1335 Tiankong
Alex sat in front of the fire and brought out Memory. As memory started heating, he looked at the prince who was waiting with the storage bag full of ingredients.
"Here you go, your Majesty," the man said and handed it over to Alex. "We have provided a recipe in case you are not familiar with the pill you will be making."
Alex looked through the ingredients with a slight surprise on his face. "Oh, a Saint Body Regeneration Pill, huh? That takes me back," he spoke softly.
It was the same pill Alex had to downgrade so many years ago when one of his arms was missing. Finding the Blood Spirit Ginseng had been such a difficult task for him back then, and yet somehow here it was. Two at that.
"It's alright, I know this recipe. I can start," Alex said. "Would you all mind leaving the room?"
"Yes, your Majesty," they all said and left, despite some wanting to watch it all happen.
Alex started preparing the pill. The fire heat up the cauldron in front of him and soon enough it was ready for the first ingredient.
The group stayed outside, with nothing better to do than wait for Alex to finish making the pill.
The old lady Yao was alone with the others, who had started speaking amongst themselves with their spiritual sense. She couldn't tell what they were saying of course, but she could guess.
It was either a talk about how they wished to see what was happening inside or wonder how they could even tell if what he was going to do was real or not. She expected a lot of distrust from these people.
"Elder Yao," the Crown Prince spoke to her.
"Yes, your Highness," the elder spoke in a respectful tone.
"Would you mind telling us how good His Majesty's pills are?" the Crown Prince asked. "We simply can't contain our anticipation."
"How good?" the old woman thought for a moment. "I believe that His Majesty stands at the pinnacle of pill-making in this world. There should be no one capable of making pills as good as his."
"Oh!" the group was surprised at the old woman's wild claims. They didn't outright call her crazy, but they certainly thought as much. "You have quite a lot of faith in His Majesty, don't you?"
"It's not about faith, your Highness," she said. "It's about witnessing miracles and learning to live with them as a commonplace occurrence. Please sit tight, your Highness. You'll bear witness to a miracle soon as well."
The clouds rumbled as the sunny day soon became overcast. The group frowned, wondering what was happening. However, as the day got darker and darker with the storm clouds, they were fearing something was happening.
"Your miracle is here, your Highness," Yao Nigh said.
A single bolt of lightning fell from the sky, hitting the building. However. To the group's surprise, the building wasn't destroyed at all. It was as if the lightning never touched the building despite so very clearly striking it.
"What… what's going on?" the others couldn't help but freak out. The Prince on the other hand simply looked at the satisfied smile of the old woman and couldn't help but gulp and turn around toward the door, waiting for it to open.
* * * * *
Somewhere in the distance, a middle-aged man was in a room, making pills. His long blue hair drooped around his blue robes.
He had a flower in his hand, ready to drop into the cauldron. However, when he sensed what he did, his concentration broke and the ingredients inside got lightly burnt.
It was damaged a little, but such little damage could barely reduce the harmony by 2% at most. However, that 2% made it clear that the pill wasn't going to be the best. So, he destroyed the ingredients inside and let the formation clean up his cauldron.
"What is happening?" he thought, focusing on the events outside. "Why is there a pill cloud here? Did they… arrive already?"
The middle-aged man opened the door and left.
* * * *
Alex walked out of the room to the scene he had been expecting to see. Yao Ning was calm and collected, but the rest could barely hide their surprise and slight fear of him.
"Here you go," he said, tossing the pill bottle in the Crown Prince's direction.
The prince caught the pill bottle, not yet aware of its importance. "Did you do it, your Majesty?" he asked, opening the pill bottle. The sweet scent of the pill drifted on around the group, making everyone curious.
"You have the pill in your hand. Why don't you see?" Alex asked.
The prince nodded and took out the pill. Just by the color of the pill, he could tell that he was looking at a Saint Body Regeneration pill. However, something was wrong with it.
Was the pill damaged?
"Did the pill crack?" he asked, looking closely at the lightning-like scar on the side of the pill.
"Your Highness," the headmaster to his side called for him with a pill tester in her hand.
"Oh right," the Prince remembered and placed the pill inside the pill tester and waited for the number to appear on it.
Within a second, the result was ready for everyone to see. "Wh-what?" the Prince couldn't help but look at the number with a blank look on his face.
100%.
As always, a pill with pill veins showed 100% harmony in the pill tester. The prince simply couldn't believe it.
Even the people behind him couldn't believe it. After all, how could someone possibly be able to make a pill that was this good?
"Surely the pill tester is not broken, right?" the Crown Prince asked before pulling out one of his own and testing the pill. Of course, the result was the same.
Only then was the Prince forced to accept the truth. There truly was a pill with perfect harmony on his palm right now.
"I… I remember hearing the news that you were a great alchemist, your Majesty," he said. "I believe I also heard that you were capable of this exact thing, but I doubted the news."
"Now I see that I had no reason to doubt you at all."
"No, it makes sense you would doubt me," Alex said. "After all, I know how hard it is to create a pill that can reach this level. The amount of things that have to go perfectly is almost too much for a normal alchemist."
"Still, you are capable of it, your Majesty," the old woman said. "Thank you for showing us that one can indeed create a pill with 100% harmony."
"You guys are mistaken."
Someone spoke from right next to them.
Alex's eyes widened as he quickly looked to the side and saw the new man that had arrived next to them.
It was a tall man that was nearly a head taller than Alex. His stark blue hair and robe were almost too distracting, and within his face that looked old and young at the same time, one could see the passage of time.
This man had been alive for a long time.
'How?' Alex wondered. 'I couldn't sense his arrival at all.'
"Your Majesty!" the rest of the group bowed down immediately at the presence of the man.
'Your… Majesty?' Alex couldn't believe it. The man in front of him, the man that had arrived just now was the Dragon Emperor.
"You guys are wrong," the Dragon Emperor explained before taking the pill for himself. He pulled open the stopper and poured the pill out before looking at it.
"I was correct," he said, looking at the lightning scar on the pill. "You truly are capable of creating pills with pill veins."
"Ah! King Alex," the Crown prince quickly spoke up. "This is my father, his Royal Majesty, the Dragon Emperor, Long Tiankong."
Alex cupped his hands in greetings. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you, your Majesty," he said.
"You do not have to refer to me as that," the Dragon Emperor said. "We are both monarchs here. You can refer to me as you please."
"Oh, very well then, Dragon Emperor," Alex said. "You can just call me Alex as well. You do not need to add a King to my name."
"King?" the Emperor looked at him. "Not an Emperor?"
"I'm afraid so," Alex said.
"But you rule over an entire continent," the Dragon Emperor said. "Her Majesty decided I would be a King, so I am a King. There is nothing I can do about it."
The Dragon Emperor nodded. "A king huh… that's…"
"Your Majesty… what did you mean by we were wrong?" the Crown Prince asked the question everyone wanted to ask.
"I've taught you before, haven't I?" the Dragon Emperor said. "That when you make a perfect pill, you call the Pill cloud. This is the result of reaching that point. This is not a 100% pill as those do not exist on their own."
"This is a 1-veined pill, which you stopped at even if you could've gone for much longer. With your cultivation base, I'm sure you could've at least reached 5 pill veins. At least, that's what the information I have on Pill veins says."
"You are correct," Alex said. "I simply stopped as I didn't want to scare your subjects. The citizens might have thought that something terrible was happening here."
"I see," the Dragon Emperor said. "Since I have seen you make pills with pill veins, I will cut to the chase, Alex."
Alex's eyes perked up. "Go ahead."
"I would like you to teach me how I too can make pills with pill veins."
