As far as Han Yu was concerned, he had no desire to ever see Gao Ren again. Especially not if the boy erged looking even more monstrous than before, infused with Earth Fla energy and muscles dense enough to bend swords on impact.
Besides, even if Gao Ren had been angry about the groin incident, he probably forgot about it ten minutes later. The more Han Yu observed and learned about him, the more he realized that Gao Ren... was simple.
Not stupid, exactly. Just... straightforward. He didn’t plot. He didn’t sche. He lived, trained, and fought in a straight line.
The kind of person who, if he had a grudge, would march into your courtyard and shout, "I’m angry!" before throwing a punch.
But he hadn’t done that.
"That ans I’m in the clear," Han Yu muttered, sipping from his teacup. "At least until he graduates from the Earth Fla sauna."
So where did that leave him?
Murong Xie was imprisoned in training. Gao Ren was slting himself underground. The other factional forces in the sect were quiet for now, perhaps cautious in the wake of the internal scandal.
That ant Han Yu had... ti.
Ti to cultivate.
Ti to advance.
Ti to make plans.
"Good," Han Yu said aloud. "It’s ti I turned my attention inward for a while."
He had been playing the shadows long enough. Now that the field was clear, he could finally focus on progressing his Soul Cultivation again. Perhaps refine more Eight Emotions techniques, or deepen his control over the Emotion Severing Slash.
Maybe even take a trip to so of the more difficult missions to gather rare materials for his Undying Life CHarm.
But most of all, Han Yu now had the luxury of building his influence. Quietly. Subtly. The Soul Path didn’t just require raw energy—it required understanding people, pulling strings, stirring emotions.
The more he thought about it, the more he realized that the next phase of his growth wouldn’t co from war...
...but from whispers.
And Han Yu was very, very good at whispers.
As Han Yu sat under the drifting blossoms, lost in his musing about cultivation plans and the strange peace that had finally settled over his life, a sudden thought struck him like a rogue lightning talisman.
He froze.
Then, very slowly, his eyes widened in realization.
"...Wait a minute."
He smacked himself lightly on the forehead.
"I wanted to be an alchemist, damn it!"
A crow cawed in the distance as if in judgnt, and Han Yu groaned, leaning forward as he buried his face into his hands.
How had he forgotten?
It wasn’t just a passing interest. That had been one of his earliest goals when joining the Twin Leaf Peak Sect or rather the Copper Cauldron Sect. Before all the intrigue, the Soul Qi, the mysterious altars, the assassins, and Murong Xie’s underhanded sches—before all of that—his dream had been alchemy.
"How did I even let that slip away?" he muttered.
Well... he knew how. Trouble. Endless trouble. Every ti he tried to focus on his own growth, sothing happened—a crisis, a new plot, a desperate escape, or a perfect opportunity he couldn’t ignore.
But now, for the first ti in ages, he had ti. Real ti. Peace. No knives behind the curtain. No investigations to tiptoe around. No wild beasts chasing him out of secret mines.
He took a deep breath.
"It’s now or never."
Of course, the path to becoming a real alchemist wasn’t simple.
Sure, he’d already taken a few baby steps. His long and occasionally dangerous association with Li i, the eccentric pill-maniac with a taste for chaos and explosions, had taught him more than most outer disciples ever got to learn.
He had watched her work, endured her tests (and survived), and even learned to identify the basics—herb combinations, pill-conception theory, and the dreaded "popping sound" that ant sothing had gone wrong in the furnace.
So he had a foundation. A small one. A volatile one. But a foundation nonetheless.
More importantly, he had Li i herself.
That thought made him grin.
"She’ll help ... if I bribe her with enough rare ingredients or let her use as a pill subject again."
She’d even once said, half-seriously and half with wild eyes, that he had a good "constitution for alchemical abuse."
That probably wasn’t a complint. But it counted for sothing.
Still, if Han Yu wanted to beco more than just a side-dabbling disciple who mixed low-grade pills in a backyard furnace, he’d have to do more.
He’d have to join the Alchemy Peak.
That was the only way to learn the true path of the cauldron—the ticulous techniques, the fla control thods, the spiritual resonance theory, the ethics of pill purity, and, of course, how to not accidentally blow oneself up while refining second-tier pills.
Alchemy wasn’t just an art. It was a discipline. A profession. And one of the most resource-intensive professions in the entire cultivation world. But one that also brought the most amount of profits.
To do it right, Han Yu needed more than just knowledge.
He needed:
A proper cauldron – not the rusty hand--down he once borrowed from Li i. A real, spiritually conductive cauldron could easily cost tens of thousands of rit points, and that was just the lower-end ones.
A Fla Array – controlled, regulated, able to heat cauldrons without burning the building down.
Refinent Rooms – which had dampening formations to suppress explosions, heat-lock arrays, and stabilized Qi fields that allowed for precise balance during pill shaping.
And then there were the ingredients.
Herbs weren’t free. Even the most common spiritual herbs used in beginner pills had to be harvested from spiritual farms, bought from the sect, or traded from outer cultivators.
Han Yu rubbed his forehead again. He could feel his rit points groaning.
"Alchemy Peak has all of that," he muttered. "Their own pill rooms, stabilized cauldrons, refining chambers, herb gardens, controlled fla rooms. They’re like a kingdom of their own."
But getting in?
"Easier said than done."
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