Looks like I got enough materials to make a batch of jade tokens. I have enough to make about thirty of them and decide to make three 'I'm in danger, please help!' jade tokens for Mara. I tie in a formation to open a one way portal to these three jades. Then I engrave the skull symbol on one side and the other I inscribe 'Break this token to summon me to kill someone' This will increase my stock to six.

Then I make two tokens for 'I miss you' with the same portal formation but this time I know I don't in with my strongest battle skill charged up and ready launch. I engrave the symbol of a heart on one side and on the other side I inscribe 'I miss you' Now I have five of these tokens to spare.

Now then for auction items, I use a pair to jade tokens for these. One to open a portal to it's paired token and allow it's owner to pass though. These sell as well as tier seven nirvana breakthough pills. I can't believe how many parents out there are willing to buy this for their beloved child. So I make ten of them for sale.

Then I begin working the rest on golden serpent protection jades. I decided to use a Spirit of Lava that has learn to shapeshift to any creature it has killed for an outward appearance. That took a serious amount of time for this three layer formation to be set in the remaining jades. Two of those layers was need to hold the power need to power my best early stage eight defense skill called Dimensional Barrier that the Spirit of Lava can use. These sell for about the same as tier seven Foundation pills so I was able to make eight of these and enough raw materials for a special one.

This last token I make is an attack jade, but I add four more layers so it has the capacity to hold the power of my Infernal Dragon battle skill. However I secretly make it harmless for me and Mara then launch the battle skill into the jade's storage bank. I engrave a fire breathing dragon head on one side and on the other I inscribe 'Focus on your target and break this jade' This sells as good as my tier eight Foundation pill, but even more of a pain to make.

A seven layer formation is just about as much as my spiritual force can handle without it blowing up in my face. I'll need at least twenty two layers if I wanted to put a late stage eight battle skill in a jade, so I can't imagine what I need to do to increase my spiritual force to that degree. My skills in arrays has come along quite nicely since I mainly focus on artificing type arrays.

But my basic knowledge in arrays has always been like two tier lower then my artificing specialization. However, I been learning quite a bit recently and manage to cut the gap by one level. I think if I can raise it to tier eight I could probably cut that twenty two formation layer by half. That is doable, just four more layers then and I search though master's legacy for answers.

Got it, it's a peak tier eight pill called Mental Awakening, looking through my stock of herbs I find I am missing two items. A Starbright Lilly and a Nardin Blizzardfruit, I should be able to find the lilly on the island I am headed, but the Nardin is going to be tough. It is used in two other peak tier eight pill recipes, however master never shared the Mental Awakening pill recipe to his guild.

Showing the recipe would cause too much of a sensation in the alchemy world. Beside, this kind of pill should be kept as a family secret and for personal use. From master's memories, when he found the recipe, it also came with a pill which he took. His massive sudden increase in spiritual force rocketed him to the head of his alchemy guild as he advance in leaps and bounds and eventually became the guild's number one alchemist.

Once we left Josie's sect, it was uneventful getting to the island of Karvalla. Sure we had some fun with Mara's curiosity leading us astray now and then, but nothing I need to talk about at this time. The city of Karvallus was build on a cliff over looking the ocean, and was about nine hundred meters above the ocean. It's a three walled city that survived the onslaught of the seafolk for many wars, but eventually peace was brokered which has been maintained for more than several hundred thousand years. Today the islanders and the seafolk live on the island as equal cititzens, and nearly a third of the population are seafolk.

As I traveled to the main auction house, I found out all the workshops are occupied by visiting crafters, and they suggested I rent a small manor house in an upscale area guarded by stage six cultivators. Leaving my name on the waiting list for a workshop I then found a manor house that suited us.

I set up a spacial anchor and gave Mara a return jade and she takes portal away back to our first city to spend time with her parent's birthdays that happen to be just a month a part. So I ended up having a month on my own as winter begins to arrive on my new home.

I was drinking from a jug of wine examing the pill I just crafted before popping it into my mouth and feel my divine sense breakthough to tier six finally. I finally crafted enough pills to make the breakthough. I open the workshop walls and let out my divine sense into the city and become impressed by the range and detail I can obtain with such a quick scan. I focus on a distant point near the horizon and I zoom in and see what really there. I check out a few more points of interest before waving my hand and think close walls and the privacy barrier enclose the workshop once more. Once again I am grateful of the Alchemist Tomb.

