Emerald Alchemist, Ch 28: Reinforcements (Patreon)

On the way to the Azurewind Guard building, the two of them carried on a detailed conversation on how to handle the sect. They were walking inside of a privacy ward that was like a bubble, which originated from an artifact she carried in her hand.

Her background and the wealth her family controlled was self-evident, which made him confident that she could handle hiring the guard. More importantly, it reminded him that he needed to acquire some more artifacts like that for himself.

She had a lot of things that made life easier.

Most of their conversation focused on the strength of the sect master, as well as what formations and other defenses they could expect. Vesana was well-informed on the general state of affairs for sects in the area, but she didn’t have all of the details.

Hopefully, the guard would know more about the local sects and their abilities, since it was an essential piece of information for this area, or at least have enough forces that it didn’t matter.

The aura he’d felt from the sect master’s presence had driven home the difference between the Inspired Aura and the Primal Spirit realms.

It was a huge gap.

While he was able to fight up an entire realm and defeat some Primal Spirit cultivators while he was only at the Aligned realm, that was already unheard of by most standards. Even with his bloodline and the Jade Scripture, it was asking too much to face an Inspired Aura expert.

If he had more dragon meridians complete, perhaps five or six, it might be possible, since that would make up most of the difference in pure strength, but as it was, they were going to need assistance.

There was also the issue of the dao, which was its own type of mystical energy that underlay all the realms of cultivation. The dao was the resonance of universal laws. Differences in understanding gave rise to huge differences in power, completely apart from your cultivation realm, but that was only one reason it was so important.

The dao was part of cultivation, infused directly into the laws that divided the realms. It was the largest barrier to advancement besides gathering enough energy.

The sect master was at the Inspired Aura realm, but he was only technically at the Aligned realm. There was a two realm difference between the two of them. While he could skip one, skipping two was out of the question.

The Aligned realm balanced a cultivator’s energy with the dao and the natural world, creating the beginning of a path. It required an expert to reach the Touch of the Dao in their path to lay the foundation for the breakthrough.

After that, the Primal Spirit realm opened the door to power.

That realm started by igniting a primal spark of the dao, which was like a flame in your spirit. The spark would grow as you ascended the ranks of the realm, from early to late, until when you reached the very peak of the realm, you were ready to form a dao spirit.

That spirit was what the ‘primal spirit’ referred to, and it was the goal of the realm.

It also required your dao to be at the Heart of the Dao or higher in order to succeed. An essential part of advancing through the Primal Spirit realm was cultivating your dao and reaching the Heart of the Dao. The earlier you could do it, the better. It would smooth out your progress and make it easier to break through by infusing your mind, spirit, and body with the echo of a universal law.

Then, once you were ready, you could attempt to infuse your dao into every part of your spirit, and create your dao spirit.

There was an enormous difference in power between those who had formed a dao spirit and those who hadn’t, since it enabled the dao to support a cultivator’s attacks in a holistic manner.

A punch from someone with a dao spirit and the Dao of the Mountain meant the force of a mountain was crushing you, not just a fist. They didn’t even need to use a technique. Every small gesture was infused with effortless power.

When they actually did use a technique, things became even more powerful.

With the dao spirit supporting all of your attacks and aura, it was almost impossible for lower realms to overcome the difference.

One of the reasons that Verse could fight against Primal Spirit cultivators without too much trouble was because he was already at the Heart of the Dao and his dragon meridian then made up for the energy difference between the realms.

Renzer and Corpsewind had both been at the early Primal Spirit stage, but they’d only had a dao spark and not even a quarter of a complete dao spirit.

The major difference between the two of them was that Corpsewind’s dao understanding was much stronger, even before his demonic bloodline came into play.

But if Verse were facing someone at the peak of the Primal Spirit realm who had already created a dao spirit, things would be different. He would need another meridian or two at least, and possibly to be at the next dao stage.

After Heart of the Dao, there was the Dao Essence stage. Normally, cultivators started working on that level after reaching the Inspired Aura realm. As that stage advanced, heaven and earth would begin to move with your attacks.

The Inspired Aura realm was all about infusing your spirit with the dao and then about how much energy you could gather.

Once you could perfectly resonate with the laws of the world around you, you could advance to the Dao Echo realm. Fortunately, that level was far beyond the sect master.

