The past day had me spend hours talking with Yin about her grandfather and reading through the many notes the man had gathered over the decades. Guo Wei may not have shattered the heavens, but he was by no means a meagre man. The notes that I'd made were far more detailed and incredible than the childish messing around that I did with my own projects.

He’d even worked with cultivators, alchemists, and other literary scholars on his travels to research how Qi worked. I recognised one of the names of the contributors as the author who’d written a book about Gu that I’d read back at the library. Though I saw no mention of Chi, they had certainly discovered the relation that tied Gu and Qi.

Yet the discovery that interested me most was their attempt to quantify Qi. An unseen mystical energy that was so dependent on individuals that it seemed near impossible. I leaned back on my chair, looking at the notes scrambled around on my desk. Of them, Wei Guo’s book rested at the centre, with my own notes scattered nearby all over. I flipped open the pages, opening the description regarding the measure of Qi.

“Cycle of Qi: The method to quantify an unseen mystical energy such as Qi had seemed difficult at first, but the problems had only increased as we’d delved further into the subject. There were notable variations across practitioners, it seemed like an impossible task to isolate factors without extensive research facilities, and I am no scholar. Luckily for me, my colleagues are, and as I’d been ready to move to my other more money oriented ideas that I’d come to them for, they’d cracked the problem.

The solution lay in cultivation realms. The way cultivators absorbed Qi itself, and how it was stored. Without delving too deeply into research jargon, this is how Qi was quantified.

A single unit of Qi, which we name as a ‘Cycle of Qi’ is the minimum amount needed to cycle Qi once within the dantian.

Upon hearing of the answer, I’d asked the obvious question on how this was not reliant on the practitioner and the size of their dantian. Yet, it turns out, it does not. No matter how vast, the minimum Qi required to cycle Qi once within one’s dantian will be a single cycle.

It had been as if an entire new world had been unlocked. Yet the problem had not been solved there. There were smaller amounts of Qi found in mundane things than this cycle, and, more curiously, in mortals. We’d been excited, wondering if the mystery to why some people could cultivate and others could not.

Unfortunately, as I write this, we have yet to find this out. Just injecting objects or people with Qi did not create cultivators. Perhaps some day someone will find this out, but for now, the mystery remains.”

I flipped the pages over, closing the book as I set it on my desk. I’d repeated the experiment using Qi crystals, and had found the experiment to be accurate. The minimum amount of Qi that could be absorbed at any point by anyone was a cycle. It was not a precise measure, as I had no way to measure Qi precisely, but it had been consistent in every test I’d done.

I lamented not having the research notes of the scholars he’d worked with, but perhaps I could locate them and find the notes eventually.

For now, my focus had shifted on redoing my notes on my pills, and checking how they measured up with this new unit in place. One big thing had been taking a test for purity, to check how much Qi each pill possessed, and how pure it was.

“Entry 43: Purity test.

Premise: Spirit Crystals have mass, and months ago, I had noted a reduction of mass upon spending the Qi inside.

Assumption: Qi has a small amount of mass, enough to be detectable.

Process for measurement: Take two bundles of pills of both kinds that weigh the same. Measure weights for both using a simple weighing tool. Dissolve both types of pills in separate containers and boil away the water and Qi, leaving just the residuals behind. Weigh again, comparing differences. Repeat multiple times with different groups of pills.

Results:

Qi Gathering pill (Vr. 1):

Qi value: 125-150 cycles.

Qi purity: 20-30%* (Approx)

Qi Gathering pill (Vr. 2):

Qi value: 150-180 cycles.

Qi purity: 40-60%* (Approx)”

I had to make the scales as precise as possible, enough to detect different as small as a grain of rice. If not for the fact that I could observe miniscule differences with my super human capability the task would’ve been impossible. But I’d managed, generating rough values with error margins in place for any mistakes in my calculations.

I wasn’t sure how helpful these measurements would be for the general purpose of establishing a drug network but they were certainly a beginning to a completely different take on Alchemy, and I couldn’t help but smile at how it’d taken building upon the work of someone from earth who’d come before me.

An interesting point of measurement that I’d also gathered was that my dantian contained quite a bit of Qi. And that the measurements of cycle remained accurate across Gu, Qi, but for Chi, they were doubled. So the minimum amount I could gather in my dantian for Chi was two cycles.

And by that measure, I had nearly four thousand four hundred ninety two cycles of Chi, and the double cycles of Qi and Gu respectively. Labby, on the other hand, had around twelve hundred cycles of Qi in her dantian, and a brief talk with Yan Yun let me know that I was curving well above the average in Qi capacity. “Borderline strange” is how she’d phrased it.

On a whim, I’d written down the details on my notes, as game notes.

“Character Sheet:

Name: Lu Jie

Age: 20 years

Realm: Fourth realm-ish (Second Spirit Circle)

Chi capacity: 4492 cycles

Key Traits:

First Law of Cultivation: Duality of Chi

Spirit tree of Unity: Becomes a big tree upon world quest completion. Probably.