Since I have a month to kill I decided to participate in an alchemy tournament that being held by the various visiting master alchemists on the island. Gaining the highest points after the first three rounds was quite easy. Pumping in my excess spiritual force to call down more pill lightning ensures my pills quality. The first two pills allow me to create a batch of them to give me quantity too, so my points quickly took me to the dazzling lead which I nearly double the points of the runner up.

As we begin the final test, my divine sense detect something flying into the standard caldron that everyone is using to give the participants a equal footing and sudden it goes berserk and about to explode in my face. I Immediatedly set up a temporal freeze formation on it to lock down it's status, then I set up another formation to bring it back under control.

While I'm doing that, when I have a spare moment I begin tracing back my divine sense to that stone then back to it's sender. With my spiritual force going full bore trying to keep everything together so I can solve the issue of what the stone did to my caldron.

I focus on the stone as I backtrack though my divine trace and see the stone for what it was an instant before it struck my caldron. It's a Dislocating Murky Stone, a tier eight material use mainly with sensory type pills and illusionary formations. Now that I know the culprit, it's easy to stablize the caldron. It's material form is actually in another dimension but it just leaves it's shadow in ours because it from an adjacent dimension with the exact timelime as ours but with one different restriction.

It's a very difficulty material to use as it naturally drains away any energy it encounters, so you have to account for this drain in order to use it properly. But there is another use for it in artificing. It adds dimensional attack techniques to weapons and well as anti dimensional defense techniques to armor and items.

The best thing about a Dislocating Murky Stone, it isn't consumed with the refining of materials. It's the effect of the shadow is what's needed, so I would never need to acquire another one until the stone's shadow has absorbed enough energy and disappears back into it's dimension. So I immediately begin weaving another layer into the formation so I can take control of the stone. This is a rare treasure that even master never owned, so I got to have this stone.

Being the first new layer, trapping the shadow and taking control of it was too easy. First I built a formation cage to forcibly keep it under my control. Then I added a third layer with a formation to slowly erode it's owner's spiritual mark so I can put my own in. Once that happens I added forth power layer just to power up the breach and brainwashing formations as quickly as possible to brute force my way though to make the stone accept me as it's owner. I want to take over as quick as possible and then erase any bad memories of me, making the stone truely believe I was it's owner all a long.

Then I created a subspace using the weak dragon vein in master ring as the backup power source. Then I added a layer to allow the stone to modify the subspace to create any type of world it wanted. Then I added as many power layers my spiritual force could handle to serve as the main self regenerating power supply and ended up putting in five such layers.

I hear my owner say "sorry buddy, I know you hate being loaned out, but I really owe that guy a favor. So thanks for going along with it, you know how I hate owing favors."

I hear my self reply "yeah, I know, but next time make sure it's a female. That's gotta be on my bottom line for now on."

"Sure thing buddy, I'll put you back in your home now. I'm sure you gotta be thirsty by now" so says my owner. Yeah, I thought, my owner gave me this awesome home he build with formations and what other tricks he has up his sleeves. He designed it with my help to create a subspace filled to the brim with energy. I never drank a better energy source thoughout my existance, with this mortal owner, I just might realize my wish to make it to the next dimension and give my true self a shadow.

So I go with "no worries mate, just take me home," I'm pinning my hopes on this mortal. Thanks the spirits that this one is a gifted mid stage eight cultivator with a very long lifespan. I can't wait to enter my subspace home that I have full control over. I'm never bored while sucking in all that delicious energy.

I remember him bitching because of all the added layers he needed to add complete my restrictions for my home gave him a serious bad headache for days afterwards. He had placed me right next to my home entrance and said it's my punishment until his head feels better. Soaking in scraps of energy instead of gulping as much as I can down made me realize one thing.

I better not piss off this owner or I just might lose this great home, and with that thought I feel him toss me into my home which has been frozen in time until I return. It's one of my pet peeves, I like to control everything in my home. My world starts revolving around me and sigh in relief as I begin absorbing all that stored up energy.

