Chapter 3: Ch 3: The Pot of the Thousand Reincarnating Souls
- Lián City streets – night -
"...And with this one, we got four victims." a man with broad shoulders and wearing a light-blue military uniform with white stripes along the sleeves said sighing dejectedly as he watched his latest finding with a defeated expression.
"Tomorrow is the Spring Festival, Captain...Just be gentle." the man next to him tried saying as the light of his lantern washed over the unconscious and rambling form of one of their colleagues, although half naked and snoring in a puddle of his own vomit.
"I can be as gentle as the Gods above, but this is the fourth man we find in this sorry state, Festival or not, it's getting every year worse." the Captain of the Lián City's Police Forces answered with a tone of total defeat.
"Be strong, Captain! Two days of Festival and then everything will be back to normal!" another soldier offered.
"I just hope so. Come on, take him back to the barracks and give him a bath...Ask Liu for help, I was just looking for a good punishment for him, and I think scrubbing yet another vomit-covered bastard will teach him some manners." the Captain said shaking his head.
"Yuck! This ones smells of opium too!" one of the soldiers grabbing the unconscious man said gagging.
"...Heee-heee-hee! Yes...Little sister can sit on her big brother's legs...Big Brother will protect Little Sister using his strong arms….Hee-Hee-Hee..." the drunkard said with a shameless dirty laugh.
"Tch!" the Captain shook his head in frustration at that and simply followed the others back to their barracks, all the while shaking his head and silently complaining about his miserable existence in the privacy of his thoughts.
Unknown to them, every case of drunkards they had found in the last few days either abandoned in side roads, ditches or alleys were all rambling about the very same girl, even if in their obfuscated minds, thanks to drugs and alcohol, she always had a different face and voice.
- At the opposite side of the city – Xie's Secret Lab -
The slender figure of the tall dark-haired scholar was at the moment pouring his all on the absurd amount of papers covering his table, every so often his claw-like hands would then take a new sheet of parchment for him to scribble few notes on it, and then angrily crumpling it and throw the small ball away barely a minute later.
"If I can make an honest guess, this is harder than what we thought." Pò asked as she entered from a back door to see the absolute mess littering the floor.
"Did you leave that guy where I told you?" Xie answered without looking at her.
"Yes and-"
"Did you use the puking medicine? The last dose of my hallucinogen?"
"Yes. Both." she answered annoyed.
"Good."
"Listen-"
"A moment!" Xie said lifting a finger as straight as a sword to silence her.
"..."
"..."
"..."
"...No." he finally said crumpling the last sheet, then stopping to think, and then tearing it to shreds to throw the resulting cloud of confetti behind his back.
"Can I?" she said, looking impatient.
"Yes, yes. Talk if you need to."
"How far are we in having a clue?"
"Just as close as the Emperor is at turning into a dragon, which is to say, very far from where I would like to be."
"Xie, tomorrow the Emperor will give his damned speech, if we really need to refine those elixirs you talked about, we'll only have tomorrow to act!" Pò said crossing her arms and waiting.
"..."
"Xie?"
"When not fully 'active', the power of a Qi Cultivator is barely a tenth of their maximum abilities compared to when they are drawing-out their Qi. It would mean that only a small part of that Power is transferred to the body as a Passive Power-up after a new Level is gained, so having a visible aura of light is a forced handicap in exchange of using the full scope of their Cultivation...Although the Life-Span is instead fully enlarged as a side-effect of each gain in a new Level with no need of constant activation..."
"Earth to mad scientist?" the young girl tried again, rising her voice of a notch to try snap his out of his rambling.
"I heard you, I am just giving a last look to the few certain tidbits of knowledge I have." he answered simply.
"So? What do we have?"
"Not much. I did my best to analyze the three soldiers of three different level of Bronze Qi Cultivation, four students of Green Qi Cultivation and the three Burned that used to be Silver Qi Cultivators you managed to 'entice' for me, and I compared what I found out with every Gemless guest of my clinic here to see if there were differences...Considering the short amount of time I had to work with (Alone), I can honestly say that more research could not be done." Xie answered sighing.
"And?"
"Other than discovering that between 'Burned' and 'Gemless' there is absolutely no difference in power? Inconclusive results…Look at this." the overly thin man said taking from a cabinet a perfectly-cleaned human skull he had vertically cut in half.
"I took this from a dead soldier I found last time that I visited the Tian-Fa Forest looking for the sap of few Celestial Trees there, he was completely rotten, but the skull I needed was still in perfect conditions."
"Hu-uh?" the girl replied unimpressed.
