Sunrise Alchemist, Ch 10: Heritage Recipes (Patreon)

Verse’s storage ring was well stocked with herbs by the time he left the store, some that he needed and some that he wouldn’t use for a while, but Seresa’s help was invaluable. He’d found out more about the guild than he’d expected to.

Now he knew they would definitely try to steal his recipes, but he wasn’t as worried about that as someone else would have been. Let them try.

Which of them was a dragon capable of using them?

He chuckled at the thought. Even if they got their hands on the recipes, it wouldn’t matter too much. The methods to use them were beyond them. That didn’t mean going to the guild was completely without danger, since they might still try to pressure him over them, but it gave him some leverage.

Seresa’s suggestion to tell them he had a legacy was a good one, but he needed to fill in some details. She'd suggested trading the heritage for protection, but he knew the value of the recipes a lot better than she did. He didn't mind giving them a couple as a teaser, but once they saw the rest, he had no doubt they would want them.

And if they wanted them, they would buy them. It didn't have to be anything they valued too highly. Some protection and a load of resources would be enough.

Whether or not they could use them wasn't his problem.

At the same time, he had no intention of saying the recipes were from the ancient dragons, nor one of the Elder Races at all. That was just asking for trouble.

But he did need something to tell them.

The origin of his techniques and the school he came from was the very first thing the Alchemists’ Guild would ask. It was a delicate balance where he needed to make sure that they saw the recipes as mildly valuable, but not something to get too excited about, and especially not something to fear. If they thought his recipes were a threat to their business, they would probably try to kill him.

He had quite a few recipes that could make a stir in Boreas once he managed to create them, but he could limit his public sales to just a few things. Other than that, the main thing was to make sure they didn’t know his real heritage, but hiding a name was a lot easier than hiding everything.

The simplest way was to just use another name, one that was close enough it might work. Ideas flickered through his mind as he talked it over with the shrine.

“What do you think about the Dawn Alchemy Sect?” he asked. “Or the Verdant Alchemy Sect?”

“Those are terrible names,” the shrine grumbled. “If it’s not going to be called Emerald Dragon Alchemy, then it should still have a proud name, like Celestial Alchemy Sect or the Divine Wood Sect. But this is a lot of work just to deal with humans. You could go find a nice cave in the mountains instead. A few centuries of work and you’d be a fine alchemist without all of this trouble.”

“I know,” Verse said with a laugh, “but I like the food in town better. It’s a serious dilemma. Plus, if I stay here, it’s much easier to gather materials. Hiding in a cave means I’d have to do it all myself, and that would take a lot longer.”

The thought of wasting so much time just to gather materials that he could easily buy in town made him put that idea all the way at the bottom of his list. The shrine was taking the long and safe view, which was fine, but he didn’t want to spend that much time unless he had to.

“You could find a few bandit gangs and wipe them out,” the shrine offered. “Taking things from enemies is a time-honored tradition. If you get enough of them, you’ll eventually find what you need. It wouldn’t even take that long.”

“How many bandit gangs carry thousands of herbs around on them?” Verse asked as he tried not to roll his eyes. “Admittedly, it’s more likely around here than in most places, but even if that did work, what about when I need higher-ranked materials? Those come from all over the empire and are carefully guarded.”

“You’ll be placing yourself directly in the hands of the guild,” the shrine complained. “Why don’t you keep alchemy a secret until you can crush them all with one swipe of your claws? That’s the most satisfying method.”

“It would slow my progress to a crawl,” Verse said as he shook his head. “I want to use the guild to gather materials and as a market to sell my work. If I avoid them, I’ll only be making things harder for myself and I won’t be able to practice as much. It will also be difficult to study how alchemy is done in the empire. It’s all or nothing.”

He didn’t feel like hiding away in the mountains and digging a cave for himself, so the second route was the only viable one.

“The market would be useful,” the shrine agreed, “but no matter how much they say they protect lost heritages, you know they will try to steal it from you.”

“Of course they will,” Verse said with a chuckle. “The only question is how long it will take them to try and how subtle it will be. But you know as well as I do that trying to copy these recipes won’t work for them. I’ll give them a couple of examples to prove it.”

“They’ll want to watch you make a pill at some point, so how are you going to deal with that?” the shrine asked. “You can’t tell them it’s a draconic soul cauldron.”

Verse looked up at the clouds as he considered the question. Then a quiet laugh escaped from his lips. Perhaps he was thinking too hard about a name, when he already had one ready made.

He would just call it Jade Scripture Alchemy.

