The day after SuYin departed, I went to WuJing’s office. He needed to get the position as Eight Flower branch manager, and I needed to lock down a position as city lord.

“What do I need to do? Besides just making countless pills, is there anything I can do to secure a spot as a lord?”

He sighed and shook his head. “Not really. Concoct and cultivate. That’s about it. Manager Cai has ideas for how to secure our transfers, and we’ll just have to wait on her for now. Just do your best to reach Peak Grandmaster as soon as possible. Younger means more promising, which means higher priority.”

I tapped my fingers as I considered my options. “What can you tell me about the pitfalls of rushing one’s cultivation as a Grandmaster?”

In the sect, I was warned about rushing as a Disciple and Master, but no one ever mentioned anything about it being a bad idea to rush as a Grandmaster. This wasn’t too surprising, though. After each advancement, most of the Grandmasters in the sect would need to take a long time to repair their dantian and accumulate qi for their next breakthrough. ‘Rushing’ wasn’t an option.

However, for me, in this life, I might be able to manage it. My dantians seemed sturdy enough to not take too much damage during an ascension, so… was it possible? And if so, was it safe?

WuJing blinked in confusion. “I’m… not sure. I’ve never known anyone to cultivate fast enough for it to become a problem before, but that isn’t saying much. Usually, cultivation slows down significantly after reaching Grandmaster. Most people I’ve known, myself included, needed to spend years between each advancement. But with an endless supply of Perfect Rank 3 pills…”

“Do you think it would be safe for me to rush my cultivation as fast as I can?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure.” WuJing’s voice was filled with concern. “You could try it, but it may make your foundation unstable. Each advancement usually causes some amount of damage to your dantian. At the very least, make sure you completely repair it before taking the next step, alright?”

I nodded. “Don’t worry. I’ll be careful.”

If I wanted to take full advantage of the discount that I received for creating my Rank 2 cultivation technique, I needed a million credits. That meant I needed to die as a Peak Grandmaster before making even one more purchase. Of course, going further than Peak Grandmaster would be nice, but by rushing now, I would gain important information about the potential pitfalls of doing it again in the future.

My goal was the spatial fire seed, and to get it, I would almost certainly need to be at least a Peak King. I lacked the talent, affinities, and resources needed to ascend that far in a single life. I would need to accumulate strength through a series of lives, and finding the fastest way to skip through these early levels would be ideal. Burning one life now by rushing my cultivation could save me decades in the future.

Still, I would try to be careful. No reason to simply waste this life.

Decision made, I refocused on WuJing. “About pills… Since I’ve reached Grandmaster, I can start making Rank 3 pills in greater quantities. I want to buy all the ingredients I can. Especially for Rank 3 Qi Gathering Pills.”

WuJing stroked his chin in thought. “I’ll do my best, but don’t expect me to be able to get you an unlimited number of them. It’s hard to get Rank 3 herbs around here. It’ll be much better after we get to Eight Flower. Rank 3 herbs are somewhat precious everywhere, and other alchemists need to have enough of a supply, too.”

“I can pay a higher markup if needed. Once I turn them into Perfect pills, the profit margin is massive, so paying a bit more for the raw ingredients isn’t a problem.”

“That’s… not a good idea…”

“Why not? Isn’t that how you usually handle things?”

WuJing tapped his desk as he tried to think of how to explain things. “Look at it this way. How much do you care about the profits from a Rank 1 pill? If I said you could double your profits from a Rank 1 healing pill, how excited would you be?”

“Not at all.”

WuJing gave me a look that said ‘exactly.’ “How much do you think a Martial Emperor cares about the profits from your Rank 3 pills?”

“Not at all?”

WuJing nodded. “Now, the Blue Wind Pavilion is a Sovereign-level force. How much do you think our Martial Sovereign cares about all of the Rank 3 pills that you could possibly produce?”

I began to respond, but WuJing cut me off. “He doesn’t. The Pavilion… It isn’t a normal business. Its goal isn’t to make money, not really. It's an organization that was set up for cultivators, by cultivators. The higher-ups want the Pavilion’s alchemists, all of the Pavilion’s alchemists, to improve their skills. That is how they make something far more valuable than a few coins.”

I nodded in understanding. “Karmic energy.”

“Yes. The organizational structure of the Pavilion is different from sects and empires, but its goal is the same. It wants to help its members improve to generate karmic energy for the people at the top. It does this by encouraging alchemists and helping them improve their skills in a profitable way. The Blue Wind Sovereign doesn’t want a single exceptional Rank 3 alchemist who can handle all the pills that are needed. He wants as many Rank 6 alchemists as possible.”

