Story 10 - The Spy Who Rocked Too Hard (Part 37 🎸) (Patreon)

Author’s Note:

Thank you for being the best readers on Patreon! Here is the link to the Google Docs for those who prefer it.

Part 37 

My main problem here was that I had barely worked with the Irrepressible Blood Chrysanthemum. For me, it was a mystery. Which meant that I needed to thoroughly test it! Muahahaha!

I picked up one of the ingredients with my spiritual energy. It had beautiful and long petals, a thin stem, and a few razor-sharp leaves. 

Before I started to really get into it, I definitely needed to dissect it first, just to see how it reacted. Then I would look at each individual piece and even turn them into liquid before using a type of alchemy hand seal that used centrifugal force to separate it into different parts. I could then figure out which were necessary to the bath, allowing for fewer impurities.  

I could even melt it down or light it on fire. Perhaps dissolving it in various acids would give useful insights. There were just so many beautiful and fun tests I needed to perform!

“Ah, Alchemist Linlin... is it just me or is that chrysanthemum trembling in fear?”

I scowled at his interruption. 

“What?! That’s nonsense. I was just shaking it a little in my excitement... probably.” 

“You were very focused. Did you figure something out?” Noxious Fangstrike jumped out of the bath and used a technique to gather all the liquid on his body and in the cauldron before making it vanish.

Inky slithered up to him and wrapped its tail around his leg. 

Interesting. After the bath, the snake appeared to dislike me less. It made me wonder if the bath somehow went both ways, only on a spiritual level for the beast.

The human needed the bath to share the special physical traits, but since the beasts only needed the energy addition and were already good physically, they just needed to provide their blood willingly. It was a truly fascinating contract.

But this wasn’t the time to risk myself to study Noxious Fangstrike’s beast.

“I need to do some experiments on the Irrepressible Blood Chrysanthemum. Give me five of them. Ones you don’t mind me completely destroying.”

He grimaced and patted Inky on its head. “Those are precious resources. While I agreed to provide what you need, knowing they’re not going towards the cure is...”

“If you want a bath that has the least amount of side effects possible, then you need to give me eight... no, ten of those flowers.”

There were just too many experiments I needed to perform.

Unfortunately, he was hesitating.

“The thing is, I had to make a lot of concessions with the horticulturists to get you those seedlings.”

“What? Are they limiting the amount of plants you can use now? One of the most important poison masters in the sect? Do they dare?”

“Those are enough resources for five disciples.”

I waved his concerns away. “It’s better that they wait for us to fix it, anyway.”

He sighed. “Fine, I’ll get you ten flowers.”

“How about fifteen?”

He narrowed his eyes at me.

“Whatever! I’ll just do what I can with limited resources.”

***

After hours of studying the Irrepressible Blood Chrysanthemum — and by that I meant testing the shit out of them — I discovered that there was something definitely wrong with them.

Which became obvious once I lit one on fire. 

Noxious was already nervous after one of the first few tests I did caused a tiny, minuscule explosion. One that would have only singed my eyebrows if I hadn’t totally expected it to happen and put up a shield. But when I started playing with flames... I mean testing the plant to see how direct heat affected it, he shouted at me! Then he grabbed it from my hand and smothered it on the worktable. Rude!

Okay, it had burned better than I expected, and in the few moments I’d lit it, the flames reached its stem. But that was no reason to get this freaked out! And the long lecture Noxious gave me on not burning herbs was completely unnecessary! 

I had not been playing around! I was doing science. I’d even recorded my hypothesis of each test and the observations of the result in my jade slip.

And what did he even know? Pushing the limits of ingredients was how I discovered new ways to use them!

For example, this plant had a pleasant scent. Once I figured out the properties of the smoke, I wanted to see how it would do in a medicinal incense. 

Anyway, what confused me for a moment was that the fire turned purple. It also had red sparks of energy in the shape of water droplets... or blood. Yeah, it was definitely blood-like. It seemed to me that the plant should have just melted into charred spiritual energy goo — which was something similar to what happened in cauldrons when concocting.

The fact that it stayed in flower form so well meant that it had something in it that resisted turning into goo... Or they weren’t using the right type of fertilizer and the soil these flowers were raised in included a preservative of some kind.

But that would mean that they’d been using the wrong type of fertilizer for these plants for centuries. That could only happen if the horticulturist disciples were corrupted... or stupid. 

Stupidity was always a possibility. 