"This represents the brain." Xie explained taking out of a drawer a piece of sponge that had been cut in a crude representation of a brain.
"Sorry for the lack of details." he added sounding almost sorry about that as he moved the sponge to fill the space inside the skull.
"Go on."
"Yes, based on what I know, the Soul Gem is about...Here." he answered gluing a piece of glass on the front of the skull, right on a strange indentation of the bone.
"Gemless have not this 'Hole' here, it acts as a slot for the Gem, and from behind it, the nerve rope acts as a bridge between the thing and the brain. Like this." Xie explained taking out from a jar of culture liquid a piece of flesh resembling a tightly knitted rope with dozens of hair-thin tendrils on both ends.
"But other than telling me to what part of the brain the Gem is attached...I have no idea what it does, and if I discover this, I can try to come up with some elixirs and drugs 'Mimicking' the functions of a Soul Gem to see if we too can Cultivate like they do,"
"So you lack the ability to see what parts of the brain the Gem influences?" Pò asked.
"Yes, even if I don't believe a technique like this exists, seeing how the brain works in real time during Cultivation would help me immensely." Xie answered sighing.
[Right in the middle of the 'Frontal Lobe'. The Part of the brain that controls cognitive skills related to personality, memory, impulses, motor functions, problem solving and the like...It would explain why they go berserk if he tries to remove the Soul Gem from their heads.] Pò thought as she started walking around the office while ignoring Xie's new rambling.
[Had we been back to my world, with the power of the Han Family I would have been able to ask to some doctors to let me use their MEG (Magnetoencephalography), fMRI or EEG (Elettroencephalography) machines to help Xie to see how Cultivation works on a human brain, because I bet the thing starts from the Frontal Lobe but then spreads to the whole brain and the rest of the body…]
"So be it!"
"Eh?" the young woman snapped out of her train of thought at the sudden scream.
"We'll improvise." Xie explained.
"...I am sorry, what?" she asked.
"Since I do not know exactly how it works, we'll improvise. I have basic knowledge of what Cultivation is supposed to achieve and that somehow it needs a human brain to do it, to that I will need to take in consideration the effect of the normal Pills, Talismans and Elixirs used to speed-up Cultivation and-"
"Xie!"
"...Ah, I am rambling about technical details to a girl working in a Tea House, sorry about that complicated talk."
"Fuck you."
"Likewise. You just worry about making me enter in their refining room and reach their giant cauldron, I will do the rest." the Young man answered nonplussed.
"And how am I supposed to do that?" Pò asked.
"The room has special openings on the ceiling they use to let clean air circle inside in case refining goes awry and produces toxic smokes, and with each new project this happens more often than what their Pride would ever admit. You will need to enter there, reach the room, and open those chutes for me to pass through since they can only be opened from inside." Xie explained.
"All the while avoiding being found by soldiers of overly-high Qi Cultivation Level. Why such security measures even? And why I have to do the sneaking?" Pò asked.
"That is a relic dated back to the time of Linghún, the creator of Cultivation. There are only three such relics on the whole planet, if they lose it the Emperor himself will suffer a terrifying blow to his image, and the man's brothers are only waiting for such mishap to happen so to put their heir on the throne…And I am a scholar, my physical abilities are very limited, especially with my frail constitution, that is why I went for formal studies instead of martial arts. And you are smaller than me, if you do not screw-up while they are flaring their Qi, you won't be discovered...IF you follow my directions, of course, there is still a margin of error, but in your case it's negligible." Xie answered.
"Okay, okay. Let's go through the fine details of my suicide mission to let you play Alchemist." Pò grumbled in answer.
"Good to hear you are ready for this, I will leave my concoctions for later, now let's plan your side of the job." the man conceded nodding.
- The next day – Imperial Institute of Advanced Alchemy Studies (AKA Alchemy Guild) -
The Alchemy Guild was the third biggest compound in the whole City, while the first and second were obviously the Imperial Palace and the Meng-Luang Institute for Cultivation.
The whole property spawned for roughly six thousand acres, the majority of which used to grow the plants and raise the more peaceful Celestial Beasts needed for their Alchemy ingredients; the more vicious and/or rare parts were instead collected in the infamous Tian-Fa forest by high level Qi Cultivators, and the Guild was unashamed whenever presented with the high number of casualties such commissions caused every time as they deemed it necessary, all under the backing of the Emperor himself.
The main body, the Institute proper, stood right in front of said crops: a giant compound of several distinct squared constructions each representing a division specializing in a branch of Alchemy connected by long bridge-like corridors that could be retracted in case incidents happened so to isolate the branch and minimize the damages.
