When Emperor Chan opened the door of his workshop and saw me waiting there, barely a couple of hours after he’d left me to practice Ascension Pills, his face scrunched up in confusion. “Is something wrong?”

When I handed him a pill bottle and he examined its contents, this look of confusion turned into one of utter bafflement.

“This should be good enough, right?” I asked. “Can you show me how they work now?”

Chan didn’t invite me inside or ask me to take a seat. He just stared blankly at my pill.

After leaving me alone in his workshop for several hours, Chan returned with an unknown middle-aged man in tow. Based on the combination of this man’s apparent age and his Peak Grandmaster cultivation base, I guessed that he was somewhere between 150 and 180 years old.

“This is Chan Ping. He’s been preparing for his ascension to Marial Lord for several years now and has agreed to let you observe his breakthrough.”

“Thank you, Grandmaster Ping.” I cupped my fists and bowed my head in gratitude. Then, I looked at Emperor Chan. “Grandmaster Ping’s cultivation base should have calcified long ago. Is this going to be an issue?”

“No. It would have been with my two-patterned pill—it would have been even with a four-patterned pill—but a five-patterned pill should have enough energy to break the hold that calcification has on his cultivation base.” Emperor Chan looked at Grandmaster Ping. “This might be painful, but you will need to endure.”

Grandmaster Ping lowered his head. “I understand, Elder.”

Emperor Chan guided us to his cultivation chamber, which was equipped with one of the Palace’s rare Rank 6 Qi Gathering Formations. After adjusting this formation to have the same effect as a standard Rank 5 formation, Emperor Chan gestured for Grandmaster Ping to sit, then handed me a thin black book.

“This details how to craft a core that’s suitable for use with an Ascension Pill.”

I eagerly opened this book and scanned its contents.

The moment I understood what I was reading, my eyes widened in shock. When I looked up and saw that Grandmaster Ping had already started following the book’s instructions, I wanted to rush forward and stop him, but I held myself back. I had to trust that Emperor Chan knew what he was doing.

“That book details how to use an Ascension Pill,” explained Chan, “but it can’t be considered a technique manual, since the core that Ping is crafting can’t be used when cultivating normally. Its only purpose is to help direct the energies of an Ascension Pill.”

Grandmaster Ping sat on the floor of Emperor Chan’s cultivation chamber, eating the largest haunch of Rank 2 demon beast meat that I had ever seen. Since this meat had been cooked, a lot of its demonic energy had been lost, but what remained was more than enough to accomplish Ping’s goal.

As Ping ate, wu poured out of the meat, and the Grandmaster used a soul technique to guide it through the acupoints near his stomach and into his energy body. From there, he carefully moved the wu into his dantian, where he formed it into the shape that resembled a karmic core. ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ NoveI(F)ire.net

While this core was a bit unusual, it was functionally identical to the one that I had created back on the Nine Rivers Continent, back when I was researching ways to advance to Martial Lord without karmic energy. At that time, I found that a core of pure wu–like the one that Ping had just created–was little better than a pile of wet sand. It looked good, but it wasn’t capable of containing any meaningful amounts of qi.

Nervously, I looked over at Emperor Chan and saw that he was smiling contentedly at Ping’s efforts. Chan, at least, didn’t see any problems with what Ping was creating.

Once Ping’s core was complete, Chan handed him the jade bottle that contained my Ascension Pill. Then, after taking a moment to calm his nerves, Ping swallowed the pill as he began pulling in as much energy as he could from the surrounding formation.

“Unfortunately,” said Chan, looking down at the man in front of him, “these false demonic cores aren’t capable of storing the energy that’s needed for a breakthrough. Ascension Pills help us get around this issue, but their effects are only temporary. So, since Ping can’t store the energy he needs ahead of time, he has to use this formation to flood his dantian with qi during the breakthrough.”

The Ascension Pill’s medicinal energy migrated to his dantian and infiltrated his newly created core. There, it formed a powerful vortex that sucked in every drop of qi in Ping’s dantian, forcing him to cultivate even more frantically.

Grandmaster Ping did his best, but his rate of cultivation couldn’t satiate the voracious appetite of the Ascension Pill.

Desperate for more energy, the taotie-like vortex began ripping qi directly from the surrounding environment, pulling it into Ping’s energy body and through the walls of his dantian. At first, the woven structure of Ping’s dantian let this energy in without much of an issue, but as the rate at which the vortex pulled in qi increased, pinhole tears began to form, and as the rate increased further, these tears began to expand.

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Luckily for Ping, while this rampant flow of qi shredded his dantian, it ended before his foundations crumbled entirely.

Without any warning, the pill’s medicinal energy suddenly switched from pulling in energy to concentrating what it already had, and a second later, a small hole formed at the very center of Ping’s core.

By this point, the pain of Ping’s damaged energy body had caused his face to contort into a rictus of agony, but he didn’t let this stop him. The moment this hole formed, he created a braid of qi and sent it to attack the chains of the world that bound him.

As this braid entered Ping’s core, the hoof wu that I had infused into the Ascension Pill melded into it. Then, the combined braid of qi and wu pierced the hole and vanished into parts unknown.

Shortly after the braid disappeared, the hole in the world sealed itself back up, and Ping collapsed in a heap. He was exhausted and in pain, but he had been able to advance to Martial Lord 1.

