CHAPTER 53: ALCHEMIST’S DREAM

Scents of crushed herbs and burning incense filled the eastern wing of the estate, moving through the hallways like phantom breeze.

The room was warmer than the others, unnaturally so, and lit with a strange orange glow that beat against the walls like firelight through amber.

Lan stepped inside.

The side chamber had once been a study, long since abandoned. Now, it had become something far more. Copper cauldrons bubbled quietly over rune-inscribed braziers.

Shelves were crowded with jars of crushed bark, dried roots, and crystalized animal glands. Scrolls and diagrams covered one wall—half-inked symbols written in both the elegant script of old Solaris and the jagged glyphs of alchemical theory.

Two small furnaces at the back spat low flames, each emitting a different hue. The air was dense with Qi, not the kind that surged in battle, but something subtler—focused, cultivated, breathing.

Seraphine stood at the center, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, her hair pulled back, golden strands streaked with soot. Her hands worked with the precision of a surgeon and the reverence of a monk.

Lan leaned against the doorway, watching her for a while before speaking.

"You look like you’ve been here for days."

She didn’t turn. "Three nights. I sleep for a couple hours when my legs give out."

Lan chuckled softly. "You’ll collapse before long."

"Not if I perfect this first," she said, finally glancing back. Her eyes gleamed with fervor, the same light he’d seen during battle—only now, it was alchemical fire instead of adrenaline.

She set down the mortar and wiped her hands on a soot-blackened cloth, then gestured for him to come closer.

Lan approached the central table. On it were two neat rows of pills—some glittering faintly with embedded essence, others matte like stone. A few still steamed faintly from the furnace.

"Do you see it, Lan?" she asked, voice hushed with wonder. "The potential of it all?"

He glanced at the pills. "I see a few strange-colored stones."

This was a lie, but he wanted her to feel like the expert.

Seraphine laughed, a short, breathless sound. "That’s because you’re a fighter. You see battle. You see movement. But this..." She picked up a golden pill, still warm between her fingers. "This is life-changing."

Lan’s eyes narrowed slightly, curious.

She began pacing, her voice rising with thought. "Mages control. They shape mana by force, by rigid instruction. But alchemy? It listens. Alchemy persuades. It’s less commanding, it’s more uncovering? If that makes sense. It reveals what a material always wanted to be."

She turned to him. "Traditional potion-making? It’s brute work. Grind this, boil that, push mana into it until it stops resisting. But cultivation-based alchemy... Lan, it’s divine. The Script had done more than teach how to make pills. It shown how to speak to materials, how to understand them. How to resonate with their spirit."

Lan nodded slowly, absorbing her words. If he wasn’t the knowledgeable cultivator he was who had seen many with this much excitement for the path of alchemy in his last life, he’d think she had gone insane.

"You sound more like a philosopher than an alchemist," he said.

"Maybe that’s what alchemy is meant to be," she replied. "A philosophy of sorts. A dance of patience and transformation."

She moved back to the furnace and retrieved a vial of deep blue liquid, placing it next to the pills.

"I’ve barely scratched the surface of the script. There are techniques I can’t even begin to translate, symbols that seem to rearrange themselves depending on how much i understand the prior. It’s alive, in its own way."

"And you’re not afraid?" Lan asked, watching her closely.

"Afraid?" She tilted her head. "Lanard... for years, I’ve worked in a world ruled by limitations. A healer in a city of wounded egos. A mage constrained by formulas written centuries ago. But this... what you’ve brought me..."

She held up a pale jade pill that pulsed faintly in the low light.

"This is freedom."

Lan stepped closer, intrigued.

"What is that?" he asked.

Seraphine placed the jade pill on a velvet cloth. "A prototype. I call it a Qi Awakening Pill. It’s meant to stimulate the latent spiritual veins in ordinary men, to make them feel Qi for the first time."

Lan’s eyes sharpened. "You’re saying you can turn non-cultivators... into cultivators?"

"Possibly," she said. "It’s not stable yet. Half the batch turned to dust during formation, and one pill exploded when I tried infusing it with a fire essence. But this one..." She tapped it. "This one is still whole."

Lan picked up the pill carefully, feeling a subtle vibration in his palm.

"This could change everything."

Seraphine nodded. "That’s what I’m trying to say. You want to build a Sect in a world that doesn’t know cultivation. You want soldiers, followers, builders who can survive any mage and walk the same path you do."

She looked up at him, eyes fierce. "Well, then they’ll need a bridge. And alchemy is that bridge."

Lan said nothing for a moment. He simply stared at the pill, the world shifting around it in his mind.

The implications were endless. The broken, the untalented, the mana-less—given the ability to cultivate, to rise, to fight.

All under his name and command.

"I’ll need more," he said finally. "Dozens. Hundreds. Can you do it?"

"Not yet," she admitted. "I need better materials. What I have is second-rate. Most of it’s from old stockpiles and what the Vipers could scavenge."

Lan thought of the mine. Of the strange pull he’d felt when he stood in its depths.

"I may have an answer to that."

Seraphine arched a brow.

"There’s something deep beneath the southern mines," he said. "Venom said they were barren, but I felt something else. If we can access those depths and refine what we find..."

She smiled. "Then I’ll build you miracles."

Lan looked around the chamber one last time—at the clutter, the smoke, the quiet pills laid out like weapons.

"You already have," he said softly. "We’ll get to work on the mines tommorow."