The first floor of every building in the 'inner ring' housed both classes and dormitories for the students with the various labs occupying instead the floors above, while the buildings in the 'outer ring' were either used as minor storage rooms for furniture or left to the soldiers normally stationed there.
But the real eye-catching building of the whole complex was the enormous tower with a dome rooftop standing right in the middle of the Institute, towering over everything else and neatly detached from the rest thanks to large and exquisite gardens surrounding it for close to a hundred meters on all sides.
That was the main laboratory of the Institute where only the Elder, which was the 'Headmaster' of the Institute, and few trusted teachers could enter and experiment; its dome was made of pure gold and would reflect both sunlight and moonlight like a blinding beacon of heavenly power.
And it also held in its biggest room, right under the dome, the 'Pot of the Thousand Reincarnating Souls' Xie and Pò needed to use.
- 'Outer Ring' – maintenance staff room -
Crickle! Crackle!…
…
Crickle! Crackle-Crack!
"En!" a soft female voice grumbled annoyed as the door to the staff room for the maintenance staff went opened from inside to let a mysterious figure reach the corridors of the institute.
"This is the price to pay for modern times, sub-par equipment or not, I took way too long to force such an ancient lock open." Pò, face and body completely covered in plain and skin-tight black clothes, muttered angrily as she sneaked inside the place.
Forcing open the tiny window to the outside had been fairly easy, but using the medieval tech lock-pick to open the door to actually enter the first part of the Institute took way too long, and Time was not a luxury she and her partner in crime had to spare.
"I hate this job." she heard one of the guards say annoyed as he and his pal neared her position.
[Grandaddy's bollocks!] the girl cursed as she tried to silently run towards the wall as soon as she saw two guards about to turn the corner.
"I hate it too, but you heard the General, the 'Black Order' is still on the loose, and they have the balls to even try to enter here a couple times to steal from the Great Elder's safe. Or at least try to." the guards companion answered as both stopped in front of that door to talk a little.
And just three feet above them, Pò was using both arms and legs to stick to the ceiling thanks to its thick beams of dark wood, trying to stick as much as she could to the few shadows they provided to remain unseen.
[I need to step-up my training! This body is too frail!] Pò thought in dread as she could already feel her extremities tremble under the stress of the position and sweat pour down her neck at an astounding rate.
Between wounds and the previous owner 'feminine' and poor upbringing, Fei's new body lacked the years of dedicated training and conditioning her old one possessed, and that was another reason for her need to find a way to Cultivate as soon as possible; as Xie told her, Qi would help immensely in training by making results show earlier than normal, and that detail meant reducing to at least a third the time needed to return to her former prowess compared to normal methods.
"Yes, because 'The Black Order' is afraid of four guards of Silver Qi...Isn't it true that their Leader is a Gold Qi Expert?"
"Their Leader is, not ALL OF THEM. The Gods do not give Gold Levels out like candy, and even if now there are only four of us, we are a good deterrent for common thieves. I am actually afraid of who or how many would the Black Order send if they really wanted to attack here now during the speech." the other answered groaning.
[For the love of God! Go talk somewhere else!] Pò mentally begged as she felt her arms grow numb and start losing grip on the wood beam in front of her.
"You know what? Whatever! In an hour there will be the switch of the guards so I'll be free! Done here I want to go to the Heavenly Lotus, I heard they have a new girl."
"Uuuh! A new one?! Is she pretty? Big chested? One that looks like a kid BUT with big breast?"
"...Sometimes your tastes worry me."
"Come on!"
"I can tell you she has a very pretty mouth and nose, the rest is covered by a veil."
"Oooh! A mysterious beauty? That's nice too!"
"And you know what they say about good mouths!" the guard said with a lecherous smile as he walked away.
"Hahahahaha! You are shameless!" the man's companion said laughing uproariously as he followed him away.
"Hey! You thought the same!" the other replied smirking.
"That I did, brother, that I did!" he answered making their laughs echo in the corridor even after they turned the corner on the far end of the long walk.
…
"...Good, nobody else seems to be around."
Tap!
Landing a bit more heavily than intended, Pò returned to safely stand on solid ground, albeit with the expression of somebody of the verge of puking everything they ever ingested in their entire life.
"Okay...Disgusting plans for my mouth aside, I got some info that may be of help. Only four guards are patrolling this side, a bit lacking considering how big is this place, but with their level of Qi each one of them equals a couple tens of normal soldiers if not more. And I may have found a good scapegoat for this whole ordeal." she muttered to herself as she silently moved towards the area housing the various labs of the Guild, the biggest of which holding the giant cauldron she needed.
