The Undying Immortal System

My win in the competition was strange. I didn’t understand it. Possibly, the System-granted ability was more accurate in calculating efficacy than the sect elders. It was possible, but I didn’t believe it, not to that extent.

There had to be another factor at play, but I didn’t know what it could be. I had to just take one step at a time. Eventually, I would figure everything out.

Having come third in the competition, my reward was a spirit fire. I knew that this was the difference between a Disciple and a Master Alchemist, but I didn’t know many details. I had avoided looking into it too much until after I knew I could get my hands on it.

The winners had a few days before we would be taken to receive the prize, so I spent that time researching. Thankfully, there was an easy solution to learn all I needed to know. The Technique Hall had a few books detailing what spirit fires were and how to use them. Clearly, they knew many disciples would be interested in the topic. I borrowed a copy and went back to my apartment to read.

So, what is a spirit fire? My personal analogy is that they are a type of symbiote, or maybe a parasite. A spirit fire lives in the body and consumes a small amount of the body’s energy to feed itself. In return, the host can channel its energy through the fire to change it, to make it something new.

The spirit fire given out by the Twin Mountains Sect was called the Cold Mountain Fire. From what I read, it, strangely enough, had no fire qi in it but was instead composed of something closer to a type of earth qi. The fire was supposed to be like something made of 90% earth energy and 10% water energy. The energy wasn’t qi, but nothing I read said what it was.

The hows and whys of this I don’t know, but the benefits were certain. The reason one needed a spirit fire to be a Master Alchemist was because of the ingredients used in higher-rank pills. Pure fire qi became a poor tool to deal with them. Instead, the unique energy of a spirit fire would easily be able to break down many types of complex pill toxins.

What the Twin Mountains Sect had was called a fire seed. Fire seeds were incredibly powerful and unbelievably important. Fire seeds created spirit fire. With a Cold Mountain Fire seed, the sect had an endless supply of spirit fire to infuse into their disciples’ bodies. After a portion was taken away, they just had to wait for it to recover. As long as the seed remained, it would keep producing new flames.

While fire seeds are beneficial to organizations like the sect, they can have an even more profound impact if absorbed by a cultivator. Unlike regular spirit fire, a seed isn’t absorbed into the body, it is absorbed into the soul, and seeds absorb energy from the environment, not the cultivator.