Dawn broke over the eastern mountains, painting the stone roofs of Ashford in pale grey light.
Sera Thorne gripped her iron spear, watching the morning mist curl around the timber platform.
Her knuckles were white against the cold wood.
The Ghost Market runner’s warning about the Blood-Wolf gang still echoed in her ears.
Over eighty mounted killers were camped in the western passes above the outer farms, yet half the town guard was stationed here to watch an alchemy match.
Old Barnaby sat on an overturned barrel beside the platform steps, his single hand nervously kneading his knee.
“Look at him over there,” Barnaby muttered under his breath, nodding toward the southern half of the stage. “The man looks like a vengeful ghost who forgot how to die.”
Alchemist Morvath looked like a corpse dredged from a river.
His eyes were blood-red, his lips cracked and bleeding, and ten copper stimulant needles protruded from his throat, chest, and arms.
He was trembling so violently that his iron tongs rattled against the bronze rim of his cauldron.
His two apprentices had collapsed hours ago, sleeping in heaps of black charcoal dust beside the bellows.
Inside the massive three-legged cauldron, a single lump of medicinal paste bubbled over the dying pine embers.
“Twelve hours,” Morvath croaked, his voice a dry, ragged whisper. “Twelve hours of unbroken flame. The spirit marrow is locking together.”
A faint herbal scent drifted across the plaza, smelling of burnt bone and sweet pine resin.
Early morning spectators were already filling the cobblestone square, drawn by the smell of smoke and the promise of a spectacle.
Deacon Vane stood near the edge of the market awning, sipping a bowl of hot pear tea while watching the stage with sharp, amused eyes.
Up in the VIP pavilion, Magistrate Vane-Locke stood at the carved railing, nodding in satisfaction.
“Morvath has done it,” Vane-Locke murmured, smoothing his silk cuffs. “A single seventy-eight percent Ringed-Grade Spirit-Marrow Pill. In border territory, that is an artisan triumph.”
Beside the magistrate, Baron Derrick Vance tapped his riding crop against his boot, his dark brow furrowed in bitter silence.
Behind the painted cedar screen on the northern half of the platform, a soft golden chime sounded in Kaelen’s mind.
[The Fallow Slate] [Stage 1: Mortal Tally] [Current Stacking Time: 160h 00m] [Active Multiplier: 161x READY!]
Kaelen opened his eyes.
He slid off the black silk eye-mask and sat up on his goose-down mattress.
He yawned, rolling his neck until his vertebrae gave three crisp pops.
Mina ducked through the cloth curtain, carrying a small clay cup of warm spring water.
“Morning, brother,” Mina whispered with a bright smile. “Morvath looks like he is going to fall over.”
“He should have taken a nap,” Kaelen said, drinking the water in two calm gulps. “Stubbornness is terrible for the complexion.”
One hundred sixty hours of pure, uninterrupted indolence, Kaelen thought, looking at his rested palms. And now it is time to collect the paycheck.
He pushed back the blanket, slipped his feet into his cloth shoes, and stepped out from behind the folding screen.
The morning crowd murmured in disbelief.
“He is awake!” an old baker called out, pointing an apron-wrapped finger.
“The boy actually woke up before the final hour!”
Across the chalk line, Morvath froze.
He turned his soot-blackened face toward Kaelen, his bloodshot eyes widening in venomous mockery.
“You crawl out of bed now?” Morvath rasped, spitting bloody phlegm onto the stage. “My pill is already ninety percent formed, and once I seal it in sixty minutes, what can a lazy dog do in one hour?”
Barnaby rushed forward, his grey hair standing on end.
“Kaelen!” Barnaby hissed in a frantic whisper. “Morvath will finish his pill before the hour is up—do you even have a fire starter and charcoal?”
“Why rush?” Kaelen asked mildly. “Food tastes better when cooked slowly, but medicine works better when cooked fast.”
He walked over to his cold, battered cast-iron stew-pot.
He reached out, touching the cold iron with his fingertips as he focused his divine sense inward.
[Cashing Out: 160 Hours Abstained] [Multiplier: 161x Engaged!] [Active Burst Duration: 60 Minutes] [Equivalence: 1 Burst Minute = 161 Baseline Hours]
A massive wave of pure, crystalline energy unlocked inside Kaelen’s dantian.
