Day 15, 4th Month of the Lunar Calendar, 6000th Year of the Yun Dynasty, Shuishang Province, Huadu Sect
It was a rather stinky morning.
And no, it wasn’t because of the fresh fertiliser someone thought belonged in a spiritual herb garden. And no, not even due to that abominable, nose-hair-singeing herbal brew concocted by a group of overly enthusiastic classmates who mistook ‘alchemy’ for ‘poison tasting.’ Although both of those things would have been fun.
No. It was a stinky day because it was the annual alchemist examination.
Exams and I had what could best be described as a mutually toxic relationship. Some days, the paper would mock me with smug blank spaces. Other days, I’d rip through those tests like a gale through paper lanterns.
I also never understood the point of exams. Ninety-nine percent of the time (and that was me being generous), they tested nothing we’d actually learned. Instead, they measured how well we could outwit the system. We weren’t proving our knowledge. We were proving how good we were at memorising loopholes.
Still, the real rot at the core of the system? Exam days themselves.
Even if I studied, even if I meditated and burned ten sticks of peach blossom incense for peace of mind, exam days always found new and creative ways to slap me in the face. It wasn’t just the creeping dread or the oh-so-predictable class-wide panic attack when answers got discussed.
No, it was the people. People changed faces on exam days. Annoying brats turned into simpering angels. The aloof became social butterflies. And the fakes? They grew tenfold.
From years of extremely unpleasant data collection, I had successfully divided my classmates into four main types:
- The worry freaks who had heart palpitations if they didn't highlight in five colours.
- The know-it-alls who recited textbook pages like religious scripture.
- The couldn’t-care-less who failed all formatives and scraped through the summative assessments.
- And then there was me. The unfortunate one everyone interrogated for last-minute answers, even though I clearly wanted to be left alone with my scroll and inner peace.
No one in class liked me. Not really.
Except for Xiao Wu, but he liked everyone, so it didn’t count.
As for gossip? Taishan’s rumour mill ran on spiritual energy and pure spite. Shuishang Sect hung out dirty laundry in a full-blown mosaic; gossip refined to perfection. Every week I was somehow the centre of some fantastical nonsense. Once, I was allegedly dating three professors. Another time, I’d supposedly bribed a spirit fox to sit my exams.
But come exam season and suddenly, I would be everyone’s best friend. Wide eyes, sticky smiles, and arms full of bribes—snacks, ink, even a flower blossom hairpin. Ridiculous. If they wanted to bribe me properly, bring me a grimoire or at least a special manual. The worst kind of people weren’t the rude or the mean. It was the fake. Fake smiles. Fake manners. Fake alliances. And I had a long-standing policy on how to deal with fake people: avoid them, and if they refused to be avoided…ignore them.
I crossed my arms and surveyed the sea of bobbing heads drifting toward me like a hungry tide.
With a sigh, I returned to my bamboo scroll, feigning deep study. My eyes skimmed the same line for the sixth time. The characters bled across the page like tangled river paths. Ink splotches bloomed like bruises across the worn yellow surface. I smirked. Ju Ying would have fainted if she saw my handwriting.
I flinched as a hand contacted my back.
A doll-like face, caked with every kind of skin cosmetic in Huadu Sect, appeared in my vision, a sheepish grin on her face. Her lips were dyed a strawberry-red and juxtaposed quite poorly with her yellowing teeth, as I watched her open-and-close her mouth repeatedly. She was probably asking some incredibly pertinent question, and it was clearer that this exam had some major significance to her—which fully explained why she had time to do her face.
I didn’t respond.
Just stared pointedly at the same sentence, willing her to retreat.
At some point, feigning study grew boring too. And my arms ached from holding up the bamboo scroll. I lowered the scroll and stretched out my arms. My wrists still ached from that other morning, a week ago.
After my brilliant idea of sneaking into the Imperial Alchemist Guild to poke around for information on my cursed Seals. It had been Lao Zhe’s recommendation. Still, it was stupid of me to go there alone, even though I had weighed up the high likelihood that no one would be awake in the early hours of the morning.
Surprise: someone was.
A book-loving scholar. Or a dedicated martial artist. Or more likely, some high-level demigod in disguise. The six-foot man had punched me—yes, punched me—, locked me into a choke, and resisted my acupuncture technique, which should’ve paralysed a mid-tier cultivator.
And it should’ve paralysed that man. Moments before I decided to hijack him, I had assessed his spiritual presence, and it wasn’t more than a tier-four. If I’d known he’d tank the hit like it was a love tap from a toddler, I’d have bailed long before.
