Soul Engineers, Alchemists, and Hall Master Hongchen's Question

"This... method of refining pills..." Jing Hongchen watched Xiao Changge refine medicine with complete focus.

He was extremely interested in this thing.

If the original version of him had seen this, he would have been interested—but not the kind of interest that made him want to switch careers and become an Alchemist. It was the excitement of a Level-Nine Soul Engineer seeing an entirely different technological tree for energy conversion. Jing Hongchen's core characterization was that of the Sun Moon Empire's Mingde Hall Master, a Level-Nine Soul Engineer, and a mad researcher of Soul Tools. He would instinctively lean in and study any system capable of "turning resources into combat power."

Why was he interested?

Their technical logic was interconnected: the three essentials of alchemy in Battle Through the Heavens were materials + Core Flame + spiritual perception, producing graded pills that healed wounds, enhanced strength, and enabled breakthroughs. Jing Hongchen worked with materials + Soul Power core arrays + triggering mechanisms, producing Soul Tools for defense, bombardment, prosthetics, and flight. Both were high-precision industrial systems. One produced pill patterns, while the other produced core arrays. When he saw Heavenly Flames regulating temperature and spiritual power shaping pills, his first reaction would be: "Can this replace the stable energy source or catalytic layer inside a Soul Tool?"

Their strategic value also aligned: Jing Hongchen had long supplied military equipment to the Sun Moon Empire and Xu Tianran. Pills of the eighth grade and above could trigger changes in heaven and earth; ninth-grade pills could take human form; Emperor-grade pills existed only in legend. The cost-effectiveness of something where "a single pill rivals one Soul Tool" would have had an enormous impact on a practical man like him, someone who calculated costs against returns.

His personality drove him as well: in