Aoyang: The Reborn Alchemist Seeks Knowledge [Xianxia]

The night was peaceful as the two talked, Baiyun recounting tales of the hunt with inconvenient details omitted.

Yue bobbed about in the air as she listened, her best imitation of nodding. She felt a little silly realising Baiyun had no way of sensing those gestures, but she couldn't help herself.

As his retellings approached the final events, her glow flickered.

"A Nascent Soul beast?" Yue's voice was horrified. "And a Spring Delusion Mantis at that... 5th in the Danger Beast rankings! How could the heavens be so cruel to you?"

"Danger ranking? What's that supposed to be?" Baiyun frowned.

He felt like he just heard something ridiculous.

Yue conjured a pair of eyebrows to crease.

"What's with that look? It's a list made by the strongest human cultivators of this era, ranking the most dangerous of beasts! Most spirit beasts are already stronger than humans of the same cultivation, so knowing what beasts are dangerous is important!"

Huh? Baiyun was taken aback by her sudden rebuttal, seemingly out of nowhere.

"Right..." he said, despite his thoughts.

Though... that species of mantis was considered to be the 5th most deadly in the world? What type of rotten luck was that? It was literally his first outing from the sect!

"You should take a look at it firsthand."

Yue harrumphed as she dropped a black leather-bound book into Baiyun's hands. He raised an eyebrow. For her to switch from concern to slight indignation so suddenly, she certainly must be a big fan of it.

But...

"Yue, I can't see." Baiyun said.

He could still read books with divine touch but that was a secret.

"Hmph. Close your eyes." Yue said.

Baiyun shut his eyelids and felt her reach threads of soulsense past his eyes and into his mind. It was unpleasant and he almost subconsciously resisted, but he managed to hold back. He was suddenly glad he regained enough control of his soul to disguise his body as a regular mortal.

Yue flew towards his face and affixed herself between his eyebrows, a light shining into his consciousness.

From a vague blur came strands of colour that flitted across his mind's eye. They shot across his vision and weaved amidst each other, until finally, they formed a tapestry, a depiction of a moonlit room at night. Baiyun widened his eyes as he realised he had temporarily regained sight.

His eyes were not repaired, but Yue had connected his vision to hers, sharing her sight with him! He blinked his eyes subconsciously from the uncomfortable sensation, but even with his eyelids shut, his vision remained constant.

Baiyun looked around with great interest, noting the colours were slightly different and oddly vibrant. He felt as if the range of colour he could see had been greatly expanded. So this was the vision of a Light Spirit...

"How is it?" Yue said, her voice strained. "Is it working?"

"Yes, I can see again!" Baiyun exclaimed, doing his best to sound excited.

He felt he had to act the part despite being unimpressed, not wanting to seem suspicious. He had taken note of how Yingtao thought he seemed way too calm about being crippled.

This was not a true solution. It wasn't as if he could constantly drag Yue with him everywhere, and from how strained she sounded, it wasn't a technique she could keep up for long.

And as he could already read the book with divine touch, technically, he gained nothing from this temporary vision. Baiyun shook his head as he thought that. Hah... why was he being so cynical? He felt like he should be a little more grateful.

Perhaps he could try to contract a few spirits for sight if he found any outside the sect... but it was unrealistic. Most spirits had no way to perceive light, with light spirits being the exception due to their element. Worst of all, light spirits were one of the rarest natural spirits, with Yue being the only one he had seen in the sect.

"Baiyun... what are you doing standing around?" Yue said in a strained voice.

"Sorry, I was just so taken aback by being able to see again..." Baiyun made an excuse. "I thought I'd be blind forever!"

"Just... go read the book."

Baiyun had an odd look on his face. This side of Yue was one he had never seen before. If she was such a huge fan of this book, it was weird how she had never shown it to him. Was she worried it would be bad influence? She was really hard to understand sometimes.

He decided to turn his attention to the book before she got on his case again.

On the ebony black leather of the book that shone under moonlight, a dragon head was etched onto its cover with simple yet exquisite strokes. He turned the book over and saw a list of 20 names on its back, crediting every author who had worked on the book. Each name had brackets beside it, detailing the author's cultivation stage.

Ling Shan (Peak Nascent Soul), Leihan (Peak Nascent Soul), Jian Wang (Peak Nascent Soul)...

Baiyun couldn't be bothered to read all the names and merely shook his head. Despite standing at the pinnacle of a mortal world's cultivation, they still felt the need to shamelessly brag. They lacked the demeanour of a true expert.

