Alchemy 2

After settling in, Lu Xiaotian took out the pill furnace again, cleaned out the impurities and waste inside the cauldron, then rekindled the fire to refine pills.

The hardest parts of pill refining were controlling the heat and judging when to open the furnace. Refining a single batch of Qi-Gathering Pills usually took nearly two hours. Lu Xiaotian had to keep constant watch over the intensity of the flames—removing a little spiritwood charcoal when the fire grew too strong, and adding charcoal when it weakened.

Yet both of these relied entirely on the pill refiner's experience. It was not as though one could easily refine pills simply by following a pill formula.

Even beginner pill refiners were highly sought after in Moonwatch City, because pill refining was not only difficult, but also a profession that consumed spirit stones at an astonishing rate. Those just learning to refine pills often had absurdly low success rates. They might fail several furnaces in a row, even more than ten, without succeeding once. Raising the success rate required long-term practice and accumulated experience.

Ordinary Rogue Cultivators simply could not bear such a burden in the early stages. Most pill refiners in Moonwatch City had been trained by the Lineages that controlled the various pill shops, using their Lineage resources.

Once trained, those pill refiners had to serve the pill shops of their respective Lineages. The pills usually sold outside were all low-grade pills, while the better mid-grade and even high-grade pills were either consumed by gifted members of cultivation Lineages or sent to auction houses, where they fetched staggering prices. That was why descendants of cultivation Lineages were often stronger than ordinary Rogue Cultivators.

Apart from his daily cultivation, Lu Xiaotian stayed in the courtyard and refined pills for nearly ten straight days. He ruined seventeen furnaces of pills in succession, and his remaining spirit stones were nearly exhausted. Such a high failure rate left him somewhat discouraged. If not for the space within the barrier being able to cultivate Purple Spirit Grass, this intensity of pill refining would have become impossible long ago.

The value of seventeen Purple Spirit Grass plants alone was nearly forty spirit stones in Moonwatch City. Including the supplementary herbs, the spirit stones Lu Xiaotian had wasted over the past ten days were an astonishing amount for a Qi Refining cultivator.

Still, through so many failures, Lu Xiaotian had worked out a method for refining Qi-Gathering Pills. He had also gained some understanding of heat control and furnace-opening timing. Lu Xiaotian stared intently at the blazing charcoal fire beneath the cauldron.

By now, he no longer removed spiritwood charcoal whenever the fire became too strong, as he had when he first began refining pills. His previous failures had given him a rough understanding of how much spiritwood charcoal different levels of heat required. This was the experience pill refiners gained through long years of refinement.

Nearly two hours later, that familiar fragrance wafted out once more. Lu Xiaotian's heart tightened. If he failed again this time, he would have to sell the remaining twenty spirit talismans in his possession before he could continue refining pills.

He calmed his mind and steadied his breath, then opened the furnace!

As he lifted the cauldron lid, a warm and familiar pill fragrance rushed into his nose. Two pale yellow pills lay quietly inside the small cauldron. One of them had an especially rich fragrance, and two tiny pill patterns had actually appeared on its pale yellow surface.

"I actually refined a mid-grade Qi-Gathering Pill!" Lu Xiaotian was overwhelmed with delight. After more than ten days of hardship, he had finally received his reward. The meaning of this reward after enduring so much hardship far exceeded that of the two pills themselves.

After the heat on the surfaces of the two perfectly round, plump spirit pills had dissipated, Lu Xiaotian placed them separately into small bottles.

Strike while the iron was hot. Since he had successfully refined a furnace of Qi-Gathering Pills, he would refine a few more batches today.

With enough seeds on hand, Lu Xiaotian refined another seven batches in succession, using up all the Purple Spirit Grass inside the barrier. He succeeded three times, but each time only produced one pill. He did not refine two pills again as he had before.

Still, he was quite satisfied with this result. Even among the Lineage pill refiners in Moonwatch City, some seasoned hands with decades of pill-refining experience would already consider it an excellent result to succeed three or four times out of ten.

Pill refining was an art that placed great emphasis on realm and judgment. Heat control and furnace-opening were not fixed and unchanging. Different Purple Spirit Grass plants varied in their growth and condition.

A skilled pill refiner would make an initial judgment about the spirit herbs in hand, estimating what degree of heat to use. That judgment could also be wrong, so during the refining process, pill refiners would make slight adjustments to the fire and the time of furnace opening according to changing conditions. But no matter how formidable a pill refiner was, they could not guarantee that their judgment was one hundred percent correct. The slightest misstep midway through would render the entire furnace of pills useless.

Thus, even experienced veteran pill refiners could only maintain a certain success rate.

The reason Lu Xiaotian could achieve such a high pill-production rate in such a short time was not merely because his pill-refining skill had improved. More importantly, he had continuously refined the same kind of pill so many times, something other pill refiners could not do. Furthermore, the Purple Spirit Grass grown within the barrier was not affected by external conditions such as wind and rain, so its growth was relatively uniform. This also raised his success rate.

After refining the last Purple Spirit Grass plant, Lu Xiaotian put away the small cauldron with satisfaction. He took out the mid-grade Qi-Gathering Pill. Naturally, good pills had to be saved for his own use. Now was the time to test its effects.

Lu Xiaotian sat cross-legged directly on a stone chair in the small courtyard and swallowed the mid-grade Qi-Gathering Pill. The pill slowly dissolved inside his body, transforming into a gentle current of heat that traveled through his limbs and bones.

