The Undying Immortal System

I wanted to return to my alchemical pursuits after the meeting, but I needed to ensure my karmic income remained at a high level. I decided I had to deal with the issues my ministers had raised in both this most recent meeting and the previous one.

The first issue was something that was not only important to the city but also important to my idea of creating a factory valuable enough to catch the attention of the Brilliant Sun Empire’s ruling family. We needed a way to produce more herbs for Nutrition Pills. The plan we had decided on was to make farms, and I knew little about arranging such matters. I would let my minister work on designing them, and I would just copy their work to my library. There was one thing I could help with, though. Those farms would be significantly more productive with Soil Enrichment Pills.

The Rank 4 Soil Enrichment Pills I had been producing recently were, of course, a terrible idea for such farms. Instead, I needed Rank 0 pills. It took me time to look up the recipe, but when I did, I was happy to see that it was another basic pill that only required a single ingredient.

The herb in question was simply called a Grower Pod. Similar to a Kairaway Pod, Grower Pods were long bean pods with several ‘beans’ of medicinal energy. Unlike the Rank 4 pod, though, the beans inside them were nearly pure medicinal energy, so purification mainly involved destroying the outer shell of toxins.

I made a couple of the Rank 0 pills to get a feel for the process. The toxic energy of these was much more robust than in other herbs of this quality, so it took more than a light touch to cleanse it. It took more energy than a normal Rank 1 herb would, but not nearly as much as a Rank 2.

The entire process made me slightly confused by the ‘Rank 0’ rating the pill was given. Throughout purification, they seemed easy enough for a low-level Disciple Alchemist while not being so easy that any untrained fire cultivator could make them. It felt like it should be a Rank 1 pill, and since they only affected mortal plants, the name would normally be Rank 1 Basic Soil Enrichment Pill with the version that helped Rank 1 plants would be Rank 1 Superior or something.

So, why was this considered a ‘Rank 0’ pill?

The answer came after the purification step. To my surprise, the individual beans began separating and dispersing, somewhat similar to how Rank 4 herbs acted. I allowed the energy to disperse freely and studied it as it did. There was no way this cheap pill would require a Lord to make it, so I tried again.

This time, as I burned away the toxic energy, I locked the medicinal energy in place with my wood affinity. This allowed me to smoothly make the pill with little difficulty.