Qi swirled within a small core. It thrummed it, pulsed it stretched. She was at the cusp of something. To become something larger than before. Even though she didn’t know any such concepts, being guided purely by instinct to seek out the light buried within her being.

The Qi swirled once more, two circles turning into one. There was a brief shudder, a moment of resistance before the barriers broke, and the Qi of the world rushed into her body, forming the very first circle in her Dantian.

She had just broken through to the First Realm.

Awareness came flooding in all at once. Knowledge, wisdom, understanding. Her being expanded, as she grew to be more than she’d ever been. Her nose twitched from the smell of herbs, and she let her mind drift on the torrents of Qi pouring within her.

The Qi asked her for a name.

Labby.

The answer came all of a sudden. Labby, she thought to herself.

La Bi?

The Qi asked. She didn’t know. She knew that La Bi wasn’t right. The Qi liked it but it wasn’t right. Yet something about Labby was wrong as well, something in the Qi told her that the word was unfamiliar. Not from here.

Labby protested in her mind. The Great Master had named her so, and so she shall be called

She accepted the name, swirling her Qi angrily. That was who she was. Labby, and not La Bi. The words may not be from here, but they were of her Great Master’s, and that was how she’d be known. The Qi resisted, shuddering for a moment before it broke, and the torrents began to flow. The Qi accepted her will as its own as her breakthrough was finalised, a purpose and identity were formed. The Qi took a sigh of relief, as its name was revealed and it began to fill her Dantian.

Labby.

She said in her mind, feeling happy. It felt right now. It felt like her. The Qi disliked the name, but Labby had started to like it. The great name her Great Master had bestowed upon her must have some special meaning to it, one so grand even the Qi didn’t know about it.

Labby squeaked to herself, feeling content and happy. Her eyes shifted over the sacred workshop. The place where her Great Master worked his miracles, producing delicious pills that he gave to her, in his boundless generosity.

Perhaps she could help him with the task now?

The thought pleased Labby. Yes, he’d called her an assistant. So she’d try and help her great master out. But where to start?

Labby sniffed the air, as her gaze travelled to the divine texts. Her Great Master always seemed to write in them. She hadn’t realised it before, but now that she could think clearly, she knew that he must have imparted his words of wisdom onto those texts. They may allow her to learn the Sacred art of her great master as well.

She could even make her own delicious pills!

Labby squeaked happily at the thought once more, her tail moving happily behind her. She jumped off the table, running to where her great master sat deep in thought. Labby slowly climbed on his tall shoulder, perching on them as she looked down at the words of wisdom he wrote on the paper.

It was then that Labby realised something very important. She couldn’t read. The words the great master wrote curved and twisted flowing into one another. They were not the sharp stokes of the brush she’d expected them to be, but akin more to the scribbles of a kid.

What kind of strange language did her Great Master use? Labby thought about that, before the obvious realisation came upon her. It must be a language he’d created! Her master was great, so there was no reason he couldn’t create a language of his own. Labby would do her best to learn it as well.

Labby squeaked out to her master, trying to make her wishes known. The great master turned to look at Labby, breaking out his trance. A gentle smile covered his face as his hand rubbed her head, and Labby leaned in, feeling happy. But soon, he returned to his notes, forgetting about her.

Labby sat waiting for a moment before she realised he wasn’t paying attention to her. Labby tried to speak to her master, yet all that came out were quiet squeaks. She couldn’t speak like he did, she didn’t have the ability to.

The thought filled her with frustration. She wished to talk to her Great Master. To learn his great teachings and make pills of her own. If she couldn’t even speak then how would she do that?

Labby couldn’t come up with an answer. Filled with frustration she was about to go bite the evil Orange-Cat once more when a scent came upon her nose. Labby sniffed once more, the Qi making her nose tingle. The scent was familiar to the Storm and Lightning woman her Great Master had rescued her from.

Entranced by the scent, Labby ran jumping up the table. She used her paws to try and open a drawer but the hefty wooden structure groaned, refusing to move. She used her Qi, flexing them and the drawer opened, letting out a thick plume of Qi and the scent of herbs. Labby squeaked, squeezing herself in as she sat next to the herb, filled with lightning Qi.

Ideas upon ideas filled Labby’s mind as she tried to resist the desire to eat them all. She was almost successful in doing that. Almost.

A lunch of spirit grass leaves later, Labby was back on track. Determination filled her heart, as the thought of eating a delicious pill filled her mind.

It was time for Labby to follow in her Great Master’s footsteps!

***

I’d come to realise something. Qi Gathering Pills, and Qi refilling pills were the one and the same. The Old Man has just used an uncommon name for the pill. I was a bit ashamed that it’d taken me this long to realise despite the recipe being almost identical for both of them. Way to confuse me, Old Man.

I sighed, taking my brush, as I began to write down the new results from my last batch. So far I'd succeeded in making three pills quite consistently.

