章 15: Breakthrough

Louis woke up late and groggy. Amber and Amelia had already bathed and clothed themselves. They huddled above him. Amelia had a glass of water in her hands and was about to pour it over his face as he opened his eyes. Amber tried to push the glass away, but missed and only made Amelia drop the glass onto him. The cold water instantly woke him up as immediately sat up in attention. After looking around and seeing it was just his sister's antics, he sighed as he went to take a bath.

Just as luck would have it, Jack and Calvin were both about to get out of the bath, but sat back down when they saw him. There was no helping it now. He had no table to physically separate them and no distractions for him to ignore them.

"Good morning." Louis said, then waded to the other side of the bath.

"Good morning." Jack said, following, as he dragged Calvin along. "Are you the legendary bookworm who spends all day in the library?"

"I do spend my time at the library, yes. What about it?" Louis said.

"I have heard a lot about you and I feel like you should do something more valuable with your life." Jack said, standing tall.

"Such as?" Louis said, sitting down, leaning his head against the bath walls and closing his eyes.

"Join my team. You won't regret it." Jack said, holding his hand out.

Louis opened an eye. It wasn't everyday he was recruited by a nine year old. Someone must have put him up to it. "I'll think about it." Louis said. "I'll give my answer in a week."

"Alright." Jack said, smiling. "I believe in the good news." He dragged Calvin as they both walked away.

Melissa brought Louis, Amelia and Amber into the basement of the manor. The room was smaller than his room back home but boxes were piled three to four high around the room, leaving just enough space for his array and a couple more boxes.

"What's this?" Louis said, hoping it was not what he thought it was.

"The materials you requested." Melissa said, putting her hands on his shoulders. "As much as I would like you to take your time, your sisters are leaving soon and would need the help immediately."

Louis groaned as he walked into the room and the rest followed him in. "You are all staying?" Louis asked. "This is going to be a long, dull process to watch."

"I'll leave with them in a second. Let me give you some spirit stones." Melissa said, taking a brown cloth bag from her handbag. "They will restore your spiritual energy and qi when you need to."

Louis opened the bag. Ten dull pebbles were in the bag. He grabbed one of them out of the bag and began to suck the qi within it. Despite its dull color, the qi entering his body was no inferior to the qi he obtained from his Wind-Water Qi Pocket Array, only the qi was much gentler and almost immediately merged into his body like he was breathing it in. These spirit stones were much better than the ones he had even in his old life.

"Not bad." Louis said. "Can you give me some more? I'll make more pills, if you do."

"They are expensive since they are very useful. I'll try to get you some more, but don't expect too much." Melissa said, shaking her head. "If you need anything, come get me. Amelia, Amber, let's go."

Amelia was about to follow, but Amber simply sat against one of the boxes and opened one of the picture books she was carrying. Not about be inferior, Amelia also sat right down with her, reading one of the books. Melissa looked at the two girls for a moment.

"It's fine. They can watch. Amelia has already watched it multiple times and Amber won't do anything. Just send Silva down too, so everything is safe." Louis said.

"Well, if you say so. I'll come down directly after the meeting and Silva will be done in a couple of minutes." Melissa said, before disappearing.

Louis began to craft the Wind-Water Qi Pocket Array. Using a spirit stone just to produce a fire was a travesty and restoring qi with it wasn't much better. He could simply replenish his qi with some of the pills he made, since the more he crafted these pills, the easier on the soul it got, since he didn't need to make so much calculations. It would become a routine.

It only took Louis thirty minutes to carve the Wind-Water Qi Pocket Array into the ground. Amelia had continued reading this entire time, though she often snuck in a few peaks at Amber to see if she was still there before she started reading again. Amber had given up reading entirely and sat next to the array, trying to touch the lines of the array while asking questions. Silva answered her questions, but as soon as Louis was done, she carried Amber to Amelia and started to read a picture book to them.

