Chapter [B5] 14 — Brewing Pill Drugs Again

Chapter [B5] 14 — Brewing Pill Drugs Again

Being back in my own lab was very nostalgic. The room had the old smells and I stood for a moment just to take it all in. Spirit ink, dried peel, heat from a plate that had been cleaned but not used for weeks. The crack in the third plank of the bench was still there. The bitten talisman brush was where I had left it, the bite clean and round. I picked it up, felt the teeth marks, and set it in the cup with the better brushes.

I took a stick of chalk and wrote on the wall beside the worktable.

Ki’s seal: one year.

I looked at the line, then added a second.

Less if the leaves sap the Chi from the tree even after they’re disconnected.

There was a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it in. Still…

“It is good to be back,” I said, not to anyone in particular.

Yin came in with a tray and heard me. She set the tray down and looked around once, like she was taking stock of all the small things that made this room “ours.”

“It is,” she said. “I missed the bench. I missed the way it quiets the head. I missed… doing this with you. Learning how to make pills is something I can never forget.”

“Yeah,” was all Yin said.

We did not say anything more for a moment. We just stood there and felt the ordinary weight of the room.

Outside, the cart yard thumped with a steady drumbeat. Foremen called counts. Boxes moved from left to right. Qiao Ying’s lines had turned barns into pill houses—I really should talk to him too, when he returns. I couldn’t help but wonder how much he’d changed. All of my friends had changed, after all, even if in subtle ways.

Then, a mischievous grin spread on Yin’s face. “Though, we’ve made a lot more tools and changed up our brewing process a bit based on your books, ‘Sage’.”

I looked at her with a lopsided grin at that, “Oh?”

“Yes. We’ve recreated all the tools you’ve mentioned are the basics for ‘Chemistry’ in your books. And the scientific testing process, do you remember it?”

It took me a second to recollect what I’d written, but then I nodded.

“We’re following that step by step, these days,” Yin said, giggling. “Can you keep up?”

“Of course!” I straightened with feigned offense. “Just you see. I’ll do it super smoothly.”

“Sure, sure,” Yin said, and it relieved me to see her… so much free and open around me. I couldn’t help but remember how afraid she was of me, all the way back when she’d first met me.

But I couldn’t get lost in nostalgia. The soldiers’ condition would get steadily worse, according to what Zhang said; it was time to brew some good old pill drugs.

“Let’s set the bench,” I said.

We laid out the tools: small cauldron for test runs, medium cauldron for controlled heat, two therm-plates, one steady, one for gentle ramps, mortar and pestle, small sifter, three porcelain dishes for cooling, scales, needles, tweezers, an etching needle with a fine point log sheets… Oh, how long had it been since I’d touched all these tools? Hell, there were even some tools here that I’d not made; when I looked at Yin, she winked at me, making me realize just how much my friends had been doing and making during my long absence.

Yin had mentioned it, of course, but seeing it in action… It made me smile.

This was good. Having these extra tools would help me be more ‘scientific’ in my approach. Even if it made me feel like I was back in school.

I wrote headers for Divine Tree Purification Pill, v0, and added columns for Batch Log and Notes before laying out the goals: Clean the taint without leaving meridians brittle. Give a small refill so a person can stand and move. Avoid drawing power from the Divine Tree. The leaf will be a route, not a source.

Yin nodded as she read them. “Clear.”

“Good. Let’s inventory materials.”

“We keep this simple,” I said. Simple is easier to teach and harder to break—and usually, simpler was more effective, too.

Yin set a small vial rack beside the scales. Three vials held samples taken from vents in the caverns. Dark threads moved in each one.

“Three vents, three strengths,” she said. “I labeled them A, B, C. A responds to the usual purification method, B is stubborn, C is slow to change and then moves all at once if it is subjected to a sufficient amount of Chi.” ŘÄΝОＢƐ𝐒

“Good spread,” I said. “We start on paper, then on a live tongue test with a very small dose, then volunteers.”

Yin looked at me. “You’re planning to test on yourself first?”

“Half a grain under the tongue. I know the signs if it goes wrong.”

She didn’t argue. She didn’t like it, but she didn’t argue. If anyone could take on experimental pill drugs without facing too many problems with their body, it’d be me, so what could she say?

