Little Spring had finished cleaning the table and had already set up another batch of herbs.

I pulled out a stalk of Golden Goat Tailed Wheat from the box and examined it with my divine sense. This glittering yellow spiritual plant was as thick and short as its namesake. It looked slightly thicker and hairier than the ones I was used to, but from my scan of it, it was definitely the herb I was looking for.

I could only attribute its difference to the slow evolution of plants‌ over centuries. While this rarely happened to spiritual plants, it did happen. And there were ways to grow them that could make a plant take on characteristics of its ancestors.

I set the stalk down in its proper order and turned to Little Spring.

“Are you ready to watch me concoct something that has never existed?”

His eyes glittered. “Yes, sister Lin!”

I grinned. “Listen up, adding the wheat to the previous recipe isn’t just a matter of throwing it in last-minute. That’s how you fail.”

He nodded.

“To make this work, I’ll have to time the ingredients so that their energies don’t clash with each other now that there is a new spiritual plant.”

Frankly, I wasn’t absolutely positive this would turn into a pill. Only 95-99%.

Even if I knew what I was doing, complete failures could still happen. And if I didn’t take the time to research the reason, I would never understand why. The only way to know for sure was to test my hypothesis out.

“How can you tell you’re doing it correctly?”

“The thing is... even I don’t.”

His eyes grew wide.

“Not completely, anyway. I’ve spent centuries studying how different plants react to each other. I’m still discovering new reactions. Sometimes even explosive ones.” This was a world where a prescription could need the alchemist to pick a plant on a certain day or it wouldn’t create the right pill.

“Explosive?” He pulled out a few protective talismans.

“Only if you don’t handle them right.” Or if I have a shitty cauldron that can’t take a little explosion or two.

Fortunately, mine — that I won from underneath Violet’s nose — was an excellent one for my current cultivation.

I gestured to each of the different plants and used my spiritual energy to move them around in the new order I’d hypothesized. I switched the Majestic Plant Killer Walnut and the Viridian Poison Pine Needles. Then I set down the Wheat after the Violet Puffing Fern Leaf.

“Don’t worry, this recipe can work.”

“I know you’ll be successful!”

Awww. This kid.

“Are you ready to see history take place?”

He nodded enthusiastically. Wait, this was the perfect time!

I held out my hand for a fist bump.

And his enthusiasm died. Little Spring rolled his eyes and barely tapped one knuckle to mine.

I bent down a little to look him in the eye and very seriously said, “If this recipe fails, it’s because you didn’t give me a proper fist bump.”

That expression on his face reminded me of a certain shocked rodent.

Messing with this kid was fun. I should do it more often.

Then again, it might come back to bite me in the ass. I gently flicked his glabella. “Use your brain.”

He scowled up at me.

This was a moment that needed to be shared.

“Hold on. I have to do something important in the space.”

“Wait? Right now?” He pointed to the fire he was controlling that was keeping my cauldron at the perfect warm temperature.

“It will take one second.”

I stepped into the space right in front of the tiny gold dragon and wrote in mid air with spiritual energy:

Little Spring: 1

Fairy Lin: 1

The anti-gravity noodle twisted in frustration, then yelled. “If I didn’t see it, it doesn’t count.”

What is this, the Xianxia version of ‘pics or it didn’t happen?’

“So you want me to record every one of his losses so I can use it to blackmail him when he’s a hormonal teenager?”

The dragon stilled for a moment, then twisted around. “Fine. I’ll take your word for it.”

Grinning, I stepped out of the space.

Little Spring nodded sagely. “Even immortals need to answer the call of nature sometimes.”

I coughed. Only if they haven’t gone through grain liberation...

Wait a second.

Let’s see. I left in a hurry for seemingly no reason, right before I started a concoction that would take me at least a half hour... And I quickly returned looking refreshed.

Yep. He definitely assumed that I’d used the restroom.

Whatever. I had history to make.