The initial breakthrough to the Inspired Aura realm required infusing your dao spirit with a specific law of your dao. This was where the cultivators who had only a general idea of their dao frequently got stuck. If they had only considered Fire as an all-encompassing concept up to then, they needed to focus it down to something more specific.

Fire was too general.

His own Crimson Sunset or Endless Dawn were examples of more specific versions that would work.

If you had multiple daos, like he did, you had a couple options. You could either abandon all but one of them, and use that single one as the path forward, or you could find a dao path that fused multiple daos together into a single concept, which was usually stronger, but also much more difficult.

Most cultivators chose the easier route of focusing on a single dao. Doing more was ambitious. If you failed there, you could end up only half-fusing your dao and become stuck, which could bring an end to your cultivation path.

Some of those fusions also resulted in dangerous side effects.

He’d been thinking about the barrier to higher realms for a while, which was why he’d come up with the Dao of the Undaunted Sun as a way of unifying his own dao. It would probably work, but it would be a while until he could try.

He hadn’t even reached the Primal Spirit realm yet.

From what he could tell from the sect master’s attack, the man had taken the harder path with his dao too, combining ghost cultivation and blood together, potentially with some type of cold corpse flame.

He didn’t know the exact combination, but it was probably the Dao of the Crimson Shade, which would make sense given the name of the sect.

It could also be a Dao of Ghostly Flame or something else that combined those ideas, but it was common for strong families and sects to hand down a unified concept.

Either way, he had probably inherited it from a previous sect master and it was the upgraded version of the dao that Corpsewind had followed.

That meant it had a significant influence on ghosts, and was probably the root of the sect’s soul slave method. Like all methods, there had to be a way to break it and free the alchemists, but it would take a bit of thought to figure out how.

Hopefully, they could find a method that worked, but if not, his own Dao of the Endless Dawn, mixed with an Amethyst Harrow pill or three, might be enough to wake them up.

He rubbed the scales on Leaf’s head as he continued to walk with Vesana.

But that was something to deal with after they freed them.

First, they needed to win, and the sect master was the biggest obstacle. Fusing multiple daos into one was an elite approach, so he would be stronger than the average cultivator at the same level.

From his aura, it felt like he was at the early Inspired Aura realm, but it would be difficult to defeat him, and that was before his bloodline was active.

He almost certainly had a similar demonic cultivation path to Corpsewind’s, and it was probably stronger.

Verse’s mind raced as he considered the best approach, but it boiled down to the strength he could call upon from his connections.

Hopefully, the Azurewind Guard lived up to their reputation.

“How did you end up in the Azurewind Guard?” Vesana asked as they walked through the Trade Quarter at a rapid pace. “They’re famous even in the capital.”

“I was given a silver-ranked badge as an inheritance for it,” Verse replied honestly. “It was the last gift of a man I only met for a short while, but we fought side by side before he died.”

He didn’t go into the full history of Rekan and what happened at Whitestone, but he gave her the general idea.

“That was a rare gift,” she said with a sad smile. “Even among the nobility of the capital, the Azurewind Guard is highly respected. It’s not as famous as the Imperial Knights, but it’s a goal for many young cultivators. With their support, it’s easier to find a path of your own.

“A lot of people try to join them to get away from their families and find their own way. I thought about it once too. If I hadn’t been able to get a post as an assistant branch manager, I might have tried it. The capital is stifling. People there are so strong that you can barely walk around without bumping into someone three realms higher than you.”

Verse nodded in agreement. That was what Yiwan and Rekan had done, although he didn’t know it when he first met them.

Eventually, he would head to the capital to see what it was like, but he had no intention of going there anytime soon.

The walk through the city was long and on the way he worked on creating more soul talismans to replace the ones he’d used. He let them float around his arms, hidden just below his sleeves.

Their name reminded him of the talisman that Renzer had used, but for a different reason than most people. Even if it had hit his soul directly, he was sure now that it wouldn’t have killed him.

But he hadn’t expected there was a different reason he needed to be careful.

While he was destroying the talisman, he’d noticed some of the energy around his soul that his father had put there, the presence he’d sensed back when he met Memory and then again in the Deian ruins.

His soul was protected still by that ancient spell, the one that had sent him to this world. He couldn’t tell much about it. He was fairly sure it was just a remnant, one that carried a memory and a trace of its original power, or at least he couldn’t sense anything more at his current level, but the magic that created it wasn’t something that disappeared easily.