It was better than thinking that there were malicious seniors in that department working to slowly take down the sect. Because there were easier and faster ways to do that. 

“Senior Noxious Fangstrike!”

“What?”

I sent him a grim look. “I need to see where these flowers are cultivated.”

“Oh no. What’s wrong?”

“I’m afraid this sect... has an infestation of idiots.”

The look he gave me was very confusing because it seemed like he was exasperated when this was an absolutely serious problem.

***

Even though I was surrounded by angry gardeners... er, horticulturists, I completely ignored them. Mostly because I didn’t trust their intelligence.

The Irrepressible Blood Chrysanthemum grew in adorable round bushes. Though cute, they gave off an oppressive energy that really made them live up to their names. They had been planted in tight rows, leaving just enough room between each bush so that they wouldn’t be starved for spiritual energy.

I bent down.

The gardeners held their breath as if getting ready to yell at me to stop.

I picked up a handful of the dirt that surrounded the base of one of the bushes.

One gardener held another back.

I rubbed it between my fingers and frowned. Unfortunately, there were bits of white pebbles stuck in between my fingernails. Immediately, I used my cleaning technique only on my hands.

Noxious leaned toward me. “What’s wrong, junior Linlin?”

“Whoever came up with this soil mixture needs to be fired.”

His brow furrowed. “What?” 

Yeah, that was too simple. 

I clasped my hands behind my back so I looked as serious as I could. “For the damage they’ve done to the generations of disciples of this sect, the person who decided to use this fertilizer for these flowers should be executed.”

A bald gardener with a white mustache and beard huffed. “Listen here, Little Alchemist Linlin, we’ve been using that same mix for over a thousand years.”

“What’s in it?”

“That’s a sect secret.”

I sighed and started listing off the various natural components used to create the fertilizer for these plants. 

The man looked panicked and glanced at the poison master. “Aren’t you going to stop her?”

He crossed his arms. “No, I’m curious about where she’s taking this.”

The old man’s cheeks turned bright red as I finished listing off the final three ingredients that made up this fertilizer. “... and finally, we have Eight Tears Pufferfish Bones.”

[Image Link]

“Impossible! You must have seen the composition somewhere!”

I rolled my eyes. It wasn’t hard. This was similar to the fertilizer we used at the Indomitable Will sect. Not that I would tell these guys that.

The difference here was that this blend included the bones of a certain spiritual pufferfish. While nutritious and used in some fertilizers for rare plants, these bones had a preservative compound that was harmful to chrysanthemum-type spiritual plants. Basically, it caused this fucking mess. 

“The Eight Tears Pufferfish Bones has a preservative harmful to Chrysanthemums. It needs to be removed from your fertilizers for this flower to grow properly. For now, gather most of your leftover seeds, grow them into seedlings, and replant them into a field that doesn’t have remnants of this fish.” 

The fact that they went out of their way to collect so many of those bones every year for the past thousand years just to use them on a plant that didn’t need them... What a fucking tragedy. Shit like this always happened when an older generation passed away without leaving proper notes or inheritance.

The gardeners stared at me with devastated expressions.

“No! I don’t believe it!” The old man fell to his knees and shoved his hands into the soil. “I can’t! If I do then that means… that means…”

He coughed up several mouthfuls of blood.

“Senior!” The little gardeners gathered around their elder and a few helped him inside while the second oldest stayed behind.

With this, I’d solved the Irrepressible Blood Chrysanthemum issue as best as I could.

I made my way back down the mountain toward Noxious Fangstrike’s alchemy room. Considering that they needed to regrow the flowers from fucking scratch, my hopes for a quick solution to Little Spring’s problem were swiftly dying. Creating a full cure for Little Spring would definitely take me more than two weeks.

After Noxious Fangstrike told the remaining horticulturist to follow my instructions exactly, he followed after me. He had this blank look on his face as if he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. His expression scrunched into a pained grimace.

“So, this whole time, we’ve been mildly poisoning the plant that was the backbone of our sect?”   

“I did say that your sect is infected with stupid.”

He stopped for a moment, covered his eyes, and breathed out to steady himself. “Wait! What about the years they couldn’t find the fish bones to add to the fertilizer? Wouldn’t they have realized that there was something wrong with the formula they were using?”

“If you stop giving someone poison, will it still remain in their body?”

“Of course!”