Flicking my sleeve, I turned and gestured to increase the fire so it licked up the golden sides of my cauldron.

I threw in the first herb and started counting.

***

After making it two-thirds of the way through the concoction, it was time to throw in the wheat.

I lowered the flames and waited for the liquid to stop boiling.

Now!

The golden stalk splashed into the mixture.

Then I counted until the wheat was almost entirely melted before throwing in a grass spiritual plant that worked well with it.

By the time I added the next one and increased the heat, I realized that something was wrong. There was too much energy.

With a twist of my fingers, I lowered the flames so they no longer touched the metal.

The energies kept building. Then they turned chaotic.

Shit.

Using one of my advanced hand seals, I cut the energies into several parts and removed some of them. When they reached the air outside, they dissipated.

This was a technique to avoid an explosion. It still ruined the batch of pills.

What had fucking gone wrong?

I turned to see Little Spring’s wide eyes.

“You actually failed?!”

I grinned. “When coming up with new recipes, even masters like me can fail. And not only once or twice.”

He looked worried. “Will it take a whole month to come up with a new pill like Clear Eyes Mad Tongue said?”

“Of course not. Who am I?”

“Sister Lin!”

“That’s right!” I smoothed his hair back. “Now, let me show you what to do with a ruined pot.”

He nodded seriously.

With a gesture, I lifted the lid to expose the darkened mess of pre-pill liquid.

The kid grimaced.

“Most cultivators just throw the ruined concoction into a spare spatial bag for later disposal. Then they’ll clean any residue with the cleaning technique. But we have something better.”

I sent the liquid into a tub in the space’s Alchemy room that was there just for these instances. The space itself would absorb the excess energy and purify the liquid. Next, I filled the cauldron with spiritual spring water, then moved it to where I left the failed concoction.

“Easy, right?”

Little Spring nodded.

After a once over with the cleaning technique, my furnace was ready for another round.

But I wasn’t.

I quickly went over the recipe in my mind. Why had it almost exploded?

There had been more energy in it than I had estimated.

It wouldn’t be something as simple as one or two ingredients clashing. I was too thorough to miss that.

Did I miss a problem with the plants I was using?

I had gone over each with my divine sense before starting. I even checked the Wheat.

Wait. There had been something different about it.

It was fine. However, now that I thought about it, this wheat was likely more powerful during this time period. A few hundred years could seriously change the structure of a plant. Sometimes for the worse.

So if I was dealing with a stronger variation of the wheat I was used to, then my cauldron almost exploding made sense.

Ah! In that case, I needed to put it first in order to purify some of that energy longer and then pair it up with the Violet Puffing Fern Leaf to really intensify the prescription’s restorative properties.

If I did this, then I would have to change the order all over again. It could also increase the vine-killing properties of this pill while intensifying the healing process.

I could even decrease the amount of Rapscallion Oscillating Leafs to half of one leaf!

That would lower the amount of time it took to recover significantly while not causing the body to go into shock.

If this worked, then it would overshadow Violet’s original pill so much that no one will even think about the stupid prototype. Muahahaha!

“Psst, Senior Ghosty, she’s acting crazy again.”

Hey, I heard that. I’d comment but I’d already taken too long getting started.

While grinning, I warmed my cauldron and threw in the Wheat.

A thousand breaths later, the stalk was so purified that it was almost goo.

Then I tossed in a spiritual berry that would help increase the healing power of the next herb, Violet Puffing Fern Leaf.

Once the plant melted and boiled brilliantly at about the count of 1000, I added in the main disease destroying ingredient — Majestic Plant Killer Walnut.

It melted, turning the whole puddle a gleaming gold. Rays of light burst out of the cauldron every time I lifted the lid.

I added the next few ingredients that would increase the vine-killing effect.

This time, as I counted the final few breaths that would lead to the end of the pill, there was no near explosion. In fact, it was practically peaceful.

