Alchemy has two subcategories.

  There’s the basic bitch alchemy, taking flora from nature to make salves and concoctions. It serves its purpose well enough, for mortals at least, fighting infections and reducing the symptoms of disease. There’s also the ones that make you high, which is, personally, Korosona’s favorite.

  Then there’s that real shit, extracting resources of any kind, so long as it has that sweet nectar the cultivator world references as Qi. She’s never liked the word Qi, so reductive of such a wonderful substance. It’s application extends beyond the medicinal, want to be faster? Grind down some Rosolome petals, Ginseng, and Forsim leaves, boil the batch in beast blood, then slowly filter out all the physical components, leaving a nice little elixir for your consumption. How about stronger? Eak seeds, chamomile, Tamkip roots, all boiled in, you guessed it! Beast blood!

  Beast blood is the bread and butter of Qi alchemy, it simply absorbs the properties of the ingredients like a slime absorbing…well anything really. Those buggers are a pain in the ass, lucky that they don’t live in the DarkWoods.

  Anyway, there’s a lot you can do with the right ingredients. It’s like an equation, and you just have to understand the components to make something truly magnificent. Masterworks often require high concentration Qi ingredients, and those are hard to find. But a true alchemist makes due with what they got, not often you get to choose your ingredients, unless your in a position like Korosona’s. Then you just have to ask and ye shall receive!

  Even the more restricted ingredients.

  Like DarkWoods Aspen sap.

  A curious creation. In everywhere but the darkwoods, trees adapt to Qi by making it a supplement, but not the main source of nourishment. DarkWood Aspen takes Qi, and makes it it’s sole focus, becoming a practical storehouse. No sunlight needed, no minerals required, their roots and leaves are built solely to absorb the Qi radiating from the foci. Makes them a wonderful source of ingredients, except, of course, the sap.

  There is one rule in alchemy, don’t fuck with ingredients that touch the soul, it always ends badly.

  The concoction she’s swishing in her little flask looks so innocent, so innocent indeed. Yet it’ll destroy whoever takes from it. Not quickly, no if you’ve got a foundation you’ll be able to put something of a fight against the corruption, but a bit of it always attaches and stays, until, eventually, you are completely consumed.

  The things that result from corruption are best left unspoken.

  She hums in contemplation of the death-in-a-bottle she’s created. Her personal project is to find a way to purify the sap, so that only the positives emerge. Could you imagine the boon it would be to the sect? But she’s been at it for a century and still no progress, no matter what ingredients or methods she’s used.

  She sighs and turns to her little pet turtle.

  “Well Rak, another one down the hatch!”

  The turtle snaps its beak, and a pinprick of Qi shoots towards Korosona, going through her eye and coming out the other side of her head.

  “Now that’s just rude!”

  -

  Rathia likes her little walks through the DarkWoods, reminding her of the beauty of nature, even if it’s influenced by a foci. This has been her home for the past…two hundred years? A decent amount of time, and most of her life, funny that her first century was when she experienced the most growth, forging has been…a challenge. When she heard how long it could take she could hardly believe her ears, but now that she’s experiencing it, well, calling it a bottleneck would be like comparing a wolf to a terrorclaw. It simply takes forever for the body to adapt to the abuse, and she’s been going as fast as she can tolerate the pain. Which is a lot, considering her cultivation, but still not enough. She sighs and it is the sound of a blade being sheathed, they formed this sect, out in the edges of nowhere, so that each and all could focus on their cultivation without the mortal distractions of war and the foolish disputes between sects in inner Rikidan, and while it has served that purpose, she can’t help but be a bit dissatisfied with the results.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  Oh well, cultivation is a thing of centuries after all, if the journey were short then immortals would infest Testhim like maggots infesting a corpse. Or like the bandits in the Woods. The master told them not to involve themselves with the Rakaja, and she didn’t! At least not while they were attacking the sect, if only to respect his wishes.

  But now their existence serves no purpose, and although the master hasn’t rescinded his statement, Rathia isn’t so weak that she’d care.

