บท 13: Chapter Thirteen - I find out about the request system
Leon spent a week melting and refining those herbs into pills. Naturally, he created a fair few Clear Spiritual Pills and Burning Essence Pills, before attempting anything else. He wanted to make a pill called One Heart Pill. It was the lesser cousin of the Blood Pill, easier to create and using less herbs. It was a common pill amongst apothecary's that served commoners more so than the Blood Pill. Leon felt that if he had a stock of healing type pills, he would have greater chances of survival. Leo had also experimented with ways to make this pills side effects less, for as well as being high in impurities, it could damage the meridens if too many were taken in a short space of time. These experiments had created some success.
The usual way to make them were to brew silver nettle leaves into a tea, before melting a wilted lily flower in this tea and then adding purple spirit grass seeds to soak in the mixture as the tea was boiled away using a constant heat. Leon practiced this method for a while, only failing once when a moment's inattention burnt the seeds as it boiled dry far faster than he had assumed it would. Once he had ten pills, he tried Leo's method.
That was to soak the seeds in the half the tea mixture, then crush the seeds into powder, add the rest of the tea then boil this mixture under the same heat, forming the pills with spiritual energy before the tea boiled dry. It was more difficult, Leon threw away several attempts before he managed to figure out the timing. The resulting pill looked more vibrant and pure than it's dull, speckled counterpart. He stored the new pill away for his own use in the chest beneath his bed.
It seemed that while Leo's experiments were better in the long run, they were not the easiest of recipes to follow. So Leon decided to stick with the basic recipes for now until he was more versed with the creation of pills.
As he now had the rest of the ingredients to hand, he made an attempt to create the basic purifying potion. The recipe was fairly easy to follow and he simply had to add his spiritual energy to the liquid to ensure that opposing ingredients bonded. He crushed dried nettle roots into a powder and dissolved it in boiling lake water. Flowering sweet sunclover was soaked in the water over night, once removed from the heat. The liquid was then drained and all leftover herbs removed before being boiled for a second time then poured directly into bottles.
Despite potions being easier, they took longer to make and were not as easily carried by practitioners and cultivators so were not as in demand as pills. A lot of alchemists did not bother making too many. That and there was still the chance of failure, as Leon proved as his second batch turned murky overnight and thickened, when he reboiled it, into mud. He wasn't sure where he had gone wrong, so was overly cautious on his third attempt. However this potion came out as clear and refined as the first batch, so his worries were unfounded.
Once the week was out, he separated his pills into those he wished to keep and those he would hand in. He had no real use for the either the spiritual nor energy pills, so he decided to stockpile a few, as Leo had done, but hand most of the rest in. He kept half of the potions and most of the one heart pills. Once done, he wandered over to the central compound. He was looking forward to eating rice again.
There seemed to be more students around this time, perhaps as it was not yet lunch time and he had not taken the long way around via the library. He also learnt that gossip was not just something found in his first life.
"Did you hear? Some outer students were picked to become inner students!"
"Was it true that Caprian was taken?"
"Hope so, some of us wanted to actually keep our pills!"
"I got a fair bit of silver out of him though!"
"And where exactly are you going to spend that around here?"
"I heard Aries was also chosen."
"That's not a surprise though, is it? He was very talented after all."
Leon exhaled a small sigh of relief. That must have been the reason the Caprian had not come to his hut for the pills. This was a good thing for him. Now he only need concentrate on worrying about himself.
He handed in his pills and potions and was surprised to see Teacher Sagi there again. He allowed the old man to check his pulse again, he thought maybe this was normal? The teacher gave him a nod, seemingly satisfied.
"Have you taken any requests recently?" The man suddenly asked. Leon had to rake through his memories to figure out what he meant and then recalled that students and teachers from all over the various schools would ask for things in exchange for other things. It was a good way of obtaining things not available from the basic stores like the Herb Hall. He shook his head. "Teacher Corne of the Martial Arts School requested a high amount of Blood pills and I thought of you. You have always been reliable. I didn't mention it first due to the deviation, but you seem on track now. If want it, go take it off of the board."
"T-thank you Teacher," Leon bowed slightly, his glasses slipping on his nose, before wandering over to the notice board hanging on the side wall. Fifty pills was a large number, but it was in exchange of a set of knives. This was good for him, he only had one and partially due to the amount of carving he had done, the blade was showing signs of wear, despite his maintenance. He also took one other requests; one seeking a type of mushroom that could be harvested in the woods in exchange for a bag of rice. He hoped he already had this type of mushroom, he would go to the library and look it up.
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