Chapter 3:The Violet Blossom Elixir
"Young master!" The chef and her assistant hastily bowed their heads. The chef was a woman in her forties, though she did not look it—likely because she had stepped up a refinement path in whatever bloodline she possessed.
The patriarch had made sure to select the very best skilled alchemist as their culinarian.
"I ask to be excused." He beckoned at the slightly trembling gardener behind him, then at a polished ceramic deck. "Place it there, and you may leave."
The gardener, compliant as a worker to a queen bee, placed the uprooted Violet Star Blossom there. Without raising his head, he completed the trail out, following the culinarian and her assistant.
Without wasting much time, he began. His body was still frail, thus there was a certain limit to how long it could remain functional. He settled a pot of silverware he had taken from a clean stack on the blackwood cupboard.
Gently and quickly—before it could rot—he dismembered the petals from the plant into the pot, then added three cups of refreshing spring water.
Two droplets of mucilage from the Mountain Thorn Aloe.
After which, he set the silver pot in a makeshift oven, crude compared to the ones back on Earth. Yes, Nether had not been, in the actual sense, from this world.
If my memory holds, two thousand years ago, I died in an aircraft crashing into the Pacific. That world had its toys—machines, artificial lights—far more advanced than this backward realm.
When I first arrived here, I was disoriented, aimless, like any mortal stripped of context.
For one hundred and fifty futile years, I hunted a path back. Every method, every rumor, every so-called sage—useless.
Waste of time.
So I discarded the delusion.
Home became irrelevant. Return became irrelevant.
Tragedies piled up—betrayals, losses, deaths—I stopped counting them.
From the endless repetition, I began to see the pattern: humanity's predictable chains of greed, fear, weakness, hypocrisy.
Every flaw loops eternally.
That realization became my Dao.
Not to fix it out of kindness.
To purge it.
To cleanse this flawed species of every shackle that binds potential—starting with my own.
Only then can the gates of eternity open.
Nether was a Teleogist who sincerely believed the world had shown him those harrowing tribulations for a definite reason.
After waiting nineteen more minutes, he quickly opened the silver pot lid, adding twenty drops of Essential Spirit—referred to commonly as alcohol. Then he watched it for another ten minutes before finally taking the herbal brew from the oven.
He poured the purple elixir into a porcelain white jug. As he did so, he could make out faint whispers from beyond the huge ebony door.
"What's the young master doing?"
"I don't know, but given the smell, it's more likely to be a concoction."
"Since when has the sick young master possessed such skill in alchemy, Xio? He must be preparing something else—perhaps a light tea."
Her heart almost flew out of her mouth when the door she was leaning on suddenly swung open, pushed by the frail young master.
She quickly gestured at Xio and adjusted her posture to one of reverence. The young master simply surveyed them with his tired eyes.
"I'm done." He was not one to talk much. With that, he traced his way back to his room, which was at the far end of the count's castle.
The castle was split into five distinct chambers linking to the centralized dome where the patriarch lived and where the D'Artagnan family court was held.
His chamber was the smallest and the least luxurious. A third of it was a museum of his personal arts and drawings, a quiet room for self-reflection and artistry, and the huge dome of his customized library.
It had been a goal of his to learn more about the world, since he probably would not see it with his own eyes.
He arrived at his room, swung the agarwood door open, and firmly shut it. He had made sure to securely hide the jug within his garment from the curious eyes of his spies in the facade of maids.
Or so he assumed. It was better to label all of them as tainted.
Settling the jug on his stool, he poured himself a sufficient amount to the brim of another porcelain mug.
It would have been modified tenfold had he integrated the Soul Mending Grass into it. Perhaps he would purchase some tomorrow, as the day was far spent and he was supposed to have a spar with his sibling.
The faint smell of the alcohol tinged his eyes before he devoured the violet elixir in one gulp.
It did not take long for him to feel the effect of the elixir. It gave a calming sensation, and for a moment, he did not feel the life-force drain of his negative Qi predicament.
The negative Qi defect was a permanent terminal illness. Unlike the common zero Qi predicament, the world drained Qi from him. But since he possessed none, it sufficed with his life force, thus lowering his expected lifespan to seventeen. And at that, he was already almost a year in.
After a while, the sensation died, though he still felt the lingering effect. He made his way to the mirror. Staring at his reflection, he could notice a very faint flush of color.
It was a satisfying improvement. He settled the jug on his study table beside the window before sitting cross-legged on the large bed mattress.
He projected his consciousness to his origin, and with a blink, he was already standing atop an obsidian-black sheet of water.
Before him were two conflicting views of the sun and the moon. When he willed the realm clearer, the dark mist parted, and crimson auroras illuminated the expanse above.
He reached his hands toward one of the countless iridescent threads that connected his astral form to those two conflicting bloodlines.
These were his meridians, and the very fact that they had lost their glow was complete testament to the destructive effect of the Umbra Snake Venom.
He sighed, feeling a little relief. Should they have been completely destroyed, then evolving his bloodline would have been a forgone myth.
The Holy Rose Lotus could only undo his negative Qi plight but not restore his meridians. A miracle such as that could only be attributed to the heavens.
But with them present, it'll only be a matter of Time before they become strengthened The Violet Star blossom Elixir.
With a subconscious activation in his mind, a golden transparent panel materialized before him. It was his world profile.
[Name: Nether Emrys D'Artagnan]
Bloodline:
Offspring of the Nascent Sun God
Origin: Pure blood
Descendant of the Treacherous Death Sovereign
Origin: Pure blood
Physicality: Low Mundane Realm 1
Obstacle: Negative Qi Defect
Cure: Holy Water Exorcism by the Mother of Rejuvenation
Sacred Nectar of the Holy Rose Lotus
He willed the panel off before it could complete itself.
The Mother of Rejuvenation was the patron goddess of the emperor of this western continent. Getting an exorcism, no less with their most treasured relic, was next to impossible. In scale of that, the Holy Rose Lotus posed a more Realistic Path.
He projected himself back to the real world. He could feel fatigue coiling up his bones, making his eyelids heavy. Reasoning far ahead, he had no less than three hours before his tutorial spar with his sister.
With that, he collapsed into the blossom of the tender mattress, and within the flick of a minute, he was fast asleep.
But after no less than two hours, he was denied the comfort of peaceful sleep. For when he opened his eyes, he was before a battlefield.
The entire plain, as far as he could see, was tenderly soaked in blood, giving it the appearance of a bloody sea.
His feet caused ripples in this sea of blood as he walked toward a figure who sat in a canyon made of flesh. Red lightning forked the skies, and a south wind blared with full intensity, threatening to topple him.
From the canyon of flesh, he could make out the familiar silhouette of someone he knew—and the others he would at some point in Time, but till then, he rather not speak.
He glanced west. There was a spreading darkness that drowned the authority of the sun. It came with the inevitability of death. The figure on the canyon merely spared it one glance before the entire formless blackness swept them both.
Within the tempest of the black storm, countless flying creatures bored holes into his skin in excruciating pain that forced no scream from his lips. He had seen greater ones in Limbo.
The creatures feasted on his skin until what was left of him was desiccated bone, with only one functional eye remaining.
With that eye, he watched the figure on the canyon grow titanic as it approached him.
That was what he last saw before the flying creatures gouged his remaining eye out..
Note:
[A person who believes that things (especially events in life) happen "for a reason" — meaning they have a deeper purpose, meaning, or aren't just random — is most commonly described as someone who holds a teleological view or is a teleologist in philosophy..]