Anbaixiu returned from the Silvermoon High Court to his underground alchemy workshop.
Although the trade had fallen through, the trip had not been an entire waste. He had sold what he knew about Arthur Ryan to Heji Stone, making a modest haul of several million gold coins.
Out of consideration for the Elegy Poetry Society, he had given a discount to one of their own; had it been an outsider, he would have demanded hundreds of millions.
Upon learning the truth about the Dragon Blood Curse, the dwarven vampire had howled with excitement for several minutes straight, thrashing about like an unruly brat. Right after that, Heji Stone had decisively kicked Anbaixiu out, announcing that he would isolate himself for the next few years to write an epic history that would leave his name immortalized in the annals of time.
Anbaixiu was naturally delighted by such a grand ambition. He made sure to add that he wanted a fifty-fifty split of the royalties, and that his name had to be credited as second author.
Heji Stone attempted to counter with the excuse that desert folks cared nothing for copyright, but Anbaixiu promptly brought out another tactic.
"If you won't give me the royalties and credit, I'll just sell the secret to other historians. I'm sure they'd be more than thrilled to give me what I want."
Heji Stone surrendered without further protest. Compared to the dream of securing a place in history, a pittance of royalties and a co-author's credit was nothing—he would simply treat it as hush money for the lich.
Only then did Anbaixiu return satisfied to his alchemy factory.
A quick inspection showed that everything was proceeding without a hitch.
Rose of Decay had already begun delivering the first shipments of myconid spore powder, and production of the sunscreen was underway. Because it was a straightforward alchemical product, it was finished in a single pass without needing secondary refinement.
With over a thousand bottles of sunscreen already stockpiled, Anbaixiu instructed Harvey to deliver them to distributors on the surface in preparation for their market debut.
Harvey asked curiously, "Teacher, how much are we pricing these at?"
Sunscreen currently on the market went for roughly ten gold coins a bottle—an exorbitant sum that only nobles could afford. The lotion had to be applied daily, and a single bottle lasted half a month at most. How could an ordinary household ever bear such an expense?
The bottleneck had always been the rarity of myconid spore powder, which kept production costs sky-high.
Anbaixiu, however, intended to break open the mass market so that everyday people could afford it. He set the price straight at five silver coins.
With one gold coin exchanging for a hundred silver coins, Anbaixiu's pricing single-handedly transformed sunscreen from a luxury good into an everyday staple. While five silver was not dirt cheap, it fell within the range of an ordinary person treating themselves to a decent meal—well within reach for most.
On top of that, Anbaixiu planned to roll out larger bottles that would last a full month, offering even greater value.
"Five silvers a bottle. And if they chant 'Praise the God of Alchemy' at checkout, give them another twenty percent off."
"Selling it that cheap... I'm afraid people might suspect it's counterfeit or shoddy," Harvey pointed out.
Harvey was no naive lad. Having lived among common folk, he was thoroughly familiar with the ways of the market.
They were not merely launching a new product; they were going head-to-head with the established brand. Their competitors would stoop to every conceivable low against a new rival.
With such a low price, rivals would surely claim it was made from defective ingredients, riddled with side effects, and would even hire fake victims to claim they had suffered horrible reactions, dragging the reputation of Anbaixiu's product through the mud.
These were commonplace tactics in commercial warfare. Those who were more ruthless might even hire local thugs to smash up storefronts.
Still, Anbaixiu's distributors were locals, so there was little need to worry on that front.
The real issue was how to ensure their sunscreen could not be smeared by competitors.
Anbaixiu chuckled. "I prepared for that long ago. Soon you'll head over to the City of Alchemy... oh, right, it should be called the Capital of Gold now. Look for another student of mine named Isabel. She is a rising star among the alchemists of today. Bring her out to the desert to brew our sunscreen right before the public's eyes. That will clear up most of the doubts. As for the rest, I will have the current President of the Alchemists' Council certify our product to prove it is of higher quality than anything our rivals make."
Upon hearing this, Harvey knew Anbaixiu had already planned everything out, and his worries vanished.
When a legendary divination wizard told you things were settled, they were settled.
Harvey was just about to leave when Anbaixiu called him back. "Wait a moment. I just thought of another method to quickly build our brand's reputation. Send a block of ice to each distributor, coat it thoroughly in our sunscreen, and tell them to place it outside their storefront under the blazing sun."
"Huh? Is our sunscreen really that effective? It can keep ice from melting?"
Anbaixiu replied, "How could that be possible? I'm telling you to work your magic so the ice doesn't melt."
Harvey was speechless.
His teacher was truly unreasonable with his assignments. How was a divination wizard supposed to cast that kind of magic?
"In any case, the task is yours. Don't expect me to micromanage everything. Use your head. If you spend all day doing nothing but rolling dice, your intellect will atrophy."
Anbaixiu was not merely trying to scare him; divination wizards truly did struggle with such tendencies.
When one placed too much faith in the Dice of Fate, one grew lazy in thinking, eventually degrading into a useless drifter tossed about by the tides.
