An Alchemist's Path to Eternity

Yuelu Street is an inconspicuous road within Tianlan Immortal City. It was mainly home to talisman skin shops, talisman ink vendors, herb stores, and a single guesthouse.

Due to the prevalence of talisman-making materials, the air here was always filled with peculiar odors. As a result, the guesthouse struggled to attract customers. Only poor rogue cultivators, drawn by the low lodging costs, would bother staying here.

Then, about a year ago, the street welcomed a new neighbor. The newcomers rented out a vacant three-story building right in the center of Yuelu Street. It was impossible to miss. Anyone entering the street would notice it at first glance.

At first, no one paid much attention to the newcomers. However, people soon began to notice that there were many female cultivators inside the building! They were all young and beautiful, their warm words making one feel instantly at home. Moreover, they would often give fruits and snacks from the shop to the surrounding neighbors. Gradually, their relationship with the locals blossomed.

Not long after, the shop officially opened.

Danxia Hall!

It specialized in pill sales and carried an impressive variety of stock. Even pills like fasting concoctions and essence nurturing liquid were common items and were priced so affordably that no one could complain.

The neighbors, having enjoyed such generosity, naturally helped spread the word out of courtesy. If they saw wandering customers lost in the area, they’d often lend a hand and guide them over.

With that, Danxia Hall’s business began to flourish, and there were plenty of reasons for this. The attendants were eloquent and charming, while the pills and enchanted artifacts sold here were of excellent value. Even broke rogue cultivators could afford to make purchases here. And of course, there were other details everyone noticed and quietly admired.

At this moment, on the third floor of Danxia Hall. Luo Chen, clad in a white Daoist robe, was flipping through an account ledger. Before him stood Gu Caiyi and Xu Xiaoliu, their hands respectfully clasped. Perhaps it was the depth of his cultivation or the growing weight of his authority, but both of them remained motionless, hardly daring to breathe.

Casting them a sidelong glance, Luo Chen returned his gaze to the ledger. In just one year, all the initial expenses had already been recouped, and there was even a healthy surplus.

A year ago, Luo Chen had personally secured this three-story building through Binglan Palace at an incredibly low rent. The reasons were obvious. Yuelu Street was far too remote, known mainly for trading raw materials, and lacked any true commercial atmosphere. And secondly, the price had everything to do with his cooperation with Tantai Jin.

The entire shop only costs five thousand low-grade spirit stones per year. In Tianlan Immortal City, that price was dirt cheap. A store of similar size, located even a little closer to the main street, would easily cost tens of thousands.

Having this shop was a major boon for the Luo Tian Society’s operations. It gave them a visible storefront and, more importantly, provided a safe and legitimate outlet to sell Luo Tian Society products.

Biyou Valley had once been convenient, but it was far too remote. After the incident where Wang Yuan executed Cao Wanchun, the valley’s reputation had suffered. Restoring its foot traffic and business atmosphere would take time, and such recovery could never happen overnight.

Thus, Luo Chen had chosen a two-pronged approach: expanding both inside and outside the city.

For the past year, aside from his daily cultivation, he had set aside spell practice and martial techniques entirely, devoting nearly all of his energy to alchemy and talent development. During this time, he tirelessly refined Jade Essence pills for seven months and Jade Dew pills for four. In between, he also crafted large quantities of Spirit Passage pills.

This massive output was not only thanks to his cultivation base and refined technique, but also the cooperation of the Alchemy Hall cultivators. The results had been extraordinary. He had refined a staggering forty thousand Jade Essence pills.

And that wasn’t all. Under his daily supervision and guidance, Qu Lingjun had finally learned to stably produce mid-grade Jade Essence pills. Although his success rate wasn’t high, and the pill count per batch was inconsistent compared to Luo Chen, it was a steady stream of production nonetheless.

And Qu Lingjun wasn’t the only talent Luo Chen had nurtured. There was Mi Li.

Once overlooked by Mi Shuhua, Mi Li had a genuine talent for alchemy. Unfortunately, Mi Shuhua had pushed her too quickly, forcing her to attempt the difficult Jade Essence pill before she was ready. Her inevitable failures had left her overlooked and underestimated.

Luo Chen, however, had taken a different approach. He didn’t offer structured lessons or rigid expectations. Instead, he gave her space to grow, letting her develop under his guidance at her own pace.

At first, she simply assisted with minor tasks. Later, he let her handle the trivial fasting concoction. These fasting concoctions were unranked, but Mi Li had mastered them quickly. By building up her skills step by step over the years, she forged a solid alchemical foundation.