So, praise the heavens he’d fallen for my bluff, because if he hadn’t…well, let’s just say I’m glad he did.
Such a shame though. I would’ve loved to hold those books a little longer. Especially the one on Meridian Seal Poisons.
I flapped my arms like a startled bird, trying to shake off the residual ache.
As I did this, a frightening silence fell upon the class. The flood of heads quickly scattered from my desk, and the flickering of cloth robes were the only sounds to be heard.
Blossom Chief Ju had entered.
She wore robes of frost-petaled silk, sleeves trailing like breath across a mirror. In one hand, she carried a white scroll bound with vermillion ribbon and gold knobs. And Taishan’s red wax seal.
“Welcome to Taishan’s annual alchemist examination,” she announced. Her voice carried the dry edge of someone who had graded too many scrolls and trusted no one. “Those who pass will be granted entrance into the Imperial Alchemist Guild.”
Ah yes. The dream dangled at the end of every desperate scholar’s nose like a sweet fruit just out of reach.
The Guild. The golden gates. The promise of silk stipends, celestial-grade furnaces, and the kind of legitimacy that could wipe away family debts in a single appointment letter.
Awe bloomed across a few faces; mostly the newer cultivators. The ones still blessed with optimism. Poor things. Their eyes glittered with unprocessed hope, like porcelain teacups right before an earthquake.
I did not share their excitement.
“This year’s exam,” she continued, “will consist of two parts: a written test, followed by a practical. You have until six sticks of incense burn to complete the written component.” She rustled the scroll. “Anyone scoring below eighty-five percent will not be allowed to proceed.”
The awe was replaced with grim murmurs that rumbled through the classroom like a distant thunder warning us of incoming doom. The kind of noise only possible when forty different dreams were all being quietly suffocated at the same time
I was too tired to make any kind of reaction.
It wasn’t tired in the way that could be cured by tea or a good nap. No. This was the fatigue of someone who had seen enough exams to know that this one wasn’t about alchemy.
Not really. It was about politics.
As if to prove my point, she shook the scroll again, drawing my attention to the red wax seal that stained the white pages.
She took a breath as her gaze found me. For some reason, a deep feeling of dread began rolling through my intestines like a lazy dog.
At last, she untied the ribbon of the scroll, then paused—again. Her shoulders drew back. “As you are aware,” she said, “only alchemists who meet certain requirements are eligible. This year, the following names have been approved.”
She started reading through the list. I waited.
Then she said my name. Just a fraction of a beat too slow. But loud enough for me to notice.
Since I became of age, I had never been allowed to enter. Ju Ying had always fudged the results of the Blossom Cultivation Contest, which was the only method Taishan used to select examinees. This year, however—with my ruckus in Taishan and drawing the Empress’ personal attention twice—there was no way I could evade being selected. Although, I’d rather die than admit that she was right.
The list concluded. She rolled the scroll with mechanical precision and gave a tight, practiced smile.
“Good luck,” she said.
***
After being escorted to the exam hall by a stiff-faced disciple who clearly hadn’t smiled since the last dynasty, I took a seat in front of a desk as blank as the future of half the students here.
A stone of freshly ground ink sat to the left, glistening like some dark, all-knowing pool of misery. Three horse-haired brushes— most definitely premium grade judging by the smooth contour of the brush handle and shine of the bristles—were arranged beside it like ceremonial weapons awaiting their master. I picked one up and ran a thumb along the lacquered handle.
A beautiful tool. Too bad it was about to suffer.
I dipped the tip into ink and began the sacred rite of all students before me: handwriting.
The exam wasn’t hard. Not today. For once, the petty examiners behind the curtain had decided to be charitable. Theory had always been my friend. Theory was predictable. It involved memorising the correct concoction of herbs and reciting that. It wasn’t knowledge, really. It was simply the art of regurgitation.
But of course, this was all just the first act.
Because practical exams? Those were forged in the deepest abyss of the netherworld, hand-signed by demons, and approved by sadists who were likely child prodigies. The written test lulled us with warm tea. The practical would beat us with the teapot.
They encouraged chaos—trials no sane alchemist would ever attempt in real life, involving ill-matched ingredients, unpredictable spiritual reactions, and heat levels that melted self-worth. Last year? Not a single soul passed the practical, much to the disappointment of Taishan and the embarrassment of Shuishang.
As for Zhouwei Province…tragedy had turned to comedy. Their top scorers from Yuyan Sect hadn’t even made it past the written component.
