hong Wu’s heart bled as she watched her hard earned merit points of over five hundred drop to almost zero in a split second. Almost every merit point Lan Cixi transferred to Hong Wu went into testing out the Initiate Apothecary’s usefulness.

“Here,” the blue robed disciple said handing Hong Wu a wooden token with the number seventy-two carved on it. “You have five days in the room number on that token. Stay longer than that and you will be given a month suspension from the Hall, so keep track of time.”

Taking the token, Hong Wu thanked the senior disciple and headed to her room. Inside was a simple workbench with an adjustable vent in the middle that was currently closed. A simple stone bed took up the left side of the room for cultivators who stayed for extended periods of time. Off to the other side were various, low quality tools provided by the sect for anyone to borrow. Ignoring these, Hong Wu went directly to the workbench and pulled out the small cauldron from a large bag. She placed the cauldron directly over the closed vent and reviewed the Initiate Apothecary one last time. ‘The Soothing Salve has three ingredients, Rejuvenating Root, Spirit Chicken Blood, and Dewleaf. I have enough of each for about thirty attempts.’

Pulling all of her materials out of her sack and arranging them on the workbench, Hong Wu sat down, taking a moment to meditate. Clearing her mind of superfluous thoughts, Hong Wu turned her attention to the lever on the side of the workbench used to control the vent.

‘This medicine is said to be the simplest out of all the recipes in Initiate Apothecary’s teachings. Very little is required from the alchemist besides adjusting the flame and timing when to add the ingredients.’

Prepared to start, Hong Wu poured her first portion of Spirit Chicken Blood into the Cauldron and fully opened the vent. Flames violently gushed out of the vent and besieged the cauldron. The room’s temperature increased sharply. To Hong Wu’s horror, these flames spat out escaped in almost every direction. Hong Wu shut the vent almost as quickly as she had opened it.

Looking inside the cauldron Hong Wu would have seen that the blood had been completely boiled away, but that was not what drew Hong Wu’s attention. What Hong Wu focused on was the other ingredients she had carefully placed around the cauldron for ease of access. The heat alone caused eight vials of Spirit Chicken Blood to shatter. Luckily, the Rejuvenating Root, the rarest ingredient, was more resilient, but three tubers were rendered unusable. What dismayed Hong Wu the most was the Dewleaf. The flame incinerated more than half of Hong Wu’s supply to ash.

Hong Wu felt like crying tears of blood over this loss. ‘How many days did I spend looking for these? All that work carefully harvesting each plant wasted!’

Hong Wu’s possible attempts just dropped from thirty to less than twenty in a matter of seconds. Determined not to give up, Hong Wu bit her lip and pressed on.

The second time Hong Wu used much more caution, opening the vent just a sliver. Watching to see what happened, Hong Wu was relieved to see the Spirit chicken blood come to a boil. After that came the addition of the Rejuvenating Root, which required the alchemist to increase the flame output until the medicinal properties mixed with the blood. Hong Wu carefully increased the flame again until the output was doubled; no reaction. Hong Wu then doubled the output again. The blood began to roil, but the tuber floated in the middle without changing. Hong Wu doubled the output again. This time black smoke rose from the root floating in the concoction. The Rejuvenating Root shriveled up into a gray waste. ‘Another failure.’

Hong Wu continued to make adjustments and after thirteen more tries she finally succeeded in extracting the essence from the Rejuvenating Root. The boiling blood now had a green tinge to it, a sign that it was ready for the Dewleaf. Hong Wu brought the temperature back down to a minimum and added the final ingredient before closing the lid and praying for the best.

Hong Wu felt powerless as she waited for her experiment to finish. The final step needed time to brew and then cool before she would know of her success or failure. Knowing she had a few hours to kill before the process was complete, Hong Wu sat down to cultivate her Coldmist Breathing Technique. After three hours of cultivating Hong Wu released her state of meditation with a look of frustration. ‘I’m not making any progress at all! It’s too hot in here, I can’t condense any of the moisture in the air into a mist.’

Realizing the futility of her actions, Hong Wu went to check on her concoction. Shutting off the vent and opening the lid, Hong Wu’s dejected expression became even worse. Black smoke once again rose from the cauldron. Once that dissipated Hong Wu looked in to see nothing but slag.

Cleaning out the cauldron and trying again, Hong Wu completed the concoction and went back to her training. This time she switched her cultivation method to the Combustion Configuration. Hong Wu immediately felt a difference from all the other times cultivating this technique. Pain.

The pain Hong Wu normally felt cultivating this technique was amplified threefold. The burning sensation Hong Wu felt inside her chest shocked her out of her meditation state and gasping for air. Her skin was red hot, as if she stayed out in the sun all day. Steam rose from her body as sweat evaporated off of her skin.

‘What was that!? I felt like I was about to burst wide open!’

Curious about what just happened Hong Wu reassumed the meditation position and braced herself. Beginning the Combustion Configuration cultivation technique again, Hong Wu directed her divine sense towards the burning sensation to see what was happening. What she saw shocked her.

Normally Hong Wu would be able to see small tongue of flame sputtering within her when cultivating the Combustion Configuration, but now the hot yang energy in the room rushed to where that flame normally formed. The dense yang energy grew into a blazing fireball the size of a fist, burning through Hong Wu’s insides. Straining to maintain her current state, Hong Wu attempted to guide this fierce energy to refine her bones. The results were immediately visible. The third rib Hong Wu had spent a week refining was completed in an instant and the forth already showed signs of rapid progress.

Hong Wu endured the pain for as long as she could before breaking the technique and slumping to the floor. She was exhausted and could not even move. Using her divine sense Hong Wu saw she had more than doubled her number of completed ribs from two to six. Hong Wu was beside herself with joy.

‘Amazing! And that was only after a few minutes of cultivating. The only downside is that I can’t maintain that state for very long.’

It took Hong Wu about three hours to recuperate enough to move about. By the time she could check on her Soothing Salve it had been overheated to slag again; only this time, Hong Wu wasn’t as dejected. Even when she ruined the next two batches before she could even add the Dewleaf she was not all that upset. Her excitement at the possibility of making the Combustion Configuration viable overshadowed her struggles with alchemy.

Hong Wu spent the next few days fine tuning her alchemy skills and simultaneously refining her ribs. Hong Wu was careful not to over exert herself again and limited herself to a minute of cultivating her Combustion Configuration at a time. With this strategy, she was able to bring her Scorched Bones from six to twenty. As an added bonus Hong Wu was even able to successfully synthesize three portions of Soothing Salve.

Glowing with self-satisfaction, Hong Wu headed back home to share news of her recent success with Yan.

Yay! We are all caught up with WordPress. I want to thank everyone for reading up to this point so far. I need to do a lot more work before any new chapters are ready to post. There will be a bit of delay before the next one comes out and the pace of releases is likely to slow down. Expect the next few days to be quiet. I will try to continue to put out quality work, so I hope I can keep your interest even with the slower releases.

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think in the comments.