Being able to look through the records of every jade slip within these rooms was considered an ‘ordinary’ task within the clan. In Bai Yunfei’s perspective, the place was a treasure trove filled with all sorts of magical pills and medicine.
But…
Bai Yunfei placed the jade slip from his hand onto the table with a sigh.
If only he was given the ability to learn how to create these pills!
His hand touched at the spot on his chest where the acupoint was. “What’s going on…am I not even able to rebecome a Soul Sprite now…?”
He couldn’t remember what kind of power he had before his memory loss, but the number of high-powered soul armaments he had surely had to mean something. Based on the records he read so far, Bai Yunfei was sure he was suffering from something akin to being ‘deleveled’. That was why breaking through was so difficult.
One month had passed since he failed to breakthrough. Right now, Bai Yunfei was adjusting to a life of being a ‘guard’ in one of the pill repositories.
This was the job given to him by the clan.
Whether he was a trainee or apprentice, there was no way Bai Yunfei would be given free room and board. The clan wasn’t so rich that they could afford for Bai Yunfei to do nothing. He would have to earn his stay here, and the more he worked, the more resources he would be allocated.
He wasn’t the only one to be disappointed with how things turned out. Elder Cheng had also been severely disappointed. In the end, the elder decided to not pay so much attention to Bai Yunfei and had him relegated as a guard elsewhere.
From then on, neither of the two saw much of one another.
One month of time was hardly a short number. Thirty days and nights. Each day was spent doing simplistic tasks by himself. This by itself allowed Bai Yunfei to spend some time trying to go over his newer memories.
Many things had happened since he awakened to his soulforce and fled the Azure Cloud Province to Jadewillow City. He had many suspicions about the events of those memories and what he did after, but he at least knew that he was trying to reach the Crafting School to become a student there.
If he had so many powerful soul armaments, didn’t that mean he managed to make it there in the end?
The more he went through those memories, the more he found himself thirsting for more. He was able to supplement his knowledge of things by reading the records within the repository. From there, he was able to learn quite a lot about the many kinds of memory-regaining pills. Most of them were more effective than the recalling pill he took, but they were all the same in one aspect.
You could only eat one. Eating two or more were simply useless. Bai Yunfei didn’t even know if eating the best kind of memory-regaining pill would even help him…
Living here in the city wasn’t inherently bad for him. He was still living in the same courtyard as before. The only difference was just how the others treated him. Many of the trainees often gave him strange looks and said things behind his back, but Bai Yunfei cared little for them.
In time, Bai Yunfei was identified to be a bit of a ‘loner’, and so there weren’t many people that often talked with him.
As a guard, Bai Yunfei was primarily responsible for being the middleman for taking in jade slips and giving back the appropriate pills. His job was inherently redundant but existed solely due to the fact that elder Yu—the elder actually in charge of the pill repository—hated seeing a different person after person. For that reason, Bai Yunfei was there to be the ‘consistent’ variable for the elder.
Day after day, Bai Yunfei saw to multiple people coming to the repository. Soon, Bai Yunfei began to notice something strange. The number of pills they were asking for was increasing by the day.
Most of the pills were related to ‘familiars’ in a way. It was as if the clan was trying to gather more and more of them…
The ‘familiars’ of the clan were actually soulbeasts, but these ‘familiars’ were said to be far more sentient and self-aware than their soulbeast counterparts.
Life didn’t get easier for the Alchemy School when they first arrived here on the Qimang Mountains. The place they set up camp in was a place where many dangerous soulbeasts and wild animals roamed. They weren’t used to being in constant danger in the first place, so life was hard for the school until the Soul Kings and others managed to finally stabilize the area for them to put up a proper stomping ground in.
That being said, the Alchemy School didn’t enjoy fighting to begin with. They were a school that studied alchemy, not any form of combat. But in order to live in the Qimang mountains where the dangerous beasts roamed, the Alchemy School had no choice but to adapt.
And so the Alchemy School came up with a new type of pill to help them.
The ‘familiar pill’.
It was a type of pill that boosted the power of any soulbeast and draw out even the timidest of soulbeast’s primal instincts. It also made any soulbeast that ingested it fully sentient.
It was the ultimate pill for taming.
Thanks to these pills, the people of the Alchemy School were able to stabilize the area around them at last. They were able to drive away any soulbeast that might’ve attacked them while also taking soulbeasts in and turning them into ‘familiars’ to protect them from other soulbeasts.
Their power could not be understated. If anything, it was because of these familiars that the Alchemy School was able to last so long and become the Yao clan.
The soulbeasts Wang Tong, Kai Wen, and Fei Yun used were great examples of these familiars. The familiars Fei Yun used, for example, were three peak late-stage class six soulbeasts, the duo-eyed magiwolves. The way the alchemists used these familiars were reminiscent of the Beast Taming School, but they used ‘emotion’ to tame these soulbeasts. It was a kind-hearted relationship, which was in direct contrast to the cold-hearted tactics of the Beast Taming School.
Normally, the familiars would be with the alchemists to scavenge or hunt, but they were also used to fight off other beasts or intruders when needed. In those times, the need for familiar pills would increase.
Now was one of those times. This could be seen with how many familiar pills they were using.
Even Bai Yunfei could tell that the ‘troublesome times’ of right now had to do with the ‘intruders’ from before.
“I know there were a lot of intruders before, but Wang Tong and the others were quick to defeat them. How powerful are the enemies then if the entire clan is this grim?”
The beginnings of a headache were starting to form within Bai Yunfei’s head. He should’ve felt terrified with how the future was starting to unfold, but the only emotion he felt was a sense of ‘helplessness.’
It was as if this sort of thing was…normal to him…
“Emergency! Emergency! Elder Cheng is injured, someone bring out a soulmending pill!”
“What?!”
Bai Yunfei snapped out from his stupor at once, a new panic was starting to unfold!
“Elder Cheng?!” His heart flew to his throat at the realization that someone he knew was injured. Simultaneously leaping to his feet, Bai Yunfei watched as a group of people stormed into the room he was in!
It was a group of four. The majority of them were Soul Exalts, and Bai Yunfei recognized one of them to be Bu Jiadi. “Tang Long??” He looked surprised to see him for a second, “are you today’s guard? Quick, bring out a soulmending pill!”
A quick glance at the other three members of the group told Bai Yunfei all he needed to know. Elder Cheng was among the bloody figures! His head hung listlessly over his shoulders and many terrible wounds were dripping with blood. The elder was close to death!
As spooked as he was, Bai Yunfei moved to comply as quickly as he could. But when he was just about to turn around, there was a slight blur in space there before elder Yu appeared in front of him!
Sparing no words, the elder enveloped the other elder in a bubble of red light with a wave of his right hand. Placing him on the ground, elder Yu then took out a semi-transparent pill and had the other elder ingest it.
The red light seemed to have some kind of diagnostic effect on elder Cheng, as elder Yu had a very grim look on his face the longer elder Cheng was enveloped by it. An ominous glint of light could even be seen in his eyes.
“What severe wounds!! What in the world happened?!”