Anbaixiu had lived three completely different lives.
In his first life, he had been a science student who squeaked by with a generic degree, drifting through life with vague confusion, having buried his ambitions beneath cheap entertainment. Only when facing death did he realize that the memories flashing across his mind were utterly inconsequential.
Then heaven granted him another chance, sending him across realms to this chaotic yet thrilling otherworld. Full of youthful arrogance, he had fancied himself the destined protagonist—reaching Legendary within three years and ascending to godhood within ten would be child's play. From his very first days as an adventurer, Anbaixiu had aimed for greatness, only to discover that even after achieving the Legendary realm, he was nothing more than a second-rate hack.
People always said a person only truly grew up when they realized they were not the center of the world.
It had been the same for Anbaixiu. When he found himself decrepit with age, still just a mediocre Legendary mage who couldn't even afford an Elixir of Youth to prolong his life, he finally understood that he was merely one slightly lucky soul among the vast multitude of mortals; being a transmigrator didn't make him special at all.
So what if he was a Legendary mage? He was still dead broke. He had simply decided to stop being human.
Reincarnating as a lich wasn't so bad after all.
Thanks to having no heartbeat and a brain that had virtually ceased operating, Anbaixiu felt only a slight twinge of detachment as he looked at his former self in the mirror. Swapping his dark, sinister robes for ordinary clothes, he prepared to leave the castle on a shopping trip.
Passing by another laboratory, he noticed Isabel inside brewing a concoction.
Basilisk Oil—a potion capable of curing petrification. With this potion as the primary ingredient, combined with a few inexpensive additives, it made an effective rock-softening agent. Once diluted with water, it was perfect for clearing uncultivated land.
However, brewing Basilisk Oil was no small challenge for an alchemy apprentice.
Worried that Isabel might waste too many ingredients, Anbaixiu paused and watched for a moment. Unable to hold back, he spoke up: "Your fundamentals are decent, but your flame temperature is wrong. The flask is positioned too low; an insufficient reaction temperature leads to an incomplete reaction. The resulting potion won't just be poor quality, you'll also be squandering materials. The outer cone of the flame is the hottest—did your master never teach you something so basic?"
Startled, Isabel spun around with a look of surprise to see an unfamiliar youth standing at the laboratory doorway.
"You..." Isabel was about to ask if he was one of the newly recruited freemen, but quickly caught herself and asked excitedly, "You understand alchemy too? What's an 'outer cone'? In my master's laboratory, we always worked with fixed apparatuses. I've never seen equipment that could be freely adjusted..."
Anbaixiu chuckled disdainfully. "The usual tricks to guard trade secrets—always terrified their apprentices might actually learn something."
Many alchemists valued their craft more than their lives and refused to teach even foundational principles. Custom-built apparatuses were their simplest and most effective safeguard.
Fixed height, fixed flame temperature, fixed ingredient ratios... Because everything was prefabricated, apprentices needed only to follow rigid, idiot-proof procedures. The success rate for brewing specific potions was high, but the fewer failures they experienced, the less they actually learned.
They were just like the assembly-line workers from Anbaixiu's previous life, performing simple, repetitive tasks while learning virtually no real technical skills. Removed from those tailor-made fixtures, many apprentices could not brew even the most basic potions.
That Isabel could produce a Tranquility Potion in an unfamiliar laboratory already proved her to be a remarkably capable alchemy apprentice.
"Alchemy isn't just mindlessly following a recipe," Anbaixiu said. "Ambient temperature, humidity, and even air circulation are vital. Every step recorded in your notes represents an underlying reaction principle. If you don't grasp those, you'll remain an apprentice for the rest of your life."
Anbaixiu stepped into the laboratory, readjusted the height of the flask, tweaked a few ingredient proportions, and smoothly produced a bottle of Basilisk Oil of virtually flawless quality.
Watching his effortless movements, Isabel stared in wide-eyed admiration. The dark-haired youth before her seemed a few years younger than she was, yet his understanding of alchemy far surpassed her own. Even his explanations were clearer and easier to understand than her master's.
Isabel wanted to ask more, or at least learn the youth's name, but by the time she set down the bottle of Basilisk Oil and turned around, he was already gone. Isabel froze, a sudden chill creeping across her scalp.
In this lich's castle... could it be haunted?
A story instantly took shape in her mind: a brilliant young alchemist who had died in the castle, his lingering spirit appearing whenever someone performed alchemy experiments. The more she thought about it, the more terrified she became, cold sweat drenching her back. Every corner of this castle truly reeked of horror.
Isabel could only hope Lord Lich had been telling the truth—that once the land was cleared, they would be allowed to move out of the castle and build houses elsewhere.
Wearing the face of a youth, Anbaixiu walked out of the castle, cast a Fly spell on himself, and soared into the sky.
After flying for roughly half an hour and covering fifty or sixty kilometers, Anbaixiu finally caught sight of that strangely abstract city—Alchemia, the City of Alchemy.
The city stood upon a vast plain, its towering stone outer walls inlaid with extensive magical metals that traced out tens of thousands of alchemical runes. Rumor had it that the entire city was a colossal alchemical creation, capable of clanking into motion and transforming into a mechanical golem titan if the need arose.
That was almost certainly boasting. If the entire city ever transformed into a mechanical titan, half the inhabitants would be crushed to death before an enemy even attacked.
Still, those runes unquestionably harbored immense power; after all, prior to the economic crisis, Alchemia had been hailed as the wealthiest city on the continent.
The reason the city was described as abstract had nothing to do with the runes on its walls. Rather, when viewed from the sky, seven magnificent alchemical towers stood arranged in a straight line within the city. These towers appeared to be built from gemstones of every color, gleaming under the sunlight with an utterly—blinding glare.
The seven towers varied in height, color, and architectural style, united only by the same twisted, hideous aesthetic. Even with no artistic sensibilities to speak of, Anbaixiu found the towers deeply grotesque—or more accurately, abstractly ugly.
And Anbaixiu was far from alone in that assessment. For years running, the City of Alchemy had claimed first place in the Nine Kingdoms' Ugliest City competition, to the point where even the Alchemists' Council could no longer stomach the sight.
Yet they could not alter them, for these were a "gift" from the divine.
Long ago, the Alchemists' Council had attempted to manufacture a god, committing grave blasphemy. In response, the God of Alchemy visited punishment upon them, not only barring them from ever achieving another breakthrough in alchemy, but also sculpting these seven towers for them.
Anyone with even a modest knowledge of alchemy could recognize at a glance what each tower represented.
The tower resembling a mound of green dung looked identical to the residue left behind when brewing a healing potion at excessively high temperatures; the tower shaped like a reddish glandular polyp mimicked the flocculent coagulation formed when the ingredient ratio of a Bear's Strength potion was unbalanced... And so on. The seven towers represented seven classes of alchemical products, embodying the seven most iconic, classic results of failed experiments.
With these seven monuments to failure, the deity had firmly nailed the city of Alchemia to history's pillar of shame.
Shame, however, had nothing to do with Anbaixiu. Maintaining his human guise, he passed through the city gates in the most ordinary manner. Yet shortly after entering, Anbaixiu sensed that the City of Alchemy had undergone dramatic changes.
Chapter 9