The Heavenfall Imperial World’s Jade Scripture Sect had a rich tradition of alchemy, but no one here would recognize the name. He didn’t have those recipes, but it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t even need to lie about his cultivation method being a heritage technique.

It really was.

Cultivating the Jade Scripture required you to live on the Heavenfall Imperial World to start. Even if he gave them the complete scripture, no one here would be able to learn it. All he had to do was skirt the truth slightly and make them think that his alchemy depended on his cultivation method instead of his bloodline.

It was fortunate that his jade essence and his emerald dragon bloodline energy were almost the same color. He should be able to hide the differences. A sense of deep amusement flickered through him as he thought about tricking them.

It might be dangerous, but it would also be fun.

There was one more thing he needed to decide on before he got started, and that was what recipes to show them. The ones he’d selected for himself were fine to start and shouldn’t cause much trouble with the guild, but he needed to decide on a complete set of heritage recipes that he could refer to. He didn’t need to make them yet, or even hand them over, but he should have them ready.

“The guild is focused on profit,” he said as he shared the plan with the shrine, “so they’ll be worried about disruptions to their market. The recipes I show shouldn’t damage their current operations. That means I’ll need to fill a new niche that expands their market or offer luxury items that can’t be mass produced, ones where they can take a cut of the profit by selling it.”

“There are thousands of pill recipes in my memory,” the shrine replied, “from basic to well beyond what the empire thinks is the peak of cultivation, but before you choose something to share, you need to get a better idea of what they already have.”

“Then it’s time to go to the auction house,” Verse said. “They keep a list of recent sales as a way of attracting buyers. Let’s go take a look.”

The White Cloud Auction House wasn’t far away, so it only took him a few minutes to arrive. Access to their previous auction lists was also easy to get. As soon as he asked for it, a white jade slip was in his hands.

When he sent his spiritual sense into it, a series of historical auctions filled his mind. He quickly browsed through them for pills that had sold here. There were far too many to list at once, with hundreds of names and all of the famous alchemy sects who’d made them, including many former schools that no longer existed except for their names on a pill.

Before long, he sorted the list into something manageable and divided the types they’d sold into a few different categories.

First, there were the classic cultivation pills that increased your spiritual energy, expanded your dantian, strengthened your meridians, or cleared your mind.

That type of pill was always in demand, but it was also one of the most hotly contended areas in the market. He glanced at it before shaking his head.

He would make cultivation pills for his own use, but he had no interest in cornering the market on them. Not only would it draw attention to his recipes, but it was the best way to make enemies.

A pill that was good enough to get attention in that area would cause more trouble than he wanted.

Next were body refinement pills that purified your bones, strengthened your muscles, enhanced your organs, increased the vitality of your blood, boosted your regeneration, hardened your skin, and stimulated your bloodline.

As soon as he saw that last type, his interest was piqued and he let out a thoughtful hum. He needed to gather energy to rebuild his bloodline, and that type of resource might be useful, but it depended on what it was.

Memory had already awoken his bloodline, which was what that type of pill was generally designed to do.

For body refinement in general, he needed to work on his Nine Dragon Meridian Art. The shrine had given him some recipes that could help, but he wasn’t able to make them yet. That would naturally strengthen his bloodline.

After that, there were soul-strengthening pills, antidote pills, healing pills, and pills that boosted your affinity for various elements, which got his attention. That type of pill was usually refined from a beast core that contained a specific element, like a Lightning Python’s core. Some of those could be useful to him, but it would probably be better to just hunt the beasts down himself and absorb their cores.

Following that, there were cosmetic pills, life-extending pills, mind-enhancing pills, and other powerful pills that were in high demand and low supply. Some of them, like the life-extending pills, were so rare that even the rumor of one would move entire sects.

Lastly, there were poisons and other things related to medicine that weren’t technically pills. Many cultivators liked to use poison to kill beasts that were beyond them or to assassinate enemies they’d made. The auction house didn’t advertise poisons for that purpose, but what someone did with it after buying it was their own business.

He spent quite a while looking through the list. Then he set it aside and thanked the attendant before he headed back out into the city. He had some ideas in mind, but he was hungry again, so he headed for a small tea house that he’d seen on the way here as he began to build a set of recipes in his mind.

“An alchemy inheritance could have hundreds of recipes in it, but there’s no need to go that far with this,” he said to the shrine. “It’ll be best to let them think it’s a limited set, a dozen or two that are closely linked to the Jade Scripture...something for each cultivation rank and then a few rare ones, enough to be a promising source of income, but not enough to cause trouble, especially since it will be obvious that I can’t make them all immediately.”

