Cultivation Struggles of a Lowly Fox

Chapter 134 – System Rewards and Alchemy

[Happy Birthday!]
[You are now 6 years old!]
[Please choose a gift:]
[1. Meat - 600]
[2. Bloodline Book*]
[3. Stat and Skill Points - 600]
[4. Surprise - Surprise]

Aiko stared at the shameless system. If she hadn't checked her age again, she would have been robbed of her birthday gift! She didn't like the fact that the system would conceal it from her.

'It's even more important since the second option is a one-time-only kind of thing.' Aiko nodded slowly, but she was still glaring at the system's translucent panel.

Aiko picked the Second option, with that she would be able to slowly but carefully change her Bloodlines to what she wanted.

She did not expect that it would have all the information inside, but she should be able to find the Bloodline Tree that she liked.

[Receive a reward for reaching Level 450?]
[Servant Mark]
[Your servants will be loyal to you, if they try to betray you or harm you in any way, their 'Blessing/s' will be forcibly withdrawn, alongside the knowledge received from the User.]

[Receive a reward for reaching Level 500?]
[Ancestral Shop]
[You will be able to buy things lost in time.]

[Receive a reward for reaching Level 550?]
[Servant Shop]
[You can buy various things for your servants.]

The only thing she cared about was the Ancestral Shop, since the others were of no use to her. She didn't have any servants and didn't want to test it on Mei...

'Thinking about how few Skill Points I have makes me worry about my future...' Aiko whined in her mind, she didn't like the fact that almost everything used Skill Points. She had a limited supply of them, yet needed so many of them.

[Ancestral Shop]
[Number of Items: Unknown]
[Search: - ]

'So it's like that?' Aiko nodded slowly, she probably had to search for what she wanted to find. 'I hope I don't need the exact name of the thing I'm looking for...' Aiko sighed.

"Are you ready?" Mei asked, interrupting Aiko's thinking.

"Yes." That thing could wait, Aiko had different troubles incoming.

'Even if I know all the Herbs, working with them is a completely different matter!' Aiko felt like it was not a good idea to take these lessons.

Mei smiled. "Don't worry, we have enough Herbs to play around with." She smiled so much that a chill went down Aiko's spine.

It was obvious that Aiko would not be left alone until she mastered Alchemy!

"Let's start with the simple Qi Recovery Pill. It's a 1st Grade Pill that can be used on Beasts at the Beast Rank, but only for Foxes since we have a much smaller Beast Core compared to other Beasts." Mei explained slowly.

"The main ingredient is Weeping Vine." Mei picked up an ugly Vine with an ugly face.

It was a brown vine with tiny green stems on it. Its face was old and constantly frowning, but unmoving. It was around 30 cm in length.

Aiko had a really bad feeling about this...

"Now, you need to cut off all these tiny stems, they will poison the Pill if you do it incorrectly." Mei skilfully cut off all the unnecessary stems, leaving Aiko staring at her technique in admiration.

Aiko nodded in understanding. "I will try my best."

She picked up a Weeping Vine, but fortunately it didn't scream at her. She tried to demonstrate her skill but cut into the vine itself when trying to cut the 3rd stem, thus ruining the whole Herb.

Aiko frowned, it was much more difficult than she expected and even when she tried to copy the technique Mei showed, her body just wouldn't listen to her properly.

"It's fine." Mei stroked Aiko's hair. "Practice makes perfect." She placed another Weeping Vine in front of her.

...

Aiko practised this for a week until she was able to remove all the stems from the Herb, but even then there were tiny parts of the stems that were stuck to the Vine. Unfortunately for Aiko, if she tried to remove them completely, like Mei, she would ruin the Herb, as she was not as skilled as Mei.

The engraving was much easier since the material didn't move away from her each time she tried to engrave it, unlike this Herb that wiggled and moved about.

"This Herb is the Green Leaf Flower." Mei picked up a flower whose petals consisted only of normal leaves.

"The urge to eat is because this Herb is packed with Qi." Mei explained when she saw the drooling Aiko.

"We need to cut off the leaves in a certain way so that they preserve the Qi inside them." She explained slowly, but her hands were already moving, stripping the flower of its green leaves.

Aiko was shocked at the ease of Mei stripping the Herb, but she was not fooled by it this time. She would slowly and carefully do her best while hoping that she wouldn't waste too many Herbs in her attempts.

It had to be said that Mei was extremely generous, as most Alchemists that started would only be given 20 sets of Herbs in order for them to learn one type of 1st Grade Pill. With each Grade, this amount would decrease until they would get only 1 set of herbs and therefore have to concoct the Pill without errors!

As for Aiko? She spent more than 500 Weeping Vines learning how to cut them properly and even then she still wasn't perfect. It could be considered a great waste, but Mei didn't mind. She was happy as long as Aiko was willing to do Alchemy with her.

...

Another 2 weeks passed. Aiko finally prepared all 3 Herbs for the concoction. Of course, she had to redo the first two since they had already withered by the time she finished with the third one.

Around them, there were hundreds upon hundreds of wasted, withered Herbs. Yet Mei was still smiling gently.

"Now we have prepared the Herbs. There are multiple ways to concoct this Pill, we will start with using the easiest one." Mei gestured.

