"Don't you think that this seems a bit too much?" Complained one first year as he and the others sat at their stone desks, each containing a fixed fireplace in the hollow of the desk and an abundance of firewood in a cubby within reach.
The students were placing their cauldrons into the hollowed fire pits and preparing the herbs required for the pills so the Teacher could see their strengths and weaknesses for himself and provide support when necessary. The first year who was complaining was not the only one to believe this, but was the only one to speak aloud. They were all talented in regards to making pills; this generally meant that they had fire or wood related roots or abundant spiritual pools. Their successes generally outweighed their failures, but their consistency was lacking. Most students, though, were not too worried. So long as they produced mostly good quality pills, then they were still better than outer school students whose pills were mostly average in quality.
They had both conceit and arrogance that remained due to the fact that they had been accepted directly into the inner school due to their talent and never considered the fact that the outer school produced more of the institutes pill requirements than the inner school. So the outer school's importance to the overall institute was just as great as the inner school.
In fact, with the exception of the seniors and about a quarter of the first years, the rest only attended the lecture for a different reason; a female student who had transferred into the inner school from the outer school.
Miss Merylin sat at a central desk with a female friend and a senior, who happened to be earnestly attending the lecture as his control was very weak, causing him difficulties progressing to more complex pills. Miss Merylin herself was doing her utmost to improve her abilities so that she might appeal more to a certain martial artist. So she was quite surprised to see the obstacle in her path to becoming that man's personal alchemist (before stepping into the realm of lovers and perhaps even marital partners and dao companions in the future....) enter the classroom behind the Teacher.
She did not allow it to distract her, however, from listening to the lecture and learning from Teacher Sagi. Indeed, if it wasn't for his strange striped hair and thick glasses that hid his large eyes from view, the youth would have been far less noticeable in her opinion. She was most impressed by Teacher Sagi's resultant Pills. She, herself, produced pills ranging in good to high quality, with only the exceptional failure. Her control was not at all weak, but she was wise enough to understand that there was room for improvement, that her talent did not make her exceptional in this school and as a new practitioner, she was a speck of dust compared to alchemists who had practiced their craft for hundreds of years.
Despite her faults and tunnel vision when it came to a certain man, she had a wide view of the world and her place within it. Unlike some other students here.
The student who had verbally complained and those who had not complained out loud but wondered why they needed to bother with this control thing in their hearts, conceitedly offered the contents of the cauldrons to the Teacher (and assistant). Each cauldron contained numerous pills (many sought to impress with quantity and not the Teacher either) which ranged from defective to good even high quality. There was not one cauldron from this group of arrogant boys and girls that offered consistency.
The Teacher shook his head and sighed inwardly. "Leon, come sit at my stove and produce a batch of Burning Energy Pills if you will."
Leon looked at the stove, then looked at the fire pits. "T-t-Teacher, m-might I use one of those? I've n-n-never used a st-stove b-before." There were a few ignorant smirks, those who looked down on Leon for his speech impediment and white hair that spoke of spiritual deviation.
The senior next to Merylin offered his seat, curious to understand what this chosen disciple could do. Merylin was also curious about Jin Li's alchemist servant. Obviously, she had heard from others that he produced a lot of pills compared to some others, but that his pills were all of average quality, hence why she never saw him as competition. Yet Teacher Sagi had selected him as his disciple...
Leon sat down after thanking the senior and carefully prepared his ingredients to one side of him, placing his much loved cauldron into the hollow upon fresh firewood. Seeing the very clean, clearly cared for cauldron placed inklings of shame into a couple of seniors hearts, while others sneered again. It was only a cheap cauldron, why make such a big deal of it? Leon quickly settled into his memorised routine for this pill, placing the ingredients into the cauldron in a set order, rather than tossing them all in at once, the heat from the fire was obvious to those close by and the most sensitive amongst them clearly noted that there was no change in temperature by even a half degree in all of this time.
Their senior was utterly focused as well, any coughs or whispers did not enter his hearing nor disrupt his concentration and after he took the curious choice of adding a drop of purple spirit grass due at the beginning of pill forming stage, the observers could not help but anticipate the final results. Leon produced eight pills in that batch, a far cry from when he had first made Burning Energy pills and could only make one pill in his cauldron at a time.
However, each and every pill was of average quality.
Teacher Sagi smiled and nodded happily at the result. Merylin was disappointed and held an inward pool of contempt. Was this man truly the obstacle in her path? The loud first year muttered; "what's so much better about his pills that ours? They are average, not a good one in the batch."
The senior, who had given up his seat, passed Leon a couple of jade bottles and examined the pills carefully as the outer school student placed them into the bottles. And then he smiled brightly. The first years were frogs in the well, too foolish to see what the Teacher was trying to teach them. Leon had produced eight average pills, that was true, but each and every pill was exactly alike. This lesson was about control and there was nothing more impressive than the control it took to produce identical pills.
