An Alchemist's Path to Eternity

Space swayed around Luo Chen, twisting his vision until he could no longer tell whether the world itself was shifting or whether the distortion had affected his senses. When everything finally steadied, the stone house had vanished, and he found himself in an entirely different place.

Before examining his surroundings, he immediately sent his divine consciousness into his storage ring. Those precious bamboo scrolls could not be taken away, but what about the Spirit Root Pills and other pills he had personally refined, of which he still had extras?

A moment later, he let out a sigh of relief. ”Good, they’re all still here.”

The pills were only first and second-tier, but the herbs required to refine them were exceptionally rare in the Mountains and Seas Realm. Some were plants he had never even heard of until he studied the bamboo scrolls. Once he left the Land of Fallen Devils, reproducing those pills would be extremely difficult unless he spent a great deal of time altering their formulas and searching for suitable replacements.

The thought made his relief fade into regret. ”If these pills could be spread throughout the Mountains and Seas Realm, I might be able to change the entire structure of this world!”

The Mountains and Seas Realm was ruled by cultivators, but cultivators made up only a tiny fraction of its population. The overwhelming majority were mortals. In the Eastern Wilderness, these mortals were raised by major sects as logistical support, gathering basic materials and providing potential cultivation seedlings. The Northern Sea made even greater use of mortals, though they were still little more than expendable labor for the various forces. But if these ordinary people could cultivate using Spirit Root Pills, even if they only reached the early or middle stages of Qi Refinement, it would still bring earth-shattering changes to the cultivation world. At that point, everyone could cultivate, and everyone could have the chance to rise. Such a future...

”I’m probably overthinking it. Even if something like that were possible, there wouldn’t be enough resources to support all of them.”

With a quiet sigh, he finally turned his attention to the place before him. ”So this is the second trial?”

He walked forward slowly, studying the countless exotic flowers and herbs carpeting the ground. Just like the first trial ground, this place was filled with plants. The difference was that the spirit energy contained within them was far richer. From what he could see, most of the herbs appeared to be more than 500 years old. Although none had reached a thousand years, the best among them were 7-800 years old. With ingredients of this quality, it would naturally be possible to refine higher tier pills.

Luo Chen was not surprised. Since this was the second trial, it was only natural that it would be more difficult than the first. As he examined the spirit herbs around him, he also extended his divine consciousness through the area in search of the other person.

Yet even after discovering a stone house nearly identical to the one from the first trial, he found no trace of anyone else.

Faced with this result, Luo Chen was unsure whether to feel relieved or worried. The absence of a competitor meant he had avoided a possible battle, but it also suggested that the other person had already advanced ahead of him. They might have cleared the first trial long ago and perhaps even passed the second.

By his estimates, he had spent roughly four years within the Land of Fallen Devils. He had used two years to cross the Heaven of Oblivion and the Heaven of the Five Elements, then another two refining pills in the Heaven of Bright Illumination. Yet the Land of Fallen Devils had been open for five years. He had delayed for a year before entering the pocket world. That meant the person ahead of him had spent at least two years, and perhaps as long as four or five years, within the inheritance grounds.

More importantly, to clear two trials within such a short period of time demonstrated extraordinary skill in alchemy. Luo Chen could not ignore the possibility that the person might complete every trial before him and obtain Heaven Refiner’s alchemy inheritance. The thought left him with a growing sense of urgency.

”Enough. I’d better see what the next test is first.”

Buzzzzzz...

The crimson-robed Daoist pushed open the stone doors. A pebbled path appeared before him, along with the three familiar rooms: the alchemy room, the study, and the medicine room. The identical layout suggested that the subsequent trials would largely follow the same format. The only difference would be the test itself.

***

Humans are the spirit of all living things, while demons are the true embodiment of heaven and earth. Yet the two follow different paths. In humanity’s case, the short lifespan created a need for keen intelligence, whereas demons, tempered by long years, are often slow and dull. At the same realm, demons are generally no match for humans. Is this difference merely a matter of external tools, or does it arise from the fundamental divide between their paths of cultivation? As an alchemist, how would you refine a pill capable of bridging the gap between humans and demons?

Standing before the similar redwood desk, Luo Chen held the jade scroll and slowly took in the question. Yet after finishing it, his face was filled with confusion, just as when he had first read the question in the first trial.

In his perspective, the difference between humans and demons largely came down to external tools. Qi Refinement cultivators could usually win against first-tier demonic beasts, Initiates against second-tier demonic beasts, and Adepts against Demon Kings because they possessed all sorts of external treasures. Demons might have stronger bodies and greater innate power, but humans could compensate through the tools they refined and wielded. How was he supposed to create a pill that erased that disparity? Would it not be simpler to teach low-tier demons how to use external tools properly?

