Chapter 228: Breathing Ink Into Water

Chapter 228: Breathing Ink Into Water

I woke to the quiet hush of morning.

The sun was low, barely a sliver on the horizon, golden light bleeding across the mist-clung rooftops of Gentle Wind. From the angle of the light and the length of the shadows, I figured I’d been asleep for a few hours. Just enough to keep going.

I sat up slowly, stretching out the stiffness in my back, and took a moment to breathe.

The memory of yesterday returned. The ache in my legs. The echo of impact in my ribs. The sharp contrast between blindness and clarity.

I cracked a smile and stood, flexing my fingers. With my vision clear again, the world looked different.

My sight didn’t exist in a vacuum anymore. It was no longer the sole pillar holding up my perception. I could feel the edges of things outside my vision; subtle vibrations, faint shifts in pressure, the smallest disturbances in heat and rhythm. Even if it required constant effort to maintain this level of perception, just bringing it to awareness was incredible.

'I'm close.'

It was like walking with my hand stretched out, fingers brushing the lip of a cliff I’d been climbing my whole life. My Body was close. So close. If I dedicated the whole day I could breakthrough.

But.

There was an order to things. And pretending otherwise never worked out.

The greenhouse by my shop stood tall and shimmering in the morning light, its frame catching dew along the glass edges. I stepped inside and breathed deep. The Spirit Soil had done its job. Even with the Plague Rain, most of the beds pulsed faintly with life, the hybrids stretching upward with slow, hungry confidence. The soil was damp, a little too much moisture clinging to the surface, but the vitality running through it was intact.

Outside, the story was different.

I walked the rows, boots squelching softly in the mud. Leaves curled at the edges. Stems drooped. The pre-rot hadn’t set in fully, not yet, but the signs were there: a sluggishness that wasn't present when I departed the village, a film over the stalks that didn’t belong.

I knelt beside a patch of basil and brushed the soil with my fingers. The scent wasn’t sharp anymore. Just tired. Weakened.

I frowned.

After Narrow Stone Peak, I had rebuilt this garden from scratch. Grown it with borrowed seeds, salvaged soil, and sweat. And now… it was being poisoned all over again.

I knew the Amethyst Plague didn’t work the same on plants as it did on people. It didn’t make them collapse overnight. It was a quiet siphon of life over time, until only the husk remained.

But still. I tended them.

One by one. Each stem, each leaf, each creeping runner of vine. I adjusted soil, cleared away rot, clipped dying growth. Not because it would fix them, not entirely.

But it was proof.

Proof that something could still thrive in this world. That something could be rebuilt. That something could live.

Even if it wilted again tomorrow, I’d still show up today.

I harvested what I could; ginseng roots that still pulsed with qi, honeysuckle petals that hadn’t yet browned, stems that hadn’t lost their bend. I stored the best in my satchel and carried the rest to my shop.

Inside, the scent of herbs and simmering oils wrapped around me like a second skin. I dropped my pack onto the table, lined up the vials, and set to work.

I gathered water from the well first, watching it glimmer faintly with that telltale violet sheen. The Verdant Lotus disciples had treated the well as best they could; Jian Feng told me they’d used a mixture of silverroot salves and detox pearls exclusive to the Verdant Lotus to slow the infection’s spread—but it was still tainted. Still not safe.

So I distilled it. Then I added a single drop of Clearveil blossom essence; a pale blue tincture I’d extracted in anticipation for purifying small quantities of water. But with my current supplies, I could only do it a few times.

The water turned clear. Not pure, but cleaner. Refined enough to be used for washing herbs or preparing outer-layer decoctions.

I bottled the filtered water and set it on the rack beside my tinctures. It wasn’t perfect but it would buy time. A few days, maybe. Once I gathered enough ingredients to create purifying agents, perhaps enough for villagers to wash and drink. ŗãꞐɵ𝐁ƐṨ

Tianyi drifted in not long after, wings trailing condensation from the morning air, her antennae twitching faintly as she hovered near the window. Windy followed shortly after, tongue flicking in lazy arcs, his coils thicker than they’d been yesterday. He slithered up the shelf and curled into a tight loop atop the rafters, exhaling in contentment.

They’d gone off to patrol again, keeping watch of the ground and sky.

When they left again, disappearing wordlessly through the clearing, I cleaned my hands, straightened the workspace, and finally let myself sit.

Then I reached inward.

The world dimmed, not in darkness, but in depth; flattening as I slid fully into the Manifold Memory Palace.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Stillness, then bloom.

