Legacy of Hatred

While everything went smoothly once Priest Fred left the meeting, Liam tasted some lingering tension, both from the Church’s representative’s rather abrupt departure and the general mood among the branching experts from the Guilds.

Nevertheless, everyone pretended that everything was fine, agreeing on a date for the alchemical contest, even revealing additional information about the area’s alchemists and arranging a place to stay for the couple.

Apparently, the master Colleen believed wouldn’t heed the contest’s call belonged to one of the neighboring Sects, basically fulfilling a role similar to Horace Rauret’s back in the Pale Moon Sect.

However, be it due to lower skills or the presence of a competitor, the Sects’ alchemist didn’t have a true alchemical monopoly. He actually wasn’t too productive in terms of sheer number of products, albeit their quality was exceptional.

As for the competitor, he was completely unaffiliated. Colleen had described him as an eccentric character who always accepted commissions as long as the buyer provided the ingredients.

According to Colleen, the unaffiliated alchemist didn’t even have long queues, always dealing with whatever commission as soon as possible. His products’ quality was even greater than the master inside the Sect, but his success rate was far poorer.

Still, the unaffiliated alchemist was said to be utterly addicted to alchemy, which was why Colleen was certain he would join the contest. As for the affiliated one, he had a far loftier position, so his participation was unlikely.

Of course, both alchemists were branching experts.

The living arrangements were the last and smoothest part of the meeting, which was mainly the couple’s doing. They knew their standing, and arriving at the appointed structure the following night only confirmed their beliefs.

A tall, frozen peak featured a nice but small house at its base. It looked nothing more than a two-story winter cabin, its walls made of long trunks. Its second floor was the only peculiar detail, featuring mismatched large balconies with fancy handrails.

The cabin’s entrance had the Enforcement Guild’s emblem, which was exactly what the couple had expected. That house was a loaned habitation that the Guilds could keep track of. It wasn’t a prison as battle cages had been, but it came close.

Felix escorted the couple by carriage personally, but didn’t set foot inside the house, wanting to reinforce the idea of hospitality and privacy. Liam and Grace were being treated as proper guests, just on trial. The full extent of the privileges worthy of their status had been delayed after the alchemical contest.

Of course, Liam and Grace knew that. It was why they had accepted Felix’s living terms without uttering a single complaint.

Naturally, the place was for cultivators. There were plenty of inscriptions on the cabin’s surfaces, mainly to keep out the cold and weather. There were even complete sets of tokens for all kinds of purposes, even more complete than the one Liam used for alchemy.

Liam went directly for the second floor while Grace dealt with the furniture, the privacy finally giving him a chance to absorb the recent events.

Everything rested on Liam’s shoulders, and he knew as much, but he felt no anxiety as he sat on the wooden floor, gazing blankly at the scenery beyond the balcony.

While Liam’s inferior cultivation level put him at a disadvantage against the area’s masters, he just had to prove his reliability and quality. Once he did, he would likely replace the unaffiliated alchemist, mainly due to his far higher success rate, something the Guilds hoped would continue once he reached the branching stage.

As for the lack of anxiety, that was just the alchemy Liam had learned. He wouldn’t fail even once. That impossible feat was as normal as breathing for him since that was the only approach he had learned. Audiences, stakes, and whatnot wouldn’t affect him in the slightest.

Instead, Liam lingered for a moment in the inspection of the world, never really studying it, mostly focusing on what it represented, drawing his pipe to appreciate the meaningful event.

Liam and Grace had basically been on hiding ever since the open tournament. That was over two years living underground. The only period when they didn’t have to keep their location a secret had come at the cost of their freedom.

Meanwhile, Liam and Grace had a home in the open now, a public one, albeit loaned and with caveats. Nevertheless, that still showed a certain acceptance from the right side of the cultivation world, one that hadn’t come out of kindness.

Liam didn’t delude himself for one second. His and Grace’s feats were the only reason behind the Guilds’ willingness to compromise and give them a chance to exist in the open.

If it weren’t for the rebellion on the border, Liam’s killing a branching expert and his alchemical skills, and Grace’s breakthrough, no one would have even bothered to hear them. The acceptance was out of inevitability. The couple had made themselves impossible to ignore or disregard.

And Liam also knew that all that would be short-lived. Unless the Sects decided to drop their alchemist rather than suppress Liam, that environment wouldn’t be enough to sustain him.

It would come a point when Liam’s hunger for resources or his sheer excellence would cause problems too big to solve, forcing him and Grace to restart the cycle of running, hiding, and settling elsewhere, the last part probably being utterly impossible now due to how public they had become.

There was also the Church. Priest Fred might have made it sound as if whatever enmity was no more, but Liam knew what he had revealed. The Guilds might be unaware, but the Church definitely knew the Archbishop’s stance on the eighth ancestral bloodline.

With Liam openly admitting he had spoken with the inheritance’s spirit, the Church was bound to suspect he had learned its greatest secret, and it was unclear what it would do on the matter.

With all that waiting on the horizon, Liam did the only thing he could do. He summoned his green jade, noting down the only aspect he could hope to improve upon within the two weeks before the alchemical contest.

’My version of the Demoness’ technique is a personal creation,’ Liam noted on the jade. ’It uses my Qi’s nature, making it a spell rather than a martial art. I’ll call this field alchemical spell."

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