The most effective way to create pills would be researching the pill and trying to create two high grade elemental qi replenishing pills in a batch. While theoretically possible, Louis wasn't skilled enough and the alchemy recipes he read only gave him the general consensus of the concoction process, leaving a lot to the imagination. Perhaps an alchemist teacher would be helpful in this regard. Researching had its own faults as well, since it consumed much more qi and spiritual energy than creating something he had done many times before. He would need the spirit stones to complement the pills for his consumption.

Without resting, he jumped straight into concocting a Water Qi Replenishing Pill. His biggest barrier was not having a high or great grade pill for him to research. When he strived for elemental and qi purity, the pill would become too little of the qi would remain for it be useful. While reducing the purity would increase the volume dramatically, he had yet to create a great grade pill by simply reducing the purity. A great and unique grade pill would have four and five layers respectively, but following the pill recipe and dividing them into three groups only created three layers. Perhaps he should split the second group of ingredients into two, since the first four were fundamental and required to be fused together fuse in order to be effective.

Splitting the second group of ingredients into two groups didn't require much more effort, though increasing the number of groups from an odd number to an even number was always pretty easy. From an even number group to a hard number group was truly the difficult part. In other words, making an unique grade pill was going to be a nightmare, but that wasn't his concern right now. He couldn't even make a great grade pill.

The greatest difficulty of adding another layer to the pill came in the cleansing stage, where he would need to breathe qi into the pill. Each layer of the pill would require much more qi. However, despite successfully making a Water Qi Replenishing Pill with four layers, the overall qi and purity within it was the same as a high grade pill. Louis spent ten minutes reflecting on the pill before he started crafting a Wind Qi Replenishing Pill, taking his new speculations to the test, since the theory for both pills were fundamentally the same.

This process would continue from morning until dinner. Louis stopped five times - each time after he had concocted one of each pill - to eat a Water Qi Replenishing Pill and a Wind Qi Replenishing Pill each time. During his sixth time to consume part of a spirit stone to restore his spirit. By the time it was dinner, while the layers of the pill remained at four, they were at the limits of a high grade elemental qi replenishing pill. Surprisingly, Amelia and Amber both remained, but both had fallen asleep at some point, resting on Silva's lap.

"It will be dinner time soon, young master." Silva said, bowing her head slightly. "Would you like to stop for it soon?"

Louis shook his head. "Not yet. The spirit stones and pills are sufficient."

"While the amount of pills you have concocted in a row is indeed impressive, but you have nothing to show for it after ten trials." Silva said.

"It's fine." Louis said. "Today and tomorrow are for research. If I'm right, I'll be able to produce many pills on the rest of the days to compensate."

"I believe in you, young master, but don't push yourself too hard. You are still young."

"Don't worry."

After Silva left, Louis consumed the rest of the first spirit stone. As the first spirit stone shattered into dust, Louis could feel his spiritual energy and qi fully restore. Better yet, since his qi was repeatedly exhausted then replenished, he had completed multiple revolutions of his qi. He normally didn't have much use for his qi in his day-to-day life, only during his morning and nightly meditations would there be an opportunity, but alchemy consumed his energy like no other. There was no possible way he would give up such a luxurious activity that allowed him to do three of his favorite things at the same time: help his sisters and advance his cultivation and alchemy.

This time, Louis promised himself, he would create a great grade pill. One of his biggest lessons today was that supplementing his own qi throughout the entire concocting process was the best increasing the size of the pill and its quality. It wasn't something he would ever imagine would be needed, since his previous materials were all heavenly and earthly treasures, inputting one's own qi during the concocting process would be a sacrilege. The materials had much purer qi than a person normally had, that's why it was so useful. However, these pills lack the pureness and quantity of qi that those ingredients had. To compensate for the deficient, Louis poured part of the elementless qi he used to make a fire to supplement the pill's own qi. While the amount was small now, he gradually increased the amount he would insert with each experiment.

His last pill of the day, the wind elemental pill, finally reached great grade pill. He smiled as he put the high grade Water Qi Replenishing Pill and great grade Wind Qi Replenishing Pill into the bag of spirit stones as he walked up to his room. In his room, not only was Amelia and Amber there, talking loudly how Amber wouldn't leave him alone, but Shea and Carla were also there, chiming in and threw the conversation into random directions. While surprising, Louis was going to call the two of them to his room anyway.

