After successfully tinkering together a "Grain Abstinence Pill," Xu Qian grew even more interested in alchemy, that mysterious side profession of cultivation—and a little overconfident, too. He felt he might actually have a knack for it. After all, he'd mastered the high-level technique of controlling fire with true qi. Brewing a few basic pills should be... not that hard, right?
Fueled by this "mysterious confidence," Xu Qian set his sights on a more practical and more challenging target: Trauma Powder.
Not the ordinary kind of herbal powder applied to wounds, but a low-grade pill recorded in the Qing Nang Handbook Supplement called "Blood-Stopping and Muscle-Regenerating Powder." It came as a pale red powder and not only stopped bleeding far better than ordinary Trauma Powder, but also had a mild detoxifying effect against common poisonous insects and snakes, as well as the ability to promote wound healing. It was fairly well-known in the martial world and was usually an essential healing remedy for low-level Martial Artists on the road.
Its recipe was much more complicated than the Grain Abstinence Pill's. It required seven or eight kinds of medicinal herbs, and called for some care in choosing their age, preparing them, adding them in the right order, and controlling the heat. Xue Muhua had once explained the process in detail, admitting that even his own success rate back then had been low. Two or three successful batches out of ten was already pretty good.
Xu Qian, though, figured that with the Longevity Dao Fruit to deduce and refine the process, and Longevity True Qi to control the heat precisely, his success rate had to be... fifty-fifty, at least?
His ideals were lofty, but reality soon dealt him a sharp blow.
First, he spent quite a bit of effort—and a few copper coins