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Originally, I had planned that once I started cultivating again, I would use that to recover qi to be able to concoct pills faster. That plan was put on hold after my lesson with Cao though. Recovering qi like that would lead to a decrease in qi purity over time. Say my qi starts at 80% purity. I can only really use the fire qi. When I use it, it leaves my body, but the mix of chaotic qi remains. When I cultivate to get it back, more impurities are brought along with it.

It isn’t as bad as 80% pure, then 80% of 80%, then 80% of 80% of 80%. That would be a quick path to damnation. Actually, when I use fire qi, chaotic qi is mixed in with it… chaotically, so a lot does end up leaving the body. At the surface level, the drop in purity might not even look like much at all. If you push all your energy out and cultivate it back, it’s more like 80% to 79.9%. Tiny at first, barely noticeable, but if you aren’t careful, it can ruin you.

I decided to do my best to get a better cultivation technique. I really wanted to break into Martial Master this lifetime, so I wasn’t going to put my future at risk for little gain.

At the end of the three-month mark, I was happy. I paid my rent and had a good sum of contribution points to spare.

I could pop out five pills a day, and at least half were High-Purity. Each day I was making 40 points, give or take. Of course, this only lasted for six days before my special points ran out. Then, I had to make up for ingredient costs out of my profits. Still, I was managing 15 a day profit. At the end of the first three months, I had racked up a total of about 500 contribution points.

This seemed almost too easy. Two more months and I would get my hands on that High-Yellow cultivation technique. It was just a matter of time. I wasn’t sure why everyone didn’t get the High-Yellow technique by the end of their first year.

“Because it’s too hard!” said Bao when I asked. “Look, most people move up one step at a time. They start with the free technique, then go to Low, then Mid. Learning the extra complications that come with a higher-level technique takes time and energy, and we usually spend that on alchemy.”

“But, a better technique means better alchemy, right?”

“Yes, but there’s another thing. By the time most people have mastered the Mid-Yellow technique they are already Peak Disciples and are ready to advance to master. Most of them wouldn’t be willing to hang around at low levels to try and gain money like you.”

I guess I could see it. Seemed like a mistake to me, but it’s their life.

“Anyway,” Bao shifted the conversation, “are you going to the tournament? It’s going to be great this year. There are even a few new disciples that entered the same time you did that will be competing!”

“What tournament?”

“Argh, you spend too much time working. You need to socialize more! It’s the yearly tournament to determine who is going to move up to outer sect disciple. There will be dozens of people competing but only the top five will be promoted! Not only that, the prize for the top three is the opportunity to become a Master Alchemist!”

“What? How can becoming a Master Alchemist be a prize?”

Bao gave a dramatic sigh. “To become a Master Alchemist, you need to bind a spirit flame. It’s nearly impossible to create rank 2 pills without one. The top three will be given spirit flames. Since they are already the best of the best as Disciple Alchemists, getting a spirit flame is a guaranteed promotion to Master Alchemist! This is, like, the only chance we will ever get to advance. Making it into the top three is jumping over the Dragon Gate!”

Bao didn’t let me decline the invitation. He grabbed my arm and physically dragged me to watch the tournament with him.

We entered a large stadium with seating that wrapped around the field below. Bao’s tickets were for seats high up, away from the action, though at least we would be facing the contests’ fronts instead of looking at them from behind.

“Wow, this place is huge. It would be great for sporting events. Do they have sports here?” I asked. I looked at the workbenches set up on the field and suddenly asked, “Only 100 places? Do only 100 people get to compete for outer sect disciple?”

“Brother Su, my man, we have got to get you out more. What have you been doing? Cultivating and working all day? You need a hobby,” Bao said with a sigh of resignation. “Yes, there are sports events held here. Many of them in fact, which you would know if you paid any attention to what was going on. And no, the preliminaries have been being held for a month now. Thousands of high-level nominal disciples tried and were eliminated.”

“Oh, really?” I asked sheepishly. “So, uh, what’s the test like?”

“Alright, so, the prelims were crazy,” Bao said, starting to get excited again. “Everyone was given a pill recipe that no one had ever seen before. To pass, you had to make a pill, but it didn’t matter if it was a trash pill. You just had to form a pill successfully. The top 100 were then based on its medicinal efficacy. The guy who came in at number 100? His efficacy was only 22%! That pill was brutal.””

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Bao shook his head in mock sympathy.

“Today’s final will be much tamer. I bet there are hundreds of people cursing the fact that the test for the final wasn’t used in the prelims,” Bao said laughing. “Today, the contestants just need to make five Superior Qi Gathering Pills, something all of them have done countless times. The final results will be based on the total medicinal efficacy of the pills. Of course, only High-Purity pills count, anything below that will be thrown out.”

“Only High? What if someone makes a Perfect pill?”

Bao guffawed. “If anyone down there makes even a single Perfect pill they will probably be sent to the inner sect immediately, not to mention the outer sect. A Disciple Alchemist making a Perfect Superior Qi Gatherer? That doesn’t happen.”

The tournament was fascinating.

The recipe for the Superior pills was no secret. I had learned it my first month here. The base of the pill was still a blue peony. For an Improved, you added astragalus root. To make it Superior, you also added schisandra berries. Everyone knew the ingredients, but making it was a different story.