Skills:

English - Fluent

Azure-Jade script - Fluent

Alchemy - Junior level

Fire Bending - Decent

Sending - Good

Stepping - Decent

Bonds:

Labby - Cute rat spirit. (Third realm)

Twilight- Tiny bloodroot spirit (Second realm)

Sheldon - Big tortle of doom (Seventh realm)”

I smiled at the stupidity of it all, and put the notebook aside. Fooling around aside, I had some tasks that I had to finish. The primary of which was developing a method that I could use to consistently create a large number of pills with.

The first test pill, as always, had been simple Qi gathering pills. I’d gathered batches of herbs of various kinds, spirit grasses, and then created the pills using normally alchemy methods. With a way to measure purity with some accuracy now, the data collected had allowed me to find the best herb to use, which turned out to be the current one in usage. Turns out, spirit grass was good as there was for a cheap source of Qi in alchemy.

What remained now, was to initiate step two. I pulled out my drawer full of spirit grass, and set them on the table. Taking out a mortar and pestle, I began to grind up the herbs into paste, using Qi infused water, at near saturation levels to create a paste.

I crushed the herbs, creating a slurry. After I had a big bowl of spirit herb juice, I took the contained and poured it into my cauldron. A flick of my wrist had a flame rising at its base, as the liquid began to bubble.

The difficult part came here. I brought over the lid for the cauldron I’d had one of the villagers get for me. It was a cauldron lid, with a hole in the centre. In that hold, I’d set in the other apparatus I’d specifically made. A metal pipe that after rising above a certain level, angled down sideways, to allow the condensing steams of Qi to flow and gather. A distillation chamber.

Lastly, I’d gatherest Frosted lilies, and added them to a metal tray, where I’d then freeze the liquid into pills.

Picking up the apparatus, I began to set up my cauldron, carefully placing everything in place. The metal pipes clanged around, jerking as I screwed them in, and stepped back.

Letting my Qi flow into the cauldron, I raised the heat of the flames and within moments, I felt wisps of Qi flowing out of the cauldron and rising through the pipes. I guided the Qi wisps, letting them gather, and flow naturally as they cooled down, while I managed the flames at certain levels.

In a minute, I saw the first drop of what should be liquid Qi drip into the beaker. A light green and gold liquid brimming with purified Qi sloshed in the collecting bowl. Drop by drop, I watched the liquid starting to gather and a few minutes later, I had a beaker half filled with the liquid, as nearly all the water had faded.

Taking out the bowl, I looked at the liquid inside. Powerful wisps of Qi flowed through as I took the shimmering liquid and poured it onto the cooling tray making sure to spread it evenly.

Walking back, I sat down as I waited for the liquid to cool. With not much else to do, I closed my eyes and let Chi flow from the world around me, into my spirit.

I took in a breath. The tree rustled, soaking in the Chi. I let the breath out. Vitality spread through my body, as one cycle completed itself. I took another breath, and the cycle began anew again. A calmness spread through my soul and before I’d realised it, an hour had passed.

Opening my eyes, I walked up from my place on the floor, and went to the tray. What lay there were little crystals filled with Qi. I felt my heart racing with excitement, as I shattered the crystal, breaking them into small chunks. Taking a bundle out, I paired them against my regular Qi gathering pills and began to run tests.

Taking two equally weighted samples, I mixed them in an equal amount of water, and began to test them for purity.

As the flames boiled the liquid away, I weighed the samples again, before working on the maths. My eyes widened in surprise, a massive grin splitting my face across in two, as I read the results for myself.

“Entry 51: New Qi Gathering Pills Test

Process: Distil a mixture of spirit herbs and water, condensing the Qi vapours into a different bowl before freezing them into solid crystals.

Benefit: Should be possible without a cultivator actively controlling the elements, given the right tool.

Results:

Qi Gathering pill (Vr 1):

Qi value: 125-150 cycles.

Qi purity: 20-30%* (Approx)

Qi Gathering Pills (Vr 3) Test:

Qi value: 180-200 cycles.

Qi purity: 60-80%* (Approx)”

I seemed to have created an extremely pure version of regular Qi gathering pills.

I looked at my tray of shining green tinted crystals, and struggled to call them pills anymore. But by all means and purposes they served the exact same purpose. The fact that these pills could be made was a big breakthrough, but even bigger was the fact that this pill could be made by a mortal.

The thought made me want to cackle madly. Reigning in my excitement, I set aside the sample and began to assess the amount of liquid used and take notes on the process.

With the burner, Qi crystal, and the distillation setup, I’d managed to simplify Alchemy into a simple distillation process. Into Chemistry.

Ideas flooded my mind, rapidly coming and going on all kinds of things I could do. But for that, I would need scholars, alchemists, and engineers. People who would be willing to work with me and help me bring these ideas to reality.

And even before any of that, I needed to get people, likely someone from Taizhou and make them into a cultivator, who could work on these alchemy projects. No, not even that. The first thing to do that remained, was a meeting with the Lord, to show him the results of my experiments, and ask him for the resources needed to begin our plan.

With a thousand ideas and plans in my mind, I gathered my Qi gathering crystals, and set back to work again.

There was a lot to be done if I wanted to start a Drug Empire.