Chapter 53 53 – Alchemy Library



"I will give my pills to you, and you can take 5% of the profits as a commission after selling them for me. Just make sure the alchemist remains anonymous."

Ken knew that Michael's offer to keep it a secret was a gesture of goodwill. Since they wanted to be on friendly terms with him, he offered to deepen their relationship.

"That sounds like a great choice. Here's my token; you can contact me whenever you want."

It was the same type of communication device that Ken gave Nick before. Ken already knew the rules, so he knew that as a fourth-rank alchemist, he needed to sell 200 pills of the fourth grade to get the right to 2 hours in the library.

"Here are 200 pills I've concocted over the last few months. Please make sure I can get 2 hours in the library."

He already had 8 hours stacked; 2 hours for each rank he passed. As a fourth-rank alchemist, he had 8 hours.

"I will take care of the procedures. I will make it look that me and some of my friends purchased your pills and I will sell them in the sect."

"Great. Take care."

Ken cupped his fist and left toward the Alchemy Library. He went down a long hall that connected the main building to the library and saw two disciples standing guard at the entrance.

"Show us your token, please."

He showed his fourth-rank alchemist token, and the guards opened the door and bowed. He wanted to wear a mask, but it was too conspicuous if he did it inside the sect. It wasn't common enough. 

The library was the information center. It had formulas and theoretical ideas. Everyone who wrote a theory that seemed logical and passed the empirical tests could place his findings here.

As for techniques, those were kept in a separate safe that Ken planned to visit later to widen his techniques variety and find more inspiration sources.

He skipped the first floor which was meant for alchemists in the first three ranks and climbed the stairs to the second floor. Although he wanted to learn about the fifth grade, he first wanted his foundations to be perfect.

Since his time was limited, he didn't bother reading the books. Instead, he opened them, glanced at a page, and moved on to the next page. This way, he could read 2 pages per second.

This way he could 'save' a page in his brain and read it later. He thought about it as saving the book as an image file so he can open it when he is home.

He skipped books that the branch sect had copies of, and only skimmed quickly through those he didn't see before. He had no idea what was written in them, but it wouldn't hurt to have the content anyway.

3 hours passed and he already memorized over 20,000 pages. He chose to leave the theories section and move to the formulas section to find out about more pills. He finished memorizing all the formulas in under half an hour and quickly went to the next floor to research the fifth rank.

He had 6 hours and a half, and he planned to save only one hour for the techniques. Techniques were much shorter than theory books and with his new idea of only memorizing the page without reading, he was sure he could memorize them easily in one hour.

He spent the next 5 hours reading theories about fifth-grade pills and materials, and half an hour memorizing all the formulas the library had. There were much fewer formulas of fifth-grade pills, probably because of the difficulty to concoct those.

'I guess I'm done here for now. I can come back after digesting everything and gaining some more hours.'

With his intelligence, he could rank up and become a fifth-rank alchemist in a matter of weeks, but he had no plans to rank up now. 

Not only it would be too flashy to become as proficient in alchemy as an elder when he was still 6 years old, but there were a lot of materials he still didn't read. 

He only read about 15% of the third floor and 40% of the second floor. Although he knew those theories weren't perfect, they at least had some truth in them since they worked well enough to pass the screening process and enter the library.

He could extract this bit of truth from them and improve his own alchemy and knowledge.

He left the library and went back to his room. He spent the next few days reading the books from his memory, and another week just to compare and organize all this knowledge.

With perfect memory he didn't need to write down his thoughts; he wasn't worried about getting confused or forgetting things.

By crossing information, he could invalidate a lot of information until he was left with almost only true things. He spent another week experimenting with the new knowledge until he was sure what was right.

He felt like there wasn't much new information he could learn about the fourth rank anymore, but he still planned to read it just in case. At least the digesting process would be much faster as time passed since he already knew what was right and wrong.

-------------

"Young Master, Young Lady Annie is requesting to meet you."

Soleil knocked on the door of his study and announced Annie's arrival. Ken purchased a lot of fourth-grade materials for his alchemy, and he was making pills to strengthen his core.

"Sure, tell her I will be there in a few minutes."

He hated sweating in his clothes when he could avoid it, so he would always train in his underwear whenever he was alone. Soleil already learned that she shouldn't enter his room when he was alone.

He used a simple Basic-grade water technique he learned lately to wash his body and used Qi to push away the water. When he was clean, he wore his clothes and went out to meet with Annie. 

He expected her to come; if his judgment of her character was correct, there was no way she would pass a chance to improve herself only because her family didn't like him.

"Hello Senior Sister, what are you doing here?"

"You can just call me Annie. I don't want someone better than me to call me 'Senior Sister'."

She said with a hint of bitterness in her voice. It was easy to guess she didn't like to admit someone from her generation was better than her.

"Sure. Hello Annie, what are you doing here?"

Ken asked with a beautiful smile, showing his straight white teeth. It was quite embarrassing, but he actually lost some of his baby teeth lately. 

Luckily, he could regrow his teeth within a few hours by using pills and suffering some pain. Trying to charm a girl with a few teeth missing could be awkward.

"I was wondering if you could spar with me regularly every other week."

"I'm sorry, but I don't think I can. You know of my status in the clan, and I'm sure your mother wouldn't want you to be connected to me."

"I'm me, and my mother is my mother. I don't care if she is against it."

"You don't, but I do. I don't need her to make my life harder because she's angry that I'm interacting with you. I have nothing to gain and a lot to lose."

"I can pay."

Ken was a fourth-rank alchemist and a professional robber; he had no money problems.

"Would you spar with someone else for money?"

"No, but..."

She answered hesitantly, unsure of how to complete the sentence. She wanted to say that he wasn't as rich as her, but she also didn't want to touch a sore point and worsen his impression of her.

"However, there's indeed something that I need."

He walked to her and placed his palm on her shoulder. He sensed her luck and saw it burning vigorously, it was the shiniest luck he had ever seen. 

It made a lot of sense; she was born beautiful, rich, talented, and smart. Just her birth situation showed how lucky she was.

"What can I do for you?"

"Can you keep a secret?"

"I can. I swear with my soul that I will not tell anyone about your request."

Swearing with one's soul was a tricky thing. It was easy to find loopholes, but it was enough when someone wanted to show sincerity. 

If the person who took the oath did something that goes against the oath, his soul will explode only if he sees it as a violation of the oath. Taking the oath in the third stage would affect her until her soul strengthened significantly in the fifth stage.

"You're a lucky person, but I'm not. Can you please share your luck with me?"

"What does that mean?"

"Do you believe in luck?"

"No, I believe in resources, talent, and hard work."

"I do believe in luck. You can see meeting me as a stroke of luck, something in your journey that may help you grow strong quickly. Would you agree to share your luck with me?"

"Sure, it seems fair."

The girl agreed without overthinking it. She felt a weird sensation as if she lost something, but it was a floating sensation that passed almost instantly. 

"All right, then we can spar once every two weeks."

Ken smiled at her and quickly changed the subject, so she won't think too much about what just happened.

"Great, see you on Sunday at 07:00 in the morning."