Candle light

Mortal tier recipe. No cultivation requirements

When nights are long, and some lack the insignificant light of a moon to provide minimal comfort, you require alternate sources to remain safe. Traditional candles, torches, and fires are all usable but impose a danger. Not to mention that without proper ventilation the smoke build-up can often be deadly. This is not a problem in homes with hearths or fireplaces, but some places are unequipped to deal with open flames.

Candle light is a thing to avoid such problems but still be an economically viable production item.

Ingredients and recipe Solar Qi crystal, 10 grams – natural gathering stage crystal Animal fat, 100 grams – non magical animal part Gracious firefly luminescent fluids, 5 ml – non magical animal part Amethyst rose, 5 petals – natural gathering stage plant

The type of Solar Qi contained matters little in this recipe. Just never use Momentary Tranquillity Qi as it barely ever reacts with anything. Find the crystal naturally or force a bunch of Solar Qi into an empty crystal.

Animal fat has no importance of origin. So long as it is burnable, there are no further requirements.

Gracious fireflies are bright little bugs. They’re actually quite subservient if provided with food at regular intervals, so harvesting them is in relatively poor taste. Then again… I’m not the paragon of ethics myself. Did more than a few ‘questionable’ things in my day.

A standard adult firefly holds around 1.5 ml of such fluid.

Amethyst rose is given its name by the sparkling purple petals it produces. Some say that its leaves look like chunks of amethyst as well, but I never saw the relation. Plucking the petals will massively harm the flower’s life force, so you may as well completely harvest it when choosing to do so.

Begin by mixing the luminescent fluids with the animal fat. You may need to heat the fat to break it down into a more usable state. Some prefer melting it completely and then recasting it into reduced fat; just ensure the fluid is mixed in well.

Then the tricky part. You must cover the pebble sized Qi crystal in your rose leaves, leaving no gaps, before covering it in the animal fat mixture. Although you will not need all the mixture to complete the recipe, at least a tenth of it should be coating the Solar Qi crystal. By extension, you can produce roughly 10 Candle lights from one batch of the mixture.

Now we set the well-coated crystal on fire. Leave it burning in a bowl until all the fat is burnt off. The petals must also be reduced to ash for this recipe to work. The moment the fire stops is the greatest problem in this recipe.

At this point the Candle light is finished, however it will constantly emit light and heat. This would not be a problem if its source of energy was infinite. As it is not, we require a way to preserve as much as possible. In a similar fashion, who would want to buy a half burnt-out candle?

We are able to preserve the crystals by grouping them together and storing them in pure-black containers. Most use silk bags dyed with midnight venom, but there are many options for the blackest black.

Usage

As stated, this functions as a light source primarily. It does also produce heat, but it is comparable to sand on a hot day. It hurts to touch, but pretty much useless at actually cooking.

Instead it produces a strong yellow light comparable to a small campfire. If they came with a flaw it would be their length of effectively being no more than 12 hours in a perfect case, as its energy source inevitably runs dry. You could try using larger/stronger Qi crystals to lengthen this time but it quickly grows needless. If you can afford spirit forming stage crystals then chances are you can afford to buy cheap lighting formations.

Additionally, their short lasting times makes it easy to sell them. Rechargeable variants do exist, but charging them in direct sunlight for two hours only produces an hour of light later on.