After stumbling through setback after setback, Xu Yi finally believed what Alchemy Notes had said: on the path of alchemy, one pill contained ten thousand methods. If you had not entered this path, then even if you understood its principles, it was like a blind man trying to size up an elephant.
Alchemy was an exceedingly mysterious art. Unless you reached a profound stage, you could not be considered initiated. Without entering its gate, you could not communicate with others about its principles.
Put simply, merely reading some books and conducting some experiments did not mean you had been initiated.
That was because medicinal herbs had such a complicated mix of properties. Take the ingredients for a Primordial Pill, for example: the primary properties of the three herbs were quite distinct, but each also had secondary properties. Even the same herb would have different secondary properties depending on the soil and the year it was grown. Often, these subtle differences at the microscopic level determined whether an auxiliary agent succeeded or failed.
Besides, every person's alchemical technique differed at the microscopic level. So the same ingredients, when refined by different people, often yielded different results.
To put it plainly, alchemy was not an assembly line. With the same raw materials and production equipment, any skilled worker could turn out the same product.
It was precisely these microscopic differences that created the threshold for entry.
And it was also these microscopic differences that gave rise to the ten thousand methods contained in one pill. The so-called ten thousand methods did not refer to differences in pill recipes, but to differences between alchemists.
For example, when refining a Primordial Pill, the recipe had never been the most important thing.
What mattered most was the success rate. A reliable success rate proved that