Molting the Mortal Coil

Sage didn’t go home until dawn the next morning.

He had only browsed through the material manuals so when it came to identifying the many incoming materials, Sage had to spend quite some time simply figuring out what everything was. The next problem was he had to accurately sort them by their age, potency, and condition.

Most Spirit Plants take massive amounts of time to mature. It was essentially the time it took different plants to cultivate. They drew in the energy of the heavens and earth, slowly converting it into Qi. Over time, just like cultivator’s physical bodies would get cleansed of its impurities and transformed into more powerful states. The older the Spirit Plant, the more powerful it would become.

Potency is related to the amount of sustaining nutrients and qi that the spirit plant absorbs during the growing period. It was like the difference between grass-fed organic and corn-fed barn raised beef. There was a huge difference between a plant that grows in the wilds for a thousand years versus the one rapidly raised by Farmers over only a couple years. Despite being matured essentially to the same cultivation level, those from the wilds will have far more time to absorb and digest the energy around them.

Condition relates to the manner in which the Spirit Plant is harvested, packaged and preserved. Just like regular vegetables, Spirit Plants would start to wilt. There was also the chance of being harvested incorrectly and ruining the effectiveness. Proper storage is incredibly important as even if harvested correctly the Spirit Plants can undergo drastic changes if stored in the wrong type of box. Not to mention losing their effectiveness, some types of container can even turn Spirit Plants into poison when stored incorrectly.

After identifying the type of Spirit Plant and sorting by age, potency, and condition. Sage then had to weigh and package them, followed by finally storing them and updating the records. If it wasn’t for the fact that there was only a dozen types of herbs and they were all mostly of similar ages and potency it would have taken him far longer. The majority of his time was spent looking things up and asking for advice from one of the other Alchemy Hall workers, but it still took him nearly a full day and night to do a job that was expected to take half a day.

He slept through the next day and returned to do his job again. The second time he again took the full day and night. The third was the same. It wasn’t until he’d been working there for nearly a full month before he was finally able to complete his tasks by midnight instead of dawn the next day. It took a full month before he began to truly learn and be confident with the spirit plants he saw often.

It was nearly half a year of studying before Sage finally became able to finish his duties in the time that the first job posting listed. He was now working a ten hour shift, three times a week rather than the punishing twenty four hour cram sessions he was spending before. That first week he had been switching between working 24 hours then resting 24 hours, squeezing in just enough time to keep from losing his sanity by spending time with his dormmates. He also spent much of his time cultivating and improved faster than he had in the last few years. It was far more peaceful and he actually had more time to spend on cultivating. Sadly, he still only increased one stage to level 26. A middling talent was only a middling talent after all.

One’s talent seemed to be mostly a measure of training speed. Each rank took exponentially longer to reach, and so low talent people were destined to take decades to reach middling ranks. Many reached a point where if they failed to reach a breakthrough in time they would die from old age. Each rank would increase a cultivator’s maximum life span so it became a race against time for most.

A few times during the next six months, Sage was forced to stay a full 24 hours again. Those were the rare times that a bunch of disciples or elders had either returned from missions to the outside or a secret area of some sort opened. Each time, the spirit plants they brought back were few in volume but large in variety. Each Spirit Plant had to be individually identified, categorized, packaged and stored. Instead of crates full of a dozen types of plants there was hundreds of individual plants with drastically different ages.

Besides those few circumstances, Sage finally felt he had time to work on other activities and he started back in on his Spirit Insect breeding activities, even building a storage room in his shared backyard to contain his insects. In order to coerce his three dormmate brothers he just offered them some Moon Honey from the Silverbee hive and they immediately agreed to the insect shack. He wasn’t about to share the Insect Immortal Index and he didn’t even know any other Insect Taming techniques, otherwise he might have gifted them some actual insects.

After three years, Sage was no longer a Stock Boy.

Finally able to perform his duties quickly, Sage was deemed to be ready for a more important job and one of the other workers recommended him as an Alchemist’s Assistant. He would be responsible for transporting, sorting, storing and retrieving materials for the Alchemist. They would stand to the side ready to fetch materials and do simple preparations and in return they could learn by observing the Alchemist. They receive no direct training from the Alchemist’s like a disciple, but even merely observing would teach plenty. If an assistant serves well they will be on the track to becoming an Alchemist’s disciple or at least an independent Apprentice Alchemist and join the Alchemist’s Hall.

In the first few months he was merely a general Alchemist’s assistant and would simply get hired on by whoever requested an assistant for the day. He wasn’t ever really trusted by these Alchemist’s, mostly being sent to deliver materials from the Alchemy Hall to the Alchemist’s house. Things only changed when his Spiritual Sense was discovered again. One of the Elders in the Alchemist Hall noticed his perception searching around inside the stockroom and added this note to his Assistant qualifications.

A few days later, Sage was signed on to be the full time Assistant to Alchemist Tang Deng. Tang Deng was working on pill formula that required constant adjustment to the refining flames while at the same time various formation arrays and qi techniques had to be performed. He was told it was a very difficult recipe that only the most skilled individuals, or whole groups of alchemists, could perform. Alchemist Tang had the idea of getting an assistant to do the somewhat simpler task of controlling the flames, allowing him to focus on the arrays and qi skills.

Sage was then given a Qi technique for controlling flames from Alchemist Tang and spent the next few weeks learning it. From there it took a few dozen tries before he was truly successful at using it and Alchemist Tang made the first attempt at the difficult pill formula. He’d attempted by himself many times so he was quite experienced and it took merely three attempts before true success. It showed how skilled Alchemist Tang was that it only took him three tries to properly synchronize with Sage and complete the pill. That was the only pill that took this special method but Alchemist Tang kept him around as a regular assistant afterwards. He had grown to enjoy Sage’s quiet nature, even though he required far more training before becoming a good assistant. There was quite a few types of basic refinements that he had to learn as well as a few more simple Qi techniques for messaging and controlling materials.