Alchemy Should Be Scientific

While the cultivation world still adheres to orthodoxy, insisting that “yellow essence can refine fasting pills, and sulfur can forge the foundation of elixirs,” Lin Xiao is already crouched in the Qingyun Sect’s alchemy room, using saltpeter and sugar to create the first spark of “physics-based alchemy.” “A Flame-Congealing Pill? How lame.” He tosses out a pill mixed with chili powder. Ice crystals drift through the wall of fire that blasts through the sect’s protective formation. “Fire and ice at once: burn evil cultivators and freeze demonic energy, killing two birds with one stone.” Su Qinghan arrives with her star chart, its silver lines linking the remnants of a blasted furnace. “According to Abnormal Spiritual Energy Theory, this waste mixed with a herring spirit can refine a ‘Void-Piercing Pill.’ It just reeks.” Evil cultivators from the Blood Fiend Hall break in? He throws out a “Fart-Freeze Demon Pill.” Its stench forms a wall of ice, freezing the demonic cultivators even as they spew fire. Traditional alchemist Ye Fan comes to provoke him, carrying a giant cauldron? He refines an “Entropy-Reduction Balance Pill,” making the other man’s alchemical flame burn backward and turning his Nine-Dragon Cauldron into a soot-black lump. The Heavenly Dao files a complaint over his rule-breaking? Lin Xiao flicks his finger and refines a “Paradox Pill.” “You say I’m wrong? Then should this pill exist or not?” From blasting through the alchemy hall to repairing the ascension passage, stabilizing the earth’s veins with neutron-star dust and brewing wine with black-hole fragments, the alchemy room is forever filled with the smell of burnt things and the radiance of “science.” Su Qinghan’s star chart is covered in equations, Ye Linglong’s betrothal gifts pile up into a demonic abyss, and even the Heavenly Dao submits a request: “Could you give us a heads-up before refining a universe-embryo pill?”