—Present Moment—

  Kai listened to Chen Gong’s stumbling, blue-dusted explanation with a growing sense of surreal dread. As the former administrator finished his tale, Kai slowly brought his hand up and pinched the ridge of his nose, a feeble attempt to stave off the headache pounding behind his eyes.

  “So, let me get this straight,” Kai began, his voice dangerously calm, each word measured. “You took a alchemical cauldron you’ve never used before. You filled it with water, dumped in a basket of… things… and then decided to modify the incredibly powerful and complex formation array carved into the floor—an array you don’t understand—with paint. And the result of this… this symphony of terrible decisions is the blue geyser that is currently painting the sky. Is that an accurate summary?”

  Chen Gong, now looking less like a scholar and more like a failed art project, shrunk under the weight of Kai’s flat, unimpressed gaze. He wrung his blue-stained hands. “Um, the ingredients were not random, master Kai. They were precisely measured according to the manual! But… yes. That is essentially what happened.”

  Kai just shook his head in utter disbelief. He might have expected this brand of reckless, curiosity-fueled disaster from Lu Bu or Zhang Liao. They were children, their judgment still tempered by youthful impulsivity. But Chen Gong? He was a grown man. A former bureaucrat. He was supposed to be the cautious one, the one who understood procedure, risk assessment, and the dire consequences of unauthorized alterations. It was a catastrophic failure of the very judgment Kai relied on. It seemed Chen Gong’s desperate, misguided desire to prove himself and his twisted devotion to finding "deeper lessons" had overridden every ounce of his common sense.

  Lulu, who had been watching Kai’s expression with clinical detachment, gave a sharp, knowing nod. “You thought so, too,” she stated, voicing his internal monologue. She then turned her formidable glare onto Chen Gong. “Gong, I held you to a higher standard. You are studious. You are meticulous. So, when you memorized that alchemical primer, did you perhaps skip the introductory chapter? The one that is written in bold, capital letters in virtually every alchemical cultivation text ever penned: ‘Thou shalt not attempt alchemical synthesis without the direct supervision of a seasoned alchemist’? Or did you simply assume that rule, like all others, was merely a suggestion designed to test your initiative?” Her voice was like ice. “We have no seasoned alchemist. Therefore, you were playing with forces you cannot comprehend, using a manual you only half-understood.”

  Kai finally found his voice again, the calm giving way to a low thrum of genuine anger and concern. “Alchemy is the least of our problems right now, Lulu. I’m far more worried about the array he modified. I don’t know much about alchemy, but I know a little about formations. The arrays in this city… they aren’t normal. They were conjured by Kuro. His power is on a level we can’t even fathom. You didn’t just risk a failed elixir. Careless modification could unleash uncontrollable energy. You could have blown the pavilion and yourselves up.”

  The blood drained from the faces of all three disciples, their blue tint taking on a sickly, pale hue. The true gravity of their actions, previously masked by the absurdity of their appearance, came crashing down. This wasn’t a simple scolding for making a smell; it was a brush with an oblivion they had been too naive to even conceive.

  Lu Bu and Zhang Liao, who had followed Chen Gong’s lead with unwavering trust, now slowly turned to face him. Their expressions shifted from shared fear to pure, unadulterated betrayal. Lu Bu’s hands, still stained blue, clenched into massive fists at his sides.

  “You said it was safe,” Zhang Liao whispered, his voice trembling with a mix of fear and fury. “You said the worst that could happen was… sludge.”

  “You said it would make training easier,” Lu Bu growled, the simple statement carrying the weight of a profound breach of trust.

  Under the combined weight of Kai’s disappointment, Lulu’s scorn, and the furious glares of his fellow disciples, Chen Gong finally, truly understood the magnitude of his folly. He had not been innovative. He had been arrogant. And he had almost gotten them all killed.

  Kai let out a weary sigh, the kind that seemed to carry the weight of the entire mountain. He turned to Lulu, his sole repository of seemingly infinite knowledge, his expression a mixture of hope and desperation.

  “Lulu, do you have any idea what’s actually happening in there? With the array? With the cauldron?” he asked, gesturing vaguely toward the still-billowing plume of cerulean smoke.

  Lulu’s brow was furrowed in intense concentration, her eyes distant as she scrolled through the vast mental archives within her mind. “In terms of the array itself, the foundational principles are stable. Kuro’s work is… perfection. It should have contained the reaction or safely dissipated the energy. Chen Gong’s modifications were crude, but they shouldn’t have been enough to cause a catastrophic failure of the formation itself. But the cauldron… the reaction within it… and this smoke…” She shook her head slightly, her focus turning inward. “I have no definitive answer. The variables are numerous and poorly documented.”

