Alchemist In A Cultivation Realm

Chapter 6: Spirit Gardens

Alchemy was expensive. That was the first thing he’d realised over the last few days of his stay here. Not only did the spiritual herbs cost money, but so did having to refill his Qi using pills because of the meagre amount he had. It was a vicious cycle where each herb he wasted would also require him to use up a Qi refilling pill, increasing the cost of waste a ton.

Looking at the higher tier pills, all of them could need a lot of expensive materials, and the more potent the pill, the higher its chances of failure, increasing the costs of making the pill even higher.

In short, he needed money.

It was easier said than done. Outer disciples got paid a very small amount, as the sect itself provided for most of their needs as long as they remained in it. It made him think that the disciples would be a burden seeing how few were ever kicked out of the sect, if he wasn’t out here sweeping the ground for the past four hours. They were free labour. Wage slaves without any wage. It made sense they only kicked disciples out when they committed some crime that had been caught and brought to an Elder’s attention. Pretty much never.

Things got worse when he had a look at Yuan’s finances, finding barely enough money to get food for a couple of weeks. The money would last him much longer if he took his leave and settled in some countryside farm, but he refused to give up and turn to a life of labour so quickly. He couldn’t start experimenting if he didn’t have the resources, which would be far easier to find in the city.

Thus the problem turned into a vicious cycle, where he needed money to learn Alchemy to earn money to leave the sect and strike it out on his own.

“Eat something funny, Yuan? Your face is all scrunched up like you got a nasty stomach ache."

He turned to look at the other boy sweeping the ground next to him, his two crooked front teeth peeking from under his lips, almost like a rat. Su Lin was the boy’s name, one of the few outer sect disciples to be both on a lower realm than him, and of an older age. It made him wonder how he got accepted into the sect in the first place.

“Just recovering from the spar,” he replied offhandedly, as he returned his focus to sweeping the paths. There was a tinge of anger inside him, not an emotion he felt, but one born from Yuan’s memories. Yuan despised how Su Lin was content to live his life in the sect and do menial labour with no hopes of ever rising through the ranks. It went against everything Yuan had believed in.

“I told ya, the young masters were trouble. They got the Thunder-Phoenix bloodline, and the twin cultivation stuff. You can’t beat ’em even if they’re in the same realm as ya. That too, not for long I reckon,” Su Lin said, snickering once about something as he continued to sweep.

The jab at his bottleneck at the current realm was obvious, yet he couldn’t care less. Perhaps if Yuan was here, he’d have been fuming, but he found himself curious about the guy instead. He watched the lanky man. He was clearly old, not the oldest outer sect disciple around, but anyone who didn’t go past the first circle before turning twenty five usually ended up taking a job at the sect, or leaving. Yet for some reason, Su Lin seemed to stick around.

An idea began to bud in his mind as he walked over to Su Lin.

“How long have you been in the sect?” he asked, as the lanky man straightened a bit in surprise, his eyes scanning his face for any clues.

“Me? A decade? Dunno, been a while,” Su Lin said, with a slight frown as he looked down at him. He was taller, but not by much. He returned what he hoped was a friendly smile as he walked closer.

“So you’ve been here for a long time. You must know almost all the outer sect disciples then, perhaps even some inner sect ones?” he asked, trying to mask his question as idle curiosity.

“I do know a few, s’pose. What about it?” Su Lin asked, eyeing him from the corner of his eyes, his two crooked teeth visible.

Now was the difficult part. He had to create a narrative in Su Lin’s mind, without forcing the issue onto him. From an outsider’s perspective, he’d just lost a spar and had holed himself in for a couple of days, not talking to anyone. No one besides the Old Man really knew about his apprenticeship or the fact that he’d been devouring Alchemy textbooks and trying to set up experiments in the Old Man’s chamber. So to them, it would look like he’d taken his defeat quite harshly.

“Nothing, nothing, no big deal. It’s just… I was wondering, y’know? You’ve been here for so long, and even if we’re both outer sect disciples, you must get some respect for the time you’ve spent here serving the sect. The heavens may not bless us all equally, but hard work is valued equally.”

He kept his voice even, watching Su Lin’s reaction. He was obviously trying to flatter him and wasn’t even trying to hide it.

What he said was total bullshit. Age meant next to nothing, and the only measure of respect people gained was strength. It was a typical survival of the fittest world of a cultivation novel. And thus, he suspected there were two ways Su Lin would react to this. The first, and the disappointing one, would be where he just accepted the flattery, thinking he was genuinely trying to butter him up for a favour.

Not optimal, but he could still work with it.

The second, the thing he was aiming for, would be if Su Lin was not as dumb as he appeared. He had suspicions about his reasons for staying in the sect for next to no pay, working as wage labour even when offered a job. This was his way of trying to prod him into confirming those suspicions.

“A bit. You do get to know people with time, and they know you instead,” Su Lin replied, returning to his work.

A half answer then. Damn. At least this wasn’t the first option, so there was still a chance. He wasn’t great at this kind of subterfuge, but he had to try this time. His future hinged on it.

“So I was thinking. Do you know anyone who works in the spirit herbs garden?”