Blossoming Path

The village had adapted faster than I expected.

It had only been a few days since the refugees arrived, yet Gentle Wind Village had already found a rhythm; one that made their presence feel less like a disruption and more like an inevitable expansion.

People adjusted, shifted, and filled in the gaps where they could. The village had no choice but to make room. And against all odds, it was working.

Liang Chen, the merchant who had arrived just before the refugees, was already struggling after being cut off from his usual supply network. I had assumed he’d be hesitant about investing too much in the village’s future, considering his situation. But instead, he had thrown himself into the efforts with surprising enthusiasm.

“It’s not like I can move my wares elsewhere,” he had muttered when I’d asked about it. “Might as well make myself useful.”

And useful he had been.

With Li Wei and the artisans that had remained behind, Liang Chen spearheaded the construction of temporary housing, using what little building materials he had left from previous shipments. But even with those, the reality was clear: we would need more supplies.

That was where the foraging expeditions had given an unexpected benefit.

While we scouted for herbs and food, Liang Chen’s workers had begun cutting down trees near the outskirts of the forest, ensuring not to venture too deep. The wood would be used to build new homes; a necessary step, as keeping so many people in the Soaring Swallow was unsustainable. Li Wei and Wang Jun worked night and day to create the other required building materials, but they seemed to relish in the work, honing themselves and growing with every challenge.

Not to be outperformed, Huan had made efforts to contribute, though his resources were more limited. He specialized in herbs and spices, not lumber or stone. Still, even that was something.

But perhaps the biggest enigma of them all was Elder Ren Zhi.

The blind bookseller, who I had assumed would be limited in his ability to help, had instead become a central figure in the village.

Not through labor.

Through stories.

Every afternoon, without fail, he gathered the village children and wove tale after tale, his voice steady and mesmerizing. His words painted vivid pictures of ancient battles, wandering heroes, cunning tricksters, and legendary cultivators, drawing his audience in with every twist and turn.

But he didn’t stop at words.

With careful, practiced movements, he drew illustrations onto a small scroll, sketching figures and landscapes onto the cart that carried his bookmaking materials. Though he couldn’t see the finished product, the precision of his strokes made it clear he knew what he was doing.

The children were hooked. And so were some of the adults.

I stood at a distance one afternoon, watching the group huddle around him. The laughter, the awed gasps, the whispers of anticipation as he unraveled another legend. It was a kind of magic that had nothing to do with cultivation. Directly, at least.

During times like this, when survival was uncertain, morale was everything.

And in a way, his contributions were more valuable than anything he could have done with his hands. Farmwork, construction—those things were important, but they only sustained the body.

He sustained the spirit.

I exhaled, crossing my arms as I leaned against the outer wall of my shop, watching the scene unfold from afar.

Even now, there was something about him I couldn’t quite place. His demeanor, his past familiarity with Elder Ming, the way his presence carried more weight than his outward frailty suggested.

There was a story behind him.

And his way of storytelling...

"It's like..."

I dismissed the thought with a wave of my hand. I had better things to do than obsess over an old man's past. My garden still needed tending, and there was a mountain of herbs from the last foraging trip waiting for me. My stock's been depleted ever since I used a chunk to treat the villagers.

Then, without warning, I sidestepped—just in time to avoid a shard of ice that whizzed past my head.

I blinked, looking down at the splintered ice where it had embedded itself in the packed snow.

Windy and Tianyi.

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Sure enough, a short distance away, I spotted them sparring. Now that Windy had fully recovered, he had wasted no time in testing himself against Tianyi. The two clashed in a flurry of motion, Windy’s lithe form darting through the snow while she darted upward, taking advantage of her ability to fly.

But despite that, Windy was holding his own.

I narrowed my eyes, watching carefully.

Tianyi launched a quick, precise strike—one that, under normal circumstances, should have landed. But Windy wasn’t there.

For a moment, it looked as though her attack passed clean through him.

I blinked again. No, it wasn't a mirage. It was the way he moved. He used the snow to obscure his form and create subtle visual distortions. His serpentine body weaved through the frost-laden ground in a way that made it almost impossible to tell where he actually was. The white of his scales, the way the snow kicked up around him—it made Tianyi’s attacks whiff at the last moment.

She let out a frustrated hum, her antennae twitching as she adjusted her stance, trying to account for his erratic movements. Windy, for his part, remained eerily calm, his tongue flicking out, waiting for her to overcommit.

He had grown stronger.

I watched for a moment longer, trying to understand the mechanics behind it, but it wasn’t something I could grasp so easily.

Filing the observation away for later, I cleared my throat. “Take the fight further out unless you want the greenhouse to be missing a few glass panes.”

They didn't respond verbally but complied, pushing themselves further away toward the open fields.

Shaking my head, I continued back into my shop, where the scent of dried herbs and fresh soil greeted me.

The gathered herbs lay neatly arranged on the workbench, separated by type and potency. I had already transplanted some into small clay pots, each one part of an ongoing experiment in hybridization. If I wanted to stretch our resources, I had to get creative.

There was no sense in using rare, potent ingredients for everything. Sometimes, the best medicines came from the simplest sources.

I recalled Elder Wei Lian’s words during the Grand Alchemy Gauntlet, where he showed Jian Duan the full potential of pyrite. I repeated it in my head like a mantra, engraving it into the way I approached my current situation.

There are no useless ingredients. Only useless alchemists.

The more I worked, the more I realized how true it was. Even the most ordinary herbs could produce powerful effects if handled correctly.

And with the myriad of abilities and tools I had now, my understanding of what was possible became limitless.

I set my notes aside and reached for something unusual—a small handful of brightly colored bamboo seeds.

They weren’t Golden Bamboo.

Ever since I had worked with Golden Bamboo essence, a thought had been sitting in the back of my mind. What if I applied the same principles to ordinary bamboo? Could I push its growth beyond natural limits?

I decided to test it.

Stepping outside, I moved to a safe distance away from the shop. If this went wrong, I didn’t want it anywhere near my storage ring full of volatile herbs.

I held up a single bamboo seed, given a measured amount of kudzu root essence. Known for its rapid, aggressive growth properties, often seen as a nuisance plant that could overtake entire fields if left unchecked, there were plenty from our expedition.

Next, I took out a vial of water, processed with deer antler velvet. It was relatively hard to come by, but Huan was willing to part with a jar of the stuff at a discount.

I carefully let a single drop land on the seed.

Then, I tossed it.

The instant it hit the ground, the change was immediate.

A sharp crack split the air as the seed burst open, and before my eyes, a stalk of bamboo shot up from the earth, growing to nearly its full height within seconds.

I took a step back, observing the impossibly rapid growth. The stalk stood tall and firm, its deep-green surface gleaming under the winter sun. It wasn’t as potent as Golden Bamboo, but it was far more efficient to cultivate.

My mind was already racing with applications.

Housing materials—this could help with the issue of building materials; all it'd need is Li Wei and Liang Chen processing the bamboo for use.

Reinforcement for buildings—with a few modifications, I could make them even sturdier than standard wood.

Weaponization? If I could enhance the growth process, could I grow bamboo as an attack? An instantaneous growth beneath an opponent, a spear of bamboo stabbing from below before they even realized it.

Something clicked.

Spiritual Herbalism has reached level 10.

Your skill has reached the qualifications to evolve to the next stage, Herbal Sage Alchemy.

Herbal Sage Alchemy enhances your two abilities and grants you a third one.

Essence Extraction - You can extract the spiritual essence of plants, beasts and metals for the creation of pills and elixirs. You can further extract essences into its different properties.

Spiritual Plant Cultivation - You can infuse plants with your qi to increase their potency, imbue them with new properties, or accelerate the growth of herbs, forcing them to mature quickly by flooding them with large amounts of qi.

