By the time that Wei Yi returned to the first floor, the receptionist had not only brought out a set of books containing the list of the ingredients available at the Chu Alchemical Store, but also a number of records regarding other available ingredients, various herbs in the area around the district, several documents on the topic of refining, legends about it and the supposed miracle fruits that could be found in the Ning District at some point, and a whole host of other scraps of information that made Wei Yi genuinely concerned for the receptionist’s wellbeing.

As she checked out everything written on the papers, she also looked through the overly energetic woman’s body with her spiritual perception but found nothing of note that would be a cause for concern.

‘Perhaps the removal of a latent physique has caused some kind of unusual reaction that allows the body to generate far more energy than normal due to not needing to maintain that physique energy… Nothing within her would suggest that, but it is worth investigating if I ever need someone to lack offensive or defensive capability but retain the larger quantity of energy that cultivation typically provides,’ Wei Yi considered while she picked out a few of the items from the enormous lists.

Her requests were brought out almost in an instant, with several large boxes of products being delivered from various parts of the district in no more than a few minutes.

“Here’s everything, and as your first-time purchase from our establishment, I’ll give you my personal employee discount! Ten percent! Just joking, fifteen percent! Twenty percent! I’ll give you a free item of your choice as well!”

“You will bankrupt this place in a few minutes if you do this for everyone.”

“Right. Sorry. You do want the free stuff, though, right?”

“Sure. Let me confirm that everything is to my standard first, though,” Wei Yi agreed, since there was never any reason to refuse free things when they did not come alongside any debts or costs.

To not expose the full capabilities of her spiritual perception, she knelt beside one of the large crates and removed its lid, taking out a few leaves of the orange herbs within and inspecting them closely. If a herb was in some way infected by the wrong kind of elemental energy, or perhaps was afflicted by more ordinary flaws such as pests or insufficient nutrition from the soil, it could have all kinds of negative effects on the refinement process.

On the surface, there did not appear to be anything wrong with any of them, but the more she looked at every individual leaf, the more she grew concerned. There were no specific flaws, no excess of yin or yang, no elemental imbalance… and yet her intuition refused to give in.

“Min Lian, do you believe that there is something strange about this?”

As she was unable to figure this out on her own, she would ask a few others. If they couldn’t see anything unusual about the herbs, or if they also couldn’t understand the reason behind it, she would reluctantly accept the herbs and then put them all through the House of Gold to let it tell her which herbs were and were not safe to use.

“Hm…” the assassin examined the leaf incredibly closely before leaning over to whisper in Wei Yi’s ear, “Master, there appears to be something unusual about this. While, insofar as I can tell, the vitality of these herbs remains, there is an element of death around them. It resonates with my hatred.”

‘Interesting… Indeed, when separated from the killing will, my killing intent also has a slight reaction to these…’ Wei Yi noticed, slightly disappointed by the fact that her solution to the conflict of mental energies had such a flaw, then stood up and told the receptionist, “My apologies, but I don’t think I can accept these. Something about their quality is odd, and I would prefer to be confident in the ingredients I work with. Could you find out where these came from so that I do not make the mistake of acquiring these in my own time?”

“Eh? I’m sorry! I didn’t know… I got these from a number of places, and those places all get it from a variety of places as well…”

“In that case, I will need to delay any more large purchases until I can figure out exactly what is going on here. I don’t know how much experience you have with pill refining and the ingredients used during the process, but there is something odd about these. Anything other than what you’ve already got here is not suitable for me, as I will be unable to verify its quality.”

“Oh… I’m sorry…”

‘Alright, her mood is also odd. I need to take a proper look at her when I have the time,’ Wei Yi thought, shaking her head, “You hadn’t noticed anything wrong, and neither have those who sold this to you. Don’t worry.”

“Right. What about anything stocked in the Chu Alchemical Store? Is anything suitable?”

“Let me see… Seven of the crates and boxes have nothing that putt me off them, whereas the rest do. I shall take those that are suitable and offer small compensation for the hassle caused by the rest.”