The silence inside was absolute, and Pò was once again cursing her new body for lacking the nimble movements she was used to before transmigrating, especially since she saw the other two guards react to sounds with way more accuracy than normal humans should be able to.
[But their range seems to become larger only when their bodies are covered by that faint aura of Qi...Can it be that it's not just a conjecture of Xie? Would this mean that unless they use Qi their abilities are not fully unleashed? That would really mean that Qi only amplifies and multiplies the user Power! It's not a fully passive skill!] the girl wondered as she watched closely how the guards would use their Qi at random intervals and how much their senses seemed to get sharper when that happened.
[Still, those people train night and day and Cultivate for the remaining hours they are awake, so even without Qi fully activated, I bet they are stronger than normal humans, it would be too convenient otherwise if Qi Cultivation was that limited.] she then added surly, never one to believe in luck or convenience.
Creak…
As she pondered about it, one of the wooden planks on the floor gave a subtle whine, one a normal man could have easily missed, but that clearly caught the attention of a new guard not too far away.
"Ah!" the girl whispered in surprise as she heard the thundering steps of somebody coming her way.
"WHO'S THERE?!" one of the soldiers hissed furious as he marched towards Pò.
"You found somebody?" the guy's companion asked with narrowed eyes while following him.
"We'll see." the soldier answered as he opened the door leading to one of the storage rooms closer to where he had heard that faint noise.
"...I know I felt a presence..." he said as he walked inside the room and through the dusty rows of extra desks normally used for the classes in the inner buildings.
[No, no, no. Not here! Go away!] Pò thought in horror as she covered her mouth with both her hands and squatted under the very last 'tower' of desks on the far back of the storage.
"If you come out now I won't get angry. I just want to know why you are here and who you are." he said looking everywhere.
"..."
"...I am going to us my Qi, and when that happens, I will find you and I WON'T be gentle. So come out now and ask for mercy."
[Go away! Go away!]
CRASH!
"What in heaven's name was that?" the guard yelled in surprise as a rock flew through the window.
"HEY! MISTER MONKEY!" one of the kids that threw the rock yelled as soon as the guard peaked outside to look for a culprit.
"What did you call me?!" the man bellowed furious, angry enough to forget that had he took just two more steps he would have found who he was looking for.
"MONKEY! MONKEY! MONKEY!" the trio of kids chanted in answer before running away.
"COME BACK HERE!"
"HEY! What are you yelling for?" the second guard hurried inside to see what the ruckus was about, and missing Pò managing to sneak out behind him as soon as she saw the man grab his partner before he could jump out the window to chase the kids.
"Three brats, homeless if you look at the rags they were wearing, they threw a rock to break the window and called me a monkey!" he answered still puffing in anger.
"And you are getting so worked-up just for this? Once done here we'll look for them to give them a spanking, just relax."
"BUT I AM NOT A MONKEY!" the other screeched furious.
"No, you are not...But what about here? Was there really somebody?"
"Bah! The room was empty, probably it was just my imagination."
"Then let's continue our rounds, you block-head."
"...I am not a monkey..." the man muttered dejected.
"You are not, you are not. A gorilla, maybe, but certainly not a monkey!" he said giving a friendly pat to his partner's back.
"Aaaugh!" the other answered groaning in sorrow.
[God bless those brats!] at the same time the young intruder sent her silent blessing to the snot-nosed pests that had involuntarily saved her life.
Meanwhile – outside -
"Slowly...Slowly...Slowly..." still shaking a little at the close-call, Pò managed to sneak outside the building, right in the circular open corridor connecting the innermost walls of the Outer Ring in a single entity that circled the small gardens separating them from the buildings of the Inner Circle.
"Tasteful, that much I will admit. They know how to show-off their wealth." the girl muttered as she squatted low to us the tall plants as a cover to sneak closer.
To her dismay, the 'four guards' she heard talking about regarded only the buildings of the Outer Ring, right where she was instead she could tell there were at least six others walking around just for patrolling the gardens.
"Fuck it to Hell and through the nine realms of Heaven! What now?!" she cursed bitterly and with a low voice.
GONG! GONG! GONG! GONG!
Four loud and long melodious explosions of sounds coming from the giant bells on top of the Imperial Palace alerted everybody in the City that the Emperor was about to give his speech to start the celebrations for the arrival of the Spring Season, and that meant two things: Pò's countdown had just started and the guards will be distracted enough for her to bypass because more focused on making sure the Elder of the Institute could come out without risk of being attacked, since the man never left the main building except in this occasions.