WuJing sighed. “If you start outbidding everyone on common herbs and driving prices up, you will hurt the Pavilion in the long run. Maybe not the Pavilion as a whole, but if you wanted to, you could put all our other alchemists in the Wastes out of business. This might gain us a bit more gold, but you wouldn’t gain anything of substance from the exercise, and you would have cut off the futures of other promising young alchemists.”

“We can import more from other places, though, right? I can’t possibly use enough to affect the continent’s supply of Rank 3 herbs.”

WuJing snorted. “No, we can’t. Importing anything into the Wastes is… difficult. Because of the restrictions on the place, the best horses we can use when making deliveries are only Rank 3, slowing things down. Aside from that, the people in charge of our supply lines don’t want skilled alchemists to hang around here too long, so they restrict the flow of resources into the place as a prod to get you to leave.”

I lowered my head. “I get it. I just don’t want to stall out here for too long.”

“I’ll get you all the low-quality herbs that I can, even ones that might normally get thrown out. Those should be more plentiful, and you’re the only one who can produce anything of value from them. They may still be more limited than you hope, though, since these herbs are widely used for practice.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

WuJing gave me a consoling smile. “Don’t worry about rushing things too much. Everything will happen in due time. For now, look at keeping one out of every three of the pills you make for yourself and Mei. That should give you enough to steadily advance while still building up your contribution. Other than that, I will try to get you assigned more urgent and special requests.”

I let out a dejected breath. “Alright.”

If procuring Rank 3 herbs was already a problem, what would happen in the future? Moving to a more prosperous area might help, but as I grew in strength, this problem would return. How common were Rank 4 herbs? Rank 5? Rank 6? When did herbs become ‘impossible’ to procure?

This only served to make me more determined to expand my storage space. If it was large enough, I would be able to grow all the herbs I needed. I just needed to get that spatial fire seed first.

WuJing cleared his throat to break me out of my thoughts. “Look, I’ll tell Cai to get you sent down south as soon as she can. Even if I can’t go with you, I’ll make sure you’re out of here and can continue advancing by the time you reach Peak Grandmaster.”

“Thank you, WuJing.”

He smiled. “No need to thank me. I’m still your sponsor, and I still get to take credit for you, even if I’m not with you. If that happens, just make sure to take Mei along so that she can keep you out of trouble.”

Rushing as a Disciple affected the natural flow of qi through a person’s body. If acupoints weren’t set up correctly, there could be serious deviations in both a person’s qi and mental state. Even if they were set up correctly, even if they were nearly perfect, rushing through the Disciple realm could still make a person dangerously imbalanced if they weren’t used to the new impulses caused by their cultivation technique.

Rushing through the Master realm was even more dangerous. Typically, cultivators used the flow of qi in their bodies to sense where to place meridians, and if they didn’t allow their bodies to adjust properly, they could end up placing them in the wrong positions, causing permanent damage to their cultivation base.

What about Grandmaster? How could rushing have a negative effect on a Grandmaster, and how could such an effect be alleviated? I didn’t know, and it seemed like WuJing didn’t either, but I wanted to see if I could find out. If there were no dangers, that would be great, but if there were, it would be good to find out now so I could begin looking for solutions.

I set my mind to fully focus on cultivating. I would perform my alchemy duties as necessary, but my focus would remain on my progression.

My body contained three dantians, but as a Grandmaster, only two of them were relevant. The top one needed to be filled with wood qi, and the bottom one needed to be filled with fire qi. In a sense, this meant I needed to do twice the work, but because of how my technique worked, filling was far faster than normal.

As a Disciple, I had opened dozens of acupoints across my body. Now, I pulled in qi through all of these acupoints at once and sent it directly to my dantians. Since each of these dantians was slightly smaller than normal, it wasn’t long before they were completely full.

At that point, I forced even more qi inside. The walls and seams of both dantians strained, but they held without giving. It wasn’t until I felt that my upper dantian might bust that I finally slammed my will down on both balls of qi simultaneously and began compressing them.

My fire affinity was slightly higher, so the energy in my bottom dantian began compressing faster. Immediately, I eased up the pressure there so that they would both complete at the same time.

When my qi compressed to one-tenth of its original size, it stabilized into its new density. I was a Martial Grandmaster 2.

I examined the walls of my dantians, but they didn’t seem to have suffered any damage. This made me wonder–was the compression phase truly necessary? Could I just keep gathering qi until it compressed naturally?