Harvey thought to himself that he hardly rolled the dice that often, but with his teacher putting it that way, he could only resign himself to his fate.
*How am I supposed to keep ice from melting?* Harvey pondered as he walked away.
Having dispatched his student to work, Anbaixiu turned to his own tasks.
The alchemy factory required little supervision; everything proceeded in an orderly fashion.
What occupied Anbaixiu now was the mass reproduction of mercury soul puppets. Spurred on by Anbaixiu, Rose of Decay had grown increasingly eager to strike at Ryan. She had begun pressuring Anbaixiu to ready an army of mercury soul puppets, expending vast fortunes to teleport colossal stockpiles of ore over to him.
Since he had taken the money, Anbaixiu could hardly sit idle. He sectioned off an area within the underground city dedicated solely to receiving ore and cultivating the mercury soul puppets.
Raising them was simple enough. Mercury soul puppets consumed metal without producing any waste, so all he needed to do was place the puppets and ore together, and the creatures would split and reproduce automatically.
With the site arranged, he would only need to check in periodically.
Once that was settled, Anbaixiu returned to his laboratory to commence a new round of experiments.
This time, however, what lay before him was no longer the skeletal remains of various creatures, but a pile of mechanical parts of diverse models and functions, along with a modest selection of weapons and equipment—the raw materials for today's work.
With swift assembly, a palm-sized drone materialized before his eyes. He then retrieved the artifact gold coin of the God of Alchemy, transmuted the drone into a corpse-aligned construct, fabricated a Simulated Soul, and stuffed it inside.
The drone's propellers spun rapidly, lifting it into the air.
"Forward, back, left, right, ascend, descend..." Anbaixiu continuously issued commands, and the little contraption executed every task flawlessly.
Setting the drone aside, Anbaixiu picked up a dagger and similarly transmuted it into a corpse-aligned object.
Next, he crafted another Simulated Soul and placed it into the dagger.
Moments later, the dagger hovered into the air as well, weaving up and down at Anbaixiu's command with remarkable agility.
This was what was commonly known as a flying weapon. In many ancient castles, when a master died, their spirit would sometimes latch onto weapons or armor they had cherished in life, transforming into an unusual sort of undead.
A possessed weapon capable of levitating and attacking on its own was called a flying weapon, while possessed armor was typically referred to as hollow armor or living armor.
The underlying principle was the same: departed souls channeling dark magic to manipulate metal armaments.
Such occurrences were exceedingly rare, however, because metal was notoriously difficult for spirits to inhabit, achievable only by exceptionally powerful undead.
Yet with his legendary boon capable of converting attributes, forging such flying weapons was child's play for Anbaixiu.
"A Simulated Soul imprinted with Fly can indeed turn a dagger into a flying sword. The speed is decent, and its agility far surpasses the drone's. But its precision is noticeably worse, and hovering in place is quite difficult..."
Anbaixiu continued testing, fashioning an assortment of uniquely shaped 'undead' to categorize and compare.
Mechanical undead boasted precise control and relatively low soul costs, but their agility was constrained by their rigid mechanical bodies. Their movements were stiff and predetermined, making them easy to anticipate.
Flying weapons and hollow armor, on the other hand, relied entirely on undead craftsmanship. Every unit moved with uncanny fluidity, and the flight paths of the swords and daggers were unrestricted by their physical shape.
If an undead drone were pitted against a flying dagger, the drone would undoubtedly lose.
However, these souls had to be imprinted with Fly at the very least, driving the cost of soul crafting many times higher than that of mechanical constructs.
This was doubly true for hollow armor. If it were to move with the freedom of a living person, the soul cost was even steeper, roughly equivalent to creating a high-tier undead.
Each had its strengths and weaknesses. Anbaixiu needed to continually fine-tune them to find the battlefields best suited to their capabilities.
"The drones can be sold to adventurers. They're willing to party with necromancers, so an undead drone to scout and track for them should sell well if the price is right. As for these flying weapons and hollow armor, they can be disguised as genuine antiques and sold to collectors."
Flying weapons and hollow armor were typically forged only through centuries of spiritual possession, so these pieces certainly qualified as antiques. Anbaixiu's counterfeiting was so seamless that no expert could dispute their authenticity.
"Both lines of products will receive a twenty percent discount for praising the God of Alchemy. That way, Teacher, your power should recover before long."
Anbaixiu's frantic preparations were all in anticipation of the impending chaos.
The fracture of Ryan was drawing near, and a world war was bound to erupt. Once the contest between the Demonic Dragon and Ryan reached its conclusion, the non-interference pact among deities would be shattered, and divine influence would spill over into the mortal realm on an unprecedented scale.
Anbaixiu had to prepare well in advance.
These novel undead units were not merely merchandise; they were his future instruments of war.
If these tiny, flying contraptions were loaded with explosive alchemical potions and dropped directly onto enemy heads... heh. It was time for his foes to learn what modern warfare truly meant.
Chapter 276