The night was a canvas of deep indigo, pricked with the distant, cold light of unfamiliar stars. Wang Jian sat in his stark outer sect hut, the 'Compendium of Immortal Herbs' resting open on his lap, though he wasn't truly reading it. His powerful soul had absorbed its contents in a single, intensive session. Every drawing, every name, every obscure property was now neatly filed away in the vast library of his mind.
'Sunpetal Lily… enhances Water Qi affinity. Moonshadow Root… used in calming draughts. Serpent's Tongue Fern… a mild paralytic. Interesting.' His mind was already cross-referencing this new knowledge with the alchemical principles he'd gleaned from Old Fang's texts, and, more deeply, with the infinitely more complex alchemical lore from his past. 'The basics are similar. Energy signatures, elemental affinities, synergistic and antagonistic properties. Just… cruder here. Less refined.'
