The Undying Immortal System

Earning my keep meant producing pills.

I spent a year doing nothing but constantly concocting as many pills as I could. Every day I would do my best to create at least a dozen pills. Deacon Liu’s rules were simple. I needed to make a profit. As long as my alchemy was profitable, I would be provided an endless stream of ingredients to work with.

My path was far different from normal disciples for a few different reasons. The most significant being that it was slow.

Many disciples would move on after being able to concoct a pill at High-Purity. By experimenting with many different kinds of pills, they would learn enough to raise their alchemy to the next tier and begin working on Grandmaster pills. This was the path of quick advancement, and it was vital to many.

Elder Mu had made it clear that one would need to ascend to Grandmaster before forty to even be considered by a sect outside the Wastes, and even then, the odds would be low. The best prospects would require Grandmaster before thirty, which didn’t leave time to slowly master every pill. People needed to focus on advancing.

I wasn’t too concerned myself. Advancing to a more powerful sect would be nice, but I didn’t need to rush it. I could follow the normal path to reach Grandmaster within the thirty-year time frame, but Elder Mu’s situation suggested that ascending to Lord wasn’t a simple process. I didn’t know the details, but I knew that a stronger foundation in the Master realm would be necessary in the long run. Besides, I had all the time I needed. Failing to advance in this life wouldn’t be terrible as long as I learned what I needed to along the way.

Aside from it taking longer, another reason my path was less common was the amount of energy it required. I was able to make over a dozen pills a day, but a normal Martial Master 3 would only be able to make two or three. This was because their spirit fire consumed a significant amount of qi. By using a fire seed, my energy use was several times more efficient.

Lastly, many simply considered a strong mastery of any one pill type to be meaningless. After being able to create a High-Purity version of a pill, how much more could it really be improved? Let’s say that with a given set of herbs, a normal alchemist can create a pill with 86% standard effectiveness. If I made the pill a hundred times, I may be able to improve that to 87%. If I made it a thousand times, I might be able to make it at 88%. It may take the experience gained from making it a million times to improve the pill to 90%.

So, was it worth spending the time to make one pill thousands of times to improve the efficacy by 1%? How much does an extra 1% improve the value of a pill? Not much. If someone needed a pill of higher efficacy, they could also just use higher-quality herbs to begin with. There was little economic incentive to encourage such focused improvements.