“It’s easy to choose some recipes,” the shrine replied indifferently as he displayed a long list of possibilities for Verse to choose from. “You can take whichever you like. Just make sure they fit with your jade essence. It has to be obvious that they are from your cultivation method.”

“A handful of recipes named after jade should be enough to avoid suspicion, even if the rest are only partially related,” Verse agreed as he looked through the list.

Some he discarded immediately. Although he was choosing pill descriptions to show off to the guild, he also needed to make sure they were ones he liked. They would be the pills that defined his relationship with the guild and his public name as an alchemist.

They had to be useful.

Since he was borrowing the name of his old sect, he also wanted to pay it due respect. A grand name shouldn’t be associated with junk. After a little while, he chose about two dozen recipes.

Most had a direct association with Jade or related concepts, but a few were named after the dragons, like the Dragon Breath Pill, which intensified control over flames for a short time, and even allowed someone to breathe them. It was a short duration combat pill.

It was a bit of a tease, and one he couldn’t resist.

So many things in the world were named after dragons that it shouldn’t cause any trouble. Just walking down the streets of Boreas in the past few minutes, he’d seen the Golden Dragon Tavern, the Flourishing Dragon Pavilion, the Five-Clawed Dragon Armory, and more.

He was currently seated in the Dragon Lotus Tea House.

He could always make other pills for his own use, and the list of possibilities for that was longer than a dragon’s tail, but these would be the ones he showed to the guild.

He quickly prepared a jade slip with a brief list of the pills, which gave away nothing besides their description, main effects, and the general categories that they fell into. There were combat pills, healing pills, cultivation pills, body refinement medicines, soul-strengthening pills, and utility pills.

He specifically made sure that the cultivation pills were nothing special. They would be ones among many, with nothing particular to attract notice about them except for their unique recipe. Some people might buy them for variety, but unless they were noticeably better than other ones of the same type, they shouldn’t affect the guild’s profits.

They had to be useful, with their own quirks to make them unique, but not too attention-grabbing. That would be just right for the image he wanted to present.

At the same time, he couldn’t leave them out. No alchemy heritage would be believable without its own cultivation pills.

For the rest of the recipes he selected, there were more interesting things. All of them had something special about them and targeted a specific niche in the market.

He couldn’t keep his head down entirely, since he needed to attract some attention from the guild.

Most of these recipes were ones with good value and moderate to strong effects. They would instantly be seen as useful, but not game-changing. They were just right to show off a new heritage without threatening the guild.

Other than that, there were three pills on the list that he felt particularly attracted to and that stood head and shoulders above the others. He chose them as soon as he read the descriptions.

The Jade Sun Pill, the Returning Heaven Pill, and the Bright Eclipse Pill.

These were the ones that would make him famous.

Together, they were a perfect fit for his cultivation method, his sun affinity, and his memories of the Heavengold Imperial World. They had a focus on jade, the sun, and the celestial dao.

They also weren’t specifically related to dragons, so if they were the centerpiece of his heritage, it would help to deflect attention from his true origin.

Each of them was miraculous in its own way.

The Jade Sun Pill was designed for body refiners. It was a pill that focused on using the sun’s vital energy to purify the body and make it like jade. It drastically improved the physical foundation as well as the vitality of skin, organs, muscles, and tendons, leading to all-around increase in strength. It also had a small chance of granting a Sun or Fire affinity.

A single pill was enough to completely rebuild someone’s body, leaving them glowing with strength. It could also be used as an energy source to supplement a body cultivation method, something that was always in extremely short supply.

As soon as he announced it, the pill should create a frenzy.

What made this pill and the other two pills particularly worthy of being a heritage was that they could be made at any rank. From Rank 1 to Rank 9, he had recipes for them at every level.

As it turned out, that was a feature of all the draconic pills.

He could make the Jade Sun Pill now as Rank 1 or Rank 2. When he reached the Aligned Realm, he could make the pill as a Rank 3. For the best effect, a cultivator would want to take one each time they reached the corresponding realm, since the effects would layer on top of each other, but they could also be taken in sequence to catch up.

For him, if he was able to make the pills soon, he would want to take the Rank 1 and Rank 2 pills one after the other, and then the Rank 3 once he broke through to the Aligned Realm. They would go a long way to advancing his physical strength.

When his alchemy skills improved, he might be able to make a pill that was a higher rank than his own cultivation, but for right now that wasn’t something he was capable of.

The only downside to the Jade Sun Pill was that it wasn’t suitable for everyone. It was best for those who had a matching constitution. It could be taken by other people without harm, even those with a Frost-type constitution, and it would still enhance their body, but most of the affinity benefit would be lost.