"Okay, first I need to enter from one of the dormitories, and from there...From there I need to hope they won't see me dash to the main building. Xie said there is an artificial pond on the north side of the tower, I'll use that to hide." Pò muttered unsure as she begged her past-life's training to not betray her now of all times, and once swallowed the knot on her throat, she ventured forward.
- Inner Circle – Main Building -
Right in front of the main entrance to the tall tower stood a small group of soldiers, all of them looking forward daring even the Gods to try and pass through them uninvited, none of them reacted when their captain marched outside through that door to address whoever had remained inside.
"The coast is clear, Elder, you can come out." the soldier acting as head of the small group of bodyguards said in satisfaction once scanned the path in front of them with a steely glare of his hawk-like eyes.
"Thank you, young man. In my advanced age my old bones can no longer sustain long battles, so if I can use my hands just to explore the wonders of Alchemy I would be happy, a pity though this means I will have to bother you." a venerable old voice replied as an exceptionally old man walked out, pale skin riddle in wrinkles and sunken eyes the color of the sky, his long white hair were tightly knotted in a formal bun hold in place by three gold rods.
On his forehead stood a bright gold jewel shaped like a drop, item that caught the awed stares of every soldier around him as that was the marking of a prodigy whose speed in Cultivation growth was a gift only one every million practitioners was born with.
THE OLD MAN WAS A LEVEL 3 GOLD QI EXPERT! WITH THE EXTREMELY RARE 'DROP SOUL GEM' TOO!
"It's no trouble, Elder. We are honored to accompany you." the same guard replied with a deep bow.
"God bless such respectful youth, it's very rare nowadays." the Elder replied with a gentle smile as he fixed the wide white robes he was wearing before walking forward with an energetic spring on his steps somebody as 'ancient' as him could only dream to have.
A prodigy among prodigies second only to the Emperor himself, and actually a close friend of the man and the Minister of War, the Elder was part of the trio of Gold Level Prodigies aptly called 'The Cerberus of Liáng City' for their close relationship and unmatched power.
"We shall go quick then, I don't want to miss a single word, it is so rare for me to leave this place, I want to see how his Imperial Majesty is doing!" the Elder said as he quickened his pace even more, soon forcing the soldiers to run as fast as they could to catch-up to the surprisingly fast and nimble old man.
And right under them, deep under the surface of the small artificial like, Pò was looking upwards towards the surface with empty eyes that finally recovered their spark of life as soon as the very last soldier walked away.
"Guh!" a giant bubble of air escaped her as her mouth opened to gasp, forcing her to hurry out so to not drown.
"Aaah! Aah! Aaah!" the girl gasped when air once again filled her lungs, her breath shallow and weak while she tried to recover her breath in the quietest way she could.
[I did not expect grandpa's 'Quiet of the slumbering death' Technique to work with this body...It was a miracle I managed to wake-up though!]
Considering the abnormal power of the Elder, in order to not be found, Pò had used one of the techniques her beloved Grandpa had personally taught her in her previous life; she had found a dark enough corner of the pond's bottom to lie down on and had reduced her heartbeat and presence to almost nothing, thus reaching a status of 'quasi-death' she hoped could fool the soldiers, even if she feared that had the Elder himself checked he would have found her all the same, it was a gamble she needed to take to remain hidden from the eyes of all those formidable enemies, especially since with an untrained body the chances of actually dying were absurdly high.
"Okay, now...The last leg of my part...Xie?" Pò muttered as she forced open the door of the main building, she knew her tampering with it to enter will be discovered, so she was not gentle in her approach to force it open.
To her relief she saw the young man carefully walk on the rooftops of the various buildings in a path that could only bring him to the dome, because any step took outside the 'safe route' he had planned to follow would have meant being discovered by any soldier patrolling the area, and without Cultivation, jumping down at any point was impossible, forcing him to sneak inside by crawling on the rooftops with his entire body glued to its tiles without even his head peaking up of a mere inch and carefully using the ropes holding up the banners with the Institute insignia as bridges to reach the innermost buildings.
"Good, he will take a while to reach the dome if he drags his sorry ass like that, just long enough for me to sneak inside and open it for him." Pò muttered nodding to herself as she finally managed to get inside.
– Main Laboratory – Cauldron Room -
"Now, let's lock the door and look for the levers Xie talked about." Pò muttered in relief as soon as she reached the room and closed the door behind herself.
The main laboratory of the Guild was a giant circular hall with a very high dome ceiling decorated with a lotus-like pattern, the walls were littered in parchments covered in formulas that had been affixed there by the various teachers and the Elder himself; and in its middle stood the towering stone cauldron she was looking for.
