Han Yu blinked.
"...So, it’s a taphorical poison? Like killing intent? Or maybe even soul resonance? Perhaps even a qi skill imbued into this?"
If that was true, then maybe he didn’t need real poison at all. Maybe he just needed a concentrated emotional intent—rage, hate, sorrow—sothing powerful enough to coat the Soul Qi with a "venomous" edge.
He sat down and concentrated again, recalling the feeling he had when he lost control during cultivation, when anger or desperation sharpened his soul. Then he shaped the Soul Qi around his finger again—but this ti, he filled it with intent.
A cutting, twisting kind of will. Not to paralyze, not to heal—but to wound.
He jabbed it at a blank scroll laid in front of him.
The scroll twitched. The ink upon it shimred, then cracked as if seared from the inside.
Han Yu leaned back, eyes wide.
"No poison. Just intent."
That changed everything.
This technique wasn’t just a weapon. It was a ssage. It ant he could influence others not just with qi, but with the very weight of his soul.
And that... that was terrifyingly powerful.
He chuckled to himself, lying back on the wooden floor of the inn, arms behind his head.
"Now that’s so unique alchemy," he whispered. "Needles that heal... or sting."
Outside, the chicken clucked triumphantly atop a fencepost, having just defeated a stubborn beetle. Inside, Han Yu smiled at the ceiling, already imagining the chaos he could cause once he mastered this technique.
"Next step," he muttered, "figure out how to sneak this into a handshake."
A while later...
Han Yu sat cross-legged on the bed in his inn room, flipping through the newly purchased book. The front cover read, in neat but unimaginative calligraphy:
"A Life of Elixirs: The Curious Tale of the Needle Finger Alchemist"
The na alone sent a flicker of excitent through his chest. Now that he knew the man had dabbled—if not outright pioneered—in the use of Soul Qi in this world, Han Yu couldn’t help but feel the itch of curiosity crawling up his spine.
Who was this mysterious alchemist?
Why did his techniques seem more suited to a healer or poisoner than a proper pill-refiner?
He hadn’t learned much from Li i either, and that in itself was suspicious. Li i loved bragging about obscure alchemists. The fact that she had only ever ntioned the Needle Finger Alchemist in passing—calling him "so lunatic who poked people to fix things"—was baffling in hindsight.
But now Han Yu had more than vague hearsay and an overpriced musty book to work with. He had the biography, and judging by its modest cost—a single Spirit Stone—it probably wasn’t anything groundbreaking, but perhaps it would give him so insight into the odd path this alchemist had walked.
He opened the book and began reading.
The early Chapters were exactly what he expected. The Needle Finger Alchemist, whose real na was Lin Shao Deng, had apparently been born in a small village known for its dicinal herbs.
He displayed extraordinary perception and comprehension of dicinal properties at an early age. By the ti he was sixteen, he’d been accepted into a minor alchemy sect and by twenty, he’d shocked his peers by producing a near-perfect tier-three healing pill without the aid of a cauldron.
Han Yu blinked. ’Without a cauldron?’
He flipped back and reread that part.
Yup. The guy crushed herbs in his hand, used his own qi to guide the mixture, and apparently "patted" the final concoction into pill form.
He could seemingly extract the impurities or essence of herbs simply by using his hands, or even alter their properties as he wished.
So called it genius. Others called it insanity. One elder reportedly called it "a horrifying display of disrespect to the sacred art of pill refinent" before promptly choking on a faulty detox pill.
Han Yu snorted. "Okay, definitely a madman."
As he kept reading, things got even stranger. Lin Shao Deng eventually left the sect, complaining that cauldrons were "too noisy" and that he preferred the feel of the herbs in his own hands. He wandered for years, traveling between remote villages, not refining pills in the traditional way, but instead poking people.
Literally.
Han Yu furrowed his brow. "He poked people into healing?"
Apparently, yes.
He’d developed a reputation for using his fingers to ’stitch’ qi flows back together, fix damaged ridians, or even induce breakthrough states in patients by unblocking their latent qi nodes.
Locals dubbed him the Needle Finger Alchemist, half in admiration, half in confusion. He never stayed in one place long. He often vanished into the wilderness, gathering herbs, ditating under strange stars, and developing unorthodox theories about qi flow, spiritual resonance, and what he called "The True Essence of Man."
Han Yu’s eyebrows rose at the phrase. That was what the old book had ntioned—what the Needle Finger Alchemist had called the Soul Qi he stumbled upon after that failed comprehension pill.
The book even ntioned that so people saw Lin Shao Deng not only poking people and animals but even plants. They found it strange and had no idea what he was doing. The man simply said that he was feeling the True Essence of the plants.
’Did he use the Finger Needle Skills on the plants too?’ Han Yu wondered.
He had already read he could make pills without a cauldron even before he figured out how to use Soul Qi. This ant that he probably went ahead and enhanced his thods using the Finger Needle Skills to directly remove the impurities of a herb or perhaps even modify them the sa way.
"So this is how he actually used it for alchemy. Now it makes sense." Han Yu did find it ingenious.
After all, half the alchemy process was extracting the essence of herbs and purifying the impurities. There were countless thods dedicated to it and every talented alchemist might make their own. And this was just one part of the alchemy process there were multiple more steps.
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