Chapter 234 – Life 73, Age 35, Martial Grandmaster Peak

Young Master Wang dropped Bao off to be shown around the outer sect by another disciple while he led SuYin and me deeper into the city hidden amongst the treetops. After showing us to the house that had been assigned to SuYin, he then gave us a detailed tour of the inner sect.

As we walked, SuYin stayed by Young Master Wang’s side while I followed behind as befit my station as a servant. However, as he showed us around, Young Master Wang focused more on ensuring that I knew where everything was than he did on SuYin. This was because, as her servant, I would be responsible for taking care of her daily necessities, so I would likely spend more time running around the sect than she would.

In general, this approach didn’t surprise me too much. The strange thing was just that Young Master Wang was showing me around himself instead of escorting SuYin privately and delegating my tour to his servant. I knew that this young master had ambitions of his own and that this behavior was likely tied to them, but I didn’t sense any hostile intentions from the man, so I would let things play out naturally.

After completing a circuit of the inner sect, Young Master Wang then guided us back to SuYin’s house.

“Junior Sister, the herbalism skills you displayed in the Verdant Fields Sect are quite impressive, but I must warn you that you are still several steps below what is expected of an inner sect disciple of the Verdant Forest Sect.”

SuYin’s brow wrinkled a bit at this statement. “But…”

The young man held up a hand. “You will know what I mean soon. I only say this because there are two things you need to take note of. First, you are only a probationary member of the inner sect. You must master the proper skills to at least Rank 2 within one year. If you don’t, you will be demoted to the outer sect. As an inner sect member, you will have access to information and resources that will make this task possible, but that doesn’t mean it will be easy.”

SuYin nodded and glanced at me worriedly. I just smirked slightly and shook my head to try and dismiss her concerns. I didn’t know what knowledge she was missing, but I was confident SuYin wouldn’t have any problems mastering it in short order.

Seeing SuYin relax, Young Master Wang continued.

“This isn’t just a problem that affects you. Everyone who joins the sect later in life will have gaps in their knowledge. As such, one of the sect’s elders will be holding a series of lectures in the coming days on the basics of herbalism. This is to help fill in all those gaps and allow everyone a chance to learn what they are missing. Typically, lessons from an elder would cost a significant number of contribution points, but this lecture series is free for all new inner and outer sect disciples.”

Young Master Wang glanced at me quickly and then turned his attention back to SuYin. “As a new inner sect Grandmaster, you were given ten thousand contribution points upon entering the sect. Su Fang is a servant disciple, so he is not allowed to enter these lectures freely. I would recommend purchasing a seat for him. These lessons will be beneficial to him if he is to help you with your projects in the future.”

SuYin dipped her head slightly. “Thank you, Young Master Wang.”

He waved this away. “I told you. Just call me Senior Brother.”

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SuYin and I spent the next few days adjusting to our new environment and making basic preparations. Most of this time was spent studying the sect’s economy and figuring out how to best exploit it.

As an inner sect disciple, SuYin’s house came with a basic garden where she could grow a small number of low-level herbs, but this wasn’t a great spot for growing high-value crops. This garden, like the house, was built upon a wooden platform high up in the treetops. As such, the soil was only half a meter deep, and growing plants there would quickly deplete it of its energy and nutrients.

To grow large numbers of high-Rank herbs, one would need to lease a plot of land in the surrounding forest, but this came at a steep cost in contribution points. And if she were to lease a plot, she would also then need to pay guards to protect it from wild beasts. Once SuYin was able to consistently produce high-quality high-Rank herbs, these costs would become a non-issue, but raising the initial funds necessary for such a project would be a bit challenging.

To make the situation worse, we also found that the herbs she had grown in the Verdant Fields Sect were considered ‘substandard,’ so they could only be sold at a steep discount. While I knew that SuYin’s herbs couldn’t compare to those I had used in the Nine Rivers Sect, I still considered them to be quality products with high levels of medicinal energy.

The only real problem with them was that they also had unfortunately high levels of toxic energy in them, but this just meant the alchemist using them would need to do a bit of extra work. These extra toxins wouldn’t affect the quality of the final pill at all.

While marking SuYin’s pill as substandard seemed a bit much to me, it did serve to show us just how much she would need to improve if she wanted to remain an inner sect disciple once this first year was over. However, instead of letting this news upset us, we were both excited by what it meant for what the sect had to teach us about herbalism.

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On our fourth day in the sect, SuYin and I met up with Bao to attend our first lecture on the ‘basics of herbalism.’ When Young Master Wang first mentioned these classes, I had expected the elder to focus on teaching us how to use a variety of important techniques. My expectations couldn’t have been further from the truth.

The first lecture was titled ‘Herb Theory.’

SuYin, Bao, and I arrived early and took our seats in the large wooden amphitheater. Then, over the next twenty minutes, people continuously poured in to join us. In total, there were over a hundred people in attendance with cultivation bases ranging from Martial Disciple 1 to Peak Grandmaster.

The sheer number of people in attendance made me doubt that they were all new disciples. Instead, it was likely that many older disciples also were interested in this lecture.