If that talisman hit him and woke up whatever remained, the reaction would probably have been enough to flatten the entire guild building, or even a good section of Boreas.

That’s one form of retribution, he said as he rubbed Leaf’s head again.

When he broke through to the Essence Condensation realm and created Dusk to Dawn, he’d heard a fraction of the word embedded into the spell.

Rebirth.

Even in his memory, it was a vast echo that shook the world around him and made reality shudder. He could still see the image of his father’s face, which transformed between that of a dragon and a man.

Just like his own soul.

It was one of his most important memories, a touchstone that told him about his origin, and he kept it close to mind.

It also made him think of the Dao Echo realm, but the power in his father’s voice was so far beyond that level that he didn’t even know the name for it.

What level of cultivation did it take to hurl his soul across the heavens and to have the spell still exist?

Before long, he had to dismiss the question, since the Azurewind Guard headquarters had just appeared in front of them. As they walked in, the art on the walls was as rich and well-appointed as ever, although a few of the paintings had been switched out.

The building felt unusually quiet, but it could have been that the two trainees, Breslin and Visele, weren’t there this time. Ressa only arched one elegant eyebrow when she heard what they wanted.

“It sounds like you have justification, but sect destruction is something that we take very seriously,” she replied. “You’ll need to speak with the guard commander directly for approval and to discuss the fee. Fortunately, she’s here today. You can head on back.”

She raised a hand and pointed toward a hallway at the back of the reception area, one that was protected by its own privacy ward. It almost echoed with silence. It was probably to keep the noise of the trainees from bothering the people who worked back there.

“She already knows what you’re here for,” Ressa added. “She hears most of what happens out here if she wants to. I imagine she’s waiting for you. You can head on back.”

Verse nodded in thanks. A moment later, he and Vesana were outside the commander’s door. He gave it a polite knock, and it silently swung open.

The commander’s office was smaller than Renzer’s, only large enough for a decent-sized desk and chair in the back half and a polished table at the front with a few chairs scattered around it.

The room was richly appointed, but understated in a spartan manner, with few extraneous objects. There was a banner on the wall, which was next to a spear and shield, and then two paintings, but that was all.

A woman with a neat braid of dark hair was waiting for them, half-seated on the edge of the desk with her arms folded across her chest. She studied them with sharp grey eyes that reminded Verse of an eagle, but her presence was almost completely hidden, so there was no sense of facing an Inspired Aura cultivator.

“Imperial Knight and branch manager,” she said politely, nodding to both of them. “And one of my silver-ranked guards as well, of course. My name is Imriz, and I’m a gold-ranked commander of the Azurewind Guard. The news of the former branch manager’s assassination has already reached me, so we can get to the real heart of the matter. Let’s skip all the other pleasantries. As I understand it, none of us has that much time to waste.”

Her voice was pleasant, but quick, and it matched Verse’s initial impression of her character, which was pragmatic to the extreme. She didn’t look like someone who liked small talk.

She pushed off the desk as she waved them toward the table. With a gesture, a tea pot and a small brazier appeared at the center of it. The leaves gave off a heady scent of spiritual energy and wood, suggesting that their quality was near the top of what could be found in the city, which was already renowned for it.

Although they’d arrived on the spur of the moment, it showed she was treating them seriously.

“Have a seat and I’ll make some tea,” she said as she indicated the chairs. “And while that’s brewing, you can tell me everything that’s happened. Once I hear it all, I can make a decision about whether to get involved or not. Fighting a sect is something we usually try to avoid, but I won’t say it doesn’t happen. So, make sure to give me a good reason.”

With that, she joined them at the table and began to brew a pot of tea. She said nothing else, only listening as the two of them began to explain.

Vesana spoke most of the time, explaining everything that had happened with Renzer and the kidnapped alchemists over the past year or more. Verse added a few details of his own, mostly about how he’d become involved and the sect’s assassination attempts.

Before long, the entire story was out, including some details of Renzer’s behavior and the kidnapped alchemists that Vesana had never thought was important enough to mention to Verse.

Since Imriz was intent on finding out everything, he went into more depth on his own battle with Corpsewind and his theory about the sect master’s Dao of the Crimson Shade. The commander’s eyes narrowed at that as she nodded slowly, apparently considering the strength of their target.

“Interesting,” she said as she held a teacup in her hand and stared into the distance. Her eyes were narrow and she seemed to be running calculations while her other hand tapped on the table.

