For a conceptual deity, divine power was bound to that very concept.
Theoretically, if a conceptual god governed nothingness, their might would be monstrous beyond belief, perhaps even enough to go toe-to-toe with Ao.
After all, the universe would ultimately march toward void and oblivion, and not even the gods could escape eventual doom.
The same held true for Ao; one day, he would fade alongside the cosmos he had forged. Yet that moment would be postponed almost indefinitely, across an expanse of time so vast that it might outstrip the concept of time itself.
Of course, there were also those who believed Ao was eternal and imperishable, beyond any possibility of falling into nothingness.
Returning to the matter at hand, alchemy was by no means an all-encompassing concept; it was merely an umbrella term for a multitude of techniques.
To put it bluntly, even if every alchemist in the world were to vanish overnight, it would hardly shake the foundations of reality. When the City of Alchemy fell, the other nations experienced minor unrest at best—the world was nowhere close to grinding to a halt.
Therefore, even at the peak of the City of Alchemy's glory, this god had at most been an intermediate deity.
And so, when the catastrophe in the City of Alchemy caused people everywhere to subconsciously reject the craft, the God of Alchemy took a devastating blow, plunging straight down to the status of a lesser deity.
Anbaixiu had toiled for so long only to help the god recover a sliver of power—just enough to turn the tables on a weakened Lolth the Spider Queen.
Yet now, the God of Alchemy was telling him that alchemy stood on the verge of a breakthrough. Wouldn't that mean the god's power would surge as well?
That was brilliant news; Anbaixiu was counting on his mentor to back him up.
"Handing over the technical data is no problem at all, but I just happened to fly a bit faster than usual. Is it really that important?" Anbaixiu asked curiously.
When it came to the divine, all Anbaixiu knew came from what was written in old tomes—most of which amounted to petty squabbles over which god feuded with whom, or who slept with whom. He had rarely encountered books that actually explained what divine power and true godhood entailed.
"You might not grasp the significance, but just now your speed broke through a critical threshold," the God of Alchemy said in all earnestness. "This is monumental—a feat never before achieved by a mortal."
"Nobody's ever tried breaking the sound barrier?"
Anbaixiu was somewhat taken aback. With this world's long history and myriad supernatural powers, had no one ever seriously studied flight?
The God of Alchemy countered, "With spatial teleportation so convenient, who would bother deeply researching a mode of flight weighed down by so many constraints? For everyday needs, the Fly spell is more than enough."
That actually made sense. Once automobiles were invented, nobody kept researching horse carriages.
In fact, if cars had come before horse carriages, the carriage might never have been invented at all.
In Anbaixiu's previous world, technological development didn't leap forward quite like that, but in a world of magic and extraordinary powers, it certainly did.
With teleportation available, who would choose long-distance flight?
"If teleportation already exists, what's the point of me flying fast?" Anbaixiu asked.
The God of Alchemy grew slightly animated. "No, the point isn't merely that you broke the sound barrier; it's that through your methods, you achieved something no mortal ever had before. And among those methods, alchemy played a massive role. In doing so, you have expanded alchemy to an entirely new height."
Anbaixiu roughly understood. By demonstrating that alchemy could reach such an extreme, he had broadened the scope of the concept itself—which was equivalent to expanding the God of Alchemy's divine portfolio.
The God of Alchemy sighed with emotion. "Alchemy has undergone two pivotal transformations. The first occurred when bored wizards began experimenting with magical materials—that was when alchemy was born. Back then, however, it was merely a pastime for mages to idle away their hours, nowhere near substantial enough to support a divine portfolio. The second occurred when alchemy shifted from a wizard's parlor trick into a true academic discipline, allowing even those without magical aptitude to participate and reshape the world with their discoveries. Only then did the concept of alchemy possess enough weight to sustain a deity, and that was when I became the God of Alchemy."
Anbaixiu hadn't particularly wanted to dwell on this topic. The old man had abandoned him to ascend to godhood on his own, and though their relationship had thawed considerably, a thorn still lingered in Anbaixiu's heart.
Setting aside how the old man had ascended in the first place, why hadn't he reached out to lend a helping hand afterward?
If the god had bestowed even the slightest boon, Anbaixiu wouldn't have lived such a miserable existence.
To outsiders, a clumsy alchemical apprentice rising to become a legend sounded like the glorious arc of a chosen protagonist. But only Anbaixiu knew the sheer agony he had endured over these past centuries.
His life had been nothing like the smooth sailing of those storied heroes. He had been captured and subjected to brutal torture more times than he cared to remember, and his limbs had been hacked off so often that not a single piece of his original body remained. He had watched companions die by the hundreds, yet for most of those tragedies he could do nothing but flee in terror, knowing that a moment's hesitation would cost his own life. As for going bankrupt, he had suffered through it at least ten times.
His life had been riddled with hardships, and memories worth calling happy were few and far between.
Perhaps that was why Anbaixiu had ultimately chosen to become a lich. Being a lich shielded him from the brunt of negative emotions, keeping him from being tormented by those agonizing memories every time he closed his eyes.
If the God of Alchemy had been willing to offer him aid, perhaps more than half of those centuries of suffering could have been spared.
Yet the old man had done absolutely nothing. Just thinking about it made Anbaixiu's blood boil.
Now that the old man had brought up his ascension, Anbaixiu couldn't hold back any longer; he wanted straight answers. "Just how did you become a god back then?" he asked.
"You want to know? I'm afraid it'll only make you angry," the God of Alchemy replied.