Once it was time, an old woman walked onto the stage. A quick check showed that she was a Peak Lord, and based on her appearance, I placed her at over 350 years old. After reaching the center of the stage, she allowed her gaze to roam around the amphitheater and studied everyone in attendance.

When she spoke, her voice was light and soft, but a formation carried her words directly to our ears.

“Before we begin, I must give you all a warning. The information in these lectures had been gathered by our sect over hundreds of years. It has been tested and verified many times over. However, there are always deeper secrets in this world. While what you learn here will be both accurate and useful, there is always the possibility of new information coming to light that completely overturns our preconceptions about how the world works.”

I subconsciously nodded at this. As I had learned from the System, the cost of learning everything about Rank 1 herbalism that would be expected from someone on this continent was far different from the cost of learning the totality of everything there was to know about Rank 1 herbalism.

“Let us begin by discussing cultivation. As everyone is no doubt aware, cultivators draw in energy known as ‘qi’ to empower themselves and perform feats beyond the limits of mere mortals. Hopefully, most of you are also aware that this is not the only type of energy in this world. In fact, there are a multitude of different types, but aside from qi, the most abundant is the energy used by demon beasts. Most refer to this simply as ‘demonic energy.’”

This made me sit up a bit straighter. In Emperor Li’s books on Rank 1 to 3 alchemy, he had written about many experiments he had done on demonic energy, but all of them had been failures. He was no closer to understanding how to use it than I was. He had only found more dead ends than I had.

“There are many competing hypotheses about the differences between qi and demonic energy, and former sect members have donated dozens of tomes on this subject written by famed scholars from across the Central Continent. However, none of these books have any clear answers. They are all supposition and guesswork. Therefore, I cannot tell you exactly what demonic energy is or why it is different from qi. What I can tell you is how herbalists can make use of this energy to grow better plants.”

The elder took out a simple blue peony out of a storage bag and placed it on a podium for everyone to see.

“There are three parts to a medicinal herb. The physical shell, the medicinal energy, and the toxic energy. To an alchemist, only the medicinal energy is truly important, but as herbalists, we must focus on all three. What is the physical shell? What is toxic energy? What is medicinal energy?”

She paused to give us time to think, but no one had an answer to these questions.

“Again, all I can say is that we do not truly know. However, we do have some clues to help us. There are no pills to help demon beasts cultivate, but they can eat raw herbs to enhance their cultivation. Alchemists can create a powerful pill, called an Energy Expulsion Pill, which is said to be able to remove all the energy from a person’s body, but it has no effect on toxic energy. Finally, herbs contain ‘medicinal energy,’ but medicinal energy is extremely scarce in the natural environment, so herbs pulling all of their medicinal energy from their surroundings is simply not possible. What does it tell us?”

My knowledge of demonic beasts was extremely limited, but I did remember being told that there weren’t any pills that could increase a beast’s cultivation base. I didn’t focus on this fact too much at the time, but hearing it now, I could see where the elder was headed.

Herbs could help beasts advance, but not pills. Assuming that this was true and that it wasn’t just that alchemists hadn’t designed the right pill yet, then that meant medicinal energy couldn’t help beasts advance. If not even Low-Purity pills could help them advance, then that meant they weren’t using the toxic energy either. All that was left was the herb’s physical shell.

“In the Verdant Forest Sect, we refer to demonic energy by the term which has gained popularity on the Central Continent in recent years, ‘wu.’ In a sense, qi is energy, and wu is substance. Demonic beasts use wu to enhance their physical bodies while cultivators use qi to enhance their energy bodies. By consuming demon beasts, you can absorb a portion of their wu to enhance your own physical body, but this effect is ultimately limited.”

A faintly sad look appeared on the elder’s face.

“Finding a way to properly absorb wu is the dream of countless cultivators on the Central Continent, but to date, all that we have learned is how to use it to enhance herbs. By properly infusing soil with wu, we can ensure that an herb’s physical shell grows healthier, stronger, and faster.”

The elder picked up the peony from the podium and used her overwhelming wood affinity to rip out its energy without first destroying the physical shell. She then presented us with the wilting flower, a ball of toxic energy, and a ball of medicinal energy.

“An herb uses wu to grow and shape its physical form. It then pulls qi from the environment and converts it into medicinal energy. The ‘toxins’ are a byproduct of this process. They are a combination of wu and qi that was not properly integrated into the growing plant. This can be caused by excessive levels of energy from improper elements, or it can be caused by an imbalance of qi and wu. To grow a blue peony, for instance, the soil needs five parts wood wu to one part of each of the other four basic elements. Qi then needs to be applied in similar proportions at a rate of two parts qi to one part wu. If this balance is off, the excess energy will coalesce into toxins.”

I glanced at SuYin as I now understood what she would need to learn if she wanted to remain in the inner sect. Not only would she need to memorize the correct proportions of qi and wu needed for growing each plant, but she would also need to learn how to properly control the levels of these different energies. Her blessing would make the first part easy, but only practice would help her with the second.