The vault door opened with a quiet rumble. The huge, round stone circle swung outward, prompting Nyx to take a step back. The vault floor was empty but beautifully polished stone. It would not have been surprising to see such a good-looking stone floor in the hallway of the estate. Instead, it hid away here, guarding his vault. Lights made of pure energy lined the walls of the vault, giving its interior a light blue color. His father really did quality work.

  Protruding from the stone floor stood a roughly hewn stone pillar, standing in stark contrast to its surroundings. It was an ugly thing, dark gray basalt with white furrows carving streaks of violence onto its surface.

  On top of the pillar, Nyx found the only thing this vault carried for him: a small silver necklace with a white teardrop pendant. The accessory weighed down a folded piece of parchment paper. Nyx curiously took the necklace, which felt slightly warm to the touch, and read the note.

  “Little Nyx.

  Crush this necklace when you arrive

  at the Verdant Reflection Sect.

  Your sister Nyx’Anethra will show you a good time <3”

  Nyx’Sol eyed his father curiously. “Who is she? Have I met her before?”

  The patriarch smiled in a way that a father does when teasing his son. “Why, yes. You have met her before. You can put the necklace on. It has a minor enchantment that will keep you warm at night.”

  “When was that? I cannot remember meeting a sister who had the dark demonic skin that her name suggests,” Nyx wondered aloud before putting on the necklace. The jewelry immediately adapted his temperature to his environment. It was damp and cool down here, yet he immediately felt warmer. This did not feel like a minor enchantment.

  “About 16 years ago. She arrived a few days before you were born,” his father said with a sly smile. “She was ecstatic about having another Nyx in the family. Over the centuries, we have only had a few, and she was the first.” He gestured him out of the vault. “Let us go. You should not make your brother wait, especially when he is about to make you a great gift. Good cultivation pills for the body cultivation realm are not easy to come by. Usually, they are produced only by aspiring alchemists who are still body cultivators, and their quality is often low. It takes about the same resources to produce a body cultivator pill as it does for a pill in the qi gathering realm. Thus, very few people produce them.”

  As they ascended through the layers and layers of vaults, another question began to form in Nyx’Sol’s mind. “What number is my sister Nyx’Anethra?”

  The patriarch remained silent until they arrived at the first layer, where he pointed at vault number two. “This is her vault. And she is the oldest of our children. She has never died. If you choose to break this necklace, she will make you her disciple.”

  He stopped at the entrance and gestured for Nyx to come closer. Then he teleported them both through the array into the workshop for alchemists. “But if you do, be aware that she is a lot harsher than me.” He winked at Nyx and hugged him goodbye. “You still have a few hours until midnight. The process should be done way before the first light. Make sure to be on your way by then. It is bad luck to leave during the day.”

  Nyx’Sol nodded seriously. He knew many of the children's stories that started with rebellious youth leaving the home during the day and attracting the gaze of the strong. If you are weak, leave quietly, keep your head down, and you will not attract danger. It was silly, but customary. “Yes, patriarch. We will meet again.” And Nyx bowed in respect before heading into the workshop.

  The workshop halls were separated from each other topically, and that had a practical reason. Alchemical processes often demanded a neutral environment with little latent energy and temperature. Pill furnaces condensed their energy internally, so they did not influence these conditions. However, large smelters and smithies layered a lot of fire energy, and their temperature tended to influence their environment.

  Instead of controlling for these conditions with expensive arrays or temperature-controlling resources, the Eternal Blossom Clan had built multiple halls that had sectioned off various workstations in different rooms to ensure enough space for any project while keeping the cost of arrays low.

  The alchemy hall had a vast library filled with books and scrolls that documented delicate crafting processes. Reading desks were abundant, and each room could be lit up with various lightstones to be as bright as possible or as dark as anyone could need.

  Nyx had snuck down here to read when he was younger, but back then, even the simplest books had made his head hurt, and his understanding of alchemy ended up being even more confused than it had been at the start. Hopefully, his brother would be a better teacher than these dusty old tomes.

  Only one of the rooms was lit up, all the way at the other side of the library. The workspace specialized in electricity and frost. Nyx’Sol had no idea what that meant, but he had a vague recollection about Yin and Yang energies being connected to fire and frost—whatever those were.

  Inside, Nox’Yanxiou was already working on a lowered workbench that reached only a bit higher than his knees. There, he was fixing a dark blue platform on it, with various carved symbols and markings. “Brother. May I help you somehow?”

  His brother checked the platform again, murmuring silently as he went through a mental checklist. Then he registered Nyx. “Oh, you are already here. Great, you can help me with cutting the nepeta.” He hurriedly moved beyond another desk, where a large alchemy tome lay open at a section about “potential dangers with shapeshifting essence,” and showed Nyx his workspace.

  “Here, in the bag,” he grabbed into a bottomless storage bag and pulled from it a handful of thick leaves that were heart-shaped and had coarsely serrated edges. The leaves also had an almost invisible fine fur that felt soft to the touch. “Don’t worry; there are only nepeta leaves in the bag, so feel free to just grab in and get more once you are done.” Brother Yanxiou pulled another tome out of his storage, this time a rather thin one that only showed roughly ten to twenty pages.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  After a quick scan through it, he placed it on the workstation and tapped the page. “Here, the nepeta leaves and how to cut them. It is really simple, but you need to be exact. The cut cannot be too deep, or you will destroy the essence below the surface. Just parting the skin in the right places is enough to prepare them. We need about 40, maybe 50.” He handed Nyx a sharp and thin knife.

  The leaves in the book showed well over a hundred cuts per leaf, carefully placed along the plant’s internal network. The leaves smelled of mint, but not quite. It was more earthen. Salt?