This year was our political stand and pressure bored down on us like there was no tomorrow. If nobody passed again, Ju Ying’s head would be sent rolling, and her intestines left fluttering like festive streamers from the rafters. Dramatic? Certainly. But we were in Taishan, which made it absolutely plausible.
And I didn’t want to see that happen. Not because I particularly liked her, but because no one deserved to die like that.
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I placed down the brush on the jade holder.
Gathering my scrolls with the reverence of a scholar carrying the last bread in a famine, I rose from my seat and tiptoed toward the front. Two and a half incense sticks still flickered at the altar, waiting to die more gracefully than most test-takers.
The invigilator sat like a fossil in an official robe, skin sagging under decades of ink dust. I handed him my paper. He didn’t even look at me. Just raised one massive, caterpillar-shaped eyebrow and flipped through the booklet with the enthusiasm of someone checking rice receipts.
Page one. Page two. Yawn.
Page four—
That’s my cue.
His hand stopped mid-flipping. The eunuch slowly placed the scroll down, as if it had grown teeth, and his eyes skittered across the paper like startled mice, then flicked up to the name on the front.
He ran a wrinkled finger across it.
An odd expression took shape.
“You completed the paper?” he said.
I inclined my head. “Yes, sir.”
***
The examinees were better this year. Xiao Wu scored a clean ninety-eight percent—an outcome he would not stop serenading us with—and Ying Yue clocked in at a solid eighty-six. The rest weren’t completely hopeless either, most of them only missing the cut off by a hair’s breadth. And, in some baffling development, someone from Zhouwei’s Yuyan Sect had actually made the list. The wonders never ceased.
After the results were announced, the ‘snack pack’—Xiao Wu’s endearing term for our trio, which I had tried, and failed, to veto—was herded to a sun-scorched dirt field for the practical portion of the examination.
The arena was all yellow sandstone and dry heat, a miserable sandbox of suffering designed by someone with a vendetta against melanin. The sun dangled above us like a cruel joke, burning straight down with the kind of intensity that made your eyelashes sweat. Every pore on my body was leaking something. I shifted my weight and wiped the back of my neck, only to find more sweat waiting.
Delightful.
I glanced left. Ying Yue stood like a bean pole, with her hair pulled back in its usual fashion and legs stiff. Perhaps it was because of the heat but she resembled a disciplined oranda goldfish. Her usual tight braid had started to loosen, her red roots clinging to her forehead like a mop left out in the rain. With her round cheeks flushed and her brows lifted in sheer discomfort, she looked one slow blink away from asking to be fed.
I looked away before I laughed.
They’d spaced us apart like plague victims. Twenty metres between each contestant, a table for company, and a cauldron for shame. I was stranded in the centre of this amphitheatre of judgment, the nearest onlookers a hundred metres away and rising in tiers like waves in an angry sea. The cheers were little more than vibrations from this distance, like someone had shaken a beehive and shoved it into a shoebox. Bodies leapt, banners fluttered, and mouths moved, but no sound made it past the dead air between us.
I shielded my face. The ground glared at me. Literally. The sun bounced off the yellow stone with surgical precision, targeting my retinas with laser-like malice. I squinted—and that’s when I saw him.
Xiao Wu. Bouncing like a flea with a sugar rush. He waved both arms and bellowed my name like we were long-lost lovers in a tragic opera. I yelled back and flashed a thumbs up.
He mouthed: I’m the best alchemist!
Between the three of us, we totally looked the absolute business.
Except for one.
The Yuyan Sect representative watched us with the withering disdain of someone who had tasted vinegar and decided to make it a personality. His face was... something. Imagine a lemon peel abandoned in a drawer for two weeks, then slapped onto a face already halfway through an allergic reaction. Yellowing blisters ringed his eyes, some fresh and weeping, others crusted like overbaked pastry. Scars tangled around his arms like he'd been branded by a furious calligrapher.
And yet, despite looking like he'd lost a duel with a frying pan, he still managed to carry himself like a smug aristocrat.
He leaned over his table. It had the same setup as mine: rows of medicinal herbs, unidentifiable objects that I’d never used, and a single clay cauldron. He immediately shoved his nose into the herbs like a truffle pig. No wonder his skin looked the way it did.
I swiped a finger across my own cauldron. Why did I have to get this dusty, colourless, just utterly embarrassing thing? The thing looked like it had been exhumed from an archaeological dig. The Yuyan Sect’s representative had an orange jade coloured one. Ying Yue’s turquoise cauldron sparkled like an imperial wedding gift. Xiao Wu’s shimmered like a knight’s breastplate.