Qi Gathering Pill:

Cost of Production: 1 Silver 7 Copper

Cost of Sale: 5 Silver

Effectiveness Increase: 9% -> 11% (Roughly)

Cost Reduction: 3.2%

I had been a bit stumped at first at how I would be able to get any kind of measurements when I'd found a simple solution for the basis of the numbers. I had used spirit stones and the Qi amount present in one as a baseline and measured the amount of time a pill took alongside the amount of Qi produced to check the effectiveness baseline for the original recipe.

The rest was just a matter of simple comparison and maths for the time and Qi amount involved for a unified effectiveness measure.

Qi Gathering was most of what I gave to Su Lin now. These were the pills I’d spent the most time refining and improving. The forty-seven silver coins I had were a result of these as well. About twice as much money as Lu Jie had saved up in months of work. A smile covered my face as I continued to write the next entries.

Body Purification Pill:

Cost of Production: 2 Silver

Cost of Sale: 7 silver 9 copper

Effectiveness Increase: 2% -> 3% (Roughly)

Cost Reduction: 0%

This was the second pill I’d been working on. Body purification pill. All it’d really done was cover me in sweat and some dark gunk (which I’d promptly collected and stored somewhere to test) and made my Qi flare up and my heartbeat rise. I wasn’t sure if I’d made a mistake or if that’s just what the pill was supposed to do, but I couldn’t tell how useful the pill was.

The testing for this one and it's effectiveness had been challenging and I'd opted to settle for the amount of Qi generated. I'd need to find better test parameters eventually, but for now, I would just have to make do with what I had.

The next pill was one that had my interest. The Qi tempering pill. It could hasten someone’s cultivation and help them rise higher. I could feel some desire building up within me, to snag the pill and use it to finally break through into the fourth realm and form my second circle. But the thoughts mostly stemmed from Lu Jie’s memory and I quickly shook them off. I was far more interested in the process of how this pill worked than in trying to cultivate to get stronger, but so far I hadn’t been able to make one. I left the entry empty.

The last pill was the Qi Reinforcement Pill. The one the old man had given me that’d healed my wounds and my dantian. It’d taken me over a week before I’d finally realised that channelling Qi into the cauldron and letting the Qi slowly dissolve into the herbs was the ‘subtly infuse your QI around the herb’ thing the book was mentioning. These people really needed more clear cut definitions in their books. I wrote down my progress.

Qi Reinforcement Pill:

Cost of Production: 6 Silver

Cost of Sale: Unknown

Effectiveness Increase: None

Cost Reduction: None

I breathed in a sigh, closing my note and putting it carefully to the side. I’d quickly come to realise that if I didn’t organise my notes, any clue or information I may get could be lost and I may never find it. It should’ve been the first step I did but being used to computers had left me with sloppy habits.

So far I'd managed to create a stack of notes for each kind of pill. A transactional log in which I entered the money I earned from each pill. And I’d also calculated how much money I’d need to get a shop of my own.

It was 20 gold pieces. At the minimum. I'd earned roughly 50 silver in the last two weeks. And a gold piece was 100 silver. So it’d take me at least 80 weeks to have my lab if I earned just this much for the entire year. I’d earn more in the coming weeks as I learned more but that was still roughly an entire year of work, just to start a new life. Maybe more.

I let out a tired sigh. Being disheartened would do nothing. All I had to do was steadily keep at it, and keep improving. I’d gotten used to living in the sect as well, and treating alchemy as a part-time job. As long as there were no hindrances, I’d be free to leave in just a few more months.

I got up from my seat, turning around to arrange some more tests when I noticed something. A threat stood facing me on the floor, its black body shining in the dim sunlight. A bug. I quickly assessed the danger it posed to me, putting it at a Yellow alert at best.

I snorted, amused by the random thoughts, and ready to get to work, when the bug revealed its true weapons. It had wings.

The threat had risen up to red in an instant as the bug charged and I- sidestepped and walked outside the room. A few moments passed before I came back in, a sandal in my hand.

It was a battle to witness, something to go down the ages. My Qi churned as I infused the sandal with it, and then in a fell swoop, I launched the deadly projectile, crushing the bug underneath it.

“I’m sorry, bug,” I whispered. “But you were bugging me,” my resolve broke as I both groaned and laughed at my terrible pun. I was both deeply ashamed and highly proud of myself right now.

“I need to keep the herbs covered though. They let out far too much Qi, and the bugs here seem to love that stuff. Another detail to explore,” I said out loud when a slightly ajar drawer caught my attention.

Curious, I walked closer when I heard something shake inside. I pulled the drawer open, trying to see what could be inside when a dark figure jumped onto my face. I panicked and stepped back as I fell on my butt.

I grabbed the creature trying to remove it when I heard a squeaking sound. A moment later, electricity coursed through my body as a sharp jolt hit me, the sensation like being pricked by a thorn.

“What the- Labby!” I shouted as I felt the lighting Qi course through my arm for a moment. I saw Labby stand frozen, as lightning crackled all around him, his fur rising up like a spiked ball of fluff.

“Did you just thunderbolt me?” I asked in surprise as Labby squeaked in protest, his ears drooping. I stared in horror and surprise at my little rat before I began to cackle madly.

Labby had used drugs to evolve into an electric type.