Epsilon Twilight
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16. Haya
🕑 Added 2025-01-10 12:30:15 +0000 UTCA pregnant silence overtook the room as Xochipilli's words lingered. The boy himself looked around as if he had been wrong, that his eyes had betrayed him. But sure enough, with the dilation of his pupils, she was able to guess he was seeing the clerk's vitality and also the pill's; but when he went back to looking at Aloe, he saw nothing at all.
All being said, she was surprised that the child was able to see vitality outright. It had taken her a few months to be able to see vitality at a distance instead of just feeling it through touch. She couldn't help but be slightly jealous. Just slightly.
Aloe kept her calm, but the same couldn't be said for the cultivator of Loyatan descendancy behind the counter.
"I was thinking the same," she muttered. "I'm not the best of cultivators, but I should have been able to sense your vitality. And I'm not. You are alive, I sense a minimum of vitality that confirms that fact, but that's all. Judging from your… assets," her eyes lingered on Aloe's bosom a bit too long before looking back at her emerald eyes, "I'd say you have plenty of vitality. Several dozen Haya at the very minimum."
The vegetable human carefully thought of her next words. Xochipilli had raised quite the difficult subject, though at the same time, the olive-skinned clerk had only been refraining from asking out of courtesy rather than ignorance.
"It's one of my many applications of the vital arts," she calmly explained as she placed a hand on the boy's head. "Hiding my vitality is one of the teachings of my cultivation."
Not fully a lie and truer than she would have liked. She still remembered how she had been hiding her true reserves for months whilst bound in a wheelchair and handicapping her growth in the process.
"I can't say I've heard such a cultivation style," the cultivator mused.
"Traditional," Aloe taciturnly explained with a smirk on her face.
Of course, everything she had said was a sweet lie at best. She wasn't actively hiding or limiting her vitality. Her natural vitality regeneration was too fast for that to even be possible. She restored several times the vitality of the cultivator's reserves per second.
No, this was but a byproduct of her massive reserves. Subterfuge applied to any physical property and quality that could make you detectable, so for that internal infusion, there was no distinction between smell or traceability of vitality reserves. And even if she was donning glamour, her passive subterfuge was greater than anything the blond clerk was able to manage.
Like what happened with the sense and regeneration stance, one could train key aspects of the stance, in this case: vitality concealment. That was why Aloe thought she had been capable of perceiving Aaliyah's distance even if the sultanah's vitality should have been massive enough to done her with a passive subterfuge internal infusion. The monster wearing human skin had never needed to hide her vitality so that part of her kit was undeveloped, unlike Aloe who had been months nonstop using those skills.
The woman behind the counter didn't have a lacking Nurture, but she could only be compared to a somewhat young sultanzade of Aloe's era. The amount of vitality raised quite an interesting question.
"We are talking about a lot of my reserves, but what about yours?" She motioned at the cultivator behind the counter. "You are quite dotted for your age. What have they been feeding to you?"
If this was her time, this woman would have needed to rape hundreds if not thousands of people to get to her current level.
"Ah, I am but a pill maker," she said as if that was more than enough explanation.
"What does that mean?" For the first time, Aloe didn't need to look like a fool as it was Xochipilli who asked the question. And children could never look like fools asking questions as they didn't know any better.
"I make the pills in this shop," the woman responded patiently, pushing a strand of blond hair behind her ear. "It's a really complex and protected process so I can't explain to you the how but just note that you need a lot of vitality to make the simplest of pills."
"Vitality as in Haya, and not your maximum reserves?" Aloe asked for clarification and the pill maker nodded. "But what about those Haya pills then? Do you make them and consume them to increase your reserves?"
"Ah, I wish the world were that simple," the cultivator almost collapsed on the counter in exasperation. "No, pill makers cannot consume their own products. Don't ask me why, it just doesn't work. You need to deal with other pill makers to get any meaningful progress, and lemme tell you, we are a nasty bunch."
Aloe snickered at the self-deprecating comment. The chuckle was completely genuine. The vegetable woman was already theorizing why pill makers couldn't reap the benefits of their own pills, but she kept those thoughts to herself. Most likely they work like an external infusion and the same person can't externally infuse themselves even if they have already put the vitality out of their body. She had known this since her practices with the flowing stance as she pushed the vitality out of her body and tried to infuse herself with it to no success.
Even when she was grafting herself with the Heartgrowths, she infused them with a myriad of external infusions before substituting her flesh for them, but alas, that hadn't quite worked. Her vitality always overpowered the internal flow of vitality of the Heartgrowth and the external infusion she had placed would just… snap. Her theory at the time was that the external infusion should be applied to the whole body instead of just a section, but now she wasn't so sure.
"So pill makers work with one another to keep increasing their vitality?" Aloe asked.
"Once more, I wish the world were that simple. But first, I must clarify something. When I say Haya pills this term incorporates both stance pills and vitality pills. The pills you are thinking of right now are vitality pills. The reason why they are all called 'Haya' pills is because they are normally made with a single Haya."
"So a vitality pill will provide a whole Haya once consumed?" The idea seemed ludicrous to Aloe, and she didn't fail to portray it on her visage.
"Once processed, yes."
"What does that mean?" Aloe crossed her arms and pressed them against her chest.
"The body can only assimilate so much vitality daily," the pill maker explained. "Around one-ninth of a Haya per day."
For a moment, Aloe remained silent as she thought. No, that's not right. Sultanzade could only absorb two-hundreds of a Haya per day, but let's assume that's a minimum and hers is the theoretical maximum. One-ninth of a Haya per day is zero-point-one periodic. One per nine days. Three-point-three periodic monthly. Around forty Haya per year. Accounting for the two centuries… yeah, my growth is greater than that. Aloe mentally shrugged. I guess that's the difference of the methods. Evolution-based vitality growth seems to have no daily limits, unlike their Nurture-based one.