The garden of thought unfolded around me, trees swaying with ideas, roots woven with old theories and experiments. I breathed in the scent of memory, of powdered bark and distilled understanding, and walked deeper. Here, time stretched. Each second in the waking world stretched into two. And with parallel thought enabled, my mind split cleanly; two tracks running concurrently.

One focused on the cure.

The other? On the infection itself.

It was the equivalent of quadrupling my current working speed.

One iteration sifted through my notes on the Amethyst Plague, cross-referencing historical records and the few fragments I’d memorized from the Million Books Pavilion. Another focused entirely on reconstruction; if I was missing two of the original ingredients from the Violet Bloom antidote, what would I do?

Adjusting the recipe was harder than expected. Not just because I lacked Bloodthorn Seeds and female ginseng, but because the structure of the antidote itself relied on their unique dual nature: one to purge corruption aggressively, the other to replenish what was lost.

Jingyu Lian had known that during the Grand Alchemy Gauntlet.

I shook it off.

Focus.

Without those two ingredients, I’d need something that could mimic the balance between purge and restoration. But it also had to interact safely with both demonic qi and natural qi. Something flexible. Adaptive.

My mindscape shifted, the trees reshaping. A dozen plant profiles opened like floating scrolls across the canopy; Witchhazel vine, heartstalk root, blue peppermoss... All partial fits. None perfect.

A new line of thought bloomed: what about the soil? The water? The animal carriers?

The plague hadn’t just targeted people. It had infiltrated systems. Spread through what people drank, touched, planted. Even if I cured them, getting sick again wasn't out of the possibility with how deep the violet rain penetrated into the ecosystem. Even Tie Niu struggled despite his newfound Dao of Fishing; most he caught were either ill or dying.

I continued to research potential candidates; both for curing the plague and for containing it afterward. My parallel lines of thought branched off across the Manifold, exploring combinations of plants, essence interactions, and alchemical carriers. I sifted through binding agents, toxin-neutralizers, and qi stabilizers; searching for anything that could purge or suppress the plague’s effects without causing collateral damage. Ways to mimic the purge-and-restore structure of the original antidote using what I had or could reasonably cultivate. Every solution was partial. Every success raised two new questions.

It was no surprise it took the region's brightest alchemists to find the cure when the plague first arrived.

But I pressed on.

A tremor rippled through the mindscape; not physical, but fundamental. A stilling of thought, a sharp halt in the branches of cognition.

All my thoughts froze. Not unraveled. Not tangled. Just… stopped.

Like a bird in flight suddenly realizing there was no sky left to soar in.

I blinked, or the mindscape equivalent of it. The trees held still mid-sway. The pond’s reflections froze. Even the warm hum of ambient qi dulled into a static fog.

I’d hit my limit.

Not the edge of intellect, but the ceiling of endurance. The Manifold Memory Palace, for all its brilliance, had never promised eternity. I could sustain parallel thought and temporal dilation for a few hours; maybe five if I carefully paced myself. And even then, it pushed against the edges of my skull like water rising in a cracked bowl.

I exhaled, pulled myself free, and blinked open my eyes.

The shop greeted me with still air and the lingering scent of herbal oils. No fire. No sound. Just the quiet thrum of exhaustion buried beneath my ribs.

I rubbed my temples. My body didn’t hurt, but my mind did. Like I'd been sprinting thoughts for miles and hadn’t stopped to breathe.

I reached for the satchel tucked beneath my bench, drew out a vial, and held it to the light.

Liquid ruby shimmered within. The Celestial Mind Illuminating Elixir. One of my first serious creations. A potion I’d once named with all the arrogant flourish of a starry-eyed alchemist who thought he’d cracked the heavens.

Now?

It sat nestled among my spare tonics like an old toy. Not useless. Just… familiar. I could likely make it in half the time with my eyes closed, with how far my alchemical skills advanced in the last few months.

I cracked the seal and poured a small amount into a cup of cooled millet tea, swirling it slowly to mute the intensity. On its own, it delivered a sharp, blazing focus; brilliant for ten minutes, then followed by a crash I could never fully prepare for. But diluted like this, the boost stretched out. Softer. Slower. More sustainable.

I drank.

The effect came gently this time. A soft lift behind the eyes. The fog thinned. Enough to think again. Enough to hold onto coherence.

Then I took out a small qi pill and rolled it between my fingers. A variant of the Golden Drop pill, to boost my reserves and circumvent the

Active rest was critical. Not just idling, but processing. Letting my body catch up with what my mind had forged ahead. I placed the pill on my tongue and began the process of Vermillion Lotus Refinement; cycling the energy inward, layering it through the meridians, letting it bloom and settle like petals unfurling in time with my breath.

At first, it worked.

