Today's third update: Chapter 1030! 3/4!
To verify his inner suspicion, Xu Kun reached out and felt around the inside of the pill furnace.
"Tree Sage, I know where the problem lies!" Xu Kun said, his eyes shining.
Tree Sage's voice came through. "Oh? Let's hear it!"
Xu Kun patted the pill furnace beside him and replied, "The problem is with this pill furnace!"
"Although the Jade Cinnamon Cardamom Pill is not considered a particularly high-grade pill, it is not an especially difficult one among B-grade pills either!"
"My steps were all correct. The mistake was that the situation I faced was different from the one assumed by the textbooks!"
"This pill furnace is merely an ordinary furnace. Refining low-grade pills with it is naturally no problem, but using it to refine B-grade pills is far too much of a stretch. Normally, if an alchemist whose alchemy had reached C-grade only possessed an ordinary furnace, he must be doing terribly!"
"Go on!" Tree Sage said with interest.
Xu Kun took a deep breath. "The Jade Cinnamon Cardamom Pill itself does not have particularly high requirements for the pill furnace or the flames. That is why even the authors of the books overlooked one issue: they could never have used an ordinary furnace to refine pills. Even a slightly better pill furnace is readily available on the market. If I had simply switched to a better furnace, I would not have encountered the problem I did!"
"What problem?"
"Heat insulation!" Xu Kun gave the answer seriously.
"A good pill furnace can not only withstand intense heat, but also absorb and conduct flame more effectively. When high temperatures are needed, it can maintain high temperatures; when low temperatures are needed, it can stay cool. This is precisely what this ordinary furnace