Emperor Chan stepped forward and patted him on the shoulder. “Good job. Do that nine more times, and you’ll be ready to ascend to King.”

Once we were alone, Chan spoke more candidly. “With Ping already so deep into calcification, it’ll be difficult for him to repair his dantian quickly enough to continue advancing. He might be able to squeeze out a few more minor ascensions, but it’s doubtful that he’ll be able to make it past Lord 4 or 5. Still, your pill gave him 100 more years of life, and it gave him hope. Thank you.”

I lowered my head in acceptance, but my thoughts remained focused on a question that had been bothering me ever since Ping first started his breakthrough. “Ping is a true Lord now, right? No different than any other Lord?”

Chan nodded.

“Then… If he uses Ascension Pills to break through all the way to Peak Emperor—assuming he can—what would stop him from ascending to Sovereign? I’ve never heard you mention a Rank 7 Ascension Pill before, but it should be possible to create such a thing, shouldn’t it? Why isn’t it?”

The System had told me that there was no way to ascend to Martial Sovereign without using karmic energy. It had gone so far as to say that it was impossible for a cultivator like Ping—someone who hadn’t constructed his core from karmic energy—to ascend to Martial Sovereign. Why?

“No. Even if he’s lucky beyond all measure, Peak Emperor is now Ping’s limit.” Chan sighed as he looked at me. “What do you know about the ascension to Martial Sovereign?”

“Most of it…” I said, carefully. “One must concentrate energy in their core until it erupts, destroying their energy body. Then, this energy reforms, marking the ascension to Sovereign.”

Chan nodded. “And what allows one’s energy body to reform? It’s the karmic energy in their cultivation base. If you try to advance to Martial Sovereign without having ascended with karmic energy, your energy body will dissipate, and you’ll be crippled for the rest of your life. You may be able to get away with using Ascension Pills during a couple of minor advancements, but even that’s a risk—one that’s not worth taking.”

“I see…”

From what I had been able to gather, the Earthly Dao was desperate for me to find a way to let the people of this world ascend to Sovereign and beyond without the use of karmic energy, but with karmic energy being such a vital part of the process, what was it expecting me to do? Would I need to develop an entirely new cultivation system? In a way, I was already doing that with body cultivation, but I had a suspicion that the Earthly Dao wasn’t too satisfied with these techniques, since they still relied on karmic energy.

I was still too far away to even understand the shape of the race I was in, let alone see its finish line. I could only keep moving forward one step at a time.

“What now?” I asked Chan. “I can work on making a six-patterned Ascension Pill, but that’s it. I can’t push the ingredients you gave me any further.”

Chan let out a slight hiss before regaining his composure. Then, he handed me another thin manual. “This has all the known recipes for Ascension Pills. It has everything from the basic three-patterned Rank 4 pill to a recipe for a nine-patterned Rank 6 pill.”

I blinked, and Chan let out a weary chuckle at my surprise.

“The Scholar’s Tower has made these recipes available to any alchemists who ask for them, and they are commonly used as a way for alchemists to compete against each other.”

With the amount of gatekeeping in this world, it seemed strange that such an important recipe would be so freely available, but, in a way, it made sense. If only one faction possessed these pills, then everyone else would likely gang up and attack them. And, considering the Earthly Dao’s willingness to stoke conflict, that likelihood of this happening turned into an absolute certainty.

“You can work on learning to concoct nine-patterned Ascension Pills if you want, but don’t waste too much time on this. Almost no one who’s talented enough to control the power of nine-patterned Ascension Pills would consider using them—they all use karmic energy, instead. Considering the scarcity of these pills, they still sell for sky-high prices, but the demand for them is limited.”

I bobbed my head in thought. Concocting nine-patterned Rank 4 pills wouldn’t be a problem, but Rank 6?

With the ‘complete’ recipes that I had devised, I was able to make a nine-patterned pill with an affinity only one stage higher than a pill’s herbs. So, I could make a nine-patterned Rank 4 pill with a five-star affinity, and I expected to be able to make a nine-patterned Rank 6 pill with a three-star affinity.

These ‘standard’ recipes were different. They were good enough to make nine-patterned pills, but they weren’t complete. Small burrs in the medicinal energy’s structure made the energy from a pill’s patterns more difficult to control. So, to concoct a nine-patterned Rank 4 Ascension Pill, I expected to need a four-star affinity, and to concoct a nine-patterned Rank 6 Ascension Pill, I would need a two-star affinity.

This… wasn’t possible. I didn’t have anywhere near enough credits to make it happen. This should mean that Jon wouldn’t be able to make such a powerful pill, either, but I couldn’t be sure about this.

Before my next encounter with Jon, I needed to be able to make the best pills possible.

I didn’t have an easy way to raise my affinities, but I might be able to reconstruct the Rank 6 Ascension Pill recipe to make it easier to use. However, there might be an even better solution available to me.

Back in the Nine Rivers Sect, the Master of the Lightning Peak had been nice enough to supply me with a rather large sheet of some unknown Rank 8 metal. Since then, this metal sheet had been doing little more than gathering dust in my inner world. Maybe it was time to put it to use.

I reached into my inner world, pulled out the metal sheet, and placed it down in front of Emperor Chan. “You were able to find someone to make me a Rank 7 crescent moon spade. Do you think you can find an Artifact Spirit to turn this into a pill furnace?