3.5 hours later...
Song Shuhang's eyes were still bright, but his body was beginning to feel tired.
"The forty-first ingredient. It's finally almost over." Song Shuhang muttered.
Who would have thought he could persist this far on his first attempt at alchemy? But he was pretty much reaching his limit now. After this ingredient, only the fresh Overlord Branch, sliced Nine-Yang Scarlet Flame Bamboo, Deep-Sea Cold Crystal, and Snow Demon Core remained—the final four ingredients. He might actually hold out until the end!
He opened the lid and swiftly added the forty-first ingredient.
Before Song Shuhang could put the lid back on, something strange suddenly happened in the hotpot basin.
The pale-gray liquid, which had fused with forty ingredients, came into contact with the forty-first ingredient—and suddenly erupted with a nauseating stench and the smell of scorching!
The half-pot of liquid inside rapidly evaporated. In the blink of an eye, one-fifth of it was gone!
"Tsk, did it fail?" Song Shuhang said in distress. Since he had added water at the beginning, he had wondered whether he had already failed from the very start.
But he had persisted all the way to the forty-first ingredient without anything going wrong. It was only natural that a tiny bit of anticipation and hope had surfaced in his heart. This was probably humanity's uniquely gambler-like mentality, right?
But now, was it finally going to fail completely?
"No, it isn't completely doomed yet." Song Shuhang saw that although the gray liquid was evaporating, it was still stubbornly fusing with the forty-first ingredient.
He knew he had to do something now. If he did nothing, it really would be over.
In fact, the forty-first ingredient was indeed the most difficult step in making the Simplified Body Tempering Liquid.
From this step onward, the process had technically entered the final stage of the Simplified Body Tempering Liquid. The four ingredients that came afterward were no longer meant to increase its medicinal properties.
The fresh Overlord Branch, sliced Nine-Yang Scarlet Flame Bamboo, Deep-Sea Cold Crystal, and Snow Demon Core—the first two were supremely yang and rigid, while the latter two were supremely yin and soft. These four ingredients were used to purify the Simplified Body Tempering Liquid.
Purification was the most important step in making the Body Tempering Liquid. Without purification, the pot of Body Tempering Liquid would be nothing more than a pot of tonic soup. Drinking it would make one feel great, but its body-tempering effects would be greatly reduced. Once the purification step was added, however, the tonic soup could transform into Body Tempering Liquid, turning mortal medicine into immortal liquid.
And the forty-first ingredient was the trigger for the purification.
This step was indeed the easiest one to fail at. Soft Feather had failed at it dozens of times.
But how was he supposed to salvage a failure?
If Medicine Master had been present, with his superb alchemy experience and technique, he would have been able to turn the tide and salvage this batch... No, this pot of Body Tempering Liquid.
But Shuhang had neither experience nor Medicine Master's technique.
"It's evaporating too quickly. I have to slow the process down first. Add water!" Song Shuhang decided to treat a dead horse as a live one and poured a ladleful of water into the pot. He had no idea whether it would work, but at least the evaporation slowed considerably.
"There are still four ingredients left."
Song Shuhang's thoughts raced wildly.
There wasn't enough time for him to refine another batch of medicine. In another hour or two, his roommates would probably be back.
To be honest, if they saw him puttering around in the kitchenette, "refining medicine," Song Shuhang couldn't guarantee that his enthusiastic roommates wouldn't tie him up and send him to the psychiatric ward.
Given that they were so enthusiastic that each of them probably deserved more than ten Good Person Cards, the possibility was quite high!
"Let's try adding all the remaining ingredients at once. It's already close to failing anyway, so I'll just treat it as gaining experience." Song Shuhang made up his mind.
Northern River's Loose Cultivator and Soft Feather in the group had both failed many times. He was a complete amateur—if he succeeded on his first try, that would be the strange thing, right?
He opened the lid.
The fresh Overlord Branch, sliced Nine-Yang Scarlet Flame Bamboo, Deep-Sea Cold Crystal, and Snow Demon Core—the four ingredients—were all tossed into the pot by Shuhang in one go.
He clapped the lid shut!
Then, Song Shuhang witnessed a true "ice-and-fire hotpot."
The fresh Overlord Branch and sliced Nine-Yang Scarlet Flame Bamboo fused with part of the medicinal liquid. When heated, the two ingredients turned bright red, as if they were about to burn. That portion of the liquid boiled even more violently and began evaporating faster. Vapor gushed from the vent in the lid like a fountain.