I cleaned the table. Yin set the small cauldron on the steady plate. I took a leaf sliver with tweezers and held it against the light. The treatment had left it flat and matte. I rested it on the etching pad and took up the fine needle.

“Route mark v0,” I said, more to the log than to Yin. “Three steps. We keep the lines short and straight. No curls.”

I scratched three small rings with breaks at the top. I added one notch on the first, two on the second, three on the third. Stillness, separation, purification. I paused and checked the depth. Too deep and it would crack the sliver during rolling. Too shallow and the mark would not hold its path.

“Depth?” Yin asked.

“Hair-thin,” I said. “No more.”

I etched nine more slivers, checking each one with a finger tap to make sure it did not bend or split.

“Base mix,” I said. “Six parts base, two parts binder, one part refill, one part temper shell.”

I measured with the small scoop, leveled each scoop with a straight edge, and wrote the ratios on the log. I mixed the base and binder dry, then misted a few drops of water and mixed again until it clumped when pressed but did not stick. Yin heated the small cauldron to a low stable point and set a clean dish above it to warm the room air around the bowl. Warm air made rolling smoother.

We rolled ten cores by hand. Each core got one leaf sliver pressed flat in the center. I sealed them with a little binder, rolled again, then dusted them in temper leaf powder and rolled a final shell.

Yin cut one with a thin knife. The cross-section showed central placement. The sliver lay flat. Good.

“Paper assay.”

Oh, she’d made tools for that too? The thought made me grin. It’d be immensely useful, being able to viably test the material and their contents using the paper.

She put a small drop of Vial A on a marked sheet. Without the pill core, the drop spread in a slow fan. She marked the edge with a line. Then she shaved a thin flake from a pill core and set it beside a second drop. The spread slowed, then stopped. The first ring on the test card lit faintly, then the second, then the third. The drop lightened.

“Time to clear, Vial A with core: forty breaths,” she said, and wrote it down.

We ran the same with Vial B. The first ring lit and held; the second took longer. The drop cleared at one hundred twenty breaths.

“Vial C,” she said. The first ring lit, then nothing. After a very long time the second ring flickered. The drop started to lighten all at once near the end. Two hundred forty breaths.

I wrote: “A = 40, B = 120, C = 240, all cleared on paper.”

“Heat test,” Yin said. She laid the third test sheet on a small warmed plate, just to see if a hotter environment changed the speed. A cleared faster. B had no change. C cleared a little faster at the end.

“Good enough to try a live test,” I said.

Yin handed me a small chip. I put it under my tongue and timed my breath. I kept my sense on the lines in my own meridians, sending out vague waves of Gu. The dissolve was steady. The first layer settled in gently. No cold spike. No sharp feeling. The refill rose with a small warm push. I could feel the route mark, a clear direction. The Gu signature in my own body was low, so there was little to clean. Mostly I felt the refill. I took a pulse reading at the wrist and logged it. Steady.

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“Any edge?” Yin asked.

“No, smooth. The refill is mild.”

“Good,” she said. “Let’s test on one volunteer with a half dose.”

We called in a runner from the outer room. He was a young man with a bandage on one arm and a dull sheen on his skin that said the battle of the day before had gotten to him. He understood what we were doing. He nodded and sat.

“Half dose. Keep it under the tongue. Do not swallow fast.”

He held it. The dissolve took longer than on me, because his mouth was dry. I passed him a sip of water, just enough to wet it. He waited. After a short time his shoulder eased.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

“Less heavy,” he said wonderingly. “No pain.”

Yin checked his pulse and the skin at his neck. She made a note. We watched ten more breaths. Still fine.

“Full dose on a second,” I said.

This one was a woman with a steady gaze. She had faint dark webs at the corners of her eyes. Not deep, but there. She took the pill and followed the same steps. Her web lines faded. She flexed her hands and nodded once.

“No sharp edges?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

Yin wrote times and small signs for both. She also wrote “no brittling.”

I stood there and let the state of the room sink in. The bench was set. The plates were warmed but not hot. The log books were filling with real numbers. I could hear the yard outside, but it was only a ground sound now, not a push. My head felt clean. My hands remembered what to do without fuss. I missed this.

“I missed this,” I said. “I missed this so much.”