The Returning Heaven Pill was targeted at a completely different market, one that might be even more demanding. It was designed to correct cultivation injuries, particularly damaged meridians. It could disperse chaotic energy, purify foreign influences, and break down some poisons. It could even help to repair some fractures in a dantian, although it wouldn’t restore it completely.

Cultivators were often injured if they pursued a method that wasn’t compatible with them or if they tried to force an advancement. Without the right medicine, problems like that could bring an end to someone’s growth, so pills designed to help were always in high demand. Sects and powerful families would pay a great deal for this type of medicine to heal their descendants.

He had no doubt that it would sell.

The only downside to the pill was that the materials for it were rather expensive. It needed high quality Wood-aligned beast cores and some natural treasures that were closely related to soothing energy conflicts. Those were valuable on their own, so not everyone would be willing to risk them in a pill.

Like the Jade Sun Pill, it had a full set of recipes for each rank, with a corresponding increase in rarity and price. What would work for a Qi Gathering cultivator wouldn’t work for a Primal Spirit cultivator.

The Bright Eclipse Pill was the last of the three signature pills. It was also the most dangerous of them. The first two were exceptional, but they belonged to well-known categories of body refinement and healing. This one was rarer.

It was designed to stimulate potential.

It had two main parts. One was poison and one was healing. The way it worked was by breaking down your body, while simultaneously flooding you with an extremely strong regeneration effect. At the same time, it would bring your mind into a dreamlike state, one where it was easier to find enlightenment.

In that state, your body would constantly destroy and repair itself, and the other herbs in the pill would stimulate your potential, letting elements that were suppressed surface. In that condition, hidden qualities in your bloodline, your cultivation method, or your physique would be dug out.

If that were all it did, however, the pill would have been too random and dangerous.

There was also a third part to the recipe, which was a key ingredient that could be switched out. That ingredient needed to be chosen based on the desired potential to be unlocked. For example, someone who wanted to stimulate a Fire bloodline would need an ingredient related to Fire.

When the pill was consumed, that ingredient would be stimulate the hidden factor in your body. The true value of the pill was that the key ingredient could be nearly anything. The other ingredients in the recipe were designed to support it.

As a result, the pill could be used to awaken various affinities, bloodlines, and more. It also meant that for the best effect the pill needed to be made selectively for a specific person. It would never be mass produced.

He chose it not only for its potential, but because out of all the pill recipes, it most closely matched his own experience of rebirth and the nature of Dusk to Dawn, the divine ability he’d created the year before. That ability encapsulated the cycle of life and death, as symbolized by the process of sunset to sunrise.

The end of one life and the beginning of the next.

This pill was the same. If it didn’t kill you, it would make you stronger. The details that came with it suggested keeping some strong healing medicine on hand while using it, three times more than necessary to overwhelm the poison.

Interrupting the full cycle of the pill would ruin its effect, but it was a necessary safeguard.

The requirements to make the three specialty pills were just as outstanding as their effects, but it should be fine. What good was having a guild if they didn’t help him find resources? That was one of the main reasons he was willing to join them.

Given the size of the guild, if they couldn’t find a steady supply, it would be a giant embarrassment.

These three pills were useful to him in other ways, even if he didn’t make the complete versions. The resources that were needed for the recipes would be beneficial for his cultivation. There were a lot of elemental crystals, Fire and Wood affinity materials, Sun-related items, bloodline medicines, high-level herbs, and more in the recipe.

Once he collected them, he could just use them directly.

For example, if someone brought him ten sets of materials to make a pill, all he had to do was say that he failed nine times and succeeded once. Then he could keep the rest of the materials. Everyone knew that pills were difficult to make, so a lot of them could disappear as “failures” without raising any eyebrows.

Draconic alchemy had a high success rate, so he was confident in turning a profit.

The other pills he selected for the heritage were more normal, and he didn’t bother paying too much attention to them. Their names were things like the Jade Restoration Pill, Emerald Crane Pill, Golden Marrow Pill, Stone Foundation Pill, Jadeheart Pill, Emerald Soul Pill, Twisting River Pill, Cleansing Rain Pill, Serene Complection Pill, and so on.

They were a mix of healing, body refinement, cultivation, soul strengthening, antidotes, cosmetic effects, and so on, giving the heritage a well-rounded breadth.

He even tossed in a recipe for something called the Emerald Cauldron Pill, just in case anyone asked about his alchemy cauldron, although it had nothing to do with it. The pill was designed to strengthen the dantian and ignite a soul flame that could be used for a specific cultivation method, one that had long been lost to time.

The shrine didn’t even have a copy of the method it belonged to.