If I tried that now, my dantian would inevitably burst from the pressure, but if I were able to make one that was strong enough, could its walls act as the sole compression force? This might be something to think about in the future.

Once I was assured of the integrity of my dantian, I rushed to cultivate and advance once more.

I directly swallowed a Qi Gathering Pill, and as soon as its effect wore off, I took another. In a matter of only days, my dantian was full to bursting again, and I performed the second compression.

Then I did it a third time, and a fourth, and a fifth. I didn’t stop until I reached Grandmaster 6. At each step, I only checked to ensure the integrity of my dantian.

In less than a year, I had raced from Martial Grandmaster 1 to 6. It was time to see what problems I had created for myself and if they were fixable in this life.

My dantians were holding together. Unlike last time, when I had to constantly patch and repair them with each advancement, I hadn’t needed to do any repairs, but it seemed like the constant stresses on them was causing a bit of wear and tear to accumulate. This might simply be a result of rushing, but I wasn’t sure. I felt that finding a better dantian structure would be the best solution to this problem.

The flow of energy in my body had intensified, so I could guess that my cultivation technique was having a much stronger mental effect on me, but I wasn’t worried about that. I knew what I was getting into there, and I had carefully chosen which effects it would have.

Those two problems were noteworthy, but they weren’t dealbreakers. I could find solutions to the first, and I could live with the second. However, after closely examining my body, I finally found the true pitfall of rushing during the Grandmaster realm.

Each time my qi was compressed in my core, it would then have to cycle throughout my body to replace and clean out the older, less refined qi. This process took time, and because I had rushed through so many stages, it hadn’t happened.

Pockets of qi at various levels of refinement had become lodged in my meridians. This may not have been a problem for most cultivators, since their meridians were simple tubes, but as a Martial Master, I had created a series of countless branching pathways of ever smaller sizes. Now, many of these small capillary meridians were completely blocked up with unrefined qi. I wasn’t sure how badly it would hurt my effectiveness, but I needed to find a solution.

Reviewing all the pills I knew, I couldn’t think of any that were designed for a situation like this, but two had somewhat relevant properties. The Qi Expulsion Pill was a type of healing pill used to remove foreign qi from wounds. The Qi Purifying Pill was used to cleanse qi of impurities caused by a chaotic mix of qi types.

What I needed was something that would expel the old qi from my meridians. However, since my meridians were made of strands of qi, it couldn’t be something that would purge all qi from my body. I also needed to be careful about completely purging all of the compressed qi from my body, because that could end up with me needing to restart from Grandmaster 1. While I didn’t know of any pills that could do what I needed, knowledge of this potential problem gave me an avenue for future research.

Now, knowing the issues that rushing would cause, I slowed down and advanced only once a year for the next four years. This brought me back to the Peak of the Grandmaster realm.

This time, I hadn’t needed the help of affinity-boosting pills. My affinities were already high enough, and my dantians were strong enough, so I was able to reach it naturally.

During this time, I had been able to reopen a few of my clogged meridians, but I was still far below my optimal condition. I didn’t regret my decision to rush, though, even without a pill to save me. I now knew what to look for when deciding if I was stable enough to advance in future lives, and that was worth a bit of trouble in this life.

That said, I did my best to ensure that Mei didn’t advance until her meridians were ready for it, so she kept up a pace of one advancement every year. By the time I reached Peak Grandmaster, she had already reached Grandmaster 6.

At this point, I no longer needed to spend much time cultivating. The only reason to cultivate was to restore whatever qi I expended. So, I shifted my focus to developing a Qi Purging Pill that would let me safely ascend through the Grandmaster realm as quickly as possible. This was slow going, and several times, I nearly risked the complete destruction of my cultivation base when I tested by concoction, but I had been careful enough to have contingencies in place to stabilize my realm before any real damage was done.

Self-experimentation was something that no sane cultivator would consider, but I found it to be the best and most morally acceptable way to learn what I needed to know. While these experiments had further damaged my cultivation base, they had also provided me with important knowledge.

Still, I couldn’t help but consider performing a quick suicide to both lock in my credit gains and shore up my foundation. This seemed like it might be a smart move, since it would grant me enough credits to make full use of the discount. Eventually, though, I decided against it.

My reset point was too far in the past, and I didn’t want to repeat everything I had done over the past several years for no reason. It would be better to let things play out and see what the future might hold.

In any case, this world had proven that death was inevitable. There was no need for me to seek it out.