Alchemy was more important to wizards who practiced dream magic than it was to ordinary wizards. It wasn't merely useful for meditation or transformation.
There was a type of potion called a Dream Potion. To some extent, it could be considered a specialty of dream wizards. Whether taken by the wizard themselves or given to someone else, it made the target more likely to enter a dream.
Charles's teacher had once helped someone brew a Dream Potion. Charles had watched and learned from the side. He hadn't understood it—this was a potion that required Tier Three to even begin—but he had memorized most of what his teacher said, planning to try to understand it once he was skilled enough.
"A Dream Potion?"
Sean thought it over. "If I buy a bottle of Dream Potion and drink it, will I be guaranteed to dream once I fall asleep?"
"That depends on what kind of dream you want," Charles said.
Names like "Dream Potion," with "potion" or "elixir" as a suffix, were usually just umbrella terms coined to make things easier for laymen to remember. In reality, they encompassed countless varieties, enough to fill thousands of pages of tables.
There were potions that could guarantee a dream. "Bloody Saliva," "Merman's Tear," and "Unreachable Wine," for instance, corresponded to "terrifying nightmares," "tragic tales," and "beautiful love," respectively. Put simply, they produced tailor-made dreams.
But that wasn't what Sean wanted.
If outside interference altered his dreams, then there was no point.
"Is there anything that can make someone have a natural dream?" he asked. "The kind that doesn't affect the dream's contents."
"There is, but it can't guarantee one hundred percent success," Charles replied. "That's what my teacher was brewing back then. It can only help. Whether you actually dream still depends on the casting wizard's abilities."
A natural dream was a projection of someone's inner self and thoughts. To create one artificially was tantamount to forcibly extracting sealed memories and forgotten experiences from the target's mind. It could be considered another form of "Soul Searching," and it was extremely difficult—not something a single potion could accomplish.
Sean understood. It seemed he would have to ask a specialist wizard to teach him.
"Do you know his name?"
"I don't." Charles looked troubled. "Even if I did, I couldn't tell you. We have rules in this line of work. We can't reveal anything about our clients."
"Right, I wasn't thinking," Sean said apologetically. "Forget I asked. Sorry."
"It's fine." Charles scratched his head. "I can't do much to help you with this. I can only tell you that there are wizards who practice dream magic in the Void Arts Space. You'll have to find out who they are yourself."
Sean thought of a certain Flame Crow Girl.
Elvily held a pretty high standing in the Void Arts Space. She probably had plenty of connections.
Light Servant Kate might know a wizard like that, too.
But Sean didn't rush to contact them.
He would work on increasing his magic power first.
Quill was sure to come after him at the signing event five days from now. Having Kate's protection alone wasn't enough.
Sean didn't doubt Kate's strength. If the classifications of wizards' magic power and ranks hadn't changed over the past few centuries, a Tier One wizard should have between one and three lak of magic power.
Tier Two: four to ten lak.
Tier Three: eleven to fifty lak.
Tier Four: fifty-one to one hundred lak.
Tier Five meant more than one hundred lak. Even ten Quills wouldn't stand a chance.
But that was Kate's power, not his. Unless he had no other choice, Sean wouldn't pin all his hopes on someone else. He had to become stronger himself.
"I'm heading out. Get ready to receive the delivery."
Sean said goodbye to Charles, left the Void Arts Space, and went to the post office to mail all the ingredients.
The two lived in cities not far apart, and Sean paid extra for expedited shipping. He sent the package at noon, and it reached Charles that evening.
"That's a lot!" Charles was pretty excited as he unpacked it.
This wasn't the first order he'd received, but it was the biggest. Most wizards who had just gained magic power were poor, after all. It took them ages to gather the ingredients for even one Spirit Potion. Only someone as "charming" as Sean could come up with this much at once.
Clearly, Charles still thought that Sean's materials had something to do with his face.
There was no need to be embarrassed about admitting it. Looks were a kind of personal ability, too. If Charles had Sean's looks, who would bother working hard?
This wasn't just about making money. It was about his personal safety, too.
With a big shot watching his back, he wouldn't have to keep hiding everywhere, for one thing.
Take him, for instance. Whenever he arrived in a city, he had to leave after staying for a while, just in case anyone started watching him. He had to keep moving. A peaceful, stable life? That didn't exist. He was lucky if he managed to avoid the Witch Hunters who raised Smell Crows.
Still, Charles didn't mind. He'd been this way since childhood and was used to it. Compared to before, he actually found his current life more exciting, even though he was still wandering from place to place. With a knife hanging over his head, even running felt more thrilling.
Besides, there was the Void Arts Space. He'd met many friends there whom he never could have had before. They were all online friends he'd never meet in person, but at least he wasn't as lonely as he used to be.
He liked his life now.
Unlike Sean's messy apartment, Charles's rented room was small but exceptionally tidy, especially the kitchen.