This past year, Luo Chen had finally allowed her to begin crafting first-tier pills, not the Jade Essence pill, but the Myriad Wonders pill. This very pill was the one that had earned Luo Chen his first fortune and marked the beginning of his rise from nothing. His familiarity with it even surpassed his understanding of the Jade Essence pill.

It wasn’t simply because of repetition. Luo Chen had lived every stage of the process too vividly. He had started with crude iron pots, moved on to wood-fired alchemy furnaces, and eventually mastered earth fire refinement. By now, there were no secrets left in the process of crafting the Myriad Wonders pill, at least, not for him.

Mi Li, too, was already familiar with it. Back when Tang Quan had repeatedly failed at refining the pill, he hadn’t dared disturb Luo Chen and instead sought advice from her. Though she had never refined it herself, she had already studied every difficulty in its process.

When Luo Chen finally permitted Mi Li to attempt refinement on her own, she tackled each obstacle step by step under his guidance. With her accumulated years of alchemical experience to lean on, it only took her a few short months to successfully refine her first batch of low-grade Myriad Wonders pills.

With that, the Luo Tian Society’s alchemical catalog began to expand with increasing depth and variety. At its core were Luo Chen’s top-grade Jade Essence pills, forming the pillar of their pill business. These were supported by Qu Lingjun’s steady production of mid-grade Jade Essence pills.

With Mi Li’s Myriad Wonders pills now added to the mix, Danxia Hall’s offerings gained a distinct flair. Essence-nurturing liquid remained the easiest to prepare. The ingredients only needed to be premixed, and customers could decoct the medicine themselves. The profit lay mainly in the preparation fee. Fasting concoctions weren’t difficult either; back in Dahe Market, Luo Chen hadn’t been the only one producing them.

In the Alchemy Hall, he had selected a few cultivators for the task and eventually trained one dedicated to refining fasting concoctions.

By this point, aside from Spirit Passage pills, Blood-Burning pills, and Jade Dew pills, Luo Chen had placed nearly every pill he knew how to refine on the shelves of Danxia Hall.

Not only that, but Danxia Hall also sold enchanted artifacts from the Artifact Hall. Those artifacts weren’t newly forged; they were spoils of war accumulated by the Luo Tian Society over multiple battles. The best pieces were kept for internal use, while the rest were patched up, lightly repaired, and put out for sale.

In addition, Feng Xia and Yuan Xiaoyue had returned to their old business. Celestial beans, dried beef, milk tea, popcorn... and more.

They had even developed new snacks like Stir-Fried Sky Silkworm Cloud Beans and Ten Fragrant Pods on top of their original offerings. In doing so, they repurposed some of the otherwise worthless crops produced during spirit field cultivation.

In this way, Danxia Hall evolved into what it was today. A shop that, though eclectic and seemingly mismatched, offered a wide and diverse range of goods.

But this variety came at a price. Calculating cost and profit became exceedingly tedious. In the early days, mistakes were common, forcing Luo Chen to stop by often just to check the ledgers himself.

Eventually, Gu Caiyi, being both the Hall Leader of the Gold Hall and manager of Danxia Hall, grew more familiar with the system and gradually sorted out the accounts. But by then, Luo Chen had developed the habit of coming by to review them. That was why he still came by from time to time.

Now, he was reviewing the annual summary.

”Danxia Hall has generated a gross profit of roughly three hundred thousand spirit stones over the past year. The majority came from pills and the artifacts supplied by the Artifact Hall.

”As for Biyou Valley, I reviewed it earlier; the gross profit there was about one hundred thousand spirit stones. Again, most of that came from my pills and the Artifact Hall’s wares.

”Qu Lingjun and Mi Li still need to improve their alchemy skills. Right now, their combined contributions to annual revenue only amount to around ten thousand spirit stones.”

If they had been independent rogue cultivators, two Qi-Refining alchemists earning over ten thousand spirit stones in a single year would have been remarkable. But for the Luo Tian Society as it stood, it was little more than icing on the cake, far less than what Luo Chen himself had earned when he first started from scratch. Still, Luo Chen didn’t mind. He had plenty of patience with the two of them. If he kept nurturing them, there was no doubt they held great potential.

Four hundred thousand in gross profit per year. That’s already more than most Foundation Establishment factions. And it’s only because I’m an alchemist that I’ve achieved these profits!

Once again, Luo Chen affirmed to himself the importance of being a noble alchemist.

With that, he turned back to the ledger and began calculating just how many spirit stones he now had available for use.