Other than that, there was a handful of battle-related pills called the Amethyst Harrow Pill, Cedarflame Pill, Dragonwing Pill, Enduring Autumn Pill, and Brilliant Jade Pill. They added temporary boosts in combat, and they all had decent effects.

Like the special pills, all of them could be made from Rank 1 to Rank 9, which was going to stun the Alchemists’ Guild. There were no pills in the empire he’d ever heard of that had duplicate versions for every rank. There were ones that had lower and higher versions that worked in a similar way, but usually only two or three versions at most.

Not for every cultivation realm.

The dragons hadn’t liked changing pills just because of a cultivation difference, so they’d researched these pills until they could make them for any rank just by changing the materials. The effects had been refined and improved over time, until they were each a vision of simplicity.

The Amethyst Harrow Pill surrounded you with a fiery aura that would protect you from spiritual attacks and damage evil spirits. It was designed to deal with all types of evil ghosts and demons, and was considered essential for fighting Netherblood Demons and their descendants.

If he’d had it back in the beginning when he first came to Whitestone, that old ghost would have been incinerated the second it tried to possess him.

The Cedarflame Pill bolstered your physical strength and increased your vital regeneration with a combination of Fire and Wood attributes. Unlike many combat pills, it had a long duration of two hours and could be taken repeatedly. The only side effect was that you smelled like burnt cedar wood after you took it, an effect which could linger for a day or more.

The Dragonwing Pill boosted your agility to an extreme level and made it seem like you could fly, although it was actually an effect of condensing Wind around your body until you could step on air. The flight effect was really only useful for Qi Condensation, but it still let higher-realm cultivators save some energy.

The Enduring Autumn Pill increased your physical defense and regeneration, and also surrounded your body in layers of protective energy like leaves, which would fall away as you were damaged. It was a type of temporary armor. With each rank of the pill, it included another defensive layer, from one to nine.

There weren’t many pills in the world that could turn into defensive techniques, but this was one of them. It was half a pill and half a talisman, and to make it required inscribing the pill with a complicated formation.

The Brilliant Jade Pill was a combat restorative. Its main effect was an extreme regeneration effect and to restore qi and stamina. Starting at Rank 4, it could directly regrow limbs that had been lost. Its downside was that it couldn’t be used repeatedly. The effect was far more violent than slower healing pills and it exerted a strain on the user’s vitality.

All of the pills were exceptional in their own way, but there were hundreds of combat pills in the world, some of which had similar effects, so including them in the heritage was fine. Given that he was the only one who could make them, and that other options existed, the demand wouldn’t be that high.

The difference that really made his pills stand out was that the residue they left behind was almost non-existent, an effect that was shared by all the draconic alchemy products. They were much better than the standard quality in the empire.

That wasn’t something he planned to advertise, however, or the demand would sky rocket.

It was why he wanted to sell specialty pills someone only needed to take once or twice, rather than ones that could be taken by the dozen. It would be a silent benefit, and hopefully not something anyone would notice for a long time.

Overall, there were 22 pills in the heritage list. If the versions for each rank were added, there were many times more than that. It was a worthy collection.

He tapped his fingers on the side of his tea cup as he looked down at the jade slip. He had recorded the basic information for each pill, but not the recipes. Those would be only in his memory, so that they couldn’t be stolen.

“Now, I just need to decide which recipes to trade the guild for their protection,” he said to the shrine. “Giving them two recipes should be enough for them to know they can’t make it, but they’ll spend a while trying.”

The three specialty pills were off the table, but he could offer them a couple of the others, perhaps the Dragonwing Pill and another one, like the Woodbalm Paste or the Cleansing Rain Pill, which was a general antidote pill. They were mostly harmless.

If they wanted to buy more, some of the others were possible too.

As he looked at the description of the Amethyst Harrow Pill, the knowledge that the Netherblood Demons still existed floated through his mind. The name he was using for the pill was in the modern language of the empire, and didn’t match the draconic name, but it was enough to make him consider whether the demons would recognize an old nemesis.

He’d keep that one to himself.

The demons were still out there somewhere, and they possibly had their hands in the background of the empire. There was no need to attract them with the description of a pill.

“That should be good,” he decided with a slight smile. “Let’s go see how much the guild wants to pay.”

Once they saw the descriptions, he was betting they would want them.

Even if he warned them they wouldn’t work, they were alchemists, and alchemists didn’t like to believe they couldn’t make something. Perhaps the empire’s alchemy would surprise him and they would be able to come up with their own method.

If so, that was their benefit. These were only a handful of the pill recipes in his memory and he could afford to be generous.

But if they wanted them, they would have to pay.