Although he could not understand the intended answer, Luo Chen began to notice a pattern in the trials. The first had required him to bridge the gap between immortal cultivators and mortals, so its focus had been humanity. This second trial concerned the divide between humans and demons, which meant its focus was clearly demonkind. According to the Flesh Ganoderma, assuming it had not deceived him, Heaven Refiner was an exceptionally unusual existence. They were neither human, demon, nor devil, yet all three at once, for they possessed the bloodlines of all three.

In other words, if the first two trials focused on humans and demons, then there would be a third trial that would most likely concern devils. That was where Luo Chen was bound to face a problem. He understood humans and demons well enough, but he knew little about devils.

”I’m thinking too far ahead. I should focus on the present.”

Luo Chen set the jade scroll down, but after a moment, he picked it up again. If he wanted to refine a pill capable of narrowing the gap between humans and demons, he first needed to understand where that gap truly came from. Only then could he identify the right remedy and refine a suitable pill.

***

Several days passed before Luo Chen finally began to see the outline of an answer.

The real difference between humans and demons did not truly lie in their bodies or raw physical strength but in intelligence and divine soul. Humans were born with short lifespans. Their desire for immortality drove them to pursue the Great Dao, study its principles, and develop every possible means of strengthening themselves. Their mastery of external tools was ultimately an extension of that intelligence.

Demons, however, were different. Most demonic beasts possessed long lifespans from birth, so they lacked the same urgency to cultivate. As a result, their cultivation path focused not on the divine soul from the very beginning, but on accumulating raw power. It was this difference at the starting point that caused the cultivation paths of humans and demons to diverge further over time.

Although human cultivators cultivated qi, the divine soul became increasingly important as their cultivation rose. At the higher realms, neither the physical body nor mana mattered as much as the divine soul. Han Zhan was the clearest example—even after losing his body, he had continued to exist through the strength of his divine soul. Demons, meanwhile, relied on their powerful physiques to store immense amounts of spirit energy. Some could even condense demon cores as early as the second tier, long before human cultivators formed Golden Cores. If raw physical strength itself could be considered a tool, then demons had been relying on external power from the very start.

”I guess my first take was wrong. Demons are born with powerful bodies, so from the very beginning, they rely too heavily on their innate strength and neglect the cultivation of their divine souls. Once they fall behind in that regard, the gap only grows wider. No matter how great one’s physique is, they still need a divine soul to control it. Without that control, they cannot wield their strength properly, nor can they use treasures and techniques to bring out their full potential. That is why demons often lose to humans of the same tier. If this problem is to be solved, then the answer is simply to strengthen the divine soul.”

After sorting through his thoughts, Luo Chen gradually found the thread hidden within the tangled mess. His ability to see it so quickly came from his years of experience with Black King and Heavenjade. In particular, he had studied Heavenjade in detail and even tailored cultivation techniques to suit her. Among human cultivators, few understood demons as well as he did.

Now that he had identified the problem, solving it seemed simple. As it happened, he knew how to refine pills that strengthened the divine soul, and he even had one on hand. Just then, spirit light flashed in his palm, and a supreme-grade second-tier Spirit Passage Pill appeared.

Luo Chen watched his surroundings closely, but nothing changed.

”Hm? Does the trial only evaluate pills refined inside the alchemy room?”

With that thought, he went to the alchemy room and took out the Spirit Passage Pill again. Yet there was still no response. The faint and weak voice from before did not appear.

”What does this mean?” Luo Chen’s expression darkened.

Could an answer that already existed truly be disqualified? The Spirit Passage Pill was not exclusive to human cultivators. He had tested it on Heavenjade before, and it had worked.

Luo Chen walked back to the study, slightly annoyed. He swept across the bookshelves before finally settling once more on the jade scroll atop the desk. Then, he sent his divine consciousness into it, and the question echoed in his ears again.

”Or is it that I’ve misunderstood the question?”

***

Unable to find an answer, Luo Chen spent another day deep in thought before deciding to start from the beginning. What did that involve? Naturally, it involved reading the bamboo scrolls on the shelves in the study.

There were far fewer scrolls here compared to the first trial. Instead of ten thousand, there were only a little over a thousand, and their contents were far more varied. They no longer recorded only information about herbs. To Luo Chen’s delight, there were also several records of unique alchemical arts.

These arts were similar to Unadorned Heart and Jade Fracture. What most people thought of as alchemical arts were the techniques or hand seals used during pill refinement, but those were just one aspect. These arts specifically concerned the handling and processing of materials, with each art suited to a particular type of material. For example, Unadorned Heart was meant to be used for processing wood-attribute herbs, especially those that could not touch the ground or be contaminated by dust. Jade Fracture and Star Plucking, on the other hand, were used for earth-attribute herbs and mineral ingredients, particularly for minerals related to jade.