"First you preheat the Cauldron with Flames. You need this exact temperature." Mei dragged Aiko close to the Cauldron so that she could feel the heat.

Aiko didn't think this was hot enough as she thought she would be able to touch the Pill Cauldron with her bare hands, but she restrained herself and watched Mei.

"Once the preheating is finished you place the Weeping Vine in and wait for 34 breaths." Mei explained whilst simultaneously counting her breaths.

"Then you form this Rune and slap the Pill Cauldron gently." Mei demonstrated and what came out was a strange kind of Powder.

She immediately placed it on the tray with her Divine Sense. Mei then picked another Herb counted 24 breaths and the last one was 13 breaths.

The temperature and time were different each time which made Aiko's head slightly hurt. If every Herb had a different temperature it would soon turn into a mess even with her memory!

"You won't be able to do this for the time being." Mei giggled at the dumbfounded Aiko.

"Why not?" Aiko tilted her head.

"Because you didn't even awaken your Divine Sense." Mei teased Aiko by nudging her nose.

Aiko frowned and massaged her nose. "Do you need Divine Sense for concoction?" It didn't seem like one needed it...

"How will you move the powders from the Pill Cauldron?" Mei narrowed her eyes.

"Turn it upside down?" Aiko lifted one of her eyebrows.

Wasn't that much better than this questionable 'Sense'?

Mei laughed heartily. "Then try it." She chuckled sinisterly.

Aiko looked around for some tong or towel that she could use to handle the Cauldron.

"So you are not completely senseless." Mei chuckled. "Even if you find something to protect you from the heat it will be useless." She shook her head.

"Why?" Aiko asked.

"While timing is important, most Herbs are very fragile once they are heated. If you jerk them around by the tilting, you might affect the quality. Not to mention, the impurities that would be drawn out from the Herbs could return into them or make the whole clean up messy." Mei explained slowly so that Aiko could understand.

Aiko nodded. That wouldn't be good since she didn't like cleaning things and she didn't have [Clean] like Mei did.

"What do we do now then?" Aiko asked staring at Mei.

"You will develop your Divine Sense." Mei said proudly.

"How?" Aiko stared at her suspiciously.

"I will nudge your mind with my own Divine Sense. This will agitate your mind and your mind will try to find a way to protect itself, thus you will develop the most crude Divine Sense there is." Mei explained.

"From there we will take our time to slowly develop and nurture your Divine Sense until it's as strong as mine." Mei ended the explanation.

"Are you ready?" Mei smiled softly.

"Okay." Aiko didn't know what to expect, but she braced herself for the pain.

Mei nodded and hummed. She used her Divine Sense to nudge Aiko's mind... only to find out it was more difficult than she expected.

'What the- How is her mind so powerful?!' Mei stared speechlessly at the innocently looking Aiko.

'I will try a bit more, but that would already be 2x more power than peers!' Mei frowned. She used her Divine Sense to nudge Aiko's mind again but found out her mind would just not budge...

...

A month later...

*Wheeze Wheeze*

Mei was panting with horror. 'What kind of monster did I make my Karmic Companion?!' She stared at Aiko in fear. Aiko's mind is already 25 times more powerful than her peers! 'She could be considered an old monster with this kind of mind!' She huffed.

Aiko still stared innocently waiting for Mei to do her thing. She already spent more than a month with her, yet she didn't feel any difference.

"It's done." Mei suddenly said with an exhausted expression.

"Eh? Already?" Aiko asked with some worry, seeing Mei like that.

"It is, but we will have to train your Divine Sense first, otherwise you will crush the ingredients." Mei shook her head.

"Huh?" Aiko tilted her head and glanced at the system.

There was a new stat below Mind.

[Divine Sense: 18,800]

Aiko didn't know if it was good or bad, but she would listen to Mei.

"What do we do first?" Aiko asked.

"We need to draw out your full potential of Divine Sense and then control it." Mei said gently wiping her face with a wet towel.

"Why not the other way around?" Aiko asked curiously.

"Because it might hinder your growth. Your control might become too strong and limit your potential of the Divine Sense." Mei warned Aiko.

Aiko nodded obediently.

'That will take a long time, you should do other things now.' Suddenly a voice sounded in her mind.

"What should I do?" Aiko asked.

'Don't ask me. I'm just warning you that it will take a long time to draw out your full potential.' The Seed was much gentler than previously.

"The Seed said we should do something else, since it will take a long time to draw out my potential." Aiko said to Mei.

'Is that true?' Mei asked the Seed through telepathy. She knew that Aiko's mind was powerful, but she didn't think it would take that long.

'It is.' The Seed said dismissively. 'You are comparing her to the normal Foxes. You should drop that motion and treat her like Heaven's Daughter.' The seed warned Mei.

'Heaven's Daughter, huh...' Mei thought about it deeply. 'This will be troublesome...'

'Tell me about it, but at least she is feeding me well, so I will help her later.' The Seed sighed, but it was still willing to help Aiko. Aiko was feeding it well with high-quality nature Qi, so it couldn't complain.

Mei nodded slowly. 'Then let's make her do something else and we will train her Divine Sense afterwards.' She didn't like the idea of postponing her lectures, but if it would take that long to draw out her full potential, then it wouldn't be a bad idea for Aiko to relax...