Yin smiled a small smile. “Which one?” she asked. “Science, or alchemy?”

“Why not both?”

“True. They’re both remarkably similar. You do the next step. Then you look. If it is wrong, you change one thing. If it is right, you write it down.”

“Exactly,” I said.

We went back to the steps.

v0, Batch 1 — Ten pills

Ratios: base 6, binder 2, refill 1, temper 1.

Leaf sliver: one per pill, route mark v0 as defined.

Dissolve target: first layer at ten breaths, second layer at thirty breaths, finish at sixty breaths.

Heat: low, steady.

Cap: do not exceed ten pills per hour on this bench until Sheldon clears it.

We timed the dissolves in water for a crude standard. Pill one dissolved too fast; the shell was too thin. Pill two was close to target. Pills three through ten were within range.

“Shell thickness. Add one pinch more temper to the shell mix.”

Yin wrote the change.

Same ratios, thicker shell. Dissolve time came into the target. We ran paper assay and live tongue micro-tests on two more volunteers and one assistant. No cold spikes. No sharp feelings, their meridians being overwhelmed. Refill mild.

“Now the grid,” Yin said. “We need to know if the marks tug the lines.”

She tapped a small ward plate by the door. The plate did not give numbers, but it could show a fluctuation if the lines moved a lot, which would happen if the taint wasn’t being dissolved, just expelled back into the ground. If what I understood about formations was correct, then Sheldon and Liuxiang had done something very interesting—they had treated the Seventh Peak as a pill of sorts, engraving veins into it and along with tunnels and hence allowing them to control and measure miasma spills or ‘taints’, as they were called.

I wondered how much of them occurred due to the Demon God and how much occurred just as backlash of the cultivators drawing the little Chi that remained in the atmosphere.

Either way, the small bead in its groove stayed steady. Good. So the pills were clearing the miasma from the bodies, not expelling it back into the ground.

“Ask Sheldon for a read.” Just in case.

The tortoise rounded the door on slow feet and looked up at us the second I reached out to my connection with him. His shell was clean, darker at the grooves where water had dried, a cable of a thin silver line tucked along his left side. He stopped at the bench and tilted his head.

“Sheldon. We kept it small.”

He blinked and looked toward the ward plate, then toward the floor, as if looking through it.

“Slow,” Sheldon said. “Daily cap.”

“Yes, yes, we made sure to maintain a cap on using the Chi and leaves and not experiment too much.”

He looked at the ten pills on the tray, then back at the floor again. “Lines. Little slack, no pull. Now.”

“Thank you. What’d you been doing underground?” I’d sensed his presence along with Labby underground—Labby was still there in the tunnels.

He turned his head a little and tapped one foot on the floor. “Cut mud. Move stone. Water here,” he said, tapping again. “Push. Then still.”

I thought through what that meant. He had gone under the south slope. He had cut a new channel in the packed soil and stone. He had shifted water from one pocket to another to take strain off a bend. He had pressed the bedrock lines into a better path, so that the tunnels there wouldn’t collapse. He had set them to stillness after the push.

“Caps,” Sheldon said again. “Slow. Watch.”

“We will,” I said.

“Cover. Thicker.”

“You want us to make the outer shell of the pills thicker? Why?” I asked, blinking.

“Demons like the smell.” Sheldon looked at the tray again and then started to turn.

“Ah. We’ll find a way to dampen it.”

He made a low sound that was not quite a word and started his slow path back toward the door. I watched him go and felt a small relief settle in my chest. He was doing a thousand small things underground that no one else could do. He’d truly become one of the pillars of the Seventh Peak, hadn’t he?

Yin sat back on the stool and rubbed at her eyes. “He says in two words what we write in two pages.”

“Two useful words,” I said. “Make the outer shell thicker, use lesser Chi per pill.”

“Thicker and lesser,” she repeated. “I will put it on the top of the method.”

We went back to the bench.

I adjusted the temper layer, about one extra pinch per pill. Dissolve in water test: ten breaths to first layer, thirty to second, sixty to finish. Good.

“Paper assay, sequence test,” Yin said. We placed three drops side by side, A, B, C. We dropped three shaved cores at the same time. I watched the rings on the test card. First ring lit at the same time for all three. Second ring lagged more on C. Third ring came last, as expected.

“Now live tests on two more volunteers,” I said. I called in two who had just come off duty and had light taint from the outer patrol. Both followed the same steps as the first two. Both cleared well.

“Log the refill level in plain words,” I said. “None of this needs fancy terms. Even though I know you’re itching to use them after learning them from my books.”

Yin pouted, but she obeyed nonetheless, writing: “Refill: small. Enough to feel steady and move. Not enough to push the miasma out fully in heavier cases, but if multiple pills are taken, it should be sufficient.”

We took a short break to drink water. The more that I thought about it, the more I realized the step I was forgetting.

Failing.

I was playing it too safe. I don’t trust a method until I have made it fail in front of me. It’s only if I understood how and where it fails could I truly experiment and innovate. I set up a small series of “bad” runs so I could see the failure signs and write them down.

Too thin shell → dissolve too fast, refill hits too early, a small sharp feeling at the wrist.

Too much refill → warm push that makes hands tingle, test subject wants to move too fast.

Bad mark (shallow notch on second ring) → separation step hangs, paper assay shows a gray rim that does not clear.

We made one of each on purpose. We ran paper tests. We also did live tongue touch with a flake the size of a seed so we could feel the onset without taking a full pill.

Yin wrote FAILURE SIGNS in a box:

“Fast dissolve = tingle = not safe for tired bodies.”

“Over-refill = eager hands = bad for brittle meridians.”

“Bad mark = hang at separation = gray rim; fix mark depth.”

We then ran a correction pass: “Fast dissolve = tingle = not safe for tired bodies.” “Over-refill = eager hands = bad for brittle meridians.” “Bad mark = hang at separation = gray rim; fix mark depth.”

I marked the discarded slivers with a cross and put them in a bag labeled “trash.”

And then we had the final problem to solve—Sheldon had said demons liked the smell, likely the clean scent that rises off the pill while it dissolves. We needed a way to delay it until the pill was already absorbed into the body. Would a thicker layer for the pill truly be enough? Maybe, but what if the pills came into contact with water before that?

Or perhaps… Yes, an idea came to me.

I mixed a thin stasis shell layer from a neutral wax bound with temper leaf powder. I rolled four pills with the extra shell, very thin. I set one in a small cup under a gauze hood and brought a sniff plate close. The plate stayed dull. I then snapped the shell with a fingernail and brought the plate back. The plate lit faintly.

“Good,” Yin said. “We keep the smell in until the last moment.”

“Add note,” I said. “Break shell at use. Do not carry broken pills.”

She wrote it.

We took all the corrections and made a bigger run. We timed each. We weighed random samples to check consistency. Just in case, we cut two at random to check sliver placement. Centered and flat.

I then cleaned the tools, which felt… therapeutic. I wiped the bench with a damp cloth and then a dry cloth. I sharpened the etching needle with a stone and checked the point against the light. I wrote “Public Method v0” and copied the steps down, writing them in the plainest way I could.

It really did look like a high school lab experiment, now. That thought made me chuckle, imagining cultivators in the future in high schools experimenting with my pill formulas.

But the goal was that if I walked out and did not come back, someone could pick this up and do a safe run, so I kept it as simple as possible.

“Last check. Two more volunteers, then we seal the tray and stop for the day.”

The next two came in from the yard, dust still on their sleeves. One had a shallow cough. The other had a small dark line at his temple that moved when he frowned. We repeated the steps. Half dose for the first. Full for the second. Clean dissolves. The cough settled. The line at the temple faded.

They smiled small, tired smiles and thanked us exaggeratedly. Miasma could be a pain, so I understood why they were so thankful.

The two of them hadn’t even left when a messenger arrived, turning the corner with quick feet and lifting a hand.

“Report,” I said.

“Spirits from the allied courts have arrived,” she said. “They are in sealed rooms in Miss Yin’s laboratory.”

“Thank you for letting us know.”

The messenger bowed and then ran out. Yin and I exchanged a look. We both knew what came next.

“We keep batch four for humans. We should make a new, stronger design for spirits.”

“Shouldn’t be too difficult. The overall process should be the same, yes?”

“I think so.” I thought about it for a second. Spirits were less… mortal in their composition, made out of Qi, Gu or Chi, but… Purification was the same for all species, right?