"Amelia, Carla, start cultivating." Louis said, throwing the wind pill to Amelia and the water pill to Carla. "Eat those before cultivating." He then threw a spirit stone to Shea. "Use the stone as you cultivate. Everyone should breakthrough tonight, so get started."

The three of them looked at the pill, then at each other, then at Louis before eating the pills and starting to cultivate. Louis grabbed another spirit stone from the bag and placed it into Amber's hands.

"I was going to craft a pill for you next week, but my mother gave me these spirit stones. I can help you breakthrough now." Louis said, his eyes shining brightly and the words spoken so fast it turned more mumbles than actual words.

Amber, nevertheless, got the gist and closed her eyes and began to cultivate. Louis placed her hands on her back and began pouring his qi into her body. While neither her qi nor spiritual energy was sufficient to open her upper dantian, the spirit stone could compensate it. If not the first, the second one. If the second one, the third one. He had many spirit stones at hand and, if they could help her breakthrough, even if just a bit, he would use them without hesitation.

"Do you see a bright blue dot within the meridians in your right hand?" Louis asked.

"Yeah."

"Follow it with your qi."

While he could have chosen Amber's left hand, which would have made the path to her upper dantian much shorter, Louis was worried that she would need time to adjust to revolving her qi consciously. At the same time, the more time she used, the more time he had to pour his own qi and spiritual energy into her body to help her.

Normally, the upper dantian wouldn't be in the cultivation path, since many smaller meridians passed by it that would feed it automatically. However, to open the upper dantian, one need to consciously direct a large amount of qi to the biggest of these meridians without breaking the meridian. Opening the upper dantian itself was easy, since it was so delicate, intentionally sending even a small amount of qi could possibly break it. Opening the dantian without breaking the meridians or crushing the upper dantian required opening one's soul threshold and connecting it to the upper dantian, increasing the space of the threshold and improving the control over it, as if the spirit threshold finally gained a control center.

This process normally required an elder to help, since a mere five year old wouldn't be able to do this process by himself. While Louis' cultivation was nowhere near desired, his soul control has only grown during these past five years. With the supplement of such high grade spirit stones, he was confident this was work. Amber needed not to understand the process. All she needed to do was push her qi in the direction he chose, and if need be, he could do that for her.

Louis crushed a spirit stone, so its qi and spiritual energy could be more quickly accessed. Since Amber had no idea what her spirit threshold was, Louis had protect it on her behalf. He grabbed another spirit stone and crushed it immediately, absorbing the qi and spiritual energy with his right hand and pouring his own spiritual energy and qi into Amber's body with his left. Once he covered both her spirit threshold and upper dantian, he fed part of his qi, the unrefined spirit stone's qi, into her upper dantian and funneled a smaller bit of her qi into it.

The upper dantian was open since birth, but only a tiny hole to feed itself. To truly open, the dantian had to be opened completely without destroying it, creating the biggest and most important meridian in the body, while at the same time be the control center of the soul. The process was slow and qi and spiritual consuming. Louis gave Amber another spirit stone, as her ran out, and destroyed another spirit stone for himself.

By the time he spent the last spirit stone, Amber's upper dantian finally opened. Within that instant, water and wind qi from the surrounding began to condense around her, immediately burning from the qi emitting by her spirit, until the element was stripped away and only the qi was left. Her spirit began to devour that qi as her body began to burn.

However, because Louis covered her entire spirit with his own qi and spiritual energy, the bed didn't burn. Instead, his hands started to burn. Unfortunately, Louis had no qi to protect his hands, only enough to protect and monitor her body. By the time the storm of qi died down, Louis' hands were charred black. Amber immediately fell asleep while his sisters were in the arms of their parents.

Louis, after seeing their faces, then his hands, however, immediately closed his eyes and covered himself with a blanket. Ignorance was bliss and no amount of explanation could bring him out of this hole.

"Louis, you have some explaining to do." Brian said. "Don't pretend to fall asleep now."