The 'Pot of the Thousand Reincarnating Souls' looked like something that had been cut out from a single giant rock, it was completely black with strange blueish reflexes shining ominously wherever the light from outside shined directly above it, even if thousands of years of use had covered the lower half in such a layer of soot that the color was simply dull black.
Though the carvings of dragons and other mythical beasts and warriors were still present on its whole surface, and looking as new as if newly made to inspire grandeur and awe upon every onlooker, nothing could help Pò to not shiver at the mere sight of the giant thing, as it felt like her own soul would freeze solid just by looking at it for too long.
"That thing is creeping me out for some reason, I feel the need to take a hammer and try to break it just by looking at it. I hope Xie knows what he is doing." the girl muttered shivering once again, and doing her best to not lay eyes on the cauldron, she looked everywhere in the room for the lever her partner in crime talked about.
Tap! Tap! Tap!
"Ah! He must be waiting for me." she exclaimed in surprise and hearing something knock on the ceiling from the outside.
Finally finding the wooden cabinet hiding the lever, with a series of ancient gears spinning and counter-weights moving downwards inside the walls, the whole ceiling of the lab opened following the pattern of the decorations, showing that indeed the top of the room had been built by layering slabs of gold-covered rock to mimic the petals of a lotus flower.
"Too much overly complicated." the girl commented unimpressed as she watched a long rope being hastily dropped down for Xie to use and enter so that she could close the roof once again.
"I remember you that for all their knowledge, those people are still Cultivators, they believe that a bead of glass on their forehead means they are the Gods' Chosen Ones, is no surprise they need to stroke their ego at every opportunity." the young man answered while fumbling with the satchel on his back to take out vials and other containers.
"If you say so. Now hurry up! I almost got discovered and the Emperor will finish that boring tripe of his speech any minute, we have not a lot of time!" Pò answered growling.
"I know! I know! I miscalculated the number of guards standing outside, I admit that much."
"I almost got discovered, Xie! If not for some brats pulling a prank I would have been captured!"
"Yes, I saw that, Big Sister Xiao sent them." Xie answered as he managed to light-up the cauldron, making the room bask in the eerie black flames roaring under it.
"Aunt Xiao? And what's with that fire?" Pò asked taking a further step back from the cauldron by reflex.
"She must have followed us when she saw us sneak away. As for the brats, I saw her waiting for those kids from my perch on the roof, I guess we'll need to give her a good explanation, and she won't be happy of this. The fire are simply 'Soul Flames', nothing unheard of in Alchemy; just do not touch it, they burn your soul instead of your flesh, and that makes just as much damages as it implies." he answered simply.
"Then I am standing the hell away from that! I'll mount guard, you tell me when you are done so we will clean-up and leave the same way you came in."
"And who's going to close the chutes?"
"Who cares? If we are lucky they will think one of them forgot to close it, otherwise, I have an idea about who to use as a scapegoat to cover our coming here." she answered uncaring.
"Then I will start immediately, while I was waiting for you I revised few formulas and came up with new alternatives, those will take longer to prepare though."
"Oh joy!"
As she said this, Pò was still with her back to the cauldron as she focused on the noises outside, and to her inner turmoil at each ingredient Xie was using there was a suffuse sound so weak to almost being impossible to hear accompanying each 'Pluck!' of the bubbling concoctions, sometimes it resembled an old lady laughing and others a young man weeping in sorrow, but each sound came and faded away too fast to properly recognize.
Even the light in the room seemed to change continuously, never a bright colour, but always a cold shade of darkness seeping through the bones to reach her soul and touch it in a way that made her recoil, she only noticed she was sweating when a drop fell inside her eye, and yet her body shivered as if she was feeling extremely cold, not that the feeling of thousands of clawed hands randomly grabbing her back and extremities were easier to ignore.
[That thing is not normal.] Pò thought uneasy as she peaked behind her to see Xie's face unblinkingly looking straight at the black flames unperturbed by the whole thing, and using the various ropes around the cauldron to control the lid's opening and the intensity of the flames.
"You are standing pretty close, doesn't it feel disturbing?" she asked.
"Disturbing? You mean the Aura this thing is covered in? I don't feel it anymore, after years of exposure you get used to it, that is why new users are subjected to this hellish thing slowly, the first time is always unpleasant." Xie answered shrugging.
"Is it safe at least?"
