The next day, Ivor was walking through the fancy portion of the free market, looking for alchemy ingredients to practice with and see if his new ability works properly, and a cauldron to go with it. He wasn’t taking the treasure trials because sect rules say you can only take them once per phase, so he was planning on waiting until he reached the peak of meridian opening to take his try. He was only allowed to take his qi attunement trial in meridian opening because he just joined the sect, but he could still have an advantage by waiting till the very end of the phase before taking them.

He walked into an alchemy shop, went straight to the counter, and placed his order. “I’ll take that cauldron over there. The beginner’s one. That one. I’d also like a basic alchemy scripture, some fire type ingredients, a pouch of calm mind berries, some spirit stone powder, and a Furious Tiger’s Eye.”

The woman manning the counter responded before moving to fulfill Ivor’s requests. “Sure, that’ll be… one spirit stone for ten portions of dust, three for a miscellaneous fire type ingredient package, two for the berries, four for the gem, and five for the cauldron. So fifteen spirit stones. The beginner’s scripture will only be two if you want to rent it for a week, meaning your total comes out to seventeen. Pay up.”

Ivor handed over the stones and got the goods, going back to his residence and preparing to do alchemy after reading the handbook. “Alright… first I pick out the ingredients. So for what I want to do… maybe I could use a portion of heartflame lotus, six calm mind berries, four drops of mindburner blood, and… all those ingredients have spiritual energy, so I’ll only use one portion of spirit stone dust. Along with ten of my volcano tree leaves as a base reagent, I should be good to go!”

Ivor heated some water to the boiling point with his cauldron, before dropping in ten flame colored leaves and an ounce of white dust. They melted in the cauldron and dyed the water orange when Ivor stirred it. Then went in six dark red lotus petals that hammered against Ivor’s mind, although it was to no avail. After that, six light blue berries slick with dew and four drops of bronze blood that sizzled before it reached the cauldron. “Ok… the ingredients are in. Now I need to inject the calming qi from my small intes-”

The mixture exploded the moment Ivor tried to interfere, sending him flying into a wall with a nasty burn on his face. The cauldron was still intact, though. “Well shit. Three drops of mindburner blood it is, then.”

The ingredients entered, and this time, the dark purple qi emanating from his left hand did as well. “It seems like it worked. Now I just have to stir until it’s ready to become a pill.”

The concocting went smoothly the rest of the way, and Ivor took out his tiger’s eye. He very slowly inserted it into the mixture. “Alright… now I just condense it into a pill. And… done!”

The water in the cauldron had evaporated, and Ivor pulled out his pill. “The heartfire lotus should make it gravitate to my heart meridian… so I guess I’ll just try it out!”

Ivor popped his pill in his mouth with trepidation, realizing shortly after that his insides were burning. “God that hurts! Wait… gotta keep calm. It’s just… yeah, I’m just tempering my - AH - dao heart a little. Plus, I was trying to - AH - weaponize heart devils, so a little pain is - AH - inevitable, when you think about it. Oh, it seems like it’s - AH - reaching my heart meridian. Oh wait shi- AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!”

After a few minutes of cultivating, Ivor realized where the impurities were going. “Dammit, seriously?! My armpits already smelled bad enough, and now THIS?! I’m going to need a shower… wait, I should probably fill the meridian first - shit, how do I cultivate. All I know how to do is stick shit into my organs, and I’m not even going to TRY that with my heart. Wait, I think I might know what to do.”

Ivor walked over to his bookshelf and grabbed The Basics of Cultivation, opening it and flipping to the very beginning. “Let’s see… according to this… ‘get a cultivation technique’. Is this book fucking with me? What, do I have to stab my heart?! Oh wait, it looks like I can inject qi into an acupoint. How about… yeah, my Spirit’s Gate will be good for this one. Now how to

inject the qi?”

After reading some basic information that every cultivator should know, Ivor was ready. “If all I need is some spiritual liquid that synergizes with the Spirit’s Gate acupoint, then I guess I can make this with mindburner blood and calm mind berries too.”

After numerous failures that would have ruined his face if not for his healing technique, Ivor had finished his spirit liquid, which contained four drops of mindburner blood, five calm mind berries, and twenty crushed energy pills. “I don’t think I’ll ever run out of energy pills as an outer sect disciple… although I’m betting that they’re only giving people this much so they can cultivate without restraint for the beast waves, so it’ll probably stop after the last of them. Ah well, I guess that just means I should become an inner sect disciple as soon as possible to make the most of this generosity… and on that note, stabbity-stab-stab!”

Ivor stuck a syringe into his Spirit’s Gate acupoint, which could be found above his pinky in his left wrist. “Ah… that’s the spot. Cool, my heart meridian’s full in one shot. You know, if a mortal saw me right now, they might think I was high. God, it would be hilarious if there were people addicted to injecting elixirs into their meridians. Actually… I saw an injection mark in the neck of one of the customers of the alchemy shop. And they were at qi infusion, injection isn’t even an efficient way of cultivating for them any more! Such Dao heart, much wow. I hope I never become some sort of pill addict.”

Ivor tossed his syringe to the side and plopped down onto his bed as his injection mark healed. “Damn, I’m tired. I guess I’ll take a nap and do my triple burner tomorrow. My heart meridian agitates people’s heart fires, and my small intestine meridian can calm them… maybe my triple burner could just make actual fire. I could even fuse my other abilities with it to create cool types of fire! That… seems like… a good… idea.”

For the first time since he started cultivating, Ivor had truly peaceful dreams that night.