Anbaixiu sneered. "I'm a lich. Aside from losing money, there's virtually nothing left that can make me angry."
"Very well, since you insist, I'll start with the part that'll sting the most. Do you know how I became a god? It was because of you. The second turning point of alchemy—the one that allowed people with negligible magical talent to change the world through the craft—was entirely your doing."
Anbaixiu stared blankly, utterly baffled.
"I was that impressive? How come I never knew?"
Anbaixiu wasn't being modest; he knew his own alchemical abilities all too well. He had never formulated any groundbreaking new theories, mostly just refining what predecessors had already built. In other words, he wasn't a visionary who went from zero to one; he merely took things from one to ten.
He might have been more capable than the average practitioner, but he knew there was an insurmountable chasm between himself and true genius.
The sole domain where he possessed supreme confidence was the study of souls. In that realm, he truly stood unmatched beneath the gods.
The God of Alchemy asked, "Didn't you once redesign standard alchemical equipment? Constant-pressure dropping funnels, Dean-Stark traps, pipettes, and the like?"
Anbaixiu nodded. Having worked in laboratories in his previous life, he had found many of this world's alchemical instruments awkward to use, so he had modified them. Such things were easy enough to recreate once someone knew how they functioned; they posed little technical difficulty beyond precision manufacturing.
"What does that have to do with your ascension? Instruments with those functions existed long before I improved them," Anbaixiu said.
"No, it's completely different. Before that, alchemy was merely a toy for wizards. Every tool was invented by a different person and designed purely around their personal habits, meaning nothing fit together, and using them was a nightmare.
"Your improvements integrated all the common instruments into a single unified system. Because your set of tools gained widespread adoption, alchemy acquired its very first standardized toolkit. It was upon that foundation that a chaotic, fragmented discipline began to coalesce into a cohesive framework. Recording alchemical formulas became vastly simpler as well; in the past, every vessel had a different shape without standardized nomenclature, and written formulas were utterly unintelligible without accompanying diagrams.
"It was precisely this highly efficient, standardized apparatus that enabled alchemy to flourish. As countless new formulas emerged, the concept of alchemy continuously expanded until it grew vast enough to elevate me to godhood."
As Anbaixiu listened, something began to feel deeply wrong. He quickly interjected, "Wait, hold on! I was the one who invented those instruments. Why the hell was it you who became a god? By all rights, it should have been me!"
The God of Alchemy threw his hands up helplessly. "Whose fault is that? You named the entire set after me and told everyone I was the one who taught you!"
"I only did that to avoid trouble! I had to pretend I had a ridiculously powerful mentor!" Anbaixiu snapped in outrage.
Surviving in the world as a young nobody with zero backing was brutally difficult. Anbaixiu had needed to fabricate a mighty wizard-alchemist as his master.
The equipment had indeed been remarkably practical. When he sold the rights to earn his first pot of gold, terrified of being robbed or silenced, he had invented an almighty legendary mage as his teacher. People hadn't known whether Anbaixiu was telling the truth, but the apparatus was so brilliantly designed that no one believed a mere youth could have devised it on his own.
And so, Anbaixiu had secured his first fortune.
Who could have guessed that the price would be forfeiting his own ascension to godhood?
The God of Alchemy looked thoroughly innocent. "I was already dead as a doornail back then, my soul rotting in Hell and traded as currency among devils. Then this immense divine power suddenly resurrected me, and I became the God of Alchemy."
Anbaixiu fumed, "Then why didn't you come back to find me?! You could have at least tossed me a few scraps! Did you know my first big fortune got stolen just days later?!"
"I honestly had no idea," the God of Alchemy sighed. "Ascending to godhood is no simple task. Even though the concept of alchemy made me a deity, I was still stuck in Hell, and getting out wasn't easy. It took me countless years to escape, and afterward I had to undergo Ao's trials. I don't even know how long it took before I finally earned His recognition and was formally established as a god. After that, I did intend to come back and look for you, but I couldn't find you!"
Anbaixiu shouted, "How could you not find me? You're a god!"
The God of Alchemy shouted back even louder, "Gods aren't omniscient or omnipotent! The portfolio of alchemy doesn't grant people-finding powers! By the time I returned to where we used to live, you had vanished without a trace! You weren't a devotee of any god, either—who else can you blame for being faithless? If you'd worshiped someone, I could have asked them for help tracking you down! Who on earth would have guessed you'd cycle through dozens of fake names over your lifetime?! If you hadn't gotten dragged into the mess with the City of Alchemy, I still wouldn't have found you—I assumed you had died and ended up in Hell centuries ago!"
The God of Alchemy's words came straight from the heart. He had even crafted an artifact mirror specifically to search for Anbaixiu, only to find that his student had already become a lich by the time he finally tracked him down.
Anbaixiu was left momentarily speechless. He had only swapped aliases because using the same name for too long brought old enemies knocking on his door—he couldn't be blamed for that!
"No, we're not just letting this slide. You still owe me!"
Even if it had all been a misunderstanding, Anbaixiu simply couldn't swallow the indignation.
The God of Alchemy waved dismissively. "Fine, fine, I owe you. Here, take them—all four divine portfolios are yours. If you want, assimilate them right now and become a god, and then the two of us, master and apprentice, can die together. Let me make this clear upfront: I can't survive an onslaught from those four goddesses, and you definitely won't either. Shar alone could squash you like a bug!"
Clutching the four small boxes tightly, Anbaixiu said with resolute conviction, "I don't care—you're going to help me solve this. I'm going to achieve godhood, and I'm taking back what was rightfully mine!"
Chapter 283