His perception snapped into absolute clarity.
The sound of the wind, the fluttering of cloth banners, the subtle heat patterns rising from the cobblestones—everything slowed to an imperceptible crawl.
Under the crushing focus of a one-hundred-and-sixty-one times multiplier, every minute of physical labor held the weight of nearly seven full days of obsessive practice.
Five minutes of work would equate to eight hundred and five baseline hours of alchemical mastery.
Morvath spent twelve hours burning his lungs with pine soot to refine one flawed pill, Kaelen thought with calm pity. Let us show him how an afternoon nap pays off.
Kaelen scooped a small handful of common charcoal from the handcart bucket and dropped it under the iron tripod.
He snapped his fingers.
A tiny spark of pure Rank 7 Qi leaped from his nail, igniting the coals into a clear, smokeless blue flame.
From a wicker basket beside his mattress, Kaelen grabbed a handful of bruised, second-rate herbs.
Cheap bone-thistle.
Wilted fever-root.
Rough dandelion leaves.
To the crowd, they looked like weeds plucked from a roadside ditch.
Morvath let out a rasping screech of laughter.
“Weeds!” Morvath wheezed, clutching his stomach. “He is boiling animal fodder in a kitchen pot!”
High in the pavilion, Cassian Vance laughed aloud.
“The Third Brother has lost his mind,” Cassian sneered, holding his bandaged ribs. “He is making turnip broth on a tournament stage!”
Kaelen ignored them completely.
He dumped the herbs into the stew-pot, poured a ladle of cold well water over the leaves, and placed the warped iron lid on top.
Then he rested two fingers against the curved rim.
The one-hundred-and-sixty-one times multiplier took hold.
His divine sense poured into the dark interior of the pot like a roaring torrent of golden needles.
In less than three minutes, the plant fibers disintegrated under the immense pressure of his thermal control.
Impurity after impurity burned away into microscopic vapor.
The medicinal essence condensed, curling into ten shimmering emerald spheres of liquid light.
In ten minutes flat at one-hundred-and-sixty-one times extraction, the matrix completed its final sublimation.
Ten Cloud-Veined Supreme Pills rolled smoothly against the bottom of the iron pot, glowing with pristine, flawless light.
Kaelen looked down at the iron rim.
He had no intention of displaying ten Cloud-Veined Supreme Pills to five hundred screaming witnesses.
That would invite every imperial inquisitor and sect elder within three provinces to dissect him like a laboratory toad.
He adhered strictly to his 95% Public Ringed-Cap Rule.
A young genius could refine three-ringed pills and be hailed as a prodigy.
A teenager refining zero-poison Supreme Pills in an old kitchen pot would be hunted down as Master Ash.
Kaelen nudged the iron lid aside by a quarter of an inch.
A deliberate blast of cold mountain air swept into the pot, quenching the delicate cloud patterns across eight of the spheres.
The spiritual mist hardened instantly, locking eight pills into ninety-five percent pure Three-Ringed Grade.
At the same instant, Kaelen’s sleeve brushed across the opening.
With the blinding speed of his Ash-Wind Footwork, his fingers plucked the remaining two unblemished Supreme Pills from the steam, vanishing them into the hidden inner pocket of his robe.
He replaced the lid with a gentle clink and let the pot cool over the dying embers for five unhurried minutes.
Total elapsed time from lighting the fire: fifteen minutes.
Kaelen picked up a wooden ladle, lifted the lid, and scooped the eight warm pills onto a flat silver tray.
The pills were the color of polished jade, each marked with three concentric silver rings circling the outer shell.
A sweet, heavenly fragrance burst across the platform, carrying the scent of morning pine and honeyed snow.
The acrid smell of Morvath’s burnt charcoal vanished in an instant, swallowed by the pristine herbal aroma.
Kaelen walked to the front of the stage and set the silver tray on the judge’s table.
“Done,” Kaelen said mildly.
The head yamen judge, an elderly magistrate with trembling spectacles, stared down at the tray.
His hands shook as he picked up a bone magnifying lens.
“Three... three silver rings,” the old judge stammered, his voice carrying over the silent plaza.
“Purity... ninety-five percent!”
The judge took a fine silver scalpel and shaved a microscopic flake from the outer ring.