“No, no, I said that I would give you a discount, so I will do exactly that! After I had descended deeper and deeper into constant lethargy and sleep, I had started to save quite a lot of money thanks to not being able to actually spend it on anything… So, since you saved me from falling into permanent sleep, I will repay you! You can’t stop me, either – I have a lot of gold and silver coins stashed away, so I can give you all sorts of discounts!”

“Do you want those things to be stolen from you?”

“No?”

“Then stop yelling about your wealth. You sound completely unstable, so you will benefit from a check-up of sorts.”

“W-Will that involve the same method as before?” the receptionist’s cheeks reddened slightly as she recalled the shame she had felt when she had nearly been too lazy to go to her own residence for the treatment.

“No, I can check your body at less detail even without direct physical contact, but depending on the exact problem with you, that might still be necessary,” she explained, “You do understand why I’m doing this, by the way? You are aware that you are currently behaving somewhat erratically and, in the reverse of your previous condition, are actively radiating so much energy that I am concerned about you shattering into pure planar energy at some point…”

“It can’t be that bad, can it?”

“It is.”

“Oh no, then we must fix this immediately! Let’s-”

“I believe that my Master has a few other things to do first. Come back at the end of your shift,” Min Lian stepped in, releasing just a droplet of her killing intent to instantly calm the overexcited woman down, stepping back and bowing her head to Wei Yi immediately after.

This achieved the desired effect, causing the receptionist to send the rest of the items back while calculating the exact cost of the ingredients that would actually be purchased, so Wei Yi did not reprimand the assassin for her actions, even if her tone was a little harsher than she would have intended had she been the one to ward off the receptionist. Then again, she was slowly slipping on her act as the stern alchemist that doesn’t like wasting time, so in a way, her hatred avatar assassin was doing a better job of it than she was.

‘At a later time, I had a few plans involving very convincing acting, so this is something that I must address. Perhaps if I find some techniques regarding acting – planar ones, not those used by the common people in the occasional play or performance – my mind will understand it better than now,’ she thought, glancing at the Truth of the Universe interface for a moment, “We shall go now. Come by in the evening.”

“Alright!”

Min Lian carried five of the boxes and Wei Yi carried the last two, bringing them out of the Chu Alchemical Store and into their compact residence, stacking them atop the bed since it wouldn’t see much use any time soon.

The smallest box that she had purchased, full of stalks of a one-star ingredient, was not actually something that she had intended to use in her refinement, as it contained the strange aura that most of the other available ingredients did. She wished to research them in greater detail, as she had considered previously, but choosing to buy one of the ingredients despite rejecting them initially would seem strange, so she instead found the cheapest and lowest quantity affected box and acquired it instead.

This also offered her the perfect opportunity to perform multiple experiments with similar samples, so to her, this was a fair and favourable deal.

Taking one of the herbs, she threw it into the House of Gold, thrusting her spiritual perception into it immediately and reading the description beside it. It began commonly enough, describing the name and typical properties of the stalk, as expected from the otherworldly spatial storage, but concluded with the sentence ‘Contains unfavourable traces’.

That was vague, and, more importantly, did not explain what about them was so unfavourable. Were they a danger for those consuming it, those refining with it, those selling or farming it, or even those who would deal with those that used it? All that she could ascertain with absolute certainty was that using it would certainly be dangerous until she could figure out the exact nature of the traces and how to either manipulate or extract them to achieve the result that was most favourable and beneficial to her, as having something that requires cultivated killing intent to discover any hint of it that could act as a poison or drug would be incredibly helpful if she wanted to weaken one of the Greats prior to battle. She could disguise as some trader, offer the Great Family member a powerful pill to prepare for a difficult challenge – perhaps even a battle with her, if word of her combat prowess spread far enough through the encounter with the Ning and Chen family members – then affect their ability to circulate energy by the time they got to fight her.