Eventually, she looked at Verse and nodded, and then she turned to Vesana.

“We’ll help,” she said clearly, “but it will be expensive, at least in terms of Boreas’s prices. If you were someone else, I would ask whether you could afford it, but I doubt the price will mean much to the Alchemists’ Guild.

“Destroying a sect is difficult, even a small one like this, but I can’t say they don’t deserve it. Just the kidnapping of your guild members and the attack on the Imperial Knight here is enough to justify it, not to mention the assassination and everything you’ve said about the Desolate Mind Pill. If that ends up being true, I might even give you a discount. The guard subsidizes some missions that benefit the public like that.

“Either way, I’ll need to teleport in some standby forces. We don’t have enough here currently. Given the sect’s strength, it would be best to take at least three Inspired Aura cultivators with us, and five would be better.

“It’s not just a matter of fighting the sect master. We also have to break the sect’s protective formation and make sure he doesn’t escape. I’m not going to leave a loose end like that behind.” She tapped her fist against the table as she thought, and then she nodded decisively.

“I’ll issue the command for the standby forces to come here,” she said. “That will take a couple hours. As for the fee, it will be 5,000 high-grade spirit stones. That’s the discounted price, by the way. If there’s no evidence of these things when we get there, it will be twice that. Some of that will also go to cover the teleportation costs to bring in the standby forces.”

Verse had to hold back his shock as he heard the price.

At the guild’s conversion rate, it was 7,500 low-grade spirit stones for a single high grade one. That was 37.5 million spirit stones. It was enough to buy his house more than a thousand times.

Vesana, however, just nodded, as if she’d expected it.

“That’s acceptable,” she said with barely a frown. “Thank you for agreeing to help us. The guild’s reputation is at stake, not to mention the lives of the kidnapped alchemists. If we find evidence of the Desolate Mind Pill here, I’m sure the higher branches of the guild will contact you as well, to assist in making sure everything is destroyed.” “I’ll look forward to that,” Imriz said with a chuckle. “The guild’s enforcement branch is well known to us. Now, if you want to wait here at our headquarters, you’re welcome to, but I’m going to be busy for the next bit until everyone is gathered together. There are a few free rooms you can use if you’d like to meditate or plan more. I’ll be in touch.”

As she finished, she passed out two bright azure communication plates, setting them on the table in front of each of them.

“Take these,” she said. “They’ll let you keep in contact with me and with anyone else assigned to this mission. Besides myself, there is one other Inspired Aura guard in the city, but I’ll need to summon a few more. I’ll also gather up the Primal Spirit guards who are available, and there should be half a dozen or so of those.”

Then she turned to Verse, her expression considering.

“Will you be participating as an Azurewind Guard or as an Imperial Knight for this?” she asked. “You are qualified to be one of our Primal Spirit-level cultivators and to join in on the mission, but your role is different depending on which one you choose. As a guard on this level of mission, you’d be part of the regular team, but as a Knight, you would have your own command and I’ll assign some people to work with you for the mission.”

“As a Knight this time,” Verse said as he nodded in recognition of the offer. “Vesana is a friend of mine and I might as well lead the team that stays with her.”

If he went as an Azurewind Guard, he would need to follow their battle plan and arrangements, and he didn’t want to be constrained by that. It would be better to stay with Vesana and take care of his own affairs.

“Very well then.” She turned to look at Vesana. “As the client, you can decide the mission objectives. It sounds like there’s both the main sect location and the area where they’re holding the kidnapped alchemists. How do you want to approach this? I’ll advise as necessary, but you should tell me your intentions first.”

“As long as we do our best to rescue the alchemists, and the sect is punished, you can follow his instructions.” Without hesitating, Vesana pointed at Verse.

Imriz just nodded, almost as if she’d expected that, and then she turned to Verse for his answer.

“I don’t want to get in your team’s way,” Verse said as he considered the matter. “Since there are two locations, however, why don’t you take the stronger team and pin down the main sect, and hopefully the sect master, and Vesana and I can focus on rescuing the kidnapped alchemists with a smaller team. It should be the weaker area, but also more important to the guild.”

“That’s similar to what I was going to recommend,” Imriz said with a nod. “I’ll assign your team once I see who’s available, but I’ll put at least one Inspired Aura cultivator with you. We can figure out the rest once everyone is here. Alright, please excuse me while I get things started.”

With that, she showed them to a room next to her office, and then she disappeared to gather the forces.