Alex felt confident that this was it. He had tried so many different recipes and so many different ingredients, but none of them felt as good as the current one he was making.
After a dozen minutes or so of making the pill, Alex was done with it.
He brought out the pill and ate it without any hesitation. Since the pill did nothing to harm his dantian or meridians, he showed no fear of what else it could do.
Since he already knew it was a pill that affected one’s mind, he had no reason to worry about the rest of his body.
Alex closed his eyes and let the pill affect him. As he let it do its thing, he slowly felt his head grow heavy and drowsy, as if he wanted to sleep right away.
However, instead of falling asleep, he simply just fell into a trance. He didn’t realize that he had fallen into a trance and let his mind freely wander about the many things it had to think about.
He was suddenly woken up by loud banging on his door.
Alex slowly opened his eyes, confused for a second as to where he was. ‘My alchemy room? What was I doing… right, the pill.’ He started remembering bits and pieces from when he had made his pills.
The doors were banged on once more, pulling Alex’s attention toward it from the pills. “Who is it?” he asked.
“Your Majesty, are you alright?” a voice spoke.
“Elder Yao?” Alex felt confused. “Is that you?”
“Your Majesty, please open the door,” the old woman sounded desperate.
Alex quickly stood up and opened the door to find Linlin and many of the elders outside his door, confusing him even more. “Is… everything alright?” he asked.
“That’s what we should be asking you, your Majesty,” the elders said. “Are you alright? Are you hurt? Is your cultivation base alright?”
“My cultivation base?” Alex looked at them weirdly. “It’s fine. Why wouldn’t it be fine?”
The elders were the ones confused this time around. “Then, did you break through? I can’t sense any change,” Yao Ning said.
“I didn’t break through,” Alex said. “What is going on with you people? Just say what you want directly.”
“You failed to comprehend a Dao,” a voice spoke from the hallway. Scarlet walked up to his room as well, and everyone moved to make way for her.
Alex was surprised when he heard that. “I… failed to comprehend a Dao?” he asked.
Scarlet nodded. “These people are mistaking the worldly laws dropping for you breaking through,” she said. “What happened? Was your comprehension not enough?”
“Comprehension? I don’t know,” Alex said. “I didn’t even realize I was learning a dao at all. I just ate my new pill and… Ah, I must’ve fallen into a trance.”
The crowd looked at him with surprised faces.
“You can all return without worrying. I’ll see you in the throne room in the evening,” Alex said.
“Your Majesty,” Linlin spoke. “It’s midnight right now.”
“What?” Alex looked at them with a surprised look on his face. “Did… did I fall in a trance for 12 hours?”
They all nodded. “It was around evening time that the worldly laws descended and only left a couple of minutes ago,” Scarlet said.
“I see,” Alex said. ‘I was learning a Dao? How come I didn’t realize it at all?’
“Your Majesty,” one of the elders called out. “Did you say… you made a pill?”
Alex smiled. “Yes, I made a pill to help you all learn Dao,” he said. “It won’t help you comprehend dao, but it will help you fall into a trance which will make it very easy for you to proceed from there. I will improve it in the next 2 days and then start making a bunch of it. Once I’m done, I will hand over the recipe to Jai Heiyun, and she can start making them for the rest.”
“Your Majesty!” the elders smiled the biggest they had in a while as they bowed many times over.
“Alright, alright. Go back. I’m sorry for disturbing you all at midnight,” Alex said, sending them away.
Scarlet stayed behind and walked into the room. “What Dao was it?” she asked. “It felt profound, way more profound than any Fire dao I’ve learned.”
“I think it’s the Dao of Technique,” Alex said. “I don’t know what else it could be if not it.”
p
“Is that so?” Alex said. “You don’t know it, do you?”
“I could never begin to try and learn that dao. One has to either be very talented, very dedicated or have a large amount of free time on their hand, which I never did,” Scarlet said.
“I see,” Alex said. “Well, I’ll make sure to give you the best pills so you can learn the True Fire Dao sometime soon.”
“I wish,” Scarlet said. “Rest for now and focus on that pill. I will take care of the rest of the stuff for the next week.”
Alex nodded and watched Scarlet leave. Once she was gone, he closed his eyes and sat in front of the furnace as he tried to remember what he was thinking when he had fallen in the trance.
A few pieces of information came floating back to him, a few thoughts he most likely had when he was in a trance. ‘I was definitely thinking about the Dao of techniques,’ he thought. ‘And from the sound of it, I was close to learning it too. Did I make a mistake somewhere, or…’
A thought came to Alex. “Was the pill I made perhaps not potent enough?” he thought. “Did I wake up a bit too early? Thinking back on it, what percentage was the pill’s harmony even?”
He had been in so much of a hurry that he hadn’t cared about the little things that he should have.
“Whatever, I will focus on improving the recipe for now,” he thought. He stopped thinking about the pill and Dao and started cultivating for the rest of the night.
He woke up late in the morning, but that did not stop him from immediately starting on the pill. With the ingredients and recipe practically carved into his brain, he easily improved the recipe after a couple of tries.
The perfect recipe was written down on a talisman 2 days later as Alex finally finished refining it to its highest potential.
Once he was done, he rested for a while longer to restore his cultivation base. Once his cultivation base was back, he wasted no time and started making pills one by one.
That day, lightning struck the palace over a hundred times. The people in the city would look toward the palace every time the lightning struck, but instead of being scared, they would smile.
‘His Majesty is making another perfect pill,’ they would think everything the lightning struck the palace.
The elders and the rest waited for the lightning bolts to stop dropping. The moment it stopped, they all excitedly waited for their King to come out.
After all, he had finally finished making the pill that would help them learn some precious Dao.