‘The potential is there, that’s certain. The question is whether I can take advantage of it myself, or if this is a part of a scheme of another that can only be used by that individual, in which case it would be in my favour to thwart it and gain some fame for my good deed,’ Wei Yi considered, ‘When the time for open conflict comes, perhaps when I am in the fourth or fifth realms and can confidently battle against small numbers of the third realm Greats, I could invoke it to gain more allies.’

Of course, if the unfavourability of the substance referred to the possibility of death after consumption, or if it was the result of some Great Family plot, she would stop it no matter what, as it would affect the entire district and easily reduce a large portion of Yi City’s remaining population with ease. For her to rebuild Yi City, reform it into the titan that it once was and perhaps even surpass the past at some point, there needed to be people to occupy it and work within it, or else she would only rule over an empty land full of vacant homes and pointless shops, effectively controlling even less than a ghost city.

After all, ghost cities still contained spirits, even if they could comprehend and do little. With enough time and influence, they could still function as normal citizens, working and living in homes as normal people would, even if they would require either pure planar energy or the lifeforce of creatures and plants around them to sustain themselves. In fact, that would be even more similar to regular humans, as they also required the lives of other entities to sustain themselves, and if spirits and people coexisted in some domain, they could split their harvest into material goods for the living and energy for the dead.

However, beyond the ancient tales and fictitious stories of the modern day, even spirits themselves were rarely seen, not to mention entire cities of them.

‘For this reason, I should stop letting my mind go off on its own, and focus on some experiments,’ she thought, splitting the stalks into two piles, with two thirds in one and one third in the other. Wei Yi gave the second pile to Min Lian, suggesting a few experiments that she could perform while she observed with her spiritual perception, and kept the more challenging or involving ones to herself, as she could simply do far more than her loyal assassin.

The first thing she explored was how the stalks reacted to her four energies – five, if yin and yang-type physique energy was to be considered separately. Planar energy in any of its forms did not yield a result that was in any way unusual, nor did spiritual will. Killing intent would fluctuate almost imperceptibly upon touching the stalks, but it was so insignificant that she was forced to doubt her senses every single time. Killing will had a similar reaction, but it was dulled even more due to the stabilisation of spiritual will, rendering that attempt entirely null. Yang-type physique energy burnt the stalks to nothingness immediately, as was expected, and none of the unfavourable influence remained, so far as she could tell.

It was yin-type physique energy that first gave her some kind of significant result. When it came into contact with the herb, it momentarily had a similar reaction to when it absorbed physique energy, although it did not increase the quantity of her physique energy and added nothing to the progress of her cultivation.

Nonetheless, with two yin-type energies reacting, she was able to establish that something was indeed happening, and that she wasn’t simply imagining it all. Furthermore, after her yin-type physique energy passed through the stalk and froze it slightly, the stalk would then no longer elicit the same response from her killing intent, meaning that the sensation of absorbing something wasn’t an invention of her mind either.

‘Thus, there is truly something within these herbs that is absent from the other ones, and it is something that is yin in nature. Whatever it is, it isn’t intended as a positive, and may harm those that use it… I guess I’ll just throw every one of these that remain into the House of Gold and work on them one by one, and if I figure out a reliable and non-suspicious manner of removing the unfavourable traces, I could offer my services to the others after I find some reasonable method of explaining why I would need to clean certain herbs and not others.’

Provided that she was able to provoke any kind of unusual reaction from these herbs, the other pill refiners in the district would be certain to check it themselves and confirm that something was amiss, as well as that Wei Yi was able to correct it, but until then, she would need to try out every kind of alchemical technique and method available to her to find the most suitable one.

‘Perhaps I should attempt to find some library that contains information on refining and alchemy as a whole, and seek some inspiration from it…’ she randomly stepped towards her door when she noticed that someone was standing outside it, looking around every now and then as if he was not certain whether it would be a good idea for him to knock now. To save him the trouble of guessing it himself, she waited for Min Lian to complete one of her assigned tests – which unfortunately did not provide anything of use to either one of them – then opened the door herself.

“Chao Juzan, I believe. You wanted to speak with me at the Chu Alchemical Store.”

