A Server-Shaking Event

Second floor of the Alchemy Room, the Slacking Alchemy Room reserved exclusively for young masters and young ladies.

Bang!

Black smoke drifted up.

Lu Bei scraped the black sludge from the pill furnace, cleaned it thoroughly, took a deep breath, and began his first alchemy attempt of great significance to him.

The last one did not count. That had merely been testing the quality of the pill furnace.

The result had been far from satisfactory. The White Quality furnace from the public area had turned a batch of Premium Quality Qi Ling Pills into waste pills.

Opening his Personal Panel, Lu Bei spent 10 Skill Points and, in the blink of an eye, mastered the pill formula and refinement procedure for "Qi Ling Pills."

He had chosen Qi Ling Pills over Blood Replenishing Pills and Qi Gathering Pills not to save the last 10 Skill Points for a rainy day. Ten Skill Points were far too few to learn anything worthwhile.

He had made the choice based on cost-effectiveness. Qi Ling Pills took the shortest time to refine and used the cheapest materials. Over time, they would yield the most experience.

"Begin. The real first alchemy attempt."

Lu Bei held his breath and operated the furnace with practiced ease. Before long, a faint, lingering fragrance wafted from within. The Qi Ling Pills were about to be refined.

Bang!

The fragrance vanished in an instant, and rising black smoke declared the refinement a failure.

"Damn it, that White Quality screwed me again!" Lu Bei's face darkened. White Quality was the most hateful thing in the world.

Failure was not surprising; it could even be said to be within reason.

He had only learned how to refine Qi Ling Pills through Skill Points. He did not have any cultivation methods or skills related to the Dao of alchemy. Every batch of Qi Ling Pills had a 10% chance of being Premium Quality, a 40% chance of being finished products, and a 50% chance of becoming waste pills.

Even that was only because Qi Ling Pills were easy for beginners and counted among the easiest pills to refine.

Next door to Lu Bei's Slacking Alchemy Room on the second floor were foundational alchemy texts written by Huangji Sect's masters of the Dao of alchemy. Learning them could greatly improve one's refinement success rate.

Lu Bei could not study them yet. The minimum requirement was 50 Skill Points. For now, he could only gain experience by refining Qi Ling Pills, then study once his overall level rose and he had enough Skill Points.

Of course, he could also grind Lin Bohai's favorability, help out as an assistant, and let his master carry him to the skies.

Lu Bei had no such plans. For one, it wasted time. For another, he was too embarrassed to keep holding onto thighs.

Holding Senior Sister Bai's and Senior Sister Zhu's thighs was one thing. After all, they were fragrant and soft. But Lin Bohai's thigh...

A man ought to stand on his own two feet!

Ten minutes later, the first batch of Qi Ling Pills since the earlier complete wipe came out. Lu Bei scraped out the white pill sludge and set it on the tea table to cool.

Highly trained senior alchemists had matching skills that allowed them to shape the pill sludge while removing it. Lu Bei had nothing of the sort and could only roll it into balls by hand.

Fortunately, no big problem. The Slacking Alchemy Room had tools resembling the ice cube molds in a refrigerator, and they were used in much the same way.

Eleven Qi Ling Pills went into the bottle. Due to losses during molding, he was one short of the standard twelve.

[You completed an alchemy refinement. Based on pill grade and quality, you gained 100 experience points. For your first alchemy refinement in the true sense, an additional 2,000 experience points have been awarded.]

"Wonderful!"

Lu Bei's eyes lit up as he used the 2,100 experience points to level up his overall level.

Level: 4

Experience: 1450/1800

The level increase did not directly raise his attributes. The notification stated: Free Attribute Points +1, Skill Points +50.

"Very good. A decent start. I'll save these 50 Skill Points for now and study the foundational alchemy knowledge after I gather 100." Lu Bei rubbed his hands together and reached for the White Quality pill furnace.

An hour later, five bottles of Qi Ling Pills stood in a row on the tea table. Lu Bei briefly admired the fruits of his labor, then eagerly began leveling up.

Level: 5

Experience: 50/3200

The notification stated: accumulated 4 Free Attribute Points and 110 Skill Points.

Lu Bei washed his hands, found Lin Bohai drinking tea, and said he wanted to learn profound alchemy knowledge. Lin Bohai did not think much of it. He took out a ring of keys and led him to the storeroom that possessed foundational alchemy knowledge.

Since it was beginner-level knowledge, there was little secrecy to speak of. Perhaps it was a rare item to that impoverished lot at Nine Bamboo Mountain, but to the wealthy and talent-rich Huangji Sect, it was merely popular science material circulated at the grassroots level.