"I don't know, and I don't think the Elder himself does or that the others know or care, as long as it does what it was made for, they are happy...Even if something had always told me they never used this cauldron to its full potential, but if this was a willing choice or not, I cannot tell. It was the Emperor himself to bring this thing here and have the room and Guild built around it, he refused to have it moved even of an inch, but nobody knows why." the young man answered.
"Something tells you?"
"Call it intuition, but there is more to this cauldron than what everybody believes, because something with such intense and ancient aura can't be just very good for every level of Alchemy work, and for once, I am actually afraid to see if I am right. Now be quiet, I need to focus."
"Okay, okay."
- Later that night – Heavenly Lotus Tea House -
"You sure you saw nothing, Xiao?" the Police Force Captain asked again while rubbing his eyes tiredly.
"Again, Wang. No, I didn't. You see my garden? We are actually late in organizing for the festival, and if I don't hurry up, that idiot from the 'Lustrous River' will steal my best customers!" Xiao answered huffing in great anger.
"They are just a brothel, Xiao...They can't compete with you..."
"WHO CARES IF THEY FUCK OR DRINK TEA TO CELEBRATE!? I am talking money! I have to be the first to open so I have no time to dally around and look at people passing by!" she said, harrumphing and huffing annoyed.
"I know, I know...But you know the procedure...I have to ask." the man replied passing a hand on his balding head with a contrite expression.
"Humph! Okay, again. Who are you looking for? Let's hear!" she finally conceded and asked with a vitriol-laced tone that had the Captain feel like a lamb on the butcher board.
"A strange guy in black form-fitting clothes, either a girl or a very slim young man. Tall like this, more or less. It has been seen run away from the Alchemy Guild and move towards the West Gate. We are interrogating every shop, stall and beggar we meet." the Police Force Captain explained with a weak smile and ample gestures.
"So a weirdo?" the woman asked with a raised eyebrow.
"We suspect it was a newly-initiated member of the Black Order, one that underestimated their target and went discovered spying on the Alchemy Guild, we found enough traces to suggest he was just a mere scout so we need to capture him or her for questioning." the officer answered, he knew he was saying too much, but the unpaid tab he was running at that Tea House was long enough for him to try and ingratiate Xiao by any means necessary, especially after certain things he said to her girls he didn't want his wife to know about.
"So somebody from the Black Order? Pfe! They get everyday more brazen! If that idiot wants to leave from the West Gate, the best bet would be passing through that 'Secret' Opium Pavillon next to the commoners' bathhouse...But I clearly saw nobody go there nor I know for certain an illegal Opium smuggler works there, okay?" Xiao answered with a meaningful look.
"I know, I am sorry if I wasted your time, Xiao. You clearly saw nothing." the Captain answered with a barely hidden smirk.
"Oh! And about your tab, consider it lowered of a 10%, I just noticed I made a mistake last time I checked it." she added with a wink.
"Ah! Thank you for alerting me, Xiao." the man said looking even happier as he walked away to organize his men's visit to a certain Opium retailer.
"..." without saying a word, and dropping her smile as soon as she moved inside, Xiao walked towards the kitchens and opened a secret trap door right under one of the small tables in there she simply moved aside.
"...You two have five seconds to tell me EVERYTHING before I get really mad." she ordered to both Pò and Xie hiding at the bottom of the ramp of stairs under her, her words were accompanied by a terrifying glare both fugitives knew was a suicide to challenge.
- Imperial Palace -
While this was happening though, in the throne room of the Imperial Palace, completely devoid of people bar the three men standing in its middle, a very tense meeting was taking place between the Emperor, the Minister of War and the Great Elder of the Alchemy Guild.
"So? What happened?" the Emperor asked in apprehension.
"Have no fear, my friend. The Cauldron is not damaged nor has been moved, the intruder has merely used the Pot of the Thousand Reincarnating Souls to prepare something." the Elder answered with a calm tone.
"Used? For what?" the Minister of War, Zhao, asked growling.
"That unfortunately I can't tell as it had been cleaned thoroughly. By the temperature though I can guess that they have used it to create pills and elixirs, the pattern of the soot suggested a very low flame used in a constant manner, without too many fluctuations." the old man answered simply.
"And if the Black Order is really behind this...Maybe their Leader is trying to advance to the third Level of Gold Qi and needs medicines to help his Cultivation." the Emperor said thoughtful.
"It is a good guess, considering the abilities of the Cauldron of strengthening every concoction created with it to the point of the resulting medicine gaining a superior Quality Grade compared to the same recipe being prepared using normal methods."
"And you think..." The Emperor asked in dread.