"I have much to learn from you, brother," the senior grinned and encouraged Leon to repeat his lesson. His words drew over a few curious and clever students.
Teacher Sagi nodded in complete satisfaction.
As it is said, those who wish to learn may learn well, whereas those who do not wish to learn will learn nothing and those who were wise to see beyond the quality of Leon's pills learned that one should never judge a book by its cover and those who were too conceited remained blind.
Leon felt as if this did not affect him in the slightest so did not let it bother him. He still did not understand his own worth, so was not able to convince all others of it. It should be noted that Merylin did not remain indifferent and although she refused to completely acknowledge Leon's talent (how great was it if those pills still remained so average!) she was not stupid enough to completely ignore it either. She learned what she wished to learn from him. Whether she could use this lesson to her own advantage would remain to be seen.
The following day, Leon demonstrated his ability of control again, but in front of the outer school students, which caused him to be a little embarrassed.
The mentality of these students was a little different to the inner school students. Both were first years, but there were a few more commoners here than nobles and their talents were not so great. To enter the inner school or simply to graduate and be seen as a good alchemist, they needed to supplement their weaker gifts with that of hard work. Not that this wasn't the path that the inner school students would find themselves on eventually, only the outer school students concluded this much sooner or forever be labelled as a waste.
Still, many had one thing in common with the inner school students; they wished to impress a girl.
Said girl was sitting very close to a demonstrating Leon right now while Teacher Sagi supervised the entire class. This class was bigger in numbers than the one the day before and none voiced complaints that working on their control was too hard or thought it was pointless. If they thought the latter, they might as well have packed up and went home directly. However, seeing Maimai in rapt concentration as she tried to learn Leon's tricks, did sour the hearts of more than a handful, but only one cauldron went flying in response to uncontrolled emotions.
That student was reprimanded and instructed to practice make Burning Energy Pills for the next week or until they could do so without incident, leaving them feeling all the more unhappy.
After the demonstration, Maimai questioned enthusiastically every little detail and Leon patiently offered his insight, some of which belonged to the previous owner of the body rather than himself. A tiny part of him wished he could indeed honour Leo and credit certain findings to him. Such as the use of a little extra dew from the purple spirit grass to stop the potion drying out too fast at pill forming stage.
Teacher Sagi had never thought about this himself, his control had far surpassed the need for such tricks, however he definitely thought it was a useful thing for those still learning or without such great control to know. He was exceedingly proud of his disciple and even more pleased with his decision to accept him as such.
Maimai adopted all of Leon's practices and tried her best to follow suit. Granted, her overall control was still sloppy, but the fact that out of the three pills to form in her cauldron only one could be considered a dud, the other two of good quality was an improvement. That and she did not lose, break or send flying the metal pot while creating them. Teacher Sagi gave her a pleased nod of acknowledgement.
Having made many, many Burning Energy Pills over the past couple of days, Leon followed Teacher Sagi after the lecture to the Herb Hall to exchange them in return for a healthy bundle of pills. However, instead of a random collection that Leon would have to sort himself before deciding which pills he should make with them, Teacher Sagi instructed the senior in the Hall to gather up herbs for two specific pills; the Still Mind pill and the Cloudy Spiritual pill. He wished to test Leon on these pills which could be considered as slightly more complex than the basic pills and Blood pills he was known for producing en masse.
If pills had fixed levels, then these could be considered level two pills along side Blood pills, although Cloudy Spiritual pills were harder to make than Blood pills and Still Mind pills were considered to be somewhere in between the two. The Cloudy Spiritual pill was a cultivation aid, a Cultivator of Secondary or Tertiary stage could take them to improve their cultivation more quickly, but like the Clear Spiritual pill, taking too many could actually block an advancement to the next stage of cultivation. Still Mind Pills were usually taken by those who had just advanced to secondary to help still the fluctuations in the soulsea that could remain. They were not always necessary, as both Leon and Sun could attest to, but they were still popular. Not many had such smooth final transitions as the pair.
Teacher Sagi left Leon to wait for his herbs with instructions to practice these two pills over the next three days then see him on the sixth day of this week with the pills he had produced. Leon agreed and Teacher Sagi retired for the day.
"S-senior?" Leon questioned as the herbs were placed before him for collection. "Why are these m-m-moth t-tails a d-d-different c-colour than usual?"
The senior shrugged. "This happens sometimes," the woman shrugged, not really caring about reasons. Mothtails were just like that, the thick leaves coated in a fine fur and curled into loose spirals could be green or they could be red or they could be a mix of the two.
Leon thanked her and placed the herbs in his interspacial bag while his lips twitched into a soft curve. He was thinking of another herb that had not only a similar name, but similar in disposition. He wondered if he had time to experiment while he practiced...
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