But something caught his eye.

Gold Core? True Soul?

3 of the cultivators had (Gold Core) beside their names, while a single cultivator had (True Soul). These cultivation stages were unfamiliar to him.

Most cultivators in the universe cultivated the Heavenly Classic, a cultivation manual bestowed by the very heavens and older than recorded history. But it should not be underestimated merely because of how ubiquitous it was.

Penned by one of the older heavens, it was one of the highest quality cultivation paths in the universe.

The people of mortal worlds were usually only able to create 2★ manuals at best. Even in the highest realms of the universe, 5-7★ techniques were considered to be absolute treasures, enough for wars to be waged over them!

The Heavenly Classic was 8★, truly absurd. It was so oppressive that most researchers gave up on creating cultivation paths, those aforementioned techniques often combat arts or spells instead.

Legends said before the Heavenly Classic had been created, cultivation paths were endless and flourishing, each clan with their own unique paths and rogue cultivators armed with the most bizarre combinations of paths.

But the day the heavens bestowed the Classic, untold chaos descended.

Suddenly, even beggars on the streets could access one of the ultimate cultivation paths. Countless old powerhouses were unwilling to destroy their cultivation to start over, and were overtaken by unreasonably strong new talents.

The near absolute standardisation of cultivation... even if those past paths were of lower quality, Baiyun felt it was a tragic tale. How much creativity and knowledge had been lost to time?

Even his unique path Elixir Stream was only 7★. But for an alchemist, the benefits were so huge that it was worth cultivating over the Heavenly Classic. The Classic might be powerful, but he had seen people cultivating paths as low as 6★ if they had useful unique properties!

Gold Core and True Soul... Baiyun could not help but feel curious. For them to be cultivating this unknown path, it had to be at least 6★. But a mortal world shouldn't be able to get their hands on a manual of such calibre; there had to be more to it, perhaps a higher world backing them for whatever reason.

A sudden thought struck him.

Then... could the alchemy techniques of this world be of such a tier as well? The very thought of it made his heart skip a beat.

"Baiyun, what are you doing? You've been... reading the names for almost 2 minutes?!" Yue said suddenly, her voice still strained.

Ah.

Baiyun imagined how weird his actions must have been from her perspective and coughed awkwardly. Without his eyes to slow his perception of time, all that was left was the bad habit of standing around to think despite being mid-conversation. But he decided to be shameless and push his luck anyway.

"Yue, what are these two stages? I've never heard of them!" Baiyun said as he pointed at (Gold Core) and (True Soul).

He suddenly realised a little of his old acted childishness had returned in that sentence. Another bad habit...

"Huh?" Yue sounded extremely confused. "Just read the book... I'll explain it to you later! I'm dying here!"

Baiyun laughed awkwardly as he finally opened the book. Any knowledge was better known than not, he supposed.

He flipped through the pages and quickly read, only for his eyes to twitch. Despite its length, the book only ranked 20 beasts, and more than half of them were dragons or phoenixes!

If it were truly for pragmatic purposes like Yue claimed, it should have excluded them from the ranking and focused on other beasts. Even fools knew just how strong dragons and phoenixes were after all; seeing them alone should be enough of a cue to run.

To him, the book seemed like the hobby of bored cultivators looking for things to theorise about.

But despite his grumbling, he briefly noted some of the beasts.

2nd: Iron Mountain Tortoise - Indomitable metal colossus
5th: Spring Delusion Mantis - The deathly lull of spring
12th: Red Eyebeast - Do not gaze at its many eyes
13th: Spiral Worm - Terror of the abyss
15th: Great Goldthread Parasite - Treacherous puppet master
17th: Dreambell - Dreams become reality
20th: Myriad Minds Octopus - A thousand minds in one

Afterwards, he flipped to the page on the Spring Delusion Mantis and read through it.

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The wording was long and verbose, but the gist of it was that the Spring Delusion Mantis was considered on the lower end of brute strength. However, its soul and illusion arts were extremely frightful; a single spring mantis could wipe out an entire army of Nascent Soul cultivators if they were caught off guard, hence its ranking at 5th!

It continued to say that this information was mostly gathered from 1 specimen, and that this might not be the full extent of its ability due to its capabilities in stealth as well. Its true terror was how it attacked out of the blue when its targets were off-guard.

