Chapter 202: Alchemist Master Memories
"I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to extract them intact."
Damon watched her work for a moment, her fingers hovering over the blossoms with the careful precision of a surgeon.
Then he crouched down beside her.
"May I?"
Alena looked at him, surprise flickering in her eyes.
"You know how to harvest Azure Vein Blossoms?"
Damon smiled.
"I know a thing or two."
He reached into his storage ring and withdrew a small, jade-handled knife.
The blade was thin and curved, honed to a razor’s edge.
Alena’s eyes widened as she recognized the tool.
"That’s a Spirit Gathering Knife," she said, her voice hushed with reverence. "Where did you get something like that?"
Damon didn’t answer.
Instead, he leaned forward and brought the knife to the base of the Azure Vein Blossom’s stem.
His hand was steady, his movements precise.
The blade slid through the stem with a clean, almost surgical cut, severing it at exactly the right angle to preserve the flow of spiritual essence within the plant.
He caught the blossom as it fell, cradling it in his palm, and placed it gently into a small, crystal vial he produced from his storage ring.
He repeated the process four more times, each cut as clean and precise as the first.
When he was done, he held out the vial to Alena.
"Here. Consider it a gift."
Alena stared at the vial, her mouth slightly open.
Then she looked up at Damon, her expression a mixture of shock and something else, something warmer.
"How did you... that was... I’ve never seen anyone harvest Azure Vein Blossoms that cleanly before."
Damon shrugged.
"I’ve had some practice."
Alena took the vial from him, her fingers brushing against his.
The contact was brief, but Damon felt the faint pulse of her qi through the touch, felt the way it responded to him.
She was interested.
Not in the way Ariel or the twins had been interested, not yet.
But the seed was there, planted in the fertile soil of her gratitude and admiration.
All it needed was time and attention to grow.
Alena tucked the vial into her storage ring and looked up at Damon, a genuine smile spreading across her face.
"Thank you, Damon. Really. This means a lot to me."
Damon smiled back.
****
Back a few minutes before Damon met Alena.
Damon moved through the forest, his steps light against the fallen leaves.
He had a plan.
The plan was find a woman with alchemist knowledge. Someone skilled in pill making. Someone he could bring into his harem.
Then he wouldn’t have to rely on the Lust Store for every pill he needed.
But as he walked, he realized the flaw in that thinking.
The flaw was simple, and it stared back at him with maddening clarity the moment he identified it.
Even if he crossed paths with the finest alchemist on the continent, a woman whose fingers could coax miracles from a cauldron, he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a masterwork pill and a carefully packaged piece of rubbish.
She could hand him a vial of colored chalk dust and he’d have no way to know.
He was walking blind into a world where knowledge was currency and he had none to spend.
Worse than that, he had no way to impress her.
A woman devoted to her craft, the kind of dedicated, obsessive alchemist worth recruiting, wouldn’t be swayed by a handsome face alone. She would respect competence.
She would respond to someone who could speak her language, who could look at her work and recognize its worth.
Without that foundation, he was just another cultivator wandering through the forest with empty hands and empty words.
He needed baseline knowledge.
Not mastery, not yet, but enough to understand the landscape he was stepping into.
Enough to evaluate what he was buying, enough to hold a conversation that went deeper than polite ignorance, and enough to spark something in the right woman when the moment arrived.
"System," he said, keeping his voice low. "Show me alchemist memories."
A window appeared in his vision.
[Alchemist Master Memories - 200,000 Lust Points]
Damon didn’t hesitate.
"Buy it."
The points drained from his balance.
Then the memories hit.
It wasn’t like the first time. No crippling pain. No collapsing to his knees.
His mind had grown stronger.
This was just another stream feeding into the river.
Herb names flooded his consciousness.
Azure Vein Blossom.
Crimson Lotus Root.
Frost Petal Orchid.
Each one came with its properties, its uses, its harvesting requirements. Pill formulas stacked in his memory like books on a shelf.
Spirit Gathering Pill.
Bone Forging Pill.
Meridian Cleansing Pill.
He knew the ingredients, the ratios, the flame temperatures.
And then he saw it.
Spirit Gathering Knife.
A specialized tool for harvesting spirit herbs.
The blade was forged from jade-silver alloy, treated with spiritual essence to preserve the plant’s vitality during the cut.
A clean cut meant maximum essence retention.
A bad cut meant wasted potential.
Damon stopped walking.
He pulled up the Lust Store and searched.
[Spirit Gathering Knife - Spirit Grade - 50,000 Lust Points]
"Buy it."
The knife materialized in his storage ring.
Damon smiled.
He resumed walking, his steps carrying him through the scrubland and into the denser forest where his Incubus Celestial Eyes had detected Alena Terra’s qi.
The alchemist.
The one whose entire existence seemed purpose-built for the craft he now needed to master.
’Perfect.’
He found her deeper in the clearing than he had expected, crouched low to the ground beside a dense cluster of glowing blue flowers.
Azure Vein Blossoms.
The very first herb his freshly downloaded knowledge had named.
Their petals were delicate, almost translucent at the edges, threaded through with veins of deeper cobalt that shimmered when the light shifted.
Even from a distance, Damon could feel the faint spiritual pressure radiating off them.
Alena hadn’t noticed him yet.
She was completely absorbed, her body still and her dark eyes narrowed in concentration, her fingers hovering bare inches above the petals without quite touching them.
Damon watched her for a moment longer.
Then he shifted his weight, and his boot came down squarely on a dry twig.
The crack split the quiet of the forest like a blade.
Alena spun, her staff already in her hands.
"Identify yourself!"
Damon stepped into the clearing, hands raised.
"Easy. It’s me. Damon."