Chapter 270: Beginner in Alchemy (2)

The door of the room remained closed for seven days.

Kyrian did not leave. He did not train with the others. He did not appear in the main hall. He simply… disappeared inside that small stone room.

The servants of the Blood Court quickly learned the new ritual. Every morning, shortly after sunrise, one of them approached the door with a tray of food. Before he could even knock, the door opened slightly. A hand took the tray. The door closed.

Not a single word was exchanged. At night, the same happened with the empty tray.

Dong Zhen was informed about this on the second day. He simply smiled and nodded.

“Leave him alone. Send more food if necessary.”

The leader of the Blood Court knew that kind of focus. He had already lived through something similar in his own past.

Inside the room, Kyrian had created his own world. The dark metal cauldron occupied the center of the space. Around it, piles of books formed small, unstable towers. Open manuscripts covered parts of the floor. Empty and full flasks accumulated in the corners.

And in the middle of all that… Kyrian.

Sitting cross-legged, gray eyes shining with flame-shaped pupils, he observed the interior of the cauldron with absolute intensity.

A gray flame danced beneath the metal, delicately heating a mixture of essences that slowly rotated.

Kyrian was… happy, in a certain way.

It was not an explosive or exaggerated happiness. It was something deeper. Calmer.

He had discovered something in the last few days. Alchemy was not just a means to obtain resources.

Alchemy was… in a certain way pleasurable.

There was something hypnotizing in the process. The absolute control over the flame. The way the herbs transformed under his command. The exact moment when the essences fused and became something new.

Kyrian discovered that he liked that.

He liked feeling the heat of the flame responding to his will. He liked seeing the impurities burning and disappearing. He especially liked the instant when the pill finally formed, solid and perfect, falling to the bottom of the cauldron with that characteristic sound.

It was like a small reward. A confirmation that he had done something right.

Besides that… there was the future.

Kyrian was not naive. He knew that the path of cultivation required resources. Many resources. Pills. Elixirs. Materials. All of that cost spirit stones, what he needed the most.

An alchemist who could produce pills would never suffer from a lack of spirit stones. On the contrary. Other cultivators would come to him. They would pay well for his work.

Independence.

That was the word echoing in Kyrian’s mind while he worked.

He never wanted to depend on others. He never wanted to need to beg for resources. And now, with alchemy, he was building something that no one could take from him.

…

On the third day, Kyrian finished reading his fifteenth book. It was a treatise on flame control techniques, written by an unknown alchemist three hundred years ago. The author described methods to adjust the temperature with millimetric precision.

Kyrian absorbed every word. Then he closed his eyes and practiced.

His gray flame changed. It stopped being a common, powerful flame and transformed into something more subtle. Layers. He could feel different temperatures within the same flame. The outer part is hotter. The inner part is softer.

He applied this in the next refinement. The result was immediate.

The pill that appeared had fifty-five percent purity. A huge leap compared to the previous attempts.

Kyrian analyzed the result with his special eyes, processing every detail. Then he stored the information and continued.

…

On the fifth day, he had already read twenty-three books. Alchemy manuals. Herb guides. Treatises on medicinal properties. Even some diaries of deceased alchemists, full of personal notes and valuable observations.

Kyrian did not only read. He memorized. Every page. Every illustration. Every comment is scribbled in the margins.

His mind worked like an infinite storage. Nothing was lost. And while he read, he practiced.

The pills accumulated. Reinforcement Pill. Energy Pill. Light Healing Pill. Resistance Pill.

All the main rank 1 pills passed through his hands.

Each one required different combinations of herbs. Each one demanded specific temperatures. Each one had its own challenges.

Kyrian faced them all. And learned from them all.

…

On the sixth day, something changed.

Kyrian was refining an Energy Pill, one of the most complex among the rank 1 pills, when he felt something different.

The gray flame seemed to… respond faster.

It was not just control. It was as if the flame and he were the same thing. His thoughts became heat. His will became form.

The five herbs in the cauldron purified in perfect synchrony. The essences fused without the slightest resistance. The pill shaped itself on its own, as if it already knew exactly what form it should have.

Kyrian cut the flame. The pill fell to the bottom of the cauldron. He picked it up and analyzed it.

Seventy-one percent purity.

Kyrian observed the number for a long moment. Then, a small smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.

It was not a smile of arrogance. It was a smile of genuine satisfaction. He had succeeded. Pills above seventy percent were pills considered true, and they could be sold.

…

On the seventh day, Kyrian finally stopped. He looked around the room.

Pills were everywhere. Small flasks lined up on the windowsill.

Organized piles near the wall. Some even inside his boots, because he had run out of space.

Kyrian made a mental count. More than two hundred rank 1 pills. Of all known types. With purities varying between fifty and seventy percent.

He sighed lightly.

’Too slow.’

If someone could hear his thoughts, they would probably have a heart attack.

Slow?

In one week, Kyrian had gone from absolute zero to becoming an alchemist capable of producing rank 1 pills with purity above seventy percent with ease.

For most alchemy apprentices, it would take several weeks or months to manage to form the first usable pill.

But Kyrian did not know that. He only knew that he wanted more.

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