Alchemical Nexus - A formation requiring no physical carvings field that can grant greater stability, speed, or potency to the refinement process. In the absence of a pill furnace, it can act as a substitute, allowing for on-the-go refinement.

The moment the knowledge settled, I felt the familiar rush of enlightenment. Everything I knew about alchemy, about herbalism—about cultivation itself—shifted into sharper focus, threading together like pieces of a grand formation I hadn't realized I was building all along.

For a long time, I had been waiting for this. The slow, meticulous journey from basic herbalism to alchemy. I had wondered why I never gained a skill like 'Alchemy', but it seemed the Interface was waiting to give me an even bigger reward.

My skills had always leaned heavily on my understanding of plants, but now?

I exhaled sharply, excitement bubbling beneath my skin.

Essence Extraction had evolved beyond simply pulling essence from materials. But according to the description, I could refine specific properties within those essences, separating them further into their most potent aspects. Before, extracting a fire-aligned essence from a Sunfire Blade Grass meant simply taking its energy wholesale. But now? Maybe it was possible to extract just its heat-producing properties, or isolate its qi-nourishing aspects. It was a level of control that would make my alchemical refinement infinitely more precise.

My mind spun with possibilities.

Then there was Spiritual Plant Cultivation.

I had already been able to hybridize plants by infusing them with foreign qi, but now I could force their growth entirely, pushing them past natural limitations with a direct influx of qi. If Golden Bamboo had once taken days to reach full height, then perhaps now I could accelerate it within moments. If an herb needed a season to mature did it mean I could bring it to fruition within hours? The implications were staggering.

But...

The Alchemical Nexus.

A formation that didn’t require physical carvings. No intricate arrays drawn in sand, no painstaking etching onto parchment.

I tested it, raising my hand.

A soft glow flickered around my palm, and I watched in awe as faint, golden lines manifested in the air. Similar to the ones I'd seen Jingyu Lian and other alchemists use, but the symbols used were different. It didn't pertain to any standard alchemy formations I knew. But perhaps that was expected of the Interface, to revive lost arts or create new ones.

The symbols pulsed, shifting as my intent pressed into them. I could choose only one aspect—stability, acceleration, or potency. Each pathway was rigid, but that rigidity was what made it stable. No deviations, no unnecessary complexity.

I clenched my fist, dispersing the formation, but my heart raced with anticipation.

This would change everything.

My biggest weakness had always been my lack of practice in higher-level techniques. It was hard to practice alchemy formation outside of a structured environment, without a mentor. The gap between me and trained sect disciples in alchemy had been in how seamlessly they could manipulate formations in their refinement process. I had made up for it with careful technique, intuition, and my Refinement Simulation Technique. But now, I finally had a way to bridge that gap.

A slow grin spread across my face.

Even the Bloodsoul Bloom…

I had worried about its volatility before. The idea of refining it had seemed like a distant goal, something I could attempt only after a long time of careful observation. But now, with the Alchemical Nexus and upgraded Essence Extraction at my disposal?

I could create a formation to stabilize it. I could control its refinement, what property I wanted to take.

For the first time, it felt possible.

Still, that was a thought for later. Right now, I had another test in mind.

I turned on my heel, striding towards the greenhouse.

Windy and Tianyi had long since finished their sparring match, and the fields beyond the village were quiet. They left for elsewhere, but I knew they weren't in any trouble. The moment I stepped inside the greenhouse, warmth enveloped me. The ambient qi within was thick, pulsing faintly between the rows of carefully cultivated herbs and experimental hybrids.

I scanned the plants, my fingers brushing over leaves and stems as I considered my options.

Which one would I test first?

The answer came quickly.

I stood at the newly planted patch of Golden Bamboo Millet. A cross between the resilient millet I had cultivated and the powerful energy of Golden Bamboo. If it worked, it would be a grain that could thrive even in the coldest winters while providing a slow, nourishing build-up of qi to those who consumed it.

Bending over slowly, I pressed my palm to the patch of soil.