“Indeed, but I didn’t wish to disturb you. I had initially wanted to speak to you about the pills that you produced, but then your mention of something unusual about certain kinds of ingredients caught my attention, and I inadvertently followed you all the way to your residence while considering it.”

“I see,” she replied dryly, “Had you noticed anything in your own work, or did you just wish to know what I had noticed?”

“Both, actually. Beside the seeming increase in the quantity of planar energy within the district, perhaps as a result of some new array within the iron walls or within the caverns beneath, I have also observed that certain refinement recipes have been more difficult than, say, a decade ago or so. In particular, I find the kinds of pills that could be described as containing or benefitting yang to be the most troublesome… The specific types, they… You know, the kinds of pills that benefit a male’s yang root…”

“Is that so? Interesting. That would suggest an imbalance of yin within the ingredients, would it not? Have you questioned whether the areas where these things are produced have suffered from any kind of blight or been affected by a duel with someone wielding techniques of extreme yin?” Wei Yi asked, guiding this man to her own conclusion as he hadn’t bothered unlike the other two alchemy masters.

“That is a possibility… However, this is the case with most ingredients. For all of them to have been affected at once, it would require a fundamental change as large as the rising of planar energy all across the world.”

‘Well, if you say so. I will receive evidence of whether that can occur through my own actions soon enough, but it is already fact that it had happened before. The only question about it is the exact cause and reasoning behind the fluctuation of planar energy from the time of the Master of Yi City to now, and that is something that can be learnt through the careful observation of what occurs upon the shattering of a planar anchor,’ Wei Yi thought to herself, but did not voice herself yet, instead saying, “Until you can deduce the exact reason behind this abnormality, I would advise limiting your usage of those ingredients. Depending on their exact nature, it could greatly harm those who use them.”

“I have already done that, but there are very few alternatives around here. If I abandon my trade entirely, I will not be able to remain in the district for long.”

That was true, and highly unfortunate, albeit understandable for a district that needed to maximise every single inch of space that was available to it. If they permitted people who no longer contributed to it to remain, they would quickly run out of residences that gave those living within them even the slightest hint of decency, and would be forced to cram everyone together into even tighter and more confined spaces to allow them a place to sleep.

“Would you be open to assisting me in a few experiments? If one of us can eliminate the issue ourselves, we won’t need to endanger those who purchase our pills while still making a sufficient amount of coin to sustain ourselves.”

“Certainly. If any of us are able to make some progress on the matter, it would greatly benefit everyone in the district and beyond, depending on the nature of the issue,” Chao Juzan agreed, “I propose sharing a few notes on our tests every now and then, so that we do not repeat the exact same experiments multiple times and waste our own resources.”

“That would only make sense. So far, I have confirmed that regular planar energy and spiritual perception do not affect the oddity of the herbs, so there is no need to test those particular things unless your cultivation technique is particularly unusual,” she said, although she could already sense that his energy was not significantly stranger than any of the basic wood-type techniques found in the Yi District, meaning that he would not find out anything that she couldn’t, “I’d recommend finding things that are high in yang and seeing how they interact differently than with normal examples of an herb.”

They shared a few more things before Chao Juzan departed to get back to his own occupation, while Wei Yi shut the door to her residence and quickly refined a few pills from the ingredients that lacked any oddity, both to her own observation and the seemingly omniscient ability of the House of Gold.

Due to the rather specific selection of ingredients and herbs, the only kind of pill that she could create was a Nail Enhancing pill, typically used for those that use nails for the purpose of combat or those that prefer to have longer nails and then struggle to maintain them without the usage of any kind of planar energy or cultivation.

Once a few pills were consumed by her and enhanced with her cosmic energy so that she would hopefully develop another part of her body that would be rendered immune to damage, just as her hair was, she stored the rest in a bag and brought them to the Chu Alchemical Store, where she once again put them up for sale at one copper coin less than the equivalent that were already on offer. After that, she had a few things she considered doing, but what caught her eye first were two figures that walked past the door of the store just before she left.