  Kai stared at her, a flicker of disbelief in his eyes. “You have no idea? Lulu, you have tens of thousands of manuals in your head. Chen Gong got this entire disastrous idea from a text you transcribed. There must be something in there that explains what this blue nightmare is?”

  “Kai,” Lulu said, her voice taking on a sharp, lecturing tone she used when explaining a fundamental concept he’d missed. “There is a profound difference between memorizing information and understanding its practical application. I am a librarian, not a practitioner. I can recite every alchemical text from the Celestial Crucible Compendium to Zu Long’s primer backwards and forwards, but that does not mean I know how the principles within them interact under real-world conditions. My mind is a vast library. It takes time to cross-reference and recall specific, obscure data, especially when the query is ‘unidentified azure vapor resulting from a botched beginner recipe amplified by a tampered formation.’”

  She closed her eyes, pressing her fingers to her temples. “Right now, I am running through every toxicology index, every recorded alchemical mishap, every known reactive agent that produces a blue byproduct. It is… a process.”

  Kai’s face fell. “So… you don’t know if it’s poisonous?”

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  At the word “poisonous,” the three blue disciples, who had been trying to make themselves as small as possible, immediately began frantically patting themselves down and taking experimental, shallow breaths as if checking for lung failure. Their earlier fear of punishment was instantly eclipsed by the primal fear of a painful, chemical death.

  “I’m not sure of that either.” Lulu stated, her eyes still closed in concentration.

  She opened her eyes and fixed Kai with a look that was utterly serious. “Alchemy is not theory. It is the messy marriage of matter and energy. They could have easily, through their ignorance, created an entirely new, unstable, and toxic compound never before recorded. A footnote in a future manual warning against the arrogance of novices.” She paused, letting the terrifying possibility hang in the air between them. “I feel I must reiterate: I am not an alchemist. I am merely telling you what the books say. And right now, the books are struggling."

  As Kai opened his mouth to ask Lulu another frantic question, a familiar, slurred voice cut through the tension like a rusty saw.

  “Whoa there! What in the blazin’ hells is goin’ on?”

  Everyone turned to see Gin staggering toward them, his gait an unsteady weave that somehow never quite ended with him on the ground. He held a small, sloshing oak cask tucked under one arm like a cherished, if inebriated, child.

  Lulu let out a sigh so heavy it could have anchored a ship. “Oh, look who finally decided to grace us with his presence,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Was the giant, sky-darkening plume of potentially toxic blue smoke not a compelling enough invitation?”

  Gin waved a dismissive hand, nearly losing his balance in the process. “Ah, give a man a break, will ya? I was busy. Artist at work.” He hefted the cask, giving it an affectionate pat. “Only came out ‘cause I need the distiller in the alchemy pavilion for this new brew. A potential masterstroke, if I do say so m’self. Then I saw the… well, the blue.” He squinted at the still-billowing smoke. “So, anyone gonna explain why our fancy new workshop is coughin’ up a lake?”

  “Chen Gong,” Lulu said, her tone leaving no room for argument. “Tell Gin what you just told us. The abbreviated version, preferably.”

  As Chen Gong, his face a mask of blue-stained shame, began to stammer through his confession once more, Kai tuned them out. His focus returned to the pavilion, his mind racing through their options.

  Obviously, we need to monitor the three of them, he thought, glancing at the azure disciples. Make sure their meridians are not poisoned. But the smoke… how do we stop it? Going in blind was suicide; if the fumes were toxic, sending anyone in would just be adding to the casualty list. And even if they could withstand it, none of them possessed the first clue how to halt an alchemical reaction gone this catastrophically wrong.

  We’ll just have to wait for it to burn itself out, he concluded with a sinking feeling. But a second, more terrifying thought followed. But if that array is as efficient as I think it is—if Kuro designed it to maximize heat conversion—it might not burn out easily. It could go for days, flooding the entire caldera with this stuff…

  He was so lost in this spiral of dread that he barely registered Chen Gong finishing his story.

  Gin listened to the tale of misguided ambition with a surprisingly neutral expression, occasionally taking a thoughtful swig from a gourd at his hip. When Chen Gong was done, Gin simply nodded, a slow, deliberate motion. “Right. Got it.”

