General tonic (Basic)

Mortal tier recipe. No cultivation requirements

Tonics, fortunately, are not healing potions. Due to the nature of higher cultivation stages they are only effective to a certain point, but that’s getting way too ahead of ourselves. Let us start on the basis for all of these tonics, the general tonic.

The original tonic was developed by cultivation sects almost a million years ago now. It’s purpose is effortlessly simple as to improve the health of mortals, but not just to help mortals for free. You see, cultivators have families, at least most do. And as such, most care about these members they have left behind, again, at least most do, but for the majority it would waste time fretting about their health and situation. Tonics cannot ward off bad luck or provide even the smallest smidgen of Qi, but they can revitalise a person. Their use is simple and direct, to allow a cultivator’s mortal family to live a good life before passing on. The purpose to calm the cultivator’s heart and allow his mortal ties to finally come to rest.

They’re also great in developed societies where people don’t want to cultivate but still want to live a healthy life. It’s rarely bad business.

Ingredients and recipe Exuberant heartstone, 25 grams – natural gathering stage mineral Lacing wire stems, 3 stems – non magical plant Purified water, 150-160 ml – non magical fluid Balanced agar, 15 grams – non magical fluid

Lacing wire is once again being used to both hold together certain materials and as a potent adjoining ingredient. Still, at this level worrying about the specifics of adjoining is just a way to confuse yourself. Wait until you understand the principle of elemental conflicts and multiplication before looking at advanced topics.

Exuberant heartstone is a type of heartstone, which is a material slightly lower in tier to lifestones. Heartstones can easily be farmed by placing the hearts of powerful creatures (Roughly at the destiny chasing stage) in a case of recursive lifestones. Heartstones are a far milder type of stone, but do not actually release any Qi upon use, instead converting a small amount into a restorative while the rest escapes freely.

Lacing wire stems are the stems of root vegetables which produce a flower above ground. In the interest of pollination it is recommended that you wait for the plant’s flowering period to end before removing the stem, although it doesn’t really matter as the insanely thin stem allows it to minimise the energy to create a new one. It can regrow in 2 days at its fastest, so really don’t worry about taking a few.

Purified water is just water with a trace amount of impurities, such as minerals. It just helps reduce the chances of adverse reactions.

Balanced agar is a type of jelly that focuses on placing everything in equilibrium except, with great irony, itself. The jelly formed nodes throughout its mass but these are undetectable with the naked eye so don’t bother. The jelly is formed in a lab due to low costs, but there are slimes made of this stuff, so hunting them is an option. They spawning grounds are utterly random though, so good luck on that front.

A relatively simple recipe this time because it was made for apprentices to complete. No dedicated alchemist wanted to waste time with these things for the family of other cultivators, and really they’re only valuable at the mortal tier.

Your heartstone must be ground to a fine powder, similar to icing sugar in consistency. You really can’t go too fine here, so if you feel any grains just go ahead and crush it again. Heartstones are significantly weaker than lifestones so any substantial force along a grain will crack it, as the size decreases it will begin to easily shatter under force at any point.

Mix this powdered heartstone with an equal mass of water, 25 ml for those not in the know. As a general rule for water, 1 litre of water is roughly equal to 1 kg.

This will form a thick slurry which all three Lacing wire stems can be coated in. Coat the stem’s entire length and leave it to set, this takes around 10 minutes in a warm room. While this is happening you can just pour all the remaining water into the balanced agar.

The agar now needs to reposition this all, which takes a little under 5 minutes. In some cases the agar is known to dry out a bit in advance, this can be resolved by adding up to 10 ml of more purified water. No more should be added as it means there is now a fundamental problem with the agar or it is too dehydrated to be of use.

With that done you can now cut each stem into 16 pieces and grind them up. This time it is far less stringent and you can just add it to the agar on the condition that no large pieces are observed.

You must stir the agar manually here, as it does not entirely distribute internally in an ideal fashion. This can be avoided through use of higher level items, such as redistribution agar which is a spirit forming stage version of this jelly but also really expensive.

Bottle the stirred product and make sure that any mortal that consumes it gives it a through shake beforehand for maximum effects.

Usage

First of all, a mortal human may only consume one every year. Any more will send their body into a highly-saturated state which comes with its own issues. Just the vitamin A extremity can cause liver failure, not to mention all the other issues that come with over-filling your body.

As for children, they should simply never touch this stuff. Their bodies don’t need balancing, it needs to take its own course to develop naturally. Adults don’t develop their bodies further, unless they plan to build muscles or the like. By extension, no one aiming to ‘bulk up’ should take this tonic.

Writing out its full list of effects is rather long, so it can be generalised into three points. First it will create an agar store of various minerals and vitamins necessary for the body to live normally, automatically filling cells with anything they’re missing.

Secondly it will deal with any imbalance in chemicals, this effect is a bit rarer unless you suffer from diabetes or thyroid issues. In the former removing the excess sugar while in the former providing iodine from the heartstone source. This is an effect of vitality power over traditional medicines, which can be transformed near freely into chemicals.

Third, and maybe the most underestimated effect, is a general enhancement of your immune system. Actually, this is more of an aftereffect of the tonic’s all-round improvements, but it’s important enough to mention. The improvement’s creation is obvious, your body’s similarly bettered state, however the other point is the higher affiliation between parts of the immune system. The already cohesive system is supported by the agar to send and receive chemical signals faster, such that their reactive-ness to infections is multiplied several times.

Some basic logic here: If you’re too healthy to get sick, then you won’t ever be sick.