The Undying Immortal System

The following lectures focused on various methods for altering the energy levels within a field and determining the correct balance for any given herb. The elder covered a few qi techniques that were useful for making small adjustments directly, but her primary focus was on how to make physical changes to a field to make large, long-term changes.

For wu, this mainly consisted of impregnating a field with energy from demonic beasts. The most common way to do this was by coating the field in a thin layer of beast manure, but a beast’s blood and viscera could also be used. Of course, even then, the energies in the manure had to have the proper balance of elements. If it all came from a wood-aligned beast, then wood wu would be too prevalent in the manure, and it would be difficult to grow high-quality herbs. So, an herbalist needed to source ‘energy’ from a variety of different beasts.

Balancing the qi levels of the field was far more straightforward and could be handled by common, everyday formations. The only somewhat difficult part of this was balancing the elements properly and maintaining them in the correct proportions. Most formation specialists wouldn’t have too much experience with this kind of work, so herbalists needed to seek out specialists who understood the complexities involved when purchasing formations.

In theory, this was all that was needed to grow the best herbs possible. Layer the ground with manure; use a formation to fill the environment with qi. However, there was one huge stumbling block: it was incredibly difficult to sense environmental energies with the precision necessary for making the minute adjustments that growing a ‘perfect’ herb would require.

The sect had techniques that could help an herbalist analyze the level of the various energies involved, but they were difficult to use well and were prone to misinterpretation. A better option was to use a specially designed formation plate capable of giving accurate, real-time information, but those were expensive and were sometimes of questionable quality.

To ensure our tools were of the highest quality, I wanted to craft our monitoring devices myself. However, after studying the problem, I found that while producing a formation capable of monitoring an area’s qi levels wasn’t too difficult, doing the same for wu levels was far more challenging. To make my own monitoring device, I would need to backwards engineer several inscriptions that were entirely new to me and then work on ways to improve them.

Since there were other projects that I had my eye on, developing enhanced monitoring equipment would need to wait for the future. For the time being, SuYin and I would need to rely on off-the-shelf devices instead.

After the series of introductory lectures was complete, SuYin turned her focus to the garden next to her house. This place wasn’t suitable for growing a lot of herbs at once, but it was perfect for performing small-scale experiments.

SuYin’s focus was on mastering the sect’s standard practices. While I considered joining her in this pursuit, my mind had already started wandering in new and unique directions. What I had learned of ‘wu’ filled in several of the gaps in my understanding of how pills and herbs worked, and part of me wanted to rush to see how the concept of ‘wu’ could be applied to alchemy. However, after stepping back and looking at the situation objectively, I decided to first investigate ways of helping SuYin with herbalism.