It was three in the morning- five hours after Shao Qing accidentally broke through his soul contract. Around this time many of the Kang Clan’s Acupoint Opening cultivators were in the midst of the few hours of sleep they needed per night. Shao Qing was not. In fact, he was planning to stay up all night, and possibly through the next night too. He was caught in the midst of a great opportunity- a chance to free himself, and maybe something beyond that- but at the same time the situation could be dangerous. It was like he was balancing his fate on the head of a needle. If he wasn’t careful then his chance would disappear just like that, and he’d have no one to blame but himself.

For the first hour after the incident, Shao Qing was in ecstasy. He struggled to hold his excitement in as he wandered around his workshop, instinctively packing things in preparation for his departure. After all, what else would he do? Now that he was free, all that was left to leave! After the hour had passed his high wore off though, and he began considering things pessimistically. Questions jumped to his mind unbidden. "The soul contract is broken, but will it stay that way? Is Kang Qun already aware that the contract has been broken? Will soul recovery pills mend the soul contract, forcing me to halt my research and hold off on my breakthroughs?"

Once Shao Qing weathered through a short period of panic, he began contemplating these questions. He didn’t dare to mutter to himself as he usually did, even with a basic concealment formation, so he simply sat on a bench and thought silently.

"Are there any latent risks besides those three I’m missing out on? I don’t believe so. The backlash on my soul could be more severe than I thought, but if that were the case I would have noticed by now, given that I can think critically about things. That means Kang Qun noticing and the contract automatically recovering are my two immediate worries. As for the answer to either of those questions… I have no way to know, as it depends on how the Kang Clan’s soul contracts are made and how exactly the contract was broken. Given that determining either would take quite a bit of research, I just have to hope neither is the case and, in the short term at least, not give the clan any reasons to be suspicious."

With his immediate situation considered, Shao Qing relaxed a bit and paced around his workshop. He didn’t know if he was truly free or if he’d be back under a soul contract within the day, but since there was currently no way for him to know, he’d just have to assume it was the former. Even if he was doomed to another 17 years of servitude he had no way to stop it, so it wasn’t worth worrying about. As long as he didn’t do anything that went against the clan’s wishes in the short-term his punishment would be minimal even if they did find him out. After all, it was just an accident. ...Although him not reporting the matter to the clan certainly wasn’t. Shit. Maybe the punishment wouldn’t be that minimal if they found out… but he wasn’t giving up his chance just because he was afraid of retribution. He was not becoming a ‘loyal and diligent servant’ again, no way in hell. For now he’d just lay low and research what happened.

...Right after he unpacked his alchemical supplies.

To continue his research, he had to confront his last question: Whether soul recovery pills would mend the soul contract. Since his soul needed to be fully healed to perform any serious research regarding the state of the soul contract, Shao Qing didn’t have much of a choice but to begin concocting some pills to help heal the damage the backlash caused to his soul.

“A pinch of ground Mind Lizard’s skin, three strips of Echret Bark, and eight strands of Soul Soothing grass…” The cauldron in front of Shao Qing lit up with colors as he added ingredients in one by one. His pill furnace stood to the side- right now he was aiming for quantity over quality, which meant he needed to change equipment. “The quantity of Soul Soothing grass was a bit high given the age of the ingredient… better add in a traitless metal ingredient to balance out the earth characteristics…”

Shao Qing continued like this for around an hour, steadily carrying on with his pill concoction. As this hour went by the water that initially filled the cauldron slowly boiled away. The water was replaced by a colorful sludge formed when all the ingredients were combined and dissolved, thoroughly mixing together with a small amount of water and each other. The sludge began to boil down, becoming more concentrated. Seeing this, Shao Qing moved into action. A strong burst of qi left his hand, lifting the sludge a short ways up into the air and removing the heat the cauldron was exerting on it.