Baiyun frowned. He could see how the mantis was lower on brute strength from how much it struggled to cleave through Yingtao's defensive artefacts. They might be of the Nascent Soul level, but as a Core Shaping cultivator, she lacked the ability to use them to their full capacity.

But were its soul arts truly that frightful? Perhaps it was a strange thing to think after how much of a loss he suffered at its scythes, but by the standard of soul arts from his previous world, its soul arts seemed fairly mediocre.

The book theorised about the Mantis's match-up against the other beasts on the danger ranking, concluding it could easily kill all the beasts beneath its rank, and even stand a chance against some of the beasts above it in ranking.

No matter how strong someone was, if they were caught in a soul illusion, they would be fish on a chopping board. Baiyun only had one conclusion from this... the soul arts of this world were undeveloped.

The only beast the writers felt certain the mantis could not defeat was the Iron Mountain Tortoise, as its defences were far too absurd.

He mused to himself, deep in thought. It seemed his soul arts were a bigger advantage than he expected. Despite how he grumbled about the book at first, he had gathered a few interesting details.

"Urgh!" Yue suddenly let out a cry.

She began to flicker as his vision went pure-white, imploding back into dark nothingness.

"Sorry... I'm at my limit." she huffed.

Oh well.

Baiyun used divine sense on the book and recorded all of its contents into his mind instantly to digest later. It wasn't a very satisfying way to read but his hand was forced.

"But Yue, didn't you say you'd explain to me what Gold Core and True Soul were?" he grinned.

Yue stared at him for a moment.

"...I can't believe you're still hung up on that detail." she sighed. "Fine, I'll give you a quick rundown!"

"Remember when I told you about the heavenly laws?" she said as Baiyun nodded. "Well, a few years after that, there was another occurrence! But this time, no new laws were passed. All they did was bestow an updated version of the Heavenly Classic."

"What?" Baiyun was stunned. "Why didn't you mention that?"

"I mean... it's not like it mattered..." Yue grumbled. "Anyway, that's why the cultivation books you saw didn't mention those stages. Any manual older than 100 years old is outdated!"

Baiyun was a little annoyed by he couldn't blame her. If not for his strange origins, what servant child would be able to cultivate? Even tossing him a few century-old dusty manuals was already quite accommodating.

Yue seemed to be in quite a hurry, but she still roughly explained the rest to him. As it turned out, while the New Heavenly Classic contained minor improvements, the main meat of it was how much it extended the manual.

Meridian Opening -> Qi Gathering -> Core Shaping... in the early stages, there was little difference between the two versions.

But upon reaching the peak of Core Shaping, the cultivator was no longer limited to Nascent Soul as their next advancement.

Golden Core and True Soul were both alternate paths! Baiyun was stunned. With new paths unlocked in the Heavenly Classic, it was as if two new 8★ manuals had been bestowed upon the universe!

Nascent Soul was the original path, an extremely powerful path with enough power to contend with the most offensive of 7★ paths. This was despite it being technically a utility path, turning the qi within one's dantian into an artificial spirit that could augment cultivation speed and make casting powerful techniques half as difficult.

Golden Core was a true offensive path, foregoing the artificial soul to create an engine within oneself. It was estimated to be double the strength of Nascent Soul! Baiyun could imagine those who cultivated 7★ offensive paths despairing from their path going obsolete.

True Soul was a soul focused path, fusing one's cultivation into the soul instead of the dantian. It had half the power of Nascent Soul, but with this, one could cultivate the soul arts of true spirits.

Baiyun took a deep breath. If the True Soul path had existed before the law of death, it might have been the undisputed supreme path. Leaving one's body in soul form was no longer feasible, as it was now considered death by the heavens. But true spirit arts were powerful enough that it could still stand head and shoulders with the other 2 paths.

These 2 paths... a terrifying thought entered his mind. The old Heavenly Classic was constrained by how it only followed 1 path, but now it had expanded to cover 3.

If the heavens suddenly passed down an 8★ alchemy path... Baiyun could only shiver at such a horrifying thought. How absurd would it be if the path he prided himself so much on went obsolete?

What exactly were the heavens doing? He doubted those 2 new paths were created out of the goodness of their hearts. There had to be a reason, something about inventing new paths that benefited them.

He had no idea what it was, but the idea that the heavens were trying to standardise all cultivation paths was terrifying.

Wait... the timeline didn't make sense.

"Yue," he suddenly said. "Only about 100 years have passed right? How have people already cultivated all the way to Gold Core and True Soul already? You said they were the strongest human experts too, so they can't be that young."

