6 **Chapter 6: Vital Gu**
"It's Saturday already, I can't believe the awakening ceremony was five days ago."
As I sat on my bed, I took a glance at my Aperture and saw the eight Poison Refinement Gu I had refined over the last few days. Yes, I had continued the refinement until I ran out of materials.
"It would have been faster, but..."
*4 days ago*
Now let's add the Dreadclaw Spider, this time it's going to be 5 primeval stones.
Now the primeval essence, 10% like always.
"Next just…"
Boom
*6 hours later*
"Ahhh… everything hurts...."
Blugh
Cough
Cough
Cough
"Well, there goes my blood, a lot of it..."
"I am so dizzy…"
"I just want to sleep..."
"NO! I have to get upstairs, my father can heal me…"
"If i sleep now, i don't know if i will survive, but i am sure nobody is finding me here."
Here I was, crawling out of the refinement room, into the empty middle room.
"My thoughts are getting clearer; I must have suffered a small soul injury to be this out of it for this long."
"Really small, as I can feel it getting better already."
With that, I continued through the room and up the stairs. This endeavor took me quite long, maybe 25 minutes. I am sure it took another 10 for one of the servants to find me.
From there, it was really fast. First, it was my father; he left for maybe 3 minutes and returned with an old man.
This one must have activated a few Gu as it was barely a few seconds before my outward injuries healed, and all I was left with was a medium headache.
*present time*
I needed a day to recover from that one; in that time I only did some light work, like cleaning up my refining room and organizing a new cauldron.
I had another accident a few days later, but this one was a lot more manageable; I was just spitting some blood. Must have gotten another soul injury, but the cauldron stayed whole that time, and I was back to refining a few hours later.
But whatever, enough about that. I'm sure you're curious about what my shiny new Gu does.
Well, it's called Poison Refinement Gu. What do you think? Of course, it refines poisons.
This little worm has only one function: it eats materials and produces poison. This process consumes only 5% of my beginning stage Rank 1 primeval essence, which is very little, to be honest.
What this Gu consumes a lot of is time.
Over the last day, while I continued the refinement of the Rank 1 Poison Refinement Gu, I experimented with Gu I had already refined.
And what can I say? The results are impressive.
The first step is to feed this Gu anything—it could be ordinary things like water, a rock, a cup of tea, or a simple stick, but it can also be Gu materials of any path, as long as they are not higher than Rank 1.
"With that said, I did just that and fed Poison Refining Gu number 8 a cup of tea."
Then comes the refinement process, which takes anywhere from 10 minutes to a day depending on the type and rank of the material.
And in the last step, the Gu spits out a poison.
*Yesterday*
"Huuuh, this one was a succes again." I said as i grabed the Poison Refinement Gu number 6 out of the caldron.
Now lets check the other ones, i want to know what kind of poisons i got…
"My vital Gu the Number one, it ate an apple, and a bit of an bark of an apple tree i had lying around."
With that i wrote into the notebook i started for these combinations:
Apple + bark of an apple tree, result is MP 4.
The abreviation was just M for mortal, P for Powder and 4, because it is the fourth of its kind. After i will test this poison i will add to this note.
"Now the next one Poison refinement Gu number 2…"
…
…
Skribble
Skribble
"Now onto Poison refining Gu number 4…"
Puff….
"Ahhhh… "
This is the way i have learned that there are not only MP for mortal power and ML for mortal liquide, but MG for mortal gas as well.
This particular one was a mild form of pepper spray…
It was not pleasant, but i did not kill myself on accident, so this is a win in my book.
*Present time*
"Ah, MG1 this one will allways have a special place in my heart…"
Continuing on, there are certain rules to this refinement that I have noticed and written down in my notebook.
Rule Number 1: I can choose to feed the Gu one material or a combination of materials.
Rule Two: If the materials I feed the Gu are normal mortal materials like water, for example, it will always result in a mortal poison.
Rule Three: If I feed the Gu a mortal poison or multiple mortal poisons—this could be any, even ones created by that very same Gu—it will always result in a Rank 1 Gu Material.
Rule Four: If the Gu is fed Rank 1 materials of a different path, it creates a Rank 1 poison based on them.
Rule Five: The conversion between material to poison or poison to poison is never 1:1. It will always result in less poison than the material that was put in.
A real-world example of this, which I have personally tested, is if the Gu is fed a liter of water. This willresult in around 50 ml of poison, and if these 50 ml are fed to the Gu again, it will result in around 10 ml of Rank 1 poison.
This Gu is perfect as my vital Gu, as it gives me near-infinite directions to research, as well as easy access to materials I will need to refine my poison path Gu.
I have many plans for new poisons and combinations of existing ones. The next few years will be busy.
The new notebook i have started will be just to document all types of poisons, their effects, as well as how to create them. My old notebook will be used for my refinement path journey.
Anyway, with that, I put my vital Gu back in my Aperture and left the rest of the Gu down here to create some interesting poisons.
---
Monday Morning
"Let's get ready for school."
I had spent the last two days in my room, refining my Aperture. In the last week, I had used 280 primeval stones for refinement and 8 for regenerating my primeval essence and to cultivate.
Which is a lot of money for me right now. Over my 15 years of life, I had managed to save up 513 primeval stones from the pocket money my father had given me. Now I only had 225 primeval stones left, which was still enough to buy one Rank 1 Gu if I got a good price.