Meanwhile, the Deep-Sea Cold Crystal and Snow Demon Core cracked open when heated, and icy-blue liquid surged out from inside. The icy-blue liquid seemed to be extremely cold. After merging with the other half of the medicinal liquid, it caused the boiling liquid to gradually calm and cool.
The temperature of the calmer portion continued to drop, while the boiling half evaporated even faster. The two portions of medicinal liquid showed signs of separating.
He couldn't let them separate. Song Shuhang's heart stirred, and he immediately increased the heat of the induction cooker, trying to make the cooling portion boil again.
As the temperature rose, the medicinal liquid evaporated even faster. In less than a minute, the original half-pot of medicinal soup had been reduced to less than one-third.
At most ten breaths later, it would evaporate completely.
"It really has failed completely." Song Shuhang laughed. Since he had been mentally prepared for this, he didn't particularly mind the failure.
He reached out to turn off the induction cooker. If he kept burning it like this, even the pot would be scorched.
But halfway through extending his hand, he stopped. He saw that although the liquid in the pot was evaporating faster, it was no longer separating into two extremes. It was beginning to fuse again.
As if possessed, Song Shuhang didn't turn off the heat. Instead, he clenched his teeth and turned it up to maximum!
He would stake everything on one throw, adding fire to fire, and fuse all the medicinal liquid in one go, forcing out and purifying the medicinal properties of all forty-five ingredients! Perhaps he could still obtain some scraps before the liquid evaporated completely?
The induction cooker was turned up to maximum and began making strange noises.
Inside the hotpot basin, ice and fire intertwined in the tiny vessel, forming beautiful shapes. The two streams of medicinal liquid churned and rolled, shaking the hotpot basin.
By the end, Shuhang could no longer see what was happening inside the pot.
After the medicinal liquid evaporated, a thick layer of impurities coated the tempered-glass lid.
Drip, drip... It was the sound of the medicinal ingredients rolling about. Each roll came exactly one second apart.
Song Shuhang took hold of his phone again and stared at the time.
Unable to see what was happening inside the pot, he could only restart the timer, planning to turn off the induction cooker after five minutes.
Three minutes and twenty-three seconds.
Boom...
At that moment, a surge of high pressure suddenly rose inside the hotpot and blew the lid away.
Immediately afterward, a cloud of black smoke shot out, enveloping the entire kitchenette. A pungent stench assaulted his nose.
The smell was far too overwhelming. It was as if every foul odor in the world had been blended together. Even taking one careless sniff made him feel like vomiting.
"Ugh..." Song Shuhang pinched his nose and hurriedly turned off the induction cooker.
"So smelly." Even with his nose pinched and his breath held, the strange stench still wormed its way into Shuhang's nostrils, refusing to disperse.
He ran to the window and opened it. If he didn't air the place out, he would have to wait for his roommates to come and collect his corpse—the cause of death would definitely be being suffocated by the foul stench.
As soon as the window opened, the black smoke drifted outside, and the stench in the kitchen gradually faded.
"This smell can't be described with words at all. And it even lingers forever." Shuhang sighed. He probably wouldn't be able to forget this smell for the next two or three days. He wondered whether he would even be able to eat afterward.
"The smell of this thing after refining it wrong is terrifyingly lethal. It could practically be used as a biological weapon. If I could collect the smell, then whenever I disliked someone in the future, I could release a whole roomful of it into their room. They'd be guaranteed to remember it forever." Shuhang mocked himself.
On the floor, the hotpot lid was still spinning nonstop. Fortunately, it was made of tempered glass and hadn't been sacrificed. Otherwise, he would have had to pay the school for it.
After picking up the lid, Shuhang suddenly felt dizzy. Fatigue swept over him like a landslide—the exhaustion that had built up over nearly four hours!
He hurriedly braced himself against the table and slowly sat down.
After resting for a moment, he pinched his nose and looked toward the bottom of the pot, wanting to see what the medicinal liquid he had ultimately failed to refine looked like to be able to emit such a foul stench.
Inside the hotpot, the original half-pot of medicinal liquid had been reduced to a thin layer.
It was black and translucent, and it gave off a pungent, acrid odor.
"Black and gooey, a bit like translucent sesame paste. It's just way too smelly." Song Shuhang complained.
"Huh? This... how could this be?" He suddenly recalled something and quickly took out the notebook containing Medicine Master's pill formula.
The medicinal liquid had formed a paste, was black in color, translucent, and had a pungent odor. This was how Medicine Master had described the finished Simplified Body Tempering Liquid.
It seemed... very similar to the stuff he had refined himself?
Before you continue