"Oh, that's because the new paths are compatible with Nascent Soul." Yue said nonchalantly. "You can cultivate multiple of the Heavenly Classic paths at once."

Baiyun's mind went blank.

"All three at once?" he said weakly.

"Eh? Yeah, the manuals did say it should be possible..." Yue mumbled. "But I've only heard of people cultivating a 2nd branch right now."

Three 8★ paths being cultivated at once... Baiyun had a horrifying thought.

A Golden Core in one's dantian providing unparalleled strength, a Nascent Soul providing cultivation speed and augmenting spells, and a True Soul to wield the arts of spirits... Even ignoring all their perks and synergies, the brute strength of such a cultivator would be 3.5 Nascent Souls. And with those accounted for, they would be 10-20 times stronger!

Ridiculous... what was this but a 9★ path?

Baiyun paled and for a moment, he wondered if he might have to abandon Elixir Stream. He did not want to relieve the legends of ancestors overthrown by younger cultivators with stronger paths.

But he smacked himself mentally. Tsk, what was he thinking? Elixir Stream was the path he had thousands of years of experience with, and had immense benefits for alchemists!

If people had the guts to cultivate 6★ paths when the Heavenly Classic was 8★, even if the Classics became 9★, what was wrong with him following his 7★ path?

Besides, this was simply too fishy. If the heavens had tampered with the Classic in some way, following Elixir Stream would keep him safe.

But despite that suspicion, Baiyun now had a new goal. He needed to obtain a copy of the updated Heavenly Classic and study it! Even if he chose not to cultivate it, the knowledge offered within would be invaluable. Perhaps he could even take inspiration from it to further improve Elixir Stream.

Yue sighed as she watched him go deep into thought again, all sorts of emotions rushing through his face.

"Okay, that's enough for today!" she huffed. "Your questions are very tiring, you know?"

Her gaze landed on his eyes and missing arm, and her voice grew soft again.

"And..." she said. "You should rest. It's late."

Baiyun nodded.

"I've got a lot to do tomorrow so I'll have to go now." Yue said, before mumbling to herself. "For something like this to happen, something is very wrong. The Beast Continent must be up to no good again..."

"Beast Continent?" Baiyun asked.

"Er... nothing! I just spoke without thinking!" Yue spoke quickly as if panicking. "Go to bed!"

With that, she shot off into the distance straight through the walls.

Baiyun walked to the window and turned his blind eyes to the night sky with a forlorn gaze. For a brief moment, visions of Jingfeng's demise glanced his mind, but he shook off the thought. Agonising about past mistakes was a recipe for inner demons.

It did feel callous to not grieve, but the world was a cruel place at times. Tormenting himself and beating himself up over his mistake would benefit no one; for now, all he could do was try to make it up to Fei An somehow.

But... Baiyun was silent for a moment.

He left the room and headed to the front door, returning to the front porch. It was silent, but he could still imagine the sight of Fei An hunched over, crying over her brother's urn.

Not a single trace of her tears remained, washed away by the uncaring world.

...

He knelt on the grass and clasped his hands, chanting an old funeral rite from the 8th heaven.

The dead could not hear such prayers. Then, did it exist merely to console the living? To seek solace for what he had done while superficially honouring the dead... how selfish was this meaningless act of his?

"Rest in the embrace of eternity, the gaze of heaven upon you."

Baiyun still said the last lines of the rite despite his berating thoughts.

To chant rites from a fallen heaven was truly ironic. Perhaps it was funeral for both Jingfeng and the 8th, Baiyun sighed.

He returned to his temporary room and sat down to meditate, letting his body sleep in the meanwhile. The turbulent and heavy thoughts eased as his mind returned to a state of still waters.

Remembering how he struggled to integrate his body during his earlier years of reincarnation, he once again tried to map it with streams of qi. He hoped he could increase his affinity with his body once more like this.

But there was nothing new to map and comprehend. Even the restructured aspects of his body were things he already understood. He sighed. He already knew the solution wouldn't be this simple, but he still had to try.

Helpless, all he could do was slowly mend his body with soul. The elixirs fed to him while he was asleep got him back on his feet, but there were still minor internal wounds left.

...

Morning came in the blink of an eye.

Baiyun turned his head to the murmur of voices outside and figured it was time to get out of bed. He walked to the door and grabbed the knob, but suddenly remembered Fei An's strange reaction yesterday.