  Curious, he eyed some descriptions that mainly referred to essence extraction techniques. One had to feel the internal energies of the plant itself, something that was way beyond his level of cultivation. The concept was rather simple, and it calmed Nyx down a bit to see it explained that essence could be forcefully extracted from any leaf; the cuts just allowed it to be more efficient and increased the potential harvest.

  Still, he hoped to do a good job. It was for his own cultivation pill, after all.

  Meticulously, he applied his tiny blade and cut along the plant’s nodes and channels, making sure not to cut too deep, which happened a lot at the start. His first leaf ended up with roughly one out of five cuts too deep, but his control and feel for the plant's skin improved quickly. He knew where to expect the skin to be thicker because it was an older part during the plant’s growth cycle and where the younger sections were.

  It was a bit counterintuitive, because the plant seemed to grow ‘fingers’ of sorts that then spread out in weird directions and connected seemingly at random before thickening. Yanxiou was meanwhile preparing another plant and its essence, but Nyx did not have the time to observe much of the cutting process. He had work to do.

  When he finished his eighth leaf, his brother extracted the essence from his own ingredients. It was quite the sight to behold. The plant shimmered in a golden light, particles sucked directly out of the plant matter and condensed into a small, bright orange orb. “Messy business, alchemy,” his brother lamented at the host of broken plants across the worktable.

  His brother opened the pill furnace, a bulky, ugly thing that was made of the green fake jade rock called aventurin. It was not even polished, only roughly cut. Practicality over beauty.

  The rock lacked the spiritual properties of jade, but exactly this quality made it so special for pill furnaces. It rejected spiritual energy and essences.

  Yanxiou opened its door and added the orange essence orb to a pure white energy that was already present.

  “What is that white thing?” Nyx curiously asked. “Another plant?”

  His older brother shook his head. “No, that is just raw spirit energy. You can make it yourself when you reach the next realm, but it takes some effort and time. I just used two spirit stones.”

  Nyx knew from his stories that spirit stones were worth a lot, since every cultivator used them to advance and cultivate during their qi gathering stage. “Is that not wasteful? They are worth a lot, are they not?” With a frown, he watched an amused smile dance on his brother's purple skin while he continued to cut his leaves.

  “You could say that. But I cannot let my younger brother, who has killed an Angel in his past life, leave the house without a little advantage, can I?” He winked at Nyx, placing a small purple pouch in front of him. “This is a little gift as well. But keep it a secret from our mother.”

  Nyx hurriedly opened the small pouch and stared inside. It was filled with a handful of spirit stones. Most of them white, some of them a different color. Immediately, he stood up, bowed to his brother, and clasped his hands. “Thank you, Brother. I will not forget it.”

  Nox’Yanxiou just laid an arm around his shoulder and slapped his chest lightly. “Come, we have work to do. We need more leaves before we take a look at your core.”

  In the next few minutes, Nyx truly could see the difference that cultivation bestowed on those who ascended. While he cut one leaf in mediocre fashion, his brother cut ten with perfect precision and accuracy. He could have possibly made one single leaf that perfect if he had practiced on a thousand. Yet his brother made it look trivial.

  Before he knew it, there was a minty scent in the air, as his brother extracted and condensed the plant's essences into a shiny, light blue orb. Added to the furnace, the three energies orbited each other in disharmony, yet never collided with one another. It was mesmerizing to watch, almost hypnotic. Maybe alchemy was not so boring after all. This seemed rather practical.

  “Now, the mimic orb, please.”

  Nyx brought it forth from his robes, the surface still slightly cracked where his claws had impacted it. It felt a bit heavier than he remembered. “What are we going to do with it?”

  “We will freeze it at a certain temperature with the array here,” Yanxiou tapped the surface of the dark blue platform, which now had a tripod on top, large enough to hold the orb. “And then you will cut it with this.” He handed Nyx a thin and long bone that had very sharp edges filed into it.

  “The bone is essence neutral, so it can touch anything without spoiling the essence while cutting. I would love to have a tiny one; they waste far less material than the steel blades do.” He sighed, placed the mimic core, and activated the array with a hand sign.

  Nyx could feel the energy surge and freeze the orb in an instant. And immediately after that, only a cold wisp of air remained. The temperature inside the room had not changed at all. It was impressive. “How does this work? The array?”

  Yanxiou shrugged. “I do not know. I just borrow them from conjurers. They have to be maintained after a while, but I have never studied it. Why not take a few lessons when you are at the sect? You will learn a lot.” He smiled. “Just stay away from alchemy if you want to keep your spirit stones. It is a very expensive profession.”

  Then Nyx cut through the frozen core with care. The saw slid through it like it was soft bread. Inside, the core was hollow, frozen black essence at the bottom.

  “Ah. Very good. This will be enough for two pills easily. You are lucky, brother,” Yanxiou said happily, extracting the essence and adding it to the furnace. Now the black shapeshifting essence was orbited by the two plant essences while it absorbed the white spirit energy.

  The door remained open, Yanxiou sitting in front of the furnace, hand raised with a concentrated look on his face. Nyx observed the whole process, all the essences absorbed into the middle one after another before the furnace was closed.

  “That is it. Our work is done.” He looked around the room. The workbenches were a mess of plant matter, drained of essence, but the furnace happily brimmed away. Its light gave a bonfire vibe.

  “Now, Nyx.” His older brother pulled him closer, hand on his shoulder. “You get to enjoy a special pleasure that comes to all students of alchemy.”

  Nox’Yanxiou smiled at him with a toothy, excited grin. “Are you ready to tackle it?”

  Nyx anticipated that he had to open the furnace and receive the first pills that he had made together with his brother. Maybe the way he opened the furnace was especially difficult and exciting? He happily nodded in confirmation.

  “Cleanup.”