In the past, it had taken nearly six hours to refine the medicinal power of a Qi-Gathering Pill. Now that he was at the Fifth Layer of Qi Refining, it took less than two hours.

The spiritual qi his meridians could not contain appeared in the barrier as usual. After absorbing the medicinal power within his meridians, Lu Xiaotian's Primordial Spirit chased after and devoured the vitality within the barrier. He then scattered Purple Spirit Grass seeds and crushed a spirit stone into powder, sprinkling it over the soil beside the seeds.

When he had run out of Purple Spirit Grass while refining pills before, he had been so anxious while cultivating it that he nearly jumped to his feet. The spiritual qi dispersing through the air drifted everywhere, making it difficult for it to directly float onto the Purple Spirit Grass seeds and be absorbed. Later, with no other choice, he began using spirit stones, and discovered that he could control them with his thoughts and crush them apart.

There was also a method to using spirit stones. After all, he possessed all five types—metal, wood, water, fire, and earth spirit stones. Only the rarer ice, wind, and lightning types were absent from his possession. Water was the source of life, but it could not be used in excess; otherwise, overly moist soil would instead hinder the growth of Purple Spirit Grass.

Earth-element spirit stones could strengthen the spiritual power of the soil. Wood-element spirit stones were also naturally suited to Purple Spirit Grass. All three of these kinds of spirit stones could be used as fertilizer. However, the wood-element spirit stones that corresponded to Purple Spirit Grass worked best overall, followed by earth spirit stones, then water spirit stones.

He had also tested metal- and fire-element spirit stones, but they were completely unusable. After absorbing the spiritual qi from metal spirit stones, Purple Spirit Grass rapidly withered. Fire spirit stones directly burned the Purple Spirit Grass into black ash.

Overall, one spirit stone could cultivate roughly three Purple Spirit Grass plants. Based on his previous pill success rate, which was already approaching forty percent, after excluding the failed batches, selling Qi-Gathering Pills would yield four spirit stones in return for every one spirit stone invested.

Although Qi-Gathering Pills were less effective for cultivators in the middle stages of Qi Refining, their advantage lay in their quantity. With an ample supply of pills, his cultivation speed began to soar in a straight line, more than several times faster than relying on meditation alone. Within half a year, having originally just entered the Fifth Layer of Qi Refining, the vitality accumulated at the Fifth Layer had now nearly reached half.

At this time, Lu Xiaotian, dressed in green, had grown considerably taller than before. His build remained somewhat thin, and he was not particularly handsome, but his fairly delicate features had gained a cool, distant air from long periods of solitude and the life-and-death hardships he had endured over the past few years.

Roar. The leopard's senses were sharper than those of ordinary cultivators, and it quickly detected movement outside the courtyard. It abruptly rose to its feet from where it had been lazily basking in the sun.

Knock, knock. Someone knocked on the door.

"Is Big Brother Lu here?" Luo Qing called sweetly from outside.

Hearing the visitor's voice, the leopard lay back down in its original spot. Over the past half year, the Luo siblings had occasionally come by to visit. After a time or two, the leopard had remembered them.

"Huh, this Qi-Gathering Pill smells different from usual." Luo Qing sniffed hard a few times as soon as she entered.

"Why did you come so early today?"

Lu Xiaotian smiled at her words, avoiding the matter of the pills. He had been lucky just now and had actually refined a high-grade Qi-Gathering Pill. Over the past half year, he had refined Qi-Gathering Pills without pause. The number of times he had opened the furnace to refine pills probably surpassed what other pill refiners could accomplish in several decades combined. After all, even if Purple Spirit Grass was planted in spirit fields, it could only be harvested once a year. It was impossible to keep harvesting spirit herbs endlessly as he did, so long as he had spirit stones.

Luo Yuan said, "It's like this. In another four months, the major immortal sects will begin their annual recruitment of disciples. My sister and I, along with several other familiar friends, plan to enter the Moonwatch Mountains to search for spiritual items. If we are lucky, we may even come across items needed for missions from other sects. Brother Lu, your strength is considerable. I would like to invite you to join our team. With one more person, we will be that much safer in the Moonwatch Mountains."

"What, are the Moonwatch Mountains very dangerous?" Lu Xiaotian asked in surprise.

"Brother Lu, you may not know this, but not only do demonic beasts run rampant in the Moonwatch Mountains—the greater danger comes from other cultivators. I have gone into the Moonwatch Mountains several times. More of my companions died in ambushes by other cultivator teams than under attacks from demonic beasts," Luo Yuan said gravely.

Lu Xiaotian shuddered inwardly. Having spent half a year refining pills in the small courtyard, he had grown somewhat numb to the bloody slaughter among cultivators.

"Who else is among the people Brother Luo invited? Who has the highest cultivation?" Lu Xiaotian asked, without agreeing immediately.

"Including my sister and me, there are five others traveling with us. The strongest among them is at the Sixth Layer of Qi Refining, the same as me. But Big Brother Lu is an exceptionally skilled pill refiner. If you join our team, you will have a certain priority over the spirit herbs we obtain."

Luo Qing spoke with an expectant expression. Over the past half year, they had come to understand Lu Xiaotian somewhat. In their eyes, being able to rely on pill refining alone to rent such a large courtyard while maintaining his daily cultivation already made him quite remarkable.