  So she’s been looking, searching around the DarkWoods in their known territory, and cutting down whoever she finds, unless their disciples from the River’s Scales or Hallowed bones, then she leaves them alone, but everyone else is as good as dead.

  She whistles a simple tune as she strolls down the forest.

  An arrow goes flying for her throat, much faster than an arrow should be, cutting through air at a speed the eye can’t follow. Well, mortal eyes, Rathia unsheathes her falcata and cuts the thing just before it would skewer her.

  She turns to face the direction of the archer.

  “Not the kindest of introductions,” says the edge of a blade drawing blood, “I’d expect that even bandits have some degree of decorum.”

  Two men and one woman land in front of her from the treetops. The woman carries a simple sword, perhaps some variant of the jian, while the man in front of her sports a rather dramatically sized axe. The last one just has a spear.

  All of them are quite powerful, all of them in integration, and their Qi rivals the density of old monsters. But the fact she can even see into their bodies is a testament to how truly pathetic their foundations are. There’s something else there, a little bead at the centre of their cores with tendrils that spread like veins and arteries. It does not have a colour, nor a shade, but Rathia can see it all the same.

  “Imbibed a bit too much of the sap have you?” She says as she blocks another arrow.

  The woman lets loose a smile full of fangs, but doesn’t go to say anything.

  “We do what we can,” says the man with an axe, “not all of us can spend our time holed away in our fancy sects.”

  “Hmmm, sounds like an excuse to me but you do as you please. It won't really matter after today.”

  The woman with the fangs barks a laugh and it is the call of the hunt, “you really think you can beat us? That’s hilarious! Koraz, can I keep her?”

  “No,” Koraz grumbles, “you’ve gotten us in enough shit already, no need to add more.”

  The woman grumbles but acquiesces.

  “Can we hurry this up?” Says the man with the spear, “all this banter serves little to no purpose, who’s even here to listen?”

  “You’re no fun Garim, it’s a process! Everyone follows the process,” the woman says.

  Garim groans.

  Another arrow flies and Rathia tilts her head out of the way.

  “Is that archer of yours gonna show his face or am I going to have to hunt him down?”

  Koraz shrugs his axe of his shoulder and faces her, “hunting, unfortunately, honoured cultivator.”

  “I’d prefer honoured master but that works.”

  Then he is in front of her axe bearing down-

  She sidesteps the blow, and the shockwave could have caused a lesser cultivator to stumble, but she stands strong. The spear man goes to puncture her guts and she parries with her blade, which gives the perfect opportunity for an arrow to strike her in the shoulder.

  Hmmm.

  That’s going to be troublesome.

  The woman tries cut through Rathia’s back, but Rathia just takes a step closer to the spearman, blocking a second blow as the axeman swings with wild abandon. Each blow leaves shockwaves, reverberations through reality from the sheer amount of Qi infused in their weapons.

  Rathia is not impressed, she brings her falcata up, infusing it with liquid Qi, and draws a deep line across the spearman's chest. He screams and takes a step back, and Rathia would continue her pursuit but there’s currently an axe in her shoulder and a blade piercing through her back and out her guts.

  That’s fine, barely even a scratch honestly, and now she’s fulfilled the requirements.

  She pulls deep from her dao, and the blood on her falcata vibrates and glows, wrapping around the edge of the blade.

  It’s funny how dao’s can work, she doesn’t have the dao of blood, yet it is integral since it mutated.

  She whips her blade in front of her, she whips her blade behind her, and the swordswoman barely manages to dodge. But the axeman? Guts spill from his person like water does a fountain as he is almost cleanly bisected, he lets out a scream and brings his axe up again.

  His motion blurs, even to Rathia, and the next thing she knows her left arm is chopped away from her body.

  She blinks.

  That was too fast.

  His veins and arteries turn purple as he screams and-

  She drains her core and cuts off his head.

  She turns, but the swordswoman and spearman are gone.

  That and the arrows have stopped.

  Rathia lets out a sigh as she sheathes her blade and picks up her arm.