“Well, the field had already been poisoned so badly that the flowers couldn’t recover. Then these idiots likely found the fish bones the next year or two later. But it wasn’t long enough for it to clear out of the flower’s roots. ”

“So this whole time?”

“You’ve been doing it to yourselves. Just like with the pepper.”

“I almost wish it had been those demonic bastards.”

“Nah, they would have moved faster than a thousand years. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they already know about this and have prevented your sect from learning how to fix things.”

“But the Irrepressible Blood Chrysanthemums aren’t going to recover in the next month. Will we still be able to find a fix for the bath?”

“It’s not ideal, but we can still use the doubling-up method your seniors came up with. But we’ll have to find a way to purify the flower, preferably one that doesn’t use an extra mint plant that just adds more impurities to it. ”

He nodded. 

“Does this mean our bath is... fixed? At least soon to be?”

“Who said that?”

“What? Don’t we merely need to wait for the new Chrysanthemums?”

I turned toward him and looked directly into his gold eyes. “Even with the cured flowers, your bath is still considered an unorthodox method of beast contracting.”

“So what? We’re unorthodox cultivators. Why should we care what some righteous sects have to say about us?”

This was a problem. And not just because I needed him to keep funding my research. “Senior, what do you think will happen when the demonic cults go to war with the unorthodox sects?”

He lifted his chin proudly. “We’d join each other to fight against them.”

“What if the attacks are timed so well that you’d have to turn to the righteous sects for help?”

His face turned grim. “That’s not likely to occur.”

“You don’t know them like I do. They absolutely would scheme up something like this. Because they understand that the orthodox sects won’t send reinforcements.”

He nodded. “They wouldn’t. They’d instead be glad because there would be one less unorthodox sect nearby.”

“As a once rogue cultivator who is now tied to this place.” Thanks to Little Spring and his goddamn normal not-puppy. “I don’t want this sect to be destroyed.”

He chuckled. “Now that we have a fix for the bath and we’ll have a cure soon, we aren’t going anywhere. Besides, the demonic cultivators are more likely to make trouble with the righteous sects.”

I needed this guy to see the danger this place was in so he could understand why we had to make the baths align closer to the orthodox methods. All for one brat. 

But I also wasn’t wrong. I’d seen this horrible shit happen in my past life. And I had cursed the original author a billion times for writing that war into his goddamn plot.

“Then, let’s say in the future, the demonic cult gives the righteous sects no choice but to band together and defeat them once and for all.”

He chuckled. “That would be great. It would get them off our back and focused on each other.”

This short-sighted... “What makes you think they’ll leave us alone?”

At least he wasn’t dumb, which I knew because his eyes darkened with realization. “They wouldn’t, because they all erroneously believe that we’re working with those demonic bastards.”

“Exactly. If we want this place to grow and survive, it will need to make alliances with the orthodox sects, and one step to go about doing that would be to make your beast taming bath so flawless they’ll have no choice but to accept it as orthodox and your sect as an ally. Which could be a bridge to bring the other unorthodox sects over.” I paused and glared at him. “And another thing you can do to help would be to start making friendships with orthodox sects instead of antagonizing them.”

“We don’t antagonize them.”

Fucking liar. Unfortunately, I couldn’t call him out on it because I was undercover.

“They antagonize us. We just fight back.”

“...” Whatever, I didn’t have time to argue. “But what I’m getting at is—”

“You want to keep improving the bath and you want me to pay for it.”

“Senior. It would only benefit the sect.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Fine.”

Yes! Investor get!

“With the way your mind so easily looks at the larger picture of the continent’s dynamics, it makes me think you have a desire to be our sect leader in the future.”

“If I have to stop doing my experiments to take care of the day-to-day minutiae of this sect, I would rather you kick me out.”

No one was trapping me in a place where I had to do paperwork for more than twelve hours a day! Not anymore! I would fight tooth and nail before I let that happen again.

That said, with this sect’s leader in closed door cultivation, who was handling everything? It didn’t appear to be this asshole or Pearlescent Rose. 

Well, whatever. It shouldn’t matter to me or my tasks. Because now that I had confirmation on what made the chrysanthemums have half the spiritual energy they should, I could move forward with my plans to fix the bath. It wouldn’t even be that hard.

No, the difficult part would come after, when I had to start developing an actual cure for those who had already undergone the contract bath.

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Author’s Note: 

Thank you all for reading! You are the best readers a writer could ask for!

This chapter ended up being much larger than I thought it would be but I’m pretty happy with it!