Luo Chen had learned many basic alchemical arts in his younger days, but as his cultivation and alchemy skills advanced, he encountered fewer new ones. The last he had acquired was the Burning Crane Hand, which Mu Yunyan of the Falling Cloud Sect had taught him during an exchange. The alchemical arts recorded in these bamboo scrolls still left him pleasantly surprised.

The first was the Qi Control Art, which was made specifically for handling spirit-energy ingredients. These comprised a very limited but very useful class of ingredients. Certain pills required an amount of energy that could not possibly be provided by the ingredients themselves; others required a great amount of a specific elemental energy but not any other element. Yet the spirit energy of heaven and earth was usually mixed, and places of pure single-attribute energy, such as the Heaven of the Five Elements, were exceedingly rare.

Supreme-grade spirit stones were certainly a solution to this problem, as they contained a vast amount of single-attribute spirit energy. Yet no alchemist would willingly waste such treasures on refining pills. Thus, the usual solution was to draw spirit energy from the surroundings and use formations to filter out unwanted attributes before guiding the desired energy into the pill.

Yet in that case, the separation could never be perfect. It was much like cultivation: Even cultivators possessing a single heavenly spirit root would passively absorb traces of other elemental spirit energies while cultivating. Those traces allowed them to use spells of different attributes, but they also slowed their growth.

The Qi Control Art was the solution to that problem from an alchemist’s perspective. It was an art meant to separate the different types of spirit energy from a certain ingredient, draw the specific attributes needed for a pill, and guide it into the refinement process. If Luo Chen mastered it, his alchemy would undergo a qualitative leap. It might even prove useful in his own cultivation.

Beyond the Qi Control Art, there were also two others, the Light Capture Art and the Formless Hand, both of which seemed even more profound. According to the scrolls, the Light Capture Art could capture different forms of light and use them as medicinal ingredients. The Formless Hand was stranger still; according to the description, it could command the intangible and refine things without physical form into medicine. But what exactly counted as something intangible?

The scrolls listed several examples: the seven emotions, the six desires, resentment, hatred, longing, separation, and more. The idea that such things could be refined into pills fascinated Luo Chen and broadened his understanding of alchemy. However, arts of this level required extraordinary attainments in alchemy as well as other aspects, and he could not hope to master them in a short time. He could only commit their principles firmly to memory.

It was through this process of extensive reading that he gradually gained a new understanding of Heaven Refiner’s question.

After sitting silently at the desk for a long time, he finally picked up his brush and began writing down the names of some herbs.

I had it wrong. I thought demons only needed stronger divine souls to make up the difference between them and humans. But that does not make sense. They live much longer than humans do. By the time they reach the same tier, their divine souls should already have foundations no weaker than a human cultivator’s. So why do they still fall short? It is not because their souls are weak, but because they are muddied. Demons spend all that time growing stronger, but they do not refine their divine souls the way human cultivators do. Their divine souls have power but not enough clarity to control it properly. Making them stronger would only make the problem worse. What they need is to be purified.

Hmm... Soul-Cleansing Grass can clear the mind and cleanse the divine soul. If I make it the main ingredient, then Scarlet Dawn Flower and Rotting Ghost Vine should be enough to support it. That should be able to produce the kind of pill I need...

Actually, it may even be useful to me. Still, cleansing the divine soul is only half the problem. Demonic cultivation has always been crude, and their demonic power is just as impure. I guess that’s why demons have such strong foundations but cannot use all of that strength properly. Maybe I can take the Spirit Refinement Pill as a foundation. I only need to alter the formula to purify demonic power instead.

***

”Power-Cleansing Pill and Soul-Cleansing Pill. These two pills are my answer to this trial!”

A year later, Luo Chen stood in the alchemy room with a black pill in one hand and a white pill in the other. At last, the faint and weakened voice sounded again. ”Two third-tier low-grade pills detected. One is capable of purifying a demon cultivator’s demonic power. The other is capable of clearing the mind and cleansing the divine soul. Trial evaluation: Excellent. Result: Passed.”

A faint smile appeared on Luo Chen’s face. He clenched the two pills tightly in his fist. The scenery before him began to twist and collapse. Amid shifting reality and illusion, he gradually appeared atop a mountain peak.

At the foot of the mountain, an old-looking woman carrying a medicine basket was diligently harvesting spirit fruits. She sensed his arrival at the same moment he noticed her. Their gazes met across the mountain.

Luo Chen cupped his fist toward her. ”Greetings, fellow Daoist. I am Devil Lord Azure Yang.”

The woman slowly straightened up and returned the gesture. ”Greetings. I am the Seagon Matriarch.”[1]

1. We initially rendered this term as Sky Matron Sea Cape due to a very ambiguous term and a lack of details on part of the author. We have since found some details, so we decided on the made-up word Seagon to render the term 海角 (hǎijiǎo, meaning ”cape, promontory), where 海 is ”sea” and 角 is ”horn” but also ”angle, point”—hence the -gon suffix, like ”polygon.” ☜