The energy flowed easily. My qi gathered, diffused, threaded through my limbs.

But then—

I felt it.

Not a block.

A burn.

A catch in the flow. My meridians became more delicate. Like the walls were thinner. Worn. Just like how it was when I first started cultivating, making me prone to Qi Deviation.

I frowned, slowed my breath, and tried to ease the refinement process.

And that’s when I saw it.

As I cycled more qi through my core, I could feel something sitting with my meridians; its presence faint but tangible. A whisper of withering at the outer roots of my qi network. Similar to pill residue, but not quite.

The more I refined... the faster it moved.

I stopped immediately.

The rest of the qi from the Golden Drop, still potent and surging, I let cycle out naturally. No risk, no forced purge. A waste of resources, but better than damaging my own meridians.

A chill crept over me.

If I couldn’t cycle my qi safely, if the Plague twisted it while it moved...

Then it meant cultivation itself might become a vector.

I rubbed my chest, fingers pressed just below my collarbone. The echo of wrongness lingered there; subtle, but insistent.

I couldn’t afford to train today. Not like that. Not until I knew more.

I stood slowly, one hand braced on the table to steady myself.

I pulled on my outer robes, slung my satchel over one shoulder, and tucked the Tianqi Duel board beneath my arm. I’d planned to see Xu Ziqing this afternoon anyway. A few matches would help me stabilize my thoughts, and more importantly, I needed to talk to him about what I’d discovered.

Because if I was right… the implications went far deeper than just me.

I stepped out into the square, boots crunching over half-dried mud. The village was quiet, but not silent. Disciples moved in and out of houses, tending to wounded, distributing poultices. Children clung to mothers, laughter quieter than it used to be. The kind of quiet that stayed after disaster. A waiting quiet.

I crossed the square toward Xu Ziqing’s usual spot, mind still churning.

Most people didn’t have access to their own qi; not consciously. The Interface had awakened many to cultivation, but their qi wasn’t cycled with intent. It simply sat in the dantian, sluggish and shallow. Unused.

But cultivators?

Their bodies breathed qi.

Even when we weren’t meditating, our energy moved. It threaded through us like breath through lungs, circulating automatically. It sustained us. Strengthened us. Empowered us.

And that meant the plague's infection could hasten.

Like stirring ink into water. The moment you move it, the dye blooms outward. Faster. Deeper.

So if the Amethyst Plague laced itself into our qi…

Then the more we cultivated… the faster it would spread. The more we trained or exerted ourselves, the quicker we fell.

My breath caught.

I hadn’t confirmed it yet, but—

“Oi!”

The shout broke through my thoughts. I turned.

Wang Jun.

He jogged up from the forge side, wiping soot from his arms with a blackened rag. His hair was tied back, face flushed with heat and effort. It was almost up to mine in length now. It suited him.

It’d been a while since I’d seen him properly. He was always buried in the forge these days; creating tools or repairing old weapons for disciples.

“You free right now?” he asked, breathing a little hard.

I hesitated. “Not really. Depends on what you need.”

He grinned, slapping the rag against his shoulder. “Your armor’s ready.”

I blinked. Then smiled.

“I have time.”

He smirked. “Didn’t think you’d say no.”

I turned briefly towards the direction of where Xu Ziqing usually waited.

“I’ll be right back,” I muttered.

Xu Ziqing stood near the outskirts, sleeves rolled just past his forearms, his sword sheathed and resting loosely in his grip. Across from him stood Xin Du.

Cured, cleansed, and despite the presence of the Amethyst Plague, absolutely thriving.

But my hypothesis about how cultivation only served to accelerate the plague made me uneasy.

Xu Ziqing adjusted his posture with a quiet gesture, and Xin Du mirrored it instantly.

I whistled softly and raised a hand.

The second-class disciple glanced over, his expression unreadable as always. He gave the barest of nods, then returned to Xin Du’s form correction.

I flashed a quick series of hand signsmand hoisted the Tianqi Duel board with one hand.

Xu Ziqing didn’t miss a beat. He waved me off casually, then tapped his sword once against the ground in acknowledgment.

I smiled, pulled the board from under my arm, and lobbed it gently toward the edge of the training area. It landed with a soft thud in the grass just beside the bench where we usually played.

“A rematch,” I muttered under my breath, “when I don’t feel like my brain’s made of wet rice.”

Then I turned on my heel and jogged back toward the forge.

Wang Jun stood there waiting, arms crossed, foot tapping in mock impatience.

“Took your time,” he said.

I exhaled the last of my breath. “Let’s see it.”

He rolled his shoulder, gave a little huff, and turned toward the forge doors.