"That's quite the amount," Aloe acted humbly, even if those quantities meant nothing to her if she continued her training schedule she had been following for centuries. "So you are earning forty Hayas per year?"
"How many times do I need to say it? I wish the world were that simple!" Even though the woman was being melodramatic, the hints of tears in her eyes were very much real. "Creating vitality pills is by far the most difficult part of being a pill maker. Not only does it cost vitality, but also a fraction of your reserves, besides a lot of fatigue, mental and physical. It's an endeavor only the most experienced or desperate of pill makers result in. Making stance pills is by far the most lucrative method to survive in this world as a pill maker without sacrificing one's health."
"I see…" Aloe responded timidly. Quite ironic coming from someone edging a mental breakdown. "Any chance you could teach me how to make vitality pills?"
She intended to teach Xochipilli her ways in the vital arts – if the boy wanted it – but perhaps a few pills would help him as the earlier Hayas were grueling to obtain with Evolution as it was an exponential process.
"Can't," the pill maker responded taciturnly.
"Can't or won't?" The vegetable woman pressed.
"Can't," she reiterated. "They will have my skin if I teach the method out of the school. If you really want to learn how to make them, you should go to the School of Pill Making in Asina. That's the only place in the world where they teach people how to make pills of any kind. They accepted anyone passionate enough or wealthy enough as they are always desperate for more people to make vitality pills as most pill makers don't want to make them. And, don't take this the wrong way, you seem like both types."
"I'll take that into consideration," Aloe said with a smile. Asina was her end goal, after all. "What about the flowing pills you mentioned before? This other type of pills that exist."
Xochipilli slightly blushed as he recalled who was the one who had interrupted the explanation. Aloe furled his hair a bit to let him know she wasn't mad at him. The boy had a tendency to think that even if he was well-behaved and normally kept things to himself.
"I don't have those ones here, but – in a nutshell – flowing pills are pills that unlock different flowing stance techniques in your body. Mind you, you still need to train those techniques, but they unlock techniques you wouldn't have been originally proficient with or straight up unable to perform."
"Oh," Aloe had to put a hand in front of her face unless she wanted to show Xochipilli the nasty smile she was making. "Now that's interesting. I always had problems with the flowing stance."
"If you want to get them, though, you will need to go to the most expensive shops in town. And even then, it's not likely you will find good flowing pills here. The best ones are made by actual cultivators with experience in Nurture, and all the pill makers this far from Asina are just off-shoots or people who want a quiet life. I'm the latter, for your knowledge. All the pill makers that can make the truly good stuff – whether flowing or vitality pills – orbit around the Calipha."
"One last question, how much does a Haya pill cost?" Depending on the price I could kickstart Xochipilli's training.
"It's hard to find them for sale as most pill makers that make them are personally hired by borgesois as their family pill makers or perhaps directly for the imperial family," the blond cultivator explained. "And those that end up in the market are normally acquired by pill makers who want to get better are their craft. Though those would be the 'clean' means if you perceive my intent."
"Yes, I do," Aloe held a groan.
Illegal trading, contraband, and a black market would always exist no matter the era, and funnily enough, it was the first thing she experienced after she came out of her bicentennial self-imposed exile.
"But I'd like a figure," she added.
"Hmm," the pill maker meditatively hummed with a finger on her lips. "It's hard to come by them, but I'd say ten thousand drupnars."
Aloe refrained from responding, but internally, she wasn't doing so well. TWO FAJATEAS FOR A PILL? LUDICROUS! She had only seen fajateas, the biggest of coins of her time, coming from Fatima's hand. The big gold coins were basically mythical as they held so much value transactions normally were carried by contract at that point rather than currency. And they were asking two of them for a single pill. I guess it makes sense as it's a free and painless Haya, but still…
Aloe now suddenly felt as if she was made out of gold.
As much as she was enjoying the information provided by the very talkative blonde cultivator, Aloe wanted out as soon as possible. Who would have thought that living in a cave for two centuries would cripple her social stamina?
Her mission was accomplished. The child had awakened his ability to sense – even see – vitality and she had gotten very important information on this new era of cultivation. Nothing was tying her to this store any longer.
Aloe provided a random excuse and thanked the woman for her contributions before pushing Xochipilli out of the shop alongside her. She didn't want to let anyone see her hyperventilate as it was starting to become more difficult to breathe and speak.
The temptation to switch to recovery was immense, but between the fact that doing so would alter her body shape therefore making a mess of her dress, and that recovery didn't do anything to mitigate mental fatigue, Aloe had to contempt herself with fresh air.
Which did a surprisingly good job of calming her down.
Xochipilli had been right, the air in that shop had been tough on the body. Well, he hadn't said those words, but his body language made the child an open book.
"What about going to that café we saw?" Aloe offered, even though she was in more need of a break than the child.
"Yesh!" His accent was as obvious as her enthusiasm.
She patted him as a reward. Ah, what would I do without this child? The vegetable woman didn't want to think about it. She already knew the answer. She already knew she was laying all her weight on the child even if he wasn't aware of it himself. It wasn't the answer to her problems, it wasn't even a good coping mechanism. But that didn't stop her from continuing to use the child for her benefit.
For she knew how much of a broken mess she was.
Comments
Zachary Patterson
Thank you for the chapter!
The3rd
😭 🫡
The3rd
Infinite sweets and goodness are here 🍨🍦🍪💖🍫🍬🍭🍮🍯🍰🍩🎂♾️
Epsilon Twilight
Well, we are 20 chapters ahead of the other sites now, so we are back to single chapter updates.