He touched the dust to his tongue, his eyes fluttering as the pure medicinal Qi coursed through his throat.
“No scorched residue,” the judge whispered in pure awe. “No carbon grit. The active medicinal essence is ninety-five percent pure!”
The judge looked up, his jaw slack.
“Eight Three-Ringed Spirit-Marrow Pills!” the judge cried out. “Total refinement time... fifteen minutes!”
The entire square erupted into pandemonium.
Merchants jumped onto their benches, knocking over jars of ginger beer.
Sera Thorne let out a breath and lowered her spear, a fierce grin lighting up her face.
Old Barnaby grabbed the edge of the handcart, laughing like a madman with tears streaming down his weathered cheeks.
In the VIP box, Derrick Vance sprang to his feet, knocking his fine porcelain teacup onto the floorboards with a loud smash.
“Fifteen minutes?” Derrick choked out, clutching his chest. “Eight three-ringed pills in a stew-pot?”
Cassian Vance’s face turned as white as curdled milk.
His hands gripped his bandaged ribs, his breath catching in his throat as his knees wobbled beneath him.
“That is impossible,” Cassian croaked, his voice shaking with bitter envy. “He only slept! He did not even light the pot until fifteen minutes ago!”
Magistrate Vane-Locke sat frozen in his chair, his knuckles turning pale against his armrest.
His calculated scheme to seize the Vance herb sheds and ruin the Third Herb Shed had just evaporated into thin air.
Across the chalk line, Court Alchemist Morvath looked at the eight glowing pills on the silver tray.
He looked at his own bronze cauldron, where a single misshapen seventy-eight percent lump was still smoking on the grate.
Then he looked at Kaelen, who was casually brushing a speck of herb dust from his sleeve.
“Fifteen... minutes?” Morvath croaked, his voice pitching into a high, broken squeak.
“You were... sleeping on a mattress...”
Morvath reached out to touch his own bitter lump of burnt medicine.
His eyes rolled straight back into his skull.
His knees buckled, and he collapsed face-first onto the hot cobblestones, knocking over his racks of rare herbs in a cloud of grey ash.
The chief judge raised his wooden gavel and struck the bronze gong three times.
“The winner is Kaelen Vance of the Third Herb Shed!” the judge declared.
“The provincial apothecary license remains with the Vance House! The eighty Low-Grade Spirit Stone tournament purse is hereby awarded to the victor!”
Two bailiffs carried forward a heavy iron-banded chest, placing eighty humming, sky-blue Spirit Stones onto Kaelen’s handcart.
Kaelen accepted the victory token with a polite, indifferent bow.
He didn’t linger on the stage to bask in the cheers of the town.
Instead, he turned on his heel and walked straight back to his curtained tent behind the cedar screen.
Barnaby and Sera followed close behind, immediately pulling the heavy canvas flaps shut to block out the prying eyes of the crowd.
Barnaby fell to his knees beside the handcart, cradling the newly stamped provincial license scroll against his chest with his single arm.
“We kept the sheds,” Barnaby wept, rubbing the golden wax seal with his sleeve. “The Nine-Cauldron Guild cannot touch our license. We beat them in broad daylight.”
“Do not celebrate just yet, Old Barnaby,” Sera said, her voice sharp as she planted her spear into the ground. “The Blood-Wolf bandits are still marching on the outer farms. When Vane-Locke realizes his alchemist failed, those bandits will be his only move left.”
Kaelen nodded slowly, sitting down on the edge of his cot.
“Sera is right,” Kaelen said. “Trouble is coming down from the mountains, and I prefer to greet armed raiders with higher numbers.”
Forty-five minutes still ticking on my one-hundred-and-sixty-one times window, Kaelen thought, feeling the immense flow of accelerated comprehension humming through his bones. With the eighty spirit stones from the duel, my liquid reserves sit at five hundred and five.
He reached under his cot and pulled out a heavy wooden crate containing two hundred and fifty Low-Grade Spirit Stones.
He flipped open the brass latch, bathing the dark interior of the tent in brilliant azure light as translucent golden runes flared across his vision.
[The Fallow Slate] [Active Multiplier: 161x Engaged (45m 00s Remaining)] [Resource Detected: 250 Low-Grade Spirit Stones (25,000 Qi)] [Target Breakthrough: Mortal Pulse Rank 8 — READY]