"No, with the short amount of time they had, they could have not attempted it, especially if there were just two people like we suspect. And I can assure you that other than us three, nobody else knows how to use the Pot." the Elder replied turning way more serious.
"You know how much we need it, right? That pot is essential!" Zhao said with narrowed eyes.
"That is why I will double the soldiers around it, but still, nothing suggest we have been found out."
"Let's hope so. Just keep everything under control, Yao." the Emperor begged.
"No fear, my friends, we are all together in this and when the time comes, you'll see we will have another success under our belt."
- The next day – Heavenly Lotus Tea House -
"XIE!" Xiao roared with her hands clasped tightly around the young man's neck to strangle him.
"I DON'T UNDERSTAND! I HAD NO REACTION! WHY SHE DID!?" Xie gasped in answered as his face slowly turned blue.
"YOU CAN TURN YOURSELF INSIDE-OUT FOR ALL I CARE! BUT MY LITTLE PO IS NOT YOUR TOY!" the woman bellowed as she kept shaking him.
"IT WASN'T INTENTIONAL! IT WAS ONLY MEANT TO AGITATE HER QI LIKE UNLOCKING HER SOUL GEM WOULD! NOT GIVE HER THOSE VIOLENT SPASMS!" Xie gave a high-pitch shriek and answered immediately.
"You know well why she is different than us...She is a Gemless that comes from a long line of Cultivators, not from commoner nobodies like us!" Xiao hissed furious.
"Maybe that means she had some latent abilities as Cultivator?" the young man tried saying with a weak smile, and with his disheveled looks and black eye, his appearances could only inspire pity, not to Xiao unfortunately.
"So you can't fix it?" the woman asked with narrowed eyes.
"...I don't know?" Xie said with a very low and unsure tone of voice.
"XIE!"
"IT WORKED! Big Brother's incense worked! She calmed down!" Xie's brother, Ke, said immediately before a new round of strangling could start.
"Then yes...I can fix it!" Xie added speaking as fast as he could to save himself.
"Then get to work!" Xiao barked.
"But I don't know where to sta-"
"NOW!"
"OKAY! OKAY!" both brothers shrieked in answer as they moved to 'fix' whatever damages they did to Pò now that the girl finally stopped having wild convulsions and vomiting blood by the mouthfuls.
- Meanwhile – Inside Pò's 'inner cosmos' - Sea of Consciousness -
Pò had fallen, as soon as she had drank the elixir Xie gave her to accompany the various bitter pills he had concocted, she fell on her back, but for her the ground had opened under her body like water and she fell into pure darkness.
As she fell, with the grace of a leaf and yet traveling at unrivaled speed, the girl saw stars coming to life and dying in the blink of an eye, flying around her like fireflies and twirling around forming and unraveling entire galaxies like wisps of smoke.
As she fell, Pò's body broke through whole constellations, and galaxies rippled like ponds as she fell through them, until the biggest one she had ever seen embraced her in warm embrace of an endless sea of small lights, this until a huge shadow swam towards her and swallowed her whole in a single bite.
When she could finally open her eyes again, the young girl found herself sitting on a small round platform of rock, barely wide enough for her to stand on, while all around her there was only water.
The clearest water imaginable with nothing swimming inside, and so deep that soon it turned completely black and the bottom could not be seen.
"Where am I?" she asked aloud as she watched the completely cloud-less sky being bright even if no sun or moon could be seen anywhere.
"Hello?" Pò yelled trying to gain an answer, even if not even a far-away echo reached her ears, and with the complete lack of anything around her, she couldn't even tell how big that place was.
"What happened? Is this supposed to happen?"
FOOOOOOM!
With a deafening explosion the water right in front of Pò exploded upward, and from there an enormous fish could be seen jump towards the sky.
"A giant carp...Made of jade?" Pò muttered with wide eyes as she watched the quite-familiar giant carp, easily twenty meters long and ten meters tall, slammed violently against the 'Sky' creating ripples, and as a dark ripple of energy erupted from the hit, a cloud of countless stars could be seen waiting beyond the ceiling trapping the fish.
"I guess...You are the reason I am here?" she tried asking making the carp abort the new jump just to swim around her at a brisk pace and with its golden eyes following her every move.
To her surprise the giant carp clearly moved its head up and down briefly, all while never stopping its swimming.
"Yes. I think it's easy to say you brought me here in this new world as Pò." the girl muttered with a weak laugh as she fell sitting on the small platform to watch the carp swim around her, both looking at each other in silence as if deciding who of them should talk first.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
LostInCultivation
LostInCultivation Again, my apologies for the late update, even if finished, I had no way to post the chapter online until now.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone