Chapter 5: Soul healing pill
As Long Tian sat on his bed thinking of what to do, he heard voices outside his room. He could hear the voices of his parents outside his room. He did not know how to face them. He was the son of the God of Trinity. And yet he was also the son of Bai Mu. He had all the memories of this life, and the feelings that came along with it. After all, he was indeed Bai Mu's son.
Afraid of what they will find out, neither of his parents were extending their senses into his room. Long Tian closed his eyes and focused his senses outside.
"... to do. What if he never wakes up?" Xiao Mei-er said.
"You heard what Doctor Mu said. He will wake up soon." Bai Mu said, trying to comfort his wife, even though he did not sound very convincing himself.
"Do you think we can get the Soul Healing Pill? The Soul Healing pill that is being auctioned off tomorrow is a sixth ranked Dao class pill. Can we even afford it?" Xiao Mei-er asked.
"I do not know. I have already told the elder council that I'm willing to pay any price to get the Soul Healing pill. If we add all of our assets into the mix, we should be able to afford it."
The moment Long Tian heard the name of the Soul Healing pill he was stunned. The Soul Healing pill was a famous pill. Some pills were randomly named by the alchemists and there would be hundreds of pills with the same name all having different effects. Most of the pills were like this as there were far too many alchemists and they would all come up with their own version of the pills and name them as they like. Yet there were also some that had standard names that were for specific purposes. These were some of the most popular, widespread and powerful pills. The Soul Healing pill was one such pill.
The Soul Healing pill was not a single pill, but rather a class of pills. Depending on their effectiveness they could be of the Qi, Soul, Dao, Immortal or God classes. All the pills were demarcated based on two criteria, their class, and their rank.
The class of a pill was represented by the effectiveness and the power contained in the pill. There were five classes of pills Qi, Soul, Dao, Immortal and God. Each class corresponded to a specific step in cultivation. Also for a person in some step of cultivation, taking a pill whose class was below that of their step would not result in much of an effect of the pill being shown.
The ranks of a pill determined the difficulty in concocting as well as the power and effectiveness within a class. There were nine ranks to a pill. A higher ranked pill would be more effective than a pill of a lower rank but of the same class, but it will always be less effective than a pill of a higher class but lower rank. But the difficulty in concocting may not be going up as easily. According to common knowledge, the difficulty in concocting only goes up by four ranks between two pills of the same rank but different class. For example, a first rank Dao class pill will be as difficult to concoct as a fifth rank Soul class pill and as difficult as a ninth rank Qi class pill. A much higher ranked pill of a lower class could be much harder to create than a lower ranked pill of a higher class.
Another thing that demarcated the strength of pills was the number of circles in a pill. The circles of a pill were determined by how precious the materials used in making the pill was. For example, if a more powerful or older medicinal ingredient, or a more valuable medicine cauldron was used, then the pill would have more effectiveness and thus more circles. Though most pills are made with just the required ingredients and thus would usually only have one or two circles. Thus usually people would only specify the number of circles if it were four or higher as only then would it have any relevance.
The Soul Healing pill had many formulas, and depending on its formula its rank and class could change. Almost all named pills had multiple formulas for multiple ranks and classes.
Long Tian continued to listen. If he was able to get a Soul Healing pill, he could use it as an excuse for why he woke up. Even though it would be a waste of time and resources, he could also use its power to step on the path of soul cultivation.
In the path of cultivation, it was generally agreed that the Qi path was more favorable than the other two paths. This was because of two reasons. The first was the difficulty in practicing the three paths. The path where talent played the most part was the soul path. It was almost impossible for people without an absurd amount of talent to walk this path. The path which required the least talent was the body tempering path. But this path required a great amount of resources and often the body tempering path was filled with great pain and thus needed great willpower.
But the qi path could be practiced by anyone as long as one was ready to put in enough effort. Thus it was the path followed by most people. Due to this, many different styles and variations arose, allowing people to cultivate in different ways, and as long as one could cultivate using the technique that suited them the most, they could easily find themselves improving at an increased rate.
The second reason was that in the early stages, the qi path was more powerful than the other two paths. In the first two steps, the soul stage was much weaker than the other two paths. This was because the soul cultivation was a cultivation that is internally manifested, and it initially is not powerful enough to affect the outside universe. Thus what it could do in the beginning was limited. But once the soul cultivation system reached the dao mark stage then, the soul would be able to connect to the dao and thus its attack power would increase tremendously, even surpassing the qi, and body tempering systems. But it was still considered weaker, as its speed, defense and single target attack power were still weaker. All of this would be solved and the soul cultivator would be as powerful as other paths in the immortal step.
As for the other two systems, the qi system was considered superior to the body tempering system in the first two steps also. This was because while the strength of the two systems was considered equal, the fighting tactics of the body tempering system were quite simple in the first two steps, while the qi cultivators had more range. This meant that it was easy to fight against a body cultivator while one had to figure out how to fight against a qi cultivator during the fight. But once a body tempering cultivator reached the dao star stage, they had to condense different dao stars into their body, and depending on which of the millions and millions of dao stars they had condensed, they would get different powers. This would increase their range and thus the difficulty in fighting them.
Now that Long Tian had figured out a way to explain his awakening, he decided to put the problem of how to face his parents to later. The next step was to figure out what to do with the power of the soul healing pill. Even though the Soul Healing pill was a healing type pill and thus had much milder effects, as a dao class pill, its strength could not be underestimated. And wasting all that medicinal effects would indeed be a pity. But as someone who had reached the god stage in soul, he was confident that he could maximize his gains.
As Long Tian thought about cultivating from the start once again, a smile came to his lips. In his past life, he emulated his father, and cultivated in all three paths. He reached the god stage in the soul system, and in the final moment of his life, he reached the titled god stage in the qi system. But in the body system, he ended up having to abandon it midway.
In the body cultivation system during the dao star stage one is supposed to resonate with a dao star and condense an image of it inside them in order to borrow their powers. But among the many dao stars, there was one special star. No one knew its name, and thus everyone simply called it the Nameless star. To date, no one had managed to condense that dao star. What it was, and what its powers are were a complete mystery. Anyone who tried died or at least had their dao path crippled.
Being young and the most talented cultivator of his times Long Tian was also filled with arrogance. Against the advice of everyone, he tried to condense the Nameless star. And he promptly failed. If it wasn't for his father he might have even died. In the end, he, who was at the eight star stage and about to condense the ninth star, fell all the way to the three star stage, unable to advance forever.
The most frustrating thing was that he could not even understand why he failed. Some of the most formidable of the stars also had a special test one had to pass in order to gain its recognition. Long Tian knew that he had faced the test of the Nameless star. But he could not remember it at all. All memories of his regarding the Nameless star had been erased. It was almost as the dao did not want anyone to remember anything about it.
He had all the knowledge he needed to cultivate to the top. Being born as the son of one of the eight great titled gods, he had access to a great number of cultivation methods and battle techniques. He had honed them in battle during the course of the Grand War.
He thought about the fact that he could cultivate once again. The first thing that he would have to do would be to figure out who tried to kill him. And kill him first.
The Long Tian of before the war would not have done so. He was brought up in a safe environment and simply cultivated. He was a naive and innocent youth. Due to his physique he never met with bottlenecks, and thus never left to temper himself. The first time he saw the cruelty of the world was when he went to participate in the war. He saw many of his friends die. He had to watch helplessly as the people he swore to protect all fell. During the course of the thirty thousand year long war, he was slowly tempered into someone with an iron will.
He calmed himself and quickly fell asleep. He was not truly asleep, only his body. But to do so he had to close off all contact with the outside world. He decided that he would wake up either when the Soul Healing pill was given, or if it wasn't, then after a couple of days.
As he settled himself in, he decided to prepare for the karmic severing. Cultivators and mortals were different in the eyes of the heavenly dao, and each had a different karmic system. When a cultivator first stepped onto the path of cultivation, and created the first trace of cultivation, he would be given a dao mark by the universe. This would be updated as the cultivator progressed in his cultivation. Every step was further divided into three realms in every cultivation system. Every time someone stepped onto a realm for the first time, the dao mark would be updated. But this would only be updated once per stage. For example, if a person had already reached the foundation establishment stage, then the dao mark would not be updated again if one reached the muscle tempering stage or the fourth soul ring, the equivalent form in the soul cultivation system.
As he thought of the karmic severing, suddenly his entire soul shook. He suddenly remembered something that he never thought would be necessary to him. Something he had forgotten about almost as soon as he did his part in creating it.
The Dao Repository.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone