3 bar menu

Chapter 158

Grandmaster Bai stroked his beard in a rather satisfied way. He had just created a mutation improvement pill. It was morning time and he had spent the entire night working to complete it. He had found the recipe in a discarded journal left abandoned in the recesses of the Stride family library. Although they called themselves an alchemist family, they had never produced their grandmaster. Thus, they were in a current state of decline. In hopes of turning it around, they had paid the grandmaster richly to get him to move to Stormberg.

As a result, he was given a great deal of leeway. The elders could only smile and wring their hands as he lived like a king at their expense. He not only used their storage of ingredients which had taken them generations to procure, but he also lived on their estate, ate their food, and even diddled their woman. Of course, he never went for their young ladies, but as long as he never touched their bottom line, he could have his fill of serving girls and he had even enjoyed one of the distant cousins from a family branch.

That had been his most joyful conquest. She was a pretty young thing but had very little status in the family. She had only visited the main branch with the hope of getting medicine for her aging father. At Grandmaster Bai’s request, she remained for two weeks and serviced him every night. The only way it would have been more perfect was if her husband had taken the trip with her. Grandmaster Bai would just have to settle for imagining the look on his face when his wife returned to him after taking in another man’s shape.

Since that day, this was probably the second most rewarding day for him. He had discovered this recipe a few weeks ago. No one in the Stride family was proficient enough to recognize the recipe for what it was. Grandmaster Bai pocketed it and then collected the ingredients in secret. He couldn’t make his discovery too well-known right now or they might suspect the truth and demand it back. Even the Stride family might risk a falling out to obtain a new recipe. Grandmaster Bai was well aware of how cutthroat the alchemy business was.

No one was willing to share their recipes with others. Even within their own family, they wouldn’t teach some recipes to their disciples just in case they tried to betray them. The best pharmacologists kept their recipes to the grave, only living hints or clues for those who came after. This meant that for every generation, the recipes needed to be rediscovered, and those who did that were allowed to achieve wealth and fame. It didn’t matter whether this discovery came from hard work in the lab or by finding some lost legacy. A new recipe was a new recipe.

The recipes were so reclusive that Grandmaster Bai had been stuck as an alchemist, unable to be promoted, exactly because he lacked enough high-level recipes. This is why he eventually took the Stride offer. He needed more recipes. Of course, the Stride family had already let Grandmaster Bai have access to their entire library of recipes, but none of them were that remarkable. Many he already knew but might have used a few different ingredients, or their potency was weaker than something already out there.

This was the first recipe he obtained that was truly a high-level one. If someone took this pill shortly before evolution, it increased their chances of going through a positive mutation. Any family would kill for such pills, and a recipe for them would be considered priceless. It might even be enough that he could finally get promoted from alchemist. He’d start back over, losing his grandmaster title, but the difference between pharmacologist and alchemist was from two different worlds. He’d gladly trade this lofty status among mortals and paragon families for the lifestyle of an immortal.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

He tensed slightly until he remembered that the door was locked and he had told anyone who stopped by to knock before entering. He quickly placed his completed pill into a medicinal bottle and then stored it away. He also made sure to remove all of the traces of what he had been working on. Only when he was finished did he unlock and open the door. Standing outside was a man older than Grandmaster Bai.

“Senior,” He lowered his head in difference. “I’m here to follow up on the task you gave me.”

This was the current head of the local alchemy guild. Although he was older than Grandmaster Bai, he was a rank lower than him, so he had to address Grandmaster Bai as his senior. It was his and the entire guild of Stormberg’s honor that Grandmaster Bai should grace them with his presence. In truth, Grandmaster Bai looked down on all of them. He only agreed to do a few things so that he could take advantage of their laboratories, which were more private than the facilities offered by the Stride family. Still, they could be useful from time to time.

“Did you track down the bag of herbs stolen from me?” Grandmaster Bai asked.

That was perhaps one of his greatest losses since coming to Stormberg. Some random mortal had appeared in the Capala mythic store with a bag filled with extinct and dead plants. The old herbologist who ran the store had disregarded the man and his small treasure trove, but Grandmaster Bai knew better. The old man, as much as he irritated Grandmaster Bai, hadn’t been wrong in that the plants had lost all mana and were effectively useless to sell as ingredients. However, their value in the study wasn’t much less. Had the mortal taken them to the alchemy guild, he likely could have made several thousand kilowatts selling those plants.