Perhaps it would be best if he hid his eyes. But his bag only had shoddy cloth and servant clothing.

He walked to the table and used divine sense on it, sensing the contents of the drawer built into it and finding a neatly folded pile of silk handkerchiefs.

Perfect. He took one of them and tied it around his eyes securely, noting how it was soft and breathable. And with how thin the cloth was, he could still make out the faint glow of ambient light.

He headed for the door and opened it with a creak, entering the hallway.

With the sound no longer obstructed by the door, muffled sound turned distinct. From their voices, he identified Mohei, Qinghe and Sanguang.

His ears picked up faint breathing as well as he approached, identifying a small creature was in Mohei's arms. That was likely the mole.

He noticed two more people from their breathing. They did not speak, but from the faint clatter of their armoured uniforms, they were likely Ying Shi's guards.

Only five disciples were here, while Yingtao and Ying Shi were absent? Baiyun began to feel uneasy.

"Baiyun!" Mohei called out. "Are you okay?"

His footsteps pattered as he rushed over, grabbing Baiyun by the nub of his left arm. He reached for the blindfold next, but Baiyun shook his head.

"...Sorry," Mohei mumbled.

For some reason, he decided mid-speech was the perfect time to return the mole. Baiyun was caught off-guard and nearly stumbled as the familiar critter was suddenly stuffed into his lone arm, grumbling while asleep.

"Stupid! He's blind now, what if he drops it?" Sanguang said.

"He saved your life but you're still bullying him now? You're so ungrateful!" Mohei snapped back. "Or are you still mad at him because of the duel?"

"Huh?" Sanguang was taken aback by the absurdity. "What do you mean? I'm yelling at you for being stupid, not him! You're the one who almost dropped his mole!"

"Yeah, yeah! You're just-"

"Enough!" Qinghe raised her voice. "Don't you two get tired of bickering? Now's not the time for that."

The boys quietened down with a few grumbles as she huffed. Mohei quietly tried to pass the cauldron over next, but Baiyun didn't have a free hand. In the end, he had to stuff the cauldron into Baiyun's bag awkwardly.

"Baiyun," Qinghe began. "Aside from us, all the disciples have returned to the clans for now, Ying Shi and Yingtao included. I should have returned to report to my clan, but I managed to convince the Clan Master to postpone my return yesterday. It should be the same for Mohei and Sanguang as well."

Baiyun's heart sank. He knew Jingfeng's death wouldn't blow over so easily. Even from just the few words she said, he could tell something big was about to happen.

Qinghe tried to grab him by his lone hand, then realised his mole was in the way and grabbed his left shoulder instead.

"You wanted to meet my master didn't you? I'll take you to my clan residence." she said.

Baiyun hesitated for a moment but nodded. With a big storm about to approach, perhaps her clan could serve as another tree to take temporary refuge under.

Qinghe took his nod as a cue to drag him away by the shoulder, heading outside the mansion. Mohei and Sanguang awkwardly stumbled after them, neither having the courage to speak. The armour of the guards clattered as they followed as well. Meanwhile, Baiyun frowned as he continued to think, absorbed in his own world.

Clans powerful enough to provide Yingtao with multiple Nascent Soul artefacts... these young masters were far from nobodies.

Even after these stupid "warrior clans" sent out their youths to gather materials in hopes of tempering their wills, he had seen enough cases of how they acted when a few of their youths inevitably died.

They would fly into a rage, looking for someone to blame and punish!

Baiyun could already guess what would happen. The enraged elders of Jingfeng and Fei An's clan would first hound the Ying clan for hosting the hunt, then when more details were discovered, they might execute him even if they didn't realise he kicked Jingfeng away!

He began to curse to himself about how hypocritical these clans were.

Servants in his past life had been killed merely for doing their jobs wrong, let alone being implicated in such a huge matter.

If he was particularly unlucky, they might even try to soulsearch him, which would cause... terrifying consequences due to the backlash of his soul, so to speak. He hoped that the lacking soul path of this world would mean soulsearches had not been invented.

Would he have to flee the sect? With how much Yue pampered him, it might be possible to convince her to distract the spirits somehow. No, there was a servant seal engraved onto his left hand from birth. Other than recording contribution points for the canteen dinners, it could also be used to track him.

...

Baiyun stared at his missing arm speechlessly.

...it seemed that problem had been unexpectedly resolved in the worst way possible. He suddenly felt ridiculous.