Addiction Pill

The Spirit-Test Platform had been black for three years.

Yue Gu was the worst of the odd-job workers in the ancient texts department. After three nights of refining a pill, an outer sect steward crushed it to dust underfoot.

He didn't say a word. That night, he bit his finger and let his blood drip into the cold furnace.

The first pill healed an old injury the steward had suffered for six years. After taking it, the steward started to leave, but stopped at the doorway. Without turning around, he said, "Don't let anyone else use the furnace in the woodshed."

Yue Gu crouched beside the furnace, thinking for half the night.

He'd spent three years refining pills, and for the first time, he understood: the most precious thing about this pill wasn't the relief from pain.

It was that once the pain was gone, people couldn't wait for the next one.

Mortals took it and wanted more. Cultivators took it and knelt before him. Even the monks from the mountain snuck down in the middle of the night to steal his pill dregs.

He was a useless nobody, with no spiritual roots or backing, and he couldn't even beat a dog. But he had a furnace of cold fire and a ledger no one else could understand.

The world’s inescapable addiction would slowly begin to burn from these ashes.