I pet the stone's subspace pouch I made for it and laugh, altering its memories was easy enough but required hefty amount of work. I add 'loan out to females' to this stone's work habits. This fake contract is part of the story which we negotiated terms for his service. To added one new minor detail to the contract every time it has to leave the home that I built, so he can to help me with something. Making this fake contract and story is important to convince the stone of our background. With the fake memories and the lure of the home, the spirit of the stone quickly accepted my hard work as reality.

From master's memories he was told that the spirits of these stones can be hard to handle. They stay with the mortal who can supply them with greatest amount of energy. Since he added a new detail, I have the right to make a minor counter clause, so I add he will work for free if I have a personal need to use his shadow. Good, making it believe it worked for that alchemist as a favor, and tweaking it's memories so that it felt contempt for the man would make him add a new clause so I can add in my first planned counter clause.

Spirits can be so finicky since they stay with anyone who can provide them with better energy filled home. My divine sense has improved greatly from the new pill recipe I finally mastered from that Alchemist Tomb. So backtracking my memory through divine trace, I see who tossed the Dislocating Murky Stone into my caldron, it's the runner up, so I record everything he did into a jade. Then I made some mysterious gestures with my hands to mystify my techiques for the audience and bring back my caldron back into real time to complete the pill.

The audience goes bonkers at what should have been a exploding caldron settling down and I complete the pill. Then I activated the recording jade so the audience can see in slow motion what had happened, and the runner up was disqualified and was promptly exiled from the island. I had a lot of fun playing with the tournament, and I even ruined the reputation of a master alchemist for additional entertainment.

The first place reward is a Fastglow Shockmelon, it's a spiritual herb I never had the chance to refine before. I knew the shockmelon as part of a game called Shocktag, but I never owned one to try out in alchemy or artificing. It's a strange dark green colored melon that starts flashing from the base to it's tip in ever increasing strobes of pale white light. It builds to a crecendo until it stops strobbing and become a solid glow, then it discharges when touched by a foreign presence.

The shock is said to turn to ash anyone under stage seven in cultivation. A stage seven cultivator would lose all control and feeling of his arm for a few hours. For a stage eight, a minor electical discharge that make you feel when your arm has fallen asleep and entering the inital stages of awakening. The pins and needles feeling last only briefly as their stage eight bodies recovers quicky.

There is a popular gambling practice of tossing the shockmelon and the participants must be a stage six cultivator. The rules was simple, if the shockmelon to thrown at you, you must use your means to harmlessly divert it to another opponent. Damaging the shockmelon and stopping it for charging cause you to lose your participation fee that is equal to a mid tier eight artifact. The game continue with each new round less one player, any player can quit after finishing a round.

The reward is always a late to peak stage eight material, so many crafters are willing to play since their spiritual force is much stronger than martial cultivators. There was a famous game I played once, on the last round I faced a peak six alchemist who also possessed wind affinity and forced to played hot potato with shockmelon for thirty six exchanges.

I remember standing in a circle about one hundred meters across, the other nine players stand at an equal distance around the circle. A fully charged shockmelon is on a stand by the side of the first pitcher. A tier eight guest is given the honor of starting them game by touching the shockmelon to discharge it and hands it over to the first player. The game a Shocktag begins and he tosses slowly charging shockmelon to the first reciever, the girl alchemist next to me.

She follows the rule and sends the shockmelon to someone not two places adjacent to her. It was during the eighth exchange when I see the shockmelon heading my way. So I proactively encase it in positive charged cocoon of lightning, using the electrical discharges to lockdown it's spacial coordinates. Then I weave a formation to use my gravity manipulation techniques to slow the spinning down. With another formation I create a tight tunnel the curved back toward my target.

Eventurally it came down to just one oppenent left and using wind techiques to catch and throw the shockmelon. Since he is playing dirty using wind techniques to give it a crazy spin, I decide to do the same and twist the tunnel near the end to give it a spin as well. Then to boost the speed, I use cascading positive lightning dischanges to speed the cocoon along in the tunnel. Once it leaves the tunnel I let the formation for the cocoon fail, and watch it blitz toward the wind user as I take another step closer to the thirty meter inner circle.

I watch the wind user become more desparate as the distance closed, he is reaching the limits of his reaction time and finally at our thirty sixth exchange his desperate actions finally damage the shockmelon causing it to fizzle out. We had reach the inner circle and was on our fifteenth exchange there that I finally won the game.