For my time as a Rank 1 Gu Master, my father would give me 200 primeval stones every month. This was about 5% of his income as a Rank 3 refinement Gu master, that worked for the clan. Of his total income, it was probably more like 2%. He had hinted at increasing that number when I reached Rank 2 and if I proved that I wasn't wasting his money.
For now, my second source of income would be the monthly allowance of the academy, which I did not know how high it would be, but I did not expect much.
Enough of this, I should not be late to my first day at the academy.
---
My pace was brisk as I made my way to the center of the village.
This time I wore some more casual robes, and my hair flowed freely.
There it stood, the Gu Master Academy, right between the mission hall and the clan leader's residence. It was perhaps the single biggest piece of land in the Fei Yu clan, at least 5 km², with six big buildings on it—one each for the three years, one for the training with Gu, and one each for the faculty and students who wanted to live there.
"Well, this building has a big banner with a '1' on it, so I guess this is the one for the first years."
On my way in, I asked a pair of mortal guards:
"Hey, can you tell me where class 1.3 A is?"
"Yes, young master! Down this corridor, up one flight of stairs, first room to the left."
Generous as I am, I still managed to mutter a "Thanks" as I followed their instructions.
As I opened the door, fifteen minutes early, I might add, I saw that there were already 17 people seated, which left me as third to last. I already noticed that the A-Grade guy, Fei Yu Wei Li, was one of the two missing people.
There were exactly five columns and four rows. I made my way to the only free seat in the back row and waited for the class to start.
Around 10 minutes before the start of class, one more person entered—the last was Wei Li, who upon entering about five minutes early, went straight to the girl that sat in the middle of first the row and barked:
"Stand up. That's my seat."
Which she complied with, tears in her eyes. But she knew she could not resist, as the young man standing before her had an Aperture filled to 95%.
There had also been rumors that he, who had a rather humble upbringing, had been recruited by the second elder to be groomed for the Military Hall.
"Sit down, everyone!"
This authoritative voice belonged to Elder Chen, the Rank 3 assistant to the first Elder. He had obviously been assigned as our class teacher.
"Now, if I say your name, you say 'here'."
"Wei Li."
"Here, Elder Chen."
"Mu Bao."
"Here, Elder Chen."
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'I can't help but notice that he is calling on the students in order from the highest to the lowest talent.'
"With my 70%, I will probably fit in somewhere in the middle."
"Zhen Wei."
'Oh, eighth... a bit better than I expected. Ah right, I forgot that there must be three C-Grade talents in this class. But let's not dally.'
"Here, Elder Chen."
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"Good, everyone is present."
"This class is the elite of our Fei Yu clan. You will be expected to become elders, specialists, and overall the cream of the crop. One or a few of you might even become Rank 4 or the future leader of this glorious clan."
With that, Elder Chen glanced at Wei Li.
"Most of you are extraordinarily talented and have powerful family members. For those of you who came from an ordinary family and are lucky enough to be here, I expect you to work twice as hard."
"This class will teach you the basics, but make no mistake, these are not the same basics that those in classes B and C will learn. No. There will be nothing like learning history or what ranks there are for Gu masters, no learning the simplest of Gu and materials."
"You are expected to know these things."
'Certainly harsh, but not unreasonable. Probably around 15 out of twenty here had private teachers from childhood, and the other 5 or so that came from normal mortal households. They have probably not even stepped three paces outside the spirit spring before being recruited by some elders, all just because they had talent.'
"So it really is a waste of time to teach the bare minimum."
"So I will tell you about what is going to happen now. I will take you to pick your first Gu, then you will go home to refine it."
"As long as you have not refined the Gu, you do not come to any more of these classes."
"Your monthly allocation of primeval stones is 20. I will provide them to you after you've selected your Gu. However, for each day, excluding today, that you fail to refine the Gu, this allocation will decrease by 4. Should it dwindle to zero, expulsion awaits, relegating you to Class B. The fastest student in Class B to attain Rank 1 Middle Stage will then assume your position."
'Simple yet effective,' I mused. 'Today being Monday, finishing tomorrow would secure 20 primeval stones monthly. Completing on Wednesday would yield 16, and so forth.'
'For me, this equates to the disparity between 220 and potentially 216 or 212 primeval stones per month. Some might argue it's inconsequential.'
'But some are idiots.'
"Am I understood?"
"Yes, Elder Chen!!!"
'Four primeval stones are actually a giant sum. A mortal family of four could survive two months on that.'
'And I plan to invest these very wisely, so with some trade, time, and patience, these few primeval stones could become hundreds or thousands through compound interest.'
"One final note," Elder Chen interjected, "the three individuals who refine their first Gu with the greatest celerity will each receive a Rank 1 token, redeemable for an additional Rank 1 Gu. The top performer will also be awarded 100 extra primeval stones upfront, along with an additional 10 stones monthly. The second-place finisher will gain 50 primeval stones initially, plus 5 more each month."
'Well, now he has really awakened my interest. First place will be hard, but I probably have a lot more primeval stones, and a lot less hesitation to use them than most of these kids. I should be able to get at least third place, especially with my experience refining Gu until now, even if they were new Gu.'
'I have also recovered from the backlash of failing in Gu Refinement twice, which at this point in time is one of the very few ways to increase soul strength. Although, it should be a very small increase.'
"Well, then follow me to the clan treasury."
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