His teacher had told him that potions were meant to be consumed, making them a kind of food. Even if he was brewing one for an enemy, the entire process had to be kept clean and hygienic.
"You can poison a potion, but you can't toss filthy things like cockroaches or duck necks into it. That's the most basic courtesy an alchemist should show."
"The Scholar Era may be in the past, but the courtesy and elegance of us alchemists will never go out of style." Those were his teacher's exact words, and Charles kept them in mind at all times.
So after counting out the ingredients, he changed into clean clothes, washed his hands with medicated soap, and used the "Dust Removal Technique" to clean them a second time. Then, humming a tune, he walked into the kitchen and switched on the rice cooker and clay pot.
Time to brew!
Charles's reputation as an alchemical prodigy was well-earned. Not only was his success rate far higher than that of other alchemists at the same tier, but he could brew potions very quickly, too. Knowing Sean was in a hurry and waiting for his potions, Charles went straight through the night.
When he emerged from the kitchen in the early morning, his face was completely blackened, his hair was singed into curls, and smoke was still rising from him.
He'd accidentally blown up the pot once.
But his overall efficiency was still astonishing. Out of twenty sets of ingredients, he had made sixteen Spirit Potions.
Charles took a shower and cleaned himself up. Without even eating breakfast, he headed out to mail the potions to Sean.
He paid for expedited shipping again.
After spending the entire night brewing, he hadn't earned a cent. Instead, he was out dozens of yuan in postage and one clay pot.
Sean was surprised when the potions arrived that afternoon. This guy was unbelievably fast, he thought.
He'd planned to take a nap. Since he couldn't control his dreams for the time being, he could at least sleep more and increase the odds of dreaming by extending his sleep.
It was undeniably a clumsy method, but Sean was used to taking naps. Ever since Chris had gotten into trouble, he hadn't slept well. On top of that, the Void Arts Space took a toll on his mind, and he still had spells to practice. Sean had been exhausted almost constantly lately. He had to get some rest.
He was already prepared. He'd spent the whole morning thinking about Elvily.
And not just Elvily, but also the Void Arts Space, the Hall of Truth, and the Saintess.
As the saying went, "What you think about during the day, you dream about at night."
If he could dream, he hoped it would be about one of those things. Any of them would do.
But now that the Spirit Potion had arrived... he might as well meditate first.
To Sean, magic power took priority over everything. He dropped the crushed rust ore into the little bottle of potion. The ore didn't rust, which proved it was nontoxic, so he filtered it out with a piece of gauze, drank the potion without worry, and entered the Void Arts Space. He found a spot on West Street and began meditating.
Every wizard saw a different scene when meditating. Some saw a forest, others a canyon or an ocean. But whatever the setting, the essence was the same: the wizard had to meet the body's instinctive needs and desires in that scene in a way different from the ordinary. Only then could the meditation be considered successful.
Normally, a wizard's scene didn't change much between meditation sessions. That was why the first session was the hardest. Afterward, as long as the wizard had the concept of "meditation" in mind and went hungry for a while, it became relatively easy to enter the state.
For this reason, Sean had gone online the previous night to look up different ways to cook Cactus and memorized more than ten recipes.
Before, he might not have been able to find the cookware and seasonings needed to prepare Cactus in the desert. But now the Spirit Potion would help him. Potions of this type made up for missing "tools" in a way similar to breaking through barriers, providing meditating wizards with objects that shouldn't exist in their current surroundings.
So, as long as he came up with the right approach, he would surely find a more efficient way to consume it.
However...
Perhaps he was too fixated on dreaming. To Sean's surprise, this time he didn't end up in the same barren wasteland as before. He could barely tell whether he was meditating or dreaming.
Because he had arrived in an elegant bedroom.
The first thing he saw was a bed.
A luxurious bed draped with a sheer canopy, its white wooden frame inlaid with gold and jewels.
A faint, pleasant fragrance drifted through the air. It was familiar, too.
On the bed behind the gauzy curtains sat a woman with her back to him, completely naked. Her smooth, flawless back was like white jade, and a gentle curve ran from her butterfly-shaped shoulder blades down past her slender waist before disappearing at her full hips. Partly hidden by the bed curtains, the view was tantalizing.
Sean's Adam's apple bobbed involuntarily, and for some reason, his cheeks grew warm.
What the hell had he gotten himself into this time?
The Saintess's bedroom?
Was this the part where the Saintess had pinned him beneath her?
Following the familiar feeling in his heart, Sean tried calling out, "Oliya?"
The girl turned her head slightly, revealing a profile just as breathtakingly beautiful as Oliya's, yet completely different. Her gaze was icy, and her voice could have frozen someone solid:
"At a time like this, you're still thinking about her?"
Sean: "..."
It wasn't Oliya?!
Oh no!
Before you continue