"This formula... is a joke." Lin Yuan mercilessly criticized it in his mind. "Measuring things by 'weight,' of all things? Why stir it 'three times'? Heat it for twenty minutes? Over what kind of fire? What about the temperature curve? Not a word! And then add Porcupine Quills? That stuff is so volatile—throw it straight in and there's a seventy percent chance the cauldron will blow. And they call this a formula?"
"Crude. Far too crude." Lin Yuan shook his head. "This isn't brewing a potion. It's gambling—gambling that these ingredients might, by some stroke of luck, manage to produce the right chemical reaction with their feeble trace of magical properties."
He had already criticized the entire process to shreds in his mind when, at last, he got to work.
He didn't light the clumsy spirit lamp.
He extended his right index finger and gently touched the cold bottom of the cauldron.
In an instant, he had taken complete control of this "alchemy furnace," which he considered to be an abysmal piece of equipment.
With his Spiritual Sense, he measured out the precise amount of each ingredient, then used True Essence to shake the Snake Fangs into an ultrafine powder.
Once he'd added the ingredients to the cauldron, he focused his mind. The bottom of the cauldron began heating in an extraordinarily steady manner, keeping the temperature precisely at the ideal Golden Temperature Point. Using his Spiritual Sense, he formed a tiny whirlpool inside the cauldron, gently and efficiently blending the potion.
The entire process was quiet and efficient, a beautiful fusion of science and art.
His smooth, fluid technique stood in painfully stark contrast to the smoky "disaster scenes" around him.
Snape had naturally noticed the eerie silence in Lin Yuan's corner.
Like a ghost, he drifted up behind Lin Yuan without a sound, his black eyes filled with scrutiny and suspicion.
He wanted to see what this "genius," who was all talk, could actually produce.
Amid the chorus of misery, Lin Yuan's corner seemed to exist in a world of its own.
As he studied the Scab Treatment Potion formula on the blackboard, he had already compared it countless times against the Alchemy Formulas he knew, running through endless calculations and deductions in his mind.
Crude. It's just too crude, he sighed inwardly.
To him, these so-called Potions formulas were like ancient Alchemy Formulas that had lost 99 percent of their essential wisdom over the ages, then been clumsily pieced back together by later generations using a few scraps of information and their own imaginations. They were "simplified versions"—or, more accurately, "degraded versions."
They knew the "form" but not the "spirit."
They knew what ingredients to add but not why; they knew how many times to stir but not the principles governing the energy flow behind each stir; they knew to apply heat but had no understanding of the word "temperature control."
How could this be "brewing a potion"? It was clearly just "making soup"!
Well then. Let me use the most basic techniques of the Alchemy Path to teach this Potions Master another lesson.
He didn't touch the heavy-looking stone mortar. Instead, he took six Snake Fangs and set them in his palm. His Soul stirred, and a wisp of pure Mana coiled around them. Following the tiny natural channels inside the fangs that stored venom, it gave them a gentle shake.
Crack.
The six Snake Fangs split apart with a barely audible snap, their broken edges smooth as jade. Droplet by droplet, pure Venom Essence—unmixed with any impurities—was drawn out through the air by his Mana and gathered in a glass dish. At the neighboring table, Harry was struggling with his own Snake Fangs. He gaped at Lin Yuan's feat of "retrieving and purifying with pinpoint accuracy from a distance."
Next, Lin Yuan dealt with the dried nettles. He didn't use a scale; he simply grabbed a handful. But the instant he did, his Soul had already calculated the nettles' total weight, the moisture content of every leaf, and the Fire Nature of the Mana within them. His measurements were billions of times more precise than those of the wobbling brass scales.
The most crucial step was "controlling the fire."
He set the cauldron in place and held his right hand beneath it.
No wand. No incantation.
A pale blue flame, no bigger than his fist, appeared in his palm. It was Soul Fire, formed by the power of his Soul directly drawing in and compressing the surrounding "fire elements." Its size, temperature, and shape were all under his control, responding to his thoughts with perfect precision.
First, he preheated the cauldron with Gentle Fire, raising its temperature to a delicate tipping point. Then he added the nettles. The Soul Fire's temperature surged instantly, searing the nettles with Intense Fire. In just three breaths, he drew out their properties of "dispelling dampness" and "spiciness," locking them inside so that not a trace could escape.
The instant those medicinal properties reached their peak, he turned his wrist and poured in the Snake Fangs' essence.
Sizzle—
The cold, yin nature of the Snake Fangs' essence clashed violently with the nettles' spicy properties, like ice meeting fire.
Lin Yuan's gaze sharpened. His Soul Power swept over the rampaging energy like an invisible net, suppressing and sorting it out in an instant. He picked up a stirring rod and ignored the book's ridiculous instruction to "stir clockwise five times." Instead, he slowly stirred the cauldron along an intricate path that followed the principles of Tai Chi and the interactions of the Five Elements.
Each time he stirred, he wasn't "mixing" the ingredients; he was "guiding" them. Guiding these opposing forces away from conflict and toward coexistence, until they reached a perfect state of Yin-Yang Harmony.
The whole process was quiet and fluid, filled with an indescribable Dao Charm and beauty. He didn't look like he was brewing a potion so much as an artist carefully sculpting a priceless masterpiece.
And every second of it, naturally, fell under Snape's watchful gaze.
Snape stopped his rounds and stood in the shadows at a distance, like a black statue.
He couldn't understand it.
He had no idea what he was looking at.
What was that method of handling ingredients? What was that fire-control technique? What was that theory of stirring?
It all lay completely beyond the system of Potions Mastery he had spent his entire life building.
Yet his master's intuition was screaming at him. He knew he was witnessing a kind of... alchemy he had never heard of or seen before—a higher form of it.
An art that was almost like the Dao itself.
When the bell rang to end the class, the dungeon classroom was half hell, half heaven.
Hell was the students' cauldrons, filled with failed brews in bizarre colors that smelled awful. Heaven belonged solely to Lin Yuan's cauldron, which had remained impossibly quiet from beginning to end.
Snape began his customary venomous inspection. With the most cutting language he could muster, he dismissed Malfoy's "not bad" as "barely usable," and Hermione's "textbook-perfect" work as "the product of a mediocre mind that can only memorize."
At last, with an indescribably complicated feeling, he stopped in front of Lin Yuan.
He drew a deep breath and peered down into the cauldron.
Then his breathing stopped.
In his deep black eyes, every trace of scorn, mockery, and anger was swept away, replaced completely by an emotion called "shock."
The cauldron held a little over half a pot of liquid.
It wasn't the pale green color described in the book.
It was the color of the purest azure sky.
Before you continue