“It should be enough for 14 pills if I distribute it optimally… condense!” Shao Qing’s hand gripped inwards. At the same time the sludge, which had separated into 14 different floating balls, began moving inwards like they were gripped by the hand. Over the course of a minute the balls grew smaller and smaller, continuing to compress in on themselves. Eventually the sludge became solid, and once each portion was similarly small in size a dense layer of qi formed around them, causing them all to solidify further and turn into pills. Once the transformation was over Shao Qing released out a deep breath and waved his hand. As he did so, a small symbol of a mortar and pestle appeared on each of the pills. On closer inspection one could see that the pestle was actually a tiny paint brush, with a small splash of color visible at the tip. This symbol was the trademark of Shao Qing’s alchemy, and it also served a basic seal to stop the efficacy of the pill from immediately leaking out.

With the concoction over Shao Qing rested for a moment before cleaning out the cauldron. At this point he was used enough to basic Soul Recovery Pills to concoct them on a large scale, but it still consumed quite a bit of qi to do so. Once that was over with Shao Qing grabbed one of the finished pills and used a special knife to cut off a small sliver of it. He swallowed the sliver, dissolving it with his qi. As he did so he paid close attention to his soul. If he felt any change in the soul contract he’d stop immediately and rethink things. If not then he’d continue eating portions of the pill until his soul recovered completely.

Fortunately, Shao Qing’s caution was unneeded. After consuming two Soul Recovery Pills and carefully guiding the energy within his soul was restored to peak condition, with seemingly no recovery to his soul contract. Of course it could have recovered without him sensing it, but he couldn’t really do anything if that were the case. He just had to believe that some of the luck from when he broke out of it was still carrying over.

Liao Mei was a clerk in the Kang Clan’s alchemy division, as well as an Apprentice Alchemist certified by the Alchemists’ Guild. She was in a constant state of being overwhelmed by paperwork, but recently it had been a tiny bit easier. Quasi-Grandmaster Shao Qing normally had an unpredictable schedule, sometimes being grabbed away by other departments for missions without the Kang Clan’s alchemy division being informed, and oftentimes being half-impossible to track down even when he wasn’t on a mission. He refused to carry around a voice transmission charm when on Kang Clan premises, and Liao Mei could never predict whether he was concocting something in his workshop, practicing battle techniques in one of the training grounds nearby, or silently cultivating god knows where. On occasion he wasn’t even at the manor- he was known to make visits to the nearby towns to grab a drink, as well as taking trips to search for alchemical ingredients or take care of errands. Whenever he did so he would only report his departure to his direct superior, leaving the alchemy division in the dark.

Despite all the difficulty in finding him, Shao Qing was much easier to deal with than the vast majority of alchemists. He filled out all the required paperwork, met all his quotas, and accepted most of the requests for pill concoctions without argument. He certainly wouldn’t go beyond the rules, but he at least met them… even if it was only because he was required to.

In the past month, Shao Qing had become a model alchemist for the overworked administrator. All of a sudden his schedule was as predictable as clockwork, and he created the bare minimum amount of paperwork to deal with. Every week, at the very start of the week, he would visit the alchemy division and turn in enough pills to meet his quota. After that he asked if any requests were made for him specifically, checked his contribution points, and then exchanged for any ingredients he needed. No bargaining, no complaints about prices, no asking if there were requests with high rewards. Just the exchange. Once his business was dealt with, Shao Qing would wish Liao Mei a nice day and return to his workshop to spend the rest of the week deep in pill concoction and research. If something came up, there was no need to track him down- he was always there, studying something intensely. Why, at one point she sought him out to pass on an announcement, only to find him pale and covered in sweat but still nobly pushing on with an alchemical experiment. Shao Qing certainly was a model alchemist, working so hard despite his status as a contracted servant. Maybe he was attempting to become a true Grandmaster?

No matter the reason, Liao Mei was pleasantly surprised by this behavior. If only all alchemists could be this easy to deal with- then her paperwork could be cut down by half. It’d never happen, but a desk jockey could dream...

