This Is Not a Potion At All!

"This recipe... is simply a joke." Lin Yuan mercilessly scoffed in his mind. "Using a crude unit like 'weight' to measure? Why stir 'three times'? Heat for twenty minutes? What kind of fire? What about the temperature curve? None of it is mentioned! And finally, adding porcupine quills? These things have such explosive fire energy; throwing them in directly has a seventy percent chance of blowing up the cauldron. And they call this a recipe?"

"Crude, too crude," Lin Yuan shook his head. "This isn't alchemy; it's gambling. Gambling that these medicinal ingredients can rely on their own faint spirituality to luckily undergo some correct chemical reaction."

Just as he had thoroughly criticized the entire process in his mind, he finally made his move.

He did not light the clumsy alcohol burner.

He extended his right index finger and gently tapped the bottom of the cold crucible.

Instantly, this "Alchemy Furnace," which he considered utterly inferior, was completely under his control.

He used his Spiritual Sense to precisely measure the required dosage of ingredients and used his True Essence to pulverize the Snake Fangs into ultrafine powder.

After adding the materials to the crucible, he willed it, and the bottom of the crucible began to heat in an extremely stable manner, precisely controlling the temperature at the perfect "Golden Temperature Point." He used his Spiritual Sense to form a miniature vortex inside the crucible, gently and efficiently mixing the potion.

The entire process was quiet, efficient, and filled with the beauty of science and art combined.

His fluid movements formed a stark, glaring contrast with the smoky, fire-scorched "disaster scenes" around him.

Snape naturally noticed the eerie silence from this side.

He drifted silently behind Lin Yuan like a Ghost, his dark eyes filled with scrutiny and suspicion.

He wanted to see what this "genius" who only knew how to talk would come up with.

Amidst the background noise of widespread lamentation, Lin Yuan's corner became a world of its own.

He looked at the "Scab Treatment Potion" recipe on the blackboard, and in his Sea of Consciousness, he had already compared and deduced it countless times against the "Alchemy Formulas" he knew.

"Crude, truly too crude," he sighed inwardly.

In his opinion, these so-called Potion recipes were like ancient Alchemy Formulas that had lost ninety-nine percent of their core essence during transmission, and were then forcefully pieced together by later generations based on fragmented words and their own imaginations – a "simplified version," or rather, a "degraded version."

They only knew the "form," not the "spirit."

They knew what ingredients to add, but not why; they knew how many times to stir, but not the principle of energy flow behind each stir; they knew to heat, but were completely ignorant of the concept of "controlling the heat."

This was not "alchemy"; it was clearly "stewing soup"!

"Fine, let me use this most basic "Alchemy Path" technique to give this Potions Master another lesson."

He did not touch the heavy-looking stone mortar. He took six Snake Fangs and placed them in his palm. With a slight movement of his Soul, a wisp of pure Mana wrapped around them. Along the natural, tiny channels within the Snake Fangs that stored venom, he gently vibrated them.

"Crack."

With an almost inaudible crisp sound, the six Snake Fangs split open, their breaks as smooth as jade. Drop by drop, pure Venom Essence, unmixed with any impurities, was levitated and collected by his Mana into a glass dish. This feat of "remote retrieval and precise purification" left Harry, who was struggling with Snake Fangs at the next table, dumbfounded.

Next, he dealt with the dried Nettle. He did not use a scale, merely a casual grab. But at the moment he grabbed it, his Soul had already calculated the total weight of this handful of Nettle, the moisture content of each leaf, and the "Fire Nature" Mana contained within. Its precision was billions of times greater than that of the wobbly brass scale.

The most crucial step was "fire control."

He placed the crucible and held his right hand beneath it.

No wand, no spells.

A cluster of pale blue flames, only about the size of a fist, ignited in his palm out of thin air. This flame was his "Soul Fire," formed by directly drawing upon and compressing the surrounding "Fire Elements" with his own Soul Power. Its size, temperature, and form were completely controlled by his will, effortlessly adjusted and refined.

He first preheated with "Gentle Fire," raising the crucible's temperature to a subtle critical point. Then, he added the Nettle. The temperature of the Soul Fire instantly rose, becoming "Intense Fire" for a rapid stir-fry. Within a mere three breaths, the "dampness-removing" and "pungent" properties of the Nettle were fully stimulated and locked in, not allowed to escape.

The moment that medicinal property reached its peak, he flipped his wrist and poured in the Snake Fang essence.

"Hiss—"

The cold Snake Fang essence and the pungent Nettle properties clashed violently in the crucible, like the confrontation of ice and fire.

Lin Yuan's gaze sharpened, and his Soul Power spread out like an invisible net, instantly suppressing and organizing the turbulent energy. He picked up the stirring rod, not following the ridiculous "five times clockwise" from the book, but stirring slowly in the crucible along an esoteric trajectory that secretly aligned with the principles of "Tai Chi" and the generation and overcoming cycles of the "Five Elements."

Each of his stirs was not "mixing," but "guiding." Guiding these two opposing forces from confrontation to symbiosis, ultimately achieving a perfect "Yin-Yang Harmony."

The entire process was quiet, fluid, and filled with an indescribable Dao Charm and beauty. He didn't seem to be brewing a pot of potion, but rather like an artist meticulously carving a timeless treasure.

And all of this, naturally, fell into Snape's eyes without a single detail missed.

Snape stopped his patrol and stood far away in the shadows, like a black statue.

He couldn't understand.

He completely couldn't understand.

What were those methods for handling ingredients? What were those fire control techniques? What were those stirring theories?

All of it completely surpassed the Potions Mastery knowledge system he had built over his entire life.

But his master-level intuition was screaming wildly. He knew he was witnessing a higher level of "Alchemy" that he had never heard of or seen before.

An art, almost akin to the "Dao."

When the bell signaling the end of the class rang, the underground classroom was half hell and half heaven.

Hell was for the students whose cauldrons were filled with failed products of various bizarre colors and foul smells. Heaven belonged exclusively to Lin Yuan's cauldron, which had been astonishingly quiet from beginning to end.

Snape began his routine, venom-laced inspection. With the most cutting remarks, he degraded Malfoy's "passable" to "barely usable," and evaluated Hermione's "standard answer" as "the work of a mediocre talent who only memorized."

Finally, with an extremely complex emotion, he walked up to Lin Yuan.

He took a deep breath and looked down into the cauldron from above.

Then, his breath hitched.

In those deep, black eyes, all the harshness, mockery, and anger were, in this moment, completely washed away by an emotion called "shock."

In the crucible, more than half a pot of liquid was held.

That liquid was not the pale green described in the books.

It was a color like the purest azure sky.