With a flick of my fingers, I formed the round pills. Then I used the hand seal to lift the lid and toss them out of the cauldron.

Little Spring once again caught the shimmering gold pills in a prepared jade bottle. These looked even clearer and shinier. I’d say that their quality was around the lower end of High. It was still Earth rank.

The kid shook the bottle. “Do you think these will work?”

“We can’t know until we test them!” I pointed. “To the clinic!”

***

This wasn’t an era where an evil entrepreneur needed the approval of a shady government organization to conduct even shadier human trials.

Instead, we had much more morally questionable ways to test new recipes.

There was the obvious answer, using a pill-beast.

Of course, that didn’t work if the medicine was made for a plague that those creatures quickly died from.

So that left, the go-to for all alchemists — trying it out on actual humans.

Because of how powerful my backing was, if I decided to grab some random infected person from off the street and force them to try my cure, literally no one would say shit about it. No one.

But I didn’t work like that.

At the very least, I wanted to have volunteers. If they ended up dying, I could set their family up for life... As long as they weren’t cultivators.

That said, I only tested cures I was 80% certain of, like this one.

We returned to the clinic with Salamander and Clear Eyes, Head Physician Xiang You stood in the middle of the room while three affluent-looking mortals yelled at the poor doctor.

“My house has given the city lord enough Spiritual Steel to arm thousands of soldiers! The least you can do is provide us with those pills!” The older one with the silver threading on this outer robe said.

“Master Yan, I was ordered to only give these pills to those who are dying. As far as I’m aware, your son isn’t even infected.”

“But he might become infected.”

A younger lord with pink robes practically threw Master Yan to the side. “Then what about my son? He was just complaining of stomach pains! That is the first sign that someone has the plague. He definitely needs the miracle pill!”

“Master Jiang,” the physician said in a deadpan voice, “I hear from a reliable source that your son was out last night at a certain house. Perhaps he merely has a stomachache due to eating something unpleasant there. You understand what I’m saying.”

Oh damn! While I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, I could guess it was some place embarrassing. Head Physician Xiang You had some fuckin’ balls for pointing it out.

Master Jiang looked like his face was going to turn into a tomato from sheer anger. At least until the next guy stepped in front of him and loomed over the Head Physician. “Then what about my son, who is in so much pain that he’s writhing on the ground screaming?”

“Master Xu, I was told to only give this pill to those who are dying. Your son isn’t at that stage yet.”

With the way their expressions changed, it seemed like things might get physical.

I walked deeper into the clinic and cleared my throat.

The rich men and the Head Physician glanced our way.

All three knelt when they saw us and yelled, “Immortals! Please save my son.”

I wasn’t fond of kneeling — even if I wasn’t the one doing it.

Eh, why did this feel so familiar?

Maybe I’d seen Bloodsword in a similar situation?

“Master Alchemist Lin! You’re back!”

I didn’t reply myself since I didn’t want these three troublemakers to approach me. Instead, I sent a telepathic message to Little Spring.

::Go hand the Head Physician the two new bottles. Instruct him to give each type of pill to people who are in a bad condition.::

The kid took out the bottles and handed them to Xiang You.

“Senior Lin wants you to test these two new pills on those who are the worst off.”

The physician clasped his hands and bowed.

“Wait, Master Alchemist Lin! What about healing my son?” Xu said, looking at Salamander.

Was this impatient fucker for real?

I understood that his son was in pain, and that was terrible, but I had no obligation to do anything about it. Not when I was in the middle of testing a pill that could cure the goddamn plague.

Salamander raised an eyebrow.

Alright, I couldn’t let these fuckers target my old friend. I crossed my arms in front of my chest and glared at the man.

“If your son is infected, then as long as he isn’t on his deathbed, he can wait for the tested cure along with everyone else.” In fact, these entitled assholes’ obsession with the prototype was delaying the actual cure.

“I can pay!”