  He carefully set his precious cask of brew down on a clean patch of grass. Then, with a startling moment of sobriety in his movements, he pulled a relatively clean—if stained—cloth from his pocket, spat something on it, and tied it around his nose and mouth. Without a single word of explanation, he turned and walked straight toward the billowing entrance of the pavilion.

  “Gin, wait—!” Kai started.

  “You fool, don’t—!” Lulu cried out simultaneously.

  But it was too late. He disappeared into the thick, churning blue gloom without a backward glance.

  A tense silence fell over the group, broken only by the ominous hiss from the pavilion. Seconds stretched into a minute. Kai was preparing to do something desperately heroic and stupid himself when, abruptly, the great plume of smoke shuddered and ceased. The hissing stopped, replaced by an unsettling quiet.

  A moment later, Gin emerged, blinking in the sunlight. He was coated from head to toe in the same fine blue powder as the disciples, making him look like a drowned river spirit. He pulled the rag from his face and coughed, a cloud of blue dust puffing from his lips.

  “Phew. It’s an absolute mess in there,” he announced, as if he’d just cleaned out a dusty closet. “Blue gunk everywhere. But nothing is broken. The cauldron’s fine, not a scratch. The array is stable, too… ‘cept for that ridiculous chicken-scratch painted all over it.” He pointed a blue finger at Chen Gong. “That abomination will have to be scrubbed off with vinegar and strong spirit before you can so much as warm a cup of tea in that thing, or it’ll just overheat again.”

  Both Kai and Lulu could only stare, their mouths agape. The man they’d written off as a useless drunk had just nonchalantly waltzed into a toxic disaster zone and fixed in minutes what they had assumed would be a days-long catastrophe.

  “W-what did you just do?” Lulu stammered, her eyes wide as they scanned Gin from head to toe, as if seeing him for the first time.

  Gin shrugged, as if he’d merely fixed a wobbly table leg and not single-handedly quelled a spiritual catastrophe. He pulled his gourd from his hip and took a long, bracing swig, the familiar action seeming to anchor him back into his well-known persona.

  “Well, I was checkin’ out the alchemy equipment earlier, long before these geniuses decided to redecorate the place in blue,” he began, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “The big boy in there? That’s a ‘Celestial Retort’ model, top-of-the-line craftsmanship from the Twirling Fumes sect. A bunch of perfectionists, but damn, they know their metal. Part of the Gilded Lotus, so you know it’s the good stuff. Their cauldrons all have an emergency shut-off function for precisely this kind of… enthusiastic amateur hour.” He gestured vaguely at the three blue disciples. “There’s a specific sequence you tap on the jade inlays near the base. Did that, and the whole reaction just… shuts down. Simple.”

  Kai stepped forward, his brow furrowed not in anger, but in genuine concern. “But Gin, we didn’t know if that smoke was poisonous. You just walked right into it. You could have been hurt.”

  Gin let out a short, dismissive bark of laughter that turned into a dusty cough. “Poisonous? Nah. Not a chance.” He ticked the ingredients off on his blue-stained fingers. “Mountain Thistle, Sun-Drop Roots, Silver-Moss… it's basic stuff. The worst that combo can do is make a foul smell and irritate your lungs if you breathe enough of it. The blue color? That’s just the Silver-Moss reacting with the heat. The real problem was the sheer volume of smoke caused by impure water.”

  “But I put pure well water in there!” Zhang Liao piped up, his voice small and defensive. “Just like Chen Gong said to!”

  Gin turned his bleary gaze on the boy, and for a moment, he looked less like a drunk and more like a disappointed master artisan. “Kid, that well water might be fine for drinking, but for alchemy? It’s filthy. Full of minerals, spirit residues, and who knows what else. You need water that’s been distilled at least nine times to be considered ‘pure’ enough for a delicate reaction like this. You toss regular water into a cauldron that is hot, all those impurities create smoke instantly.”

  As Gin delivered his impromptu lecture with an air of casual authority, a single, unified thought echoed through the minds of everyone present—Kai, Lulu, and the three disciples alike:

  Who are you, and what have you done with Gin?

  They stared at the blue-dusted man, their minds struggling to reconcile the crude, stumbling drunk they knew with the figure before them who spoke with the effortless expertise of a seasoned alchemist. The disconnect was so profound, so utterly bizarre, that for a long moment, no one could muster a single word, capable only of gaping at the walking, talking, and brilliantly knowledgeable contradiction in front of them.