Qin Shan walked to his disciple's room late afternoon. He had been too busy with the tasks in the sect he had kept off from doing due to the arrival of so many guests.
Now that they were gone, he was forced to do everything.
Only now had he finished the task he started a day and a half ago.
Wondering if Alex was with his mother or not, Qin Shan knocked on the door.
Suddenly, he felt a wave of spiritual sense and heard the words, "Come in, master" from inside the room.
Qin Shan paused a moment to understand what had just happened. When he realized that his disciple had used a spiritual sense, he quickly opened the door and entered.
"Lin'er, did you just?" he hurriedly asked as he walked inside.
"Master, I can use spiritual sense now," she shouted.
"How?" the old man gave a confused look and even checked his disciple's cultivation base to make sure she hadn't broken through.
Seeing his puzzled look, Helen answered. "My son brought me the… what was it called? Spirit Cleansing Lily."
"What?" Qin Shan gave a surprised look. "Young man, you gave your mother that flower? Where did you find it?"
"My son, he—"
"I was given it by the person that trained me," Alex said, cutting off his mother.
Helen gave him a weird look and said nothing.
"Wow!" Qin Shan still had a hard time believing it. "That means your mother's talismans will become a lot better. Not only that, she will be able to make a lot of them as well."
"Yes, her spiritual sense should help her improve on the minor imperfections that is impossible without a spiritual sense," Alex said.
But then, he gave them a confused look. "Wait, what does having a spiritual sense have to do with making many talismans?" he asked.
"Opening your spiritual sea allows your mind to get stronger and last longer when doing such production tasks. Since making talisman is so draining, having a strong mind helps a lot," Qin Shan said.
"Oh," Alex said with clear surprise written on his face. "I didn't know talisman did that."
"Huh?" Qin Shan made a confused noise. "It's not just talisman. All of them are like that. Whether you make pills, formations, or artifacts, they all consume a lot of mental strength, which is why not many are able to do that one after another," Qin Shan said.
"I see," Alex said as he fell into thought. 'All this time I had thought I could make more pills than others because I had better Qi than others. Turns out it was actually my spiritual sense,' he thought.
Surely his Qi helped a bit too, but it was most likely the spiritual sense that helped him more than anything.
"Did you not know?" Qin Shan gave him a weird look.
Alex shook his head. "I've had a spiritual sense from the very moment I started making pills, so I was never able to tell the difference," he said.
"Also, I made pills alone most of the time, so it was impossible for me to learn about it from my peers," he said.
"Did you not learn about it from any alchemy books?" he asked.
Alex shook his head again. "Where I learned alchemy, Spiritual sense isn't common at all. When I had spiritual sense, I could count the number of people who also had a spiritual sense on my hands. That is consisting of the entire empire."
"Is that so?" Qin Shan gave him a surprised look. "I didn't know you were from a backwater place."
Alex gave a dry laugh.
"Anyway," Qin Shan continued. "You really gave me quite a surprise today."
"Ooh, that reminds me," Helen said and turned to her son. "Show him, Al."
Alex chuckled and brought out his medal again.
Qin Shan's eyes went wide just as Helen wanted them. "When?" he asked a single-word question.
"Today," Alex said.
"You passed that tough exam?" he asked.
"Yes," Alex said, remembering the test to become a True Heaven Alchemist. It truly was difficult to say the least.
The test wasn't as simple as making a pill with 50% Harmony. They didn't accept that as proof of one having the capability to do it every time.
So, instead, they gave 10 different recipes, and the alchemist had to make 10 Heaven-grade pills.
Fortunately, they did allow 3 failed attempts for the whole thing, which Alex had to use one for a pill that came out to 48% because his Yang flared a bit mid-alchemy.
However, perhaps more frustrating than that was the fact that this time too, the test room had blared out its alarm at him even when he had put both his storage ring and storage bags into a separate box.
Alex was starting to believe that he was inadvertently using his body's Qi, which could activate everything, to activate that formation.
But then, he couldn't think of an answer as to why all the other formations didn't work for him just being there. Alex shook his head and forgot about that.
Qin Shan gave some congratulations and wholeheartedly welcomed him to the sect as a guest elder.
According to him, there was no saint-rank Alchemist in this city, so Alex was one of the three greatest alchemists of this city. If people there were to find out, surely that would cause a roar throughout the empire.
A 24-year-old True Heaven alchemist. That wasn't something you heard every day.
"You mentioned you wanted to try your hands on talismans right?" Qin Shan asked. "When do you want to start?"
Alex thought for a bit as to what he had coming up next. There was nothing.
The only urgent thing he could think of was his hand, but that too started seeming useless now. He would do his best to get it back if given the opportunity. However, with no opportunity at the moment, he didn't want to do anything.
At least not yet.
So, thinking about this all, Alex gave an answer to the sect master Qin.
"Right now."
A few minutes later, Qin Shan walked out of the room with a sigh and went up the mountain back to his abode.
Helen had refused to let him teach Alex, saying that she had taught him all this time, and she wanted to continue to do so. At least, the starting part.
Alex watched his mother with a smile as she put on the appearance of a strict teacher as she did every time he was taught something back when he was homeschooled.
This brought forth buried memories and that made him smile.
"As you already know, Talismans are simply a piece of paper with runes drawn on top of it," she started teaching him.
"Each rune does something very specific," Helen said as she brought out a blank talisman paper.
"This rune," she said as she drew on the top left corner of the paper, "it is a rune that will create heat."
She poured in some Qi into the rune and soon Alex could feel mild heat coming from the paper.
He was quite surprised to see that a talisman actually worked with most of the paper empty. He hadn't seen such a talisman in his life, so he was surprised, to say the least.
"Next, when I draw this rune for this rune," she said as she drew another rune. "It will create more heat. This new rune is the rune for 'Growth' by the way."
Alex nodded as he listened intently to his mother's explanation.
He watched her draw the two squiggly lines that were runes and then saw her draw a single straight line between the two runes.
"We call this line a Rune Bridge. It connects the 'Heat' rune to the 'Grow' rune," she said. "When connected the 'Grow' rune will aid the 'Heat' rune and help the heat grow."
"So, when I do this…" Helen said as she poured in her Qi into the talisman. Alex waited a moment, and a second later he could start feeling intense heat radiating from the talisman.
In the next second, the paper caught fire and burned off.
"…that happens," Helen said as the final remains of the talisman papers were burnt away.
"Isn't that wasteful?" Alex asked seeing her so easily destroy her creation.
"No," she said. "I'm not stupid enough to use good papers and ink when teaching. Most of these papers are very low grade that I use to practice new runes on before trying it in my actual good quality paper with my good quality ink."
"Oh," Alex said.
"Let's continue," she said and brought out another piece of paper and did the same thing that she did last time.
When the 'Heat' and 'Grow' runes were connected, she stopped and looked at Alex.
"When this talisman is used, it produces too much heat for the talisman to sustain. What do you think we can do?" Helen asked.
She knew Alex didn't know the first thing about runes, yet she still asked.
Alex thought for a moment and asked a question instead. "What's our purpose with the heat? Are we trying to use it or just make sure the paper doesn't burn?" he asked.
"Good question," Helen said. "Hmm… okay, what if we don't want the paper to burn?"
Alex thought for a moment and answered, "is there a rune for cooling?' he asked.
"There is," Helen said. "But that affects the heat from the talisman which we don't want to lower. What else can you think of?"
Alex thought for a moment. He could think of a few other ways.