But mine? Beige. Cracked. And as I leaned in, the handle—offended by my presence—snapped clean off and smacked the table like a final insult.
I stared at it in silent betrayal.
“Welcome to the final test of the Guild’s Annual Exam!” A voice boomed from nowhere and everywhere all at once.
The air stilled. Even the heat seemed to pause, listening. Something about that voice tightened the skin along my arms.
“Today’s test is very simple. Within the time frame of three hours, create any tier-seven pill and you will be guaranteed a spot.”
Did they just say ‘tier-seven’?
Was that a joke? Tier-seven pills required experience, precision, and an unhealthy relationship with self-immolation. The most senior alchemists in our sect couldn’t produce them reliably. Even Qi Qi, a tier-nine alchemist, accidentally ruptured the ground beneath the cauldron when she attempted.
The voice laughed. A petty, smug, we-will-crush-you-like-ants kind of laugh.
Court politics had finally oozed into our exams like ink through thin paper. With the recent diplomatic flare-ups between Shuishang and Taishan, it was no surprise.
Still, I didn’t think they'd be this obvious.
They cleared their throat with as much drama as possible.
“Of course, of course. Who am I speaking to? The rabble.”
A chorus of snide laughter rippled through the crowd like a cracked whip.
“Our Imperial Alchemist Guild will show our generosity this year. As long as you produce a high-grade tier-five pill, we will accept it. But...” A pause. “If any of you can create a tier-seven pill, there will be rewards.”
Rewards?
REWARDS?
My ears practically twitched off my head. I wasn't the only one. The whole arena held its breath, as if the air had suddenly turned fizzy and sweet. Murmurs bubbled like a potion brought too fast to boil. Even the stones beneath us seemed to lean in.
Then the voice spoke again. And this time—it sang.
“The one-and-only: The Velvet Root Compendium.”
The Velvet Root Compendium?!
THE Velvet Root Compendium?!
Su Tang. Keep calm. Keep calm. There are lots of fakes going around. There is no way—
The artefact materialised in the centre of the courtyard.
The one bound in midnight bark.
The one inked with crushed moon orchid.
The one with breathing pages that sighed when you flipped them.
It wasn’t just a book. It was the book. The whisper-on-the-wind book. The sunlit-in-a-sealed-cellar book. The I-heard-my-master’s-master’s-master-once-touched-the-corner-of-it-with-a-gloved-hand-and-then-wept book.
If The Thousand Petals Diary was considered a jewel, The Velvet Root Compendium was a diamond.
“Hush, hush,” said the voice, now oozing sugar. “The exam begins! Start the clock!”
An incense stick flared to life. The smell of burnt ash curled in the air like a warning.
And everyone snapped into motion like obedient puppets pulling from memory. Herbs flew. Flames lit. qi rippled across the court.
But I stood transfixed by her words.
My hands were shaking. My heart was slapping itself. My brain had turned into petals and was blowing away in a happy little storm.
I could feel it already. The scent of pressed herbs, the shimmer of age-old recipes hidden between metaphor and ink.
My fingers twitched with the need to touch. To see. To just—just be in the same room as it. I’d sell my best cauldron. I’d obey Ju Ying for a whole month if I could just read it once.
This wasn’t just a reward.
This was the Velvet Root Compendium.
I was going to win this exam if it killed me.
Quite literally I needed to.
I tugged my sleeve back. A grey line had begun to form on my inner forearm like a snake revealing its ugly head. This morning, Qi Qi had checked my pulse this morning and confirmed my worst fear.
I didn’t have answers to my Seals problem. But I was sure that The Velvet Root Compendium would. The Guild’s Library had been a dead end last week, sealed archives, missing manuscripts, and that unwanted encounter. And no one who wanted to see the sun tomorrow would openly talk about forbidden seals.
But if I could create a tier-seven pill…and if the Guild kept their word…perhaps I could hit two birds with one stone.
My fingers curled against the rim of my dusty cauldron.
It was reckless.
It was foolish.
It was my only chance.
So naturally, I took it. A tier-seven pill it would be.
I sniffed, staring at the cracked, pathetic thing that dared call itself a cauldron. There was no universe in which I could refine a tier-seven pill with this piece of junk. I’d have more luck using a soup ladle and prayer.
The only pill I knew that didn’t require crockery was the Restoring-Blood Pill—a tier-seven monstrosity with a difficulty level hovering somewhere between divine miracle and suicidal fantasy. A technique for geniuses.