However, he was just a foolish mortal, so Grandmaster Bai saw it fit to relieve him of the bag. He got the mortal drunk and then had some hired thugs steal it. Those thugs ended up being useless though, and they lost the bag to some hidden paragon. As far as Grandmaster Bai was concerned, those were his plants and they were stolen from him. Once he discovered which family the paragon belonged to, he would put pressure on them until his things were inevitably returned. After all, he had the power to cut anyone off from access to the guild. That was a death sentence for most families. Even the Stride family would suffer without a proper avenue to buy equipment and rare ingredients.

“Um… no, sir.” The old man at the door answered after a moment of embarrassment. “I meant about the examination results. You wanted me to grade them for you.”

Grandmaster’s frown deepened, but he did recall setting that exam into motion the previous day. He took particular notice of this exam because one of the two taking the exam had caught the interest of his disciple. Although he was paid to give lessons to the Stride family’s young masters, he only had one true disciple, Penelope Capala. She was both talented and beautiful. The Capala family was in a slump right now, but they used to control 40% of the market share of alchemy herbs in this province.

Unlike Stride’s decline, Capala still had their main family line, and it was known that any of their branches could be recovered instantly if they willed it. Thus, as far as Grandmaster Bai was concerned, the Capala family was much more advantageous to have a close relationship with. That was only one of the reasons that he decided to take her in as his disciple. The other reason was simply because of her personality.

She was a spoiled, foolish little girl who had never been allowed to grow up. As much as her father pushed his sons, he doted on his daughter, and the result was a woman who while intelligent, was also quite innocent. Grandmaster Bai liked defiling this type the most. He naturally doted on her now, but when the time came, he would sweep the rug out from under her feet. The naïve girl would panic, and then he’d be able to get her to do anything to cover up her misdeeds.

Grandmaster Bai could see it all so clearly. He’d give her some rare ingredients, setting her up to accidentally ruin them. Then, he would give her an obscene bill, something even her father might not be able to pay. With the right nudge and push, she would give herself to her trusted master in exchange for him covering up her mistakes. That’s right, Penelope was a flower he was grooming so he could pluck it at the right time.

So, when she asked him to take special note of this boy, he naturally would do everything in his power to let her feel she could depend on her teacher. At first, he had been jealous of this Spirit. He had only seen him briefly during the tournament as he hadn’t been watching it all that thoroughly, but he did make note of the poisons he used. Grandmaster Bai had tried to cure the poison from one of the young lords but had been unable to do so.

This was something he would never tell anyone, but the poison wasn’t cured by him. It had simply gone away after a certain length of time. Grandmaster Bai presumed it must have been a temporary poison, but he had to admit he wasn’t familiar with it. When he heard Spirit’s name again from his disciple, he was afraid she might have some kind of crush on him, seeing him as competition, a source from which love could grow, making his plans for her more difficult to follow through with.

However, after interrogating her closely, she didn’t seem to have any interest in the boy. She simply wanted him to fail. Grandmaster Bai didn’t know the reasons, but he also didn’t care. He had swapped his test out with a much harder exam, and that should settle things with him. So, it was only the girl worth mentioning.

“The youngest Stride lady… that’s right, I told her I’d allow her to sit in on her brother’s lessons if she can pass the basic requirement.” Grandmaster Bai reminisced, thinking that her legs were rather nice to look at.

“Diana Stride?” The master blinked. “Yes… um, she did manage to pass the exam. However, the candidate I was hoping we could talk about was the other one, Spirit.”

“Spirit? What about him? Did he fail so badly?” Grandmaster Bai laughed. “Well, that can’t be helped.”

“No, sir… he passed. He got the highest score I’ve ever seen. I was hoping if it was okay with you, I’d like to personally invite him to join the guild. I think if the main branch hears about him, they may want to nurture him as a direct disciple.”

“A direct disciple of the guild? What do you think we are, some evolutionary sect?” Grandmaster Bai’s smile was wiped from his face. “Give me that! You must have made some mistake!”

Grandmaster Bai gave him the exam for botanists! Even he would have been hard-pressed to pass it. There was no way that snot-nosed kid could have done it!

The two men went back to the guildmaster’s office and Grandmaster Bai went over the exam personally. Yet, as he graded down the test and read the available answers, his mouth slowly began to drop.