Lu Bei ran his hand over the books on the storeroom shelves one by one, selecting a copy of the Huangji Pill Nurturing Art that required 80 Skill Points to learn.

How did one judge whether a cultivation method was good or bad?

The method Players commonly used was to check how many Skill Points were needed to begin learning it. The greater the cost, the higher its potential ceiling.

But there were exceptions. After all, every sort of person existed among cultivators. There was no shortage of authors who dug pits in their books; a work that began profound and broad but ended like a dog's tail grafted onto a sable coat was a common sight.

Some Players judged by experience, successfully leapt into the pit, and were so enraged they thanked the author's ancestors for eight generations. Others won big with little investment and found hidden gems, joyfully thanking the author's forebears.

Overall, cultivation methods that required a large amount of Skill Points and experience in their early stages generally could not be too bad.

Huangji Pill Nurturing Art Lv1 (0/100)

Lu Bei spent 80 Skill Points and learned the Huangji Pill Nurturing Art in one second. Yet in Lin Bohai's eyes, he had merely flipped through two pages and called it a day.

As expected of a rich family's young master. Their arrogance was all cut from the same cloth.

Lin Bohai secretly shook his head, locked the storeroom door, and returned to continue drinking tea.

Having learned the Pill Nurturing Art, Lu Bei was mainly thrilled by the prospect of gaining experience. Addicted to alchemy beyond escape, he quickly bade Lin Bohai farewell, returned to the Slacking Alchemy Room, and began his journey of grinding experience.

In the later stages, the experience from refining Qi Ling Pills was but a drop in the ocean for Players. But in the early stages, especially during the novice period before entering the ranks of cultivation, every point of experience was hard-won.

Lu Bei vaguely remembered his LSP boss mentioning that, when the server had first opened, Players realized that Alchemy Rooms were equivalent to experience rooms. They swarmed into the major Huangji Sect bases, willing to work for free without even demanding food or lodging.

As a result, they were treated as troublemaking commoners. Half entered Solitary Confinement, while the other half were beaten until they fled like rats with their heads in their hands.

Huangji Pill Nurturing Art Lv2 (500/500)

Huangji Pill Nurturing Art Lv3 (2000/2000)

Huangji Pill Nurturing Art Lv4 (0/8000)

Spirit +1, Endurance +1, Spirit +1, Endur...

Other than losing a little time at noon when Zhu Yan dragged him off for lunch, Lu Bei spent the entire day refining Qi Ling Pills and grinding experience. He successfully raised the Huangji Pill Nurturing Art to level 4 and unlocked a new Secondary Profession.

Alchemist Lv1 (0/100)

Like Farmer, Alchemist was a basic Secondary Profession. It could be leveled up and transformed.

Unlike Farmers, who could transform into branch Secondary Professions such as Animal Husbandry, Fishing, and Miner, Alchemists were closer to the cultivation system. At max level, they would advance into Senior Alchemist, Master, and Grandmaster.

The same applied to Artifact Refining and Formation Refining.

These three were Secondary Professions that both NPCs and Players valued immensely, accompanying almost everyone throughout their lives.

Because these three Secondary Professions had enormous potential and the greatest influence on one's Main Profession, almost determining roles such as healers, battlefield controllers, attackers, and tanks, they were listed separately. When Players did quests, they could form temporary teams based on each member's main focus and unique traits, increasing the game's diversity.

Incidentally, because of teammates, the elegant C language had also become a profound field of study.

Speaking of Secondary Professions, one had to mention the three most basic ones—Scholar, Farmer, Artisan, and Merchant.

The Merchant Secondary Profession had been stuffed in merely to make up the numbers. Only large guilds could make it work; ordinary Players could just dream about it. The other three had countless branches and could also affect one's Main Profession, even granting bonuses to pills, artifacts, formations, and special cultivation methods.

For instance, the Farmer branch Herbalist; the Artisan branches Blacksmith and Painter; and the Scholar branches Spy and General. After reaching max level, all of them could unlock hidden Secondary Professions.

When it came to choosing Secondary Professions, there had once been a small group of Players who caused a server-shaking event. Forum posts were flooded because of them.

Among the Scholar branches, they unearthed an extremely secret and ancient profession—Eunuch.

Although the method of changing professions was exceedingly simple—enter the palace and castrate oneself—but...

One could only say, as expected of Players: the Fourth Calamity in name and in truth. No matter how deeply a hidden profession was buried, it could not withstand their wild imagination.

Recommend Book: Alliance at the Edge of Film Worlds

Author: Riding Cane

As the name suggested, it was an infinite-flow novel, a book...

Fine, no more pretending. I sacrifice this book in hopes that my new book achieves good results.