This pattern of behavior continued for two months. Shao Qing was practically trapped in his lab, dedicating all of his time to researching how his soul contract broke. If his soul contract was somehow mending itself, or if Kang Qun might learn of its failure through some delayed method, he needed to know. His future depended on it.

During this period Shao Qing had considered researching soul contracts by placing them on others, but unfortunately there were too many roadblocks. The effort involved in finding test subjects who would consent to having a soul contract placed on them and the compensation required if he accidentally caused permanent damage to their soul while experimenting on them was only the easy part. Besides that, he didn’t even know the Kang Clan’s specific soul contract technique. He was prevented from learning it as a basic precaution, and for all he knew it could function completely different from any existing techniques he could track down. And even if he did track down a similar technique, in the end it’d all be too conspicuous. Despite his growing anxiety, he knew it wasn’t worth getting to the bottom of things a bit quicker if it drew attention onto him.

With the preferred option impossible, Shao Qing focused on more theoretical research. His only test subject was himself and he had minimal resources to work with. It was difficult to even keep data, given the secret nature of his research. Shao Qing wanted to learn some sort of mental cataloguing technique to assist in keeping everything perfectly memorized, but it ended up being too obscure and he wouldn’t be able to find one in a short time. In the end he settled for a compromise, writing down data but not labelling what it was about- he’d have to remember all of that himself.

These roadblocks made research difficult, but eventually he did make a breakthrough. Two months after breaking his soul contract, Shao Qing discovered the exact reason. The Kang Clan’s soul contract method implanted a tiny, parasitic offshoot of the owner’s soul into the target. This ‘parasite’ would stay outside the target's soul, but would lay down a certain number of connections within it- a bit like a tree laying down roots in the soil. When Shao Qing damaged his soul, it managed to damage the area where their souls were connected just enough to destroy the connections, dislodging them without destroying the ‘parasite’. The contract still existed, and it wouldn’t dissolve for another 17 years, but he was no longer the target- it had no connection with him.

With this discovery, all of his questions were answered. The soul contract could not repair itself without Kang Qun’s direct intervention, and he had no way of knowing it was broken. The parasite had originated from his own soul but was currently trapped within Shao Qing and couldn’t transmit any detailed information back to the owner. If it could, it would’ve had to be an actual piece of Kang Qun’s soul, and he would never risk that- besides weakening himself, if Shao Qing died, it would mean that Kang Qun would have major, irreversible damage to his soul. The only thing the parasitic offshoot could do was tell the owner whether it still existed or not. And as of now… it still existed. Unless he did a very thorough check, Kang Qun would never be able to notice the problem.

Now that Shao Qing knew that he wasn’t in danger and that he hadn’t been discovered, he could finally consider what to do next. He was free. Should he stay or should he go?

If he left now he could settle down somewhere else, create a new identity, and break through to Half-Step Soul Foundation and then Soul Foundation within the next few years at worst. It would probably be impossible for him to reach Soul Cleansing now, but reaching Late Soul Foundation was still likely. He would be free.

If he stayed here he’d have to continue putting off his breakthrough, do whatever the Kang Clan told him to, and reduce his chances of advancing to Late Soul Foundation or Half-Step Soul Cleansing further. There seemed to be no benefits to continuing this way of life.

...But what if he took a different approach? He was currently a trusted member of a group he hated, the kind of person who literally could not betray the clan. He didn’t have the privileges of the higher-ups, but in certain ways he could be considered even more trustworthy. If he used this trust, it would be possible to leave the Kang Clan with some benefits. ...A lot of benefits actually, if he approached it the right way.

Shao Qing considered things for a few hours before coming to a decision. As he did so a wide, vibrant smile spread on his face. He was excited.

He was going to pull off the heist of the century and use his position within the Kang Clan to rob them blind.