Chapter 499 - Ripples (VI)

Chapter 499

Ripples (VI)

"Of course; I'll send a word ahead and have them prepare the Grand Alchemy Chamber," was the response I got the moment I posed the question to the Sect Master buried under the mountain of paperwork.

I honestly thought I'd have to use my silver tongue and my impeccable charms in order to just barely squeeze out something, but... alas, they will remain in their holsters, I suppose. For now.

Khm.

"Here, my Lord," the steward that escorted us led us to a rather inconspicuous building nestled in the western region of the sect; it was about three stories tall and built out of gray brick, though the scent it exuded was quite powerful and evident as soon as we got within a hundred feet of it.

It was a mix of herbal and strangely pharmaceutical; in a way nostalgic, really, as it reminded me of home.

"The chamber is in the basement," he said and handed out a strange, wooden plaque. "Simply press this against the southmost wall. If you need anything, I will remain here all the while."

"... thank you." I took the plaque, still pretending none of this was weird.

The three of us headed inside as the steward remained, with the other two immediately chattering behind me.

"I didn't expect a sect with minimum focus on alchemy to have such good facilities," Lao Shun said as we entered the central hall. The scent of medicine was practically corporeal at this point, and I had to use Qi to clog my nostrils because it was that overwhelming.

The hall was quite spacious with dozens upon dozens of smaller tables with people lurking over them; it wasn't that they were concocting herbs, but more that they were studying it.

We quickly headed left after asking a nearby kid where the basement was, traversing through a narrow corridor before coming upon the stairs. While none of this place was that well lit, there was barely any light here at all.

I had to use Qi to enhance my eyes just to see the steps, and they were not easy even with that; their length was about half the length of my foot, so I had to descend on my toes, one by one, for nearly five minutes. This thing ran at least a mile into the damn earth.

At least.

We exited onto a dirt-paved opening with four sets of doors on either of our sides and a blank wall to the front. I eyed the wall oddly as I sensed strange energy coming from it and raised the plaque we were given towards it. A low, annoying hum seemed to erupt for a moment before the ground began to shake and the wall began to part, unveiling... well, something, that's for sure.

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It was eerily reminiscent of a modern-day laboratory, just with less modern tech, of course. Purpose-built spaces, structured environments, tools... instead of a sterile room, there seemed to be a purifying array embedded directly into the floor. Instead of beakers and centrifuges and fume hoods of a lab, there were cauldrons and furnaces and strange, ladle-like tools with even stranger engravings on their surface.

There were dozens of shelves hanging off of side walls stacked to the top with jars upon jars of herbs and materials and monster cores, and though they were distinctly different from chemical reagents, biological samples, and catalogued, measured, and labeled compounds, it was akin to watching a prototype live. The furthest wall, however, was the oddest, as it had open containment arrays within which flickers of light emerged in the dark.

Alchemy Fires.

Even I could recognize them.

"Not bad." Lao Shun didn't sound nearly as impressed as I was; he and the woman walked in and started examining the place. "Slightly outdated with the last generation of flames and tools, but definitely above average for non-alchemy sects. Alright," he turned toward me. "You can stay and observe; if you notice anything off, tap her and she will relay the information to me. Under no circumstances should you interact with me, though." She looked at him oddly, and I stopped myself from doing the same.

I'm pretty sure he's still under the impression that I knew stuff about Alchemy. Whether it was because I procured recipes nobody else could, or because I handed him that cauldron, or just because... I don't know. Regardless, I wasn't gonna be noticing anything off or odd.

"I'll stand guard." There was no need, as the wall behind us had closed up, and it was unlikely that the Sect Master would let anyone else stroll in here. If he wanted to kill us, there were easier ways to do it, I imagine.

Rather than using any of the provided cauldrons, Lao Shun whipped out the one I gave him; the woman's reaction was that of softened shock. It was likely that he'd already showed it to her once, but she still wasn't completely accustomed to it.

Though I've watched Alchemy be done a few times before, from the onset I recognized this was a bit... different.

The way Lao Shun conducted himself was a bit mind-blowing, to be honest; in my eyes, despite being five hundred years old, he was like a meddlesome kid who was curious about everything. He did little to fix that reputation as he often bickered with the literal kids.

But now, watching him work... it was a reminder of who he truly was.

Fire Qi roared around him like a dragon, beads of sweat quickly coalescing on the woman's forehead; despite the fact that I stood about thirty feet or so away, even I felt the temperature quickly spiking into triple digits.

He started taking out materials one by one--strange kind of grass, some raisin-like little things, and plenty of others whose silhouettes I barely caught before they were tossed into the cauldron. Herbal scent intensified a hundredfold in the matter of minutes despite me still clogging my nostrils, causing me to frown.

... wasn't this kind of stupid? Neither he nor she wore any protection and used the exact same technique that I did--blocking the nostrils and hoping for the best. But that would be like trying to work with toxic agents back on Earth by only having nose plugs as protection and not an entire goddamn hazmat suit.

Regardless, I quickly realized why not just 'anyone' could be his assistant--certainly not me. He began to fire off commands that were spoken in a familiar language but may as well be alien gibberish, honestly.

"Curve root of Rya sunward against the le'thin diagonal; hold for a breath; soak leftmost root-tip tenth and a half of an inch in the red section; press blending core into the roar in seven seconds and turn it into paste within eleven..."

It sounded a whole lot like when Mike, Yas' brother, tried to explain to me some or another function he added to his game.

"I tried fixing hard-coded system serialization at initial runtime, but all my event triggers would fail to register, but when I went back to calling the system registration in the start, I got a bunch of null references. Turns out I accidentally..."

Some things really are the same just about anywhere, huh?