I watched as the contestants carefully trimmed the astragalus so that the resultant medicinal strength correctly complemented the peony. After that, most of the people ranked lower down began slowly peeling the schisandra berries. The skin was pure pill toxin, so they wanted to remove it first. Those who were higher ranked didn’t bother. They would burn away the skin in the cauldron.

As they began concocting, qi flowed like water. Where I used my qi as a shell to slowly melt away the toxins, theirs acted like scalpels and spears, ruthlessly cutting and hacking it away.

Every person had to make five pills, so the competition took hours, but I couldn’t look away for a single moment. I felt I was watching master painters create their Mona Lisas.

The final result was staggering. Even the worst of the champions had made five High-Purity pills, all with medicinal efficacy above 90%. As for the woman who took first place? Her total efficacy was 482! She had made three at 96% and two at 97%! I had never even gotten close to those kinds of numbers when making just the most basic pills.

The skill of these competitors was far beyond anything I was capable of.

After the tournament, I sat in contemplation. I was really glad Bao had dragged me here. Watching a group of alchemists who were much more skilled than myself showed me how much I was lacking.

I had been watching from far enough away that I couldn’t clearly see what they were doing, and even if I could have seen it clearly, I still wouldn’t have understood why they did what they did. Still, even from what I could see, it was obvious to me that they all had masterful control of fire qi. Even the people who were eliminated early had skills far, far above what I did.

This wasn’t about knowledge or techniques. It was pure basic skill. Like how a professional athlete, without doing any special tricks or fancy moves, would be able to crush an amateur with basic fundamentals.

“Brother Bao,” I said, “I need to improve my qi control. I was told I should work on improving my innate skill with it instead of relying on techniques. Do you know any way to do that?”

“Working on your control? Sure, that’s easy enough. Come with me.”

Bao took me to the Provisions Hall. In the past, the area I had entered was just a small room with a single counter. Turns out, that was just an express store for picking up ingredients. I thought the rest of the building was a warehouse of some kind, but there was also a large store for miscellaneous goods. Before, I had been so focused on the task at hand that I walked right by it.

Bao explained that this store sold most random things you might need. It had the cultivation mats he had mentioned when we first met, it had more comfortable sleeping rolls—it even had books and games for entertainment during downtime.

Our focus was on a set of shelves that contained an awe-inspiring number of what looked to be nothing more than index cards. The packets were sectioned off in a grid-like pattern of five rows and four columns.

"These are something the servant disciples get paid to make. I hear it’s a real pain to do. Each pack contains fifty cards,” he said, grabbing a pack from the group on the top left. “These are to help you learn accuracy. The top row is easiest, bottom row is hardest. Each column is a different skill. Accuracy, insulation, speed, and power. Most people would say the skills get harder as you move from left to right, but that really depends on the person.”

“Let’s go buy these and I’ll show you how they work,” he said, picking up a pack from the top left and moving towards the counter.

Bao offered to pay, but I had a decent reserve built up at this point, so I declined his offer. He wanted to fight me over it, but after explaining that his help was enough, he finally relented.

We took the cards back to our apartment and he began to explain.

“Alright, the top card is going to be the simplest, so it’s a good place to start. Take a look.”

He showed me a card of white paper with a thick black line horizontally down the middle.

“I’m not sure if it was originally a joke or not, but the first few cards are just numbers. Anyway, this is to help you practice accuracy. You want to channel qi from your body and into the card. Your goal is to burn away the black line. You have to be careful. If your qi touches the white part of the card, the entire thing will turn to ashes in a flash. This level isn’t too sensitive. You might get away with burning the white a little, but the higher the difficulty the more sensitive the paper and the more complex the pattern.”

He flipped through the cards, showing me a few of the different designs.

“You’re only Martial Disciple 2, so you don’t have much qi in your body yet. That’s one of the nice things about this set of cards, it barely takes any qi. Just keep a light, steady touch and focus on where you send it. If you were to try some of the other skills, you might need to supplement your qi with natural fire, and I don’t recommend that. Stick with this skill for now and start on the others when you are a higher level.”

I sat down and started working on the first card.

When I made Qi Gathering Pills, my basic process was to create a rough shell of qi around the flower then molding it into shape, slowly moving it between areas to burn away the chaotic qi taint evenly. I tried the same process with this card.

I started from the center. I could freely push qi there without worrying about hitting the white border. Slowly I massaged the qi to the borders, first the top and bottom, then the sides. My qi spread through the card like a highly eccentric oval. I was able to cleanly remove the black paper along nearly all the sides.

The problem was the shape on the card was a rectangle with sharp corners. Getting flush with the sides was easy, the corners were a different story. As my qi approached the corners, I kept stopping and pulling back. The more I tried to form it into a right angle, the more I lost control. Eventually, I slipped. The entire card flashed and turned to ash.

“Hey, that was pretty good,” said Bao. “I didn’t get near that far my first time. Just keep trying, you’ll get the hang of it. One suggestion though. Your qi is covering a pretty thick area at any one time, so you have to try to shape it into hard lines. That can be difficult, as you just saw. It’s good to practice that, but you might want to start with a narrow band of qi. Think of it like a thin tea knife, or like a long needle. Burn just a tiny part at a time. It will be a lot more work to do the sides like that, but it will be great for the corners.”

He used his qi to demonstrate his meaning.

“In the end, you will be working on doing it both ways, but I think starting with a narrow beam will probably be easier for you.”

“Thank you, Brother Bao,” I said with a nod of gratitude.

“Hey, you’re treating me like a stranger now. This is what I should do for my brother!”