Which I, famously, was not.
Not when it came to this. Last summer, Qi Qi had tried to teach me how to refine it. I, of course, had been too busy complaining about the chores Ju Ying had given me to pay attention. Because naturally, I assumed I’d never make it to tier-seven.
How poetic. Now look at me. About to summon death in the middle of a public arena because I didn’t listen to the one person who actually tried to help me.
Still. I remembered the ingredients. Twelve of them. Each had to be added in strict sequence according to their elemental rank. Each had to be refined in open air. The margin for error was non-existent.
And yes, obviously, I had practiced air refining before. It wasn’t like this was only the third time I was doing it.
...It was exactly the third time I was doing it.
And last time I’d barely scraped together a tier-four pill—with three ingredients.
Now I was trying to make something four times more complex, with quadruple the ingredients and a cracked memory of the technique. Brilliant.
I plucked the herbs, minerals, and roots one by one, setting them into a neat pile. Somewhere to my left, a sweet aroma, flaky and honeyed, drifted toward me. Xiao Wu. Only the high-grade tier-five Cloud-Walking Pills produced that smell. It brought me back to a warmer time, a kitchen-accident that had somehow ended in success. That day, we laughed so hard the stove broke.
Now here I was, quietly dying under the burning sun.
A wet explosion burst from the direction of the Yuyan Sect’s booth. Their representative shouted, then slammed his fists into the table. Smoke rose. I winced for him. That kind of mistake would probably haunt him and his sect until the next year.
Especially with only two and a half hours left.
I exhaled and raised my hand. A white flame bloomed into existence. It flared violently, searing the air in front of me. White flames ranked as the hottest of all the fires—the lowest was yellow, then amber, red, blue, black, and finally white—used in the refining process. As it burned brightly and hotly, only white flames could refine high quality medicines. Or if someone had a death wish.
The issue was never the heat. It was the hunger.
White flames devoured indiscriminately. If even for a second that the alchemist lost control, the untamed beast would claim their soul.
Which was why sane alchemists used floral bases to stabilise them. And what would be a better base than the king of all flowers—báilián, the White Lotus?
But given how much fuss and trouble the presence of báilián had attracted—I’m not denying that most of that was my fault—it wasn’t smart to bring it out so soon.
I’ll try without a floral base. For now.
I twisted my fingers, and the flame bloomed again, this time like a stubborn weed. Its tendrils reached for the pile of ingredients, licking the edges, forming a fiery shell around them.
The host’s voice rang out over the arena like nails on ceramic.
“Looky, looky! What do we have here? It seems one of our contestants has opted not to use a cauldron and has chosen to air-refine their pill. What skilful use of the unorthodox ancient technique!”
Shut up. My lips twitched downward. I needed silence, not commentary.
Beads of sweat squeezed out of my forehead, trickling down my hot cheeks and pooling at my jawline. Squinting, I furrowed my eyebrows and tightly pinched my lips. My fingers trembled as I controlled the fire, barely. The flame snarled in response, like a beast resenting its leash.
I turned my wrists, and the flame brightened. The glare of the flames smiled at the sight of me, twirling and swirling within the air like some dancing girl.
One hour passed. But I kept my hands locked in position.
A core began to form at the centre of the flames, a radiant pearl amidst a sea of fire.
Then it cracked.
A single line. Sharp. Ugly. The fracture crawled across the shell like a wound opening mid-battle. If it cracks anymore, it’s going to explode. I need to—
Pain bloomed in my chest, like a knife twisting inward. My hands were shaking uncontrollably now. I panted, trying to get some air into me. But I could feel my pulse slowing, and my lungs sinking.
The flames continued to burn.
I had become the flame.
I coughed and blood splattered onto my tongue.
I’m not going to be able to make it without it. It was now or never—whether the pill could be refined without cracks, relied on that dreaded flower.
Fine.
I swirled my left hand and called the flower forth. A white lotus bloomed at my fingertips. A thing made of memory and pain. My chest screamed. The vein on my left arm darkened, branching outward like roots creeping over a gravestone.
I didn’t look. I didn’t need to.
I violently hacked. And it felt like my head would rip apart. The blood that had been on my tongue now dribbled out of my mouth. All I could taste was a disgusting, overpowering metallic thing that coated my throat.
I need to finish this. Just hold on. Just hold on.
I opened my eyes.
With one clean movement, I stuffed the half-formed pill into the heart of the flower.