The heavy wooden door creaked shut behind him, shutting out the clamor of the outside world.
Su Chen leaned against the rough door, his chest heaving. Every breath brought a searing pain.
Only after the palpitations from his desperate flight had eased somewhat did he straighten and carefully take the warm jade bottle from his robes.
The bottle was made of crudely polished green jade. Beneath its translucent surface, a wisp of dark-red flame thrashed wildly.
At times, it took the shape of a furious lizard's phantom and slammed into the bottle's walls, letting out a muffled hum.
At others, it stretched into a thin line of fire and darted about frantically, searching for even the tiniest gap through which to escape.
The bottle alternated between hot and cold. In his hand, it felt like a red-hot branding iron that wouldn't stop struggling.
This was primal Beast Flame.
It was filled with the savagery, chaos, and resentment of a magical beast on the brink of death.
Forget using it to refine pills. If an ordinary Dou Zhe dared to absorb it directly into his body, its impure, violent fire energy would burn his meridians to cinders in an instant.
It was valuable, yet difficult to tame.
That was the common pain point for low-tier alchemists in Wutan City, and even across the entire Dou Qi Continent.
Su Chen's knuckles turned faintly white from gripping the bottle so tightly.
He looked at the unruly flame within, yet showed not the slightest concern.
What others saw as trash was, to him, a rough jade that could be turned to gold with a touch.
He walked to the middle of the room and sat cross-legged.
He closed his eyes, letting his mind sink like water into the depths of his consciousness.
That familiar Void Space appeared once again.
The ancient Stone Platform floated motionless at its center, its profound patterns giving off a reassuring glow.
Su Chen's thoughts locked onto the jade bottle containing the "Rock Fire" in the real world.
"Come in."
The command was soundless.
Hum!
The jade bottle in his hand jolted violently.
The wisp of violent, dark-red flame seemed to have its throat seized by an invisible hand. Its struggles stopped at once.
The next moment, an irresistible force yanked it out of the bottle. It became a streak of light and vanished into thin air.
At the same time.
In Su Chen's consciousness, the wisp of dark-red "Rock Fire" appeared atop the Stone Platform.
Freed from the bottle, it instantly returned to its violent nature. It swelled furiously into a fire cloud the size of a washbasin, radiating chaotic, scorching heat.
The Stone Platform lit up.
A gentle white light, several times brighter than when it had analyzed Zhu Huo or the Flame Rat's Beast Flame, rose from the patterns on its surface. Like a vast net, it enveloped the fire cloud in an instant.
Rows of profound information poured into Su Chen's mind once more.
"Item: Fire Rock Lizard Beast Flame (Inferior)"
"Category: Beast Flame"
"Composition: Impure fire elements, magical beast blood essence, demonic energy residue, fragments of chaotic will"
"Analysis: The energy structure is extremely unstable and contains a large amount of harmful impurities. The flame is fierce and difficult to control. Forcibly absorbing it risks severe injury. It possesses some potential for growth."
"Functions: Can be refined, copied, and purified"
Su Chen's attention skipped straight past all the preceding analysis and fixed on the words "purified."
Without the slightest hesitation.
His thoughts became a heavy hammer, and he slammed them down on that option.
Boom!
The entire Stone Platform erupted with a roar unlike any it had made before.
Countless runes beyond Su Chen's understanding emerged from within the platform. They whirled around the "Rock Fire," forming a massive wheel of light.
The wheel turned.
An indescribable force of purification began to grind down and strip away every last part of the Beast Flame.
"Chi... ch-ch..."
Wisps of visible black mist, reeking of decay, were forcibly squeezed from the flames.
They were the residue of demonic energy and impurities contained within the Beast Flame.
Faint gray thoughts, heavy with madness and malice, were ground away by force.
They were the chaotic will of the Fire Rock Lizard.
As this "waste" was continuously stripped away, purified, and annihilated, the enormous fire cloud began to shrink rapidly.
Its color, too, underwent a complete transformation.
It changed from a muddied dark red to a pure scarlet.
Then, from scarlet, it condensed into a deeper, steadier orange-red.
The flame's volume finally shrank to a tenth of its original size, about as large as a fist.
But the energy it contained was more than ten times purer than before!
The whole process lasted the time it took to burn a stick of incense.
When the final wisp of black mist had been purified, the light faded and the Stone Platform fell quiet.
A brand-new flame floated silently above the platform.
It was a gentle orange-red, burning quietly like a piece of warm jade, meticulously carved. Not a trace of its former violence remained. It contained only pure, stable, concentrated fire energy.
Perfect.
It was practically a work of art.
Suppressing his excitement, Su Chen focused his thoughts on the "copy" option.
Hum!
A wave of exhaustion a hundred times more intense than what he'd felt when copying Zhu Huo surged from the depths of his mind, as if a small piece of his soul had been torn away.
Su Chen's face paled slightly, but the drain was still within what he could bear.
The Stone Platform gave a faint shudder.
A copy identical to the orange-red flame condensed out of thin air and floated quietly beside the original.
Success!
Su Chen steadied himself and didn't stop.
Gritting his teeth against the fatigue as his mental energy continued to drain away, he activated the "copy" function again and again.
The third copy.
The fourth.
The eighth.
When the ninth copy had condensed, a powerful wave of dizziness washed over him. Su Chen's mental energy was already on the verge of exhaustion.
"One last copy!"
He let out a low growl from the depths of his soul, wrung out the last of his mental energy, and slammed it down!
Hum—
As the tenth copy condensed, Su Chen's mind spun violently. He nearly passed out on the spot.
He forced his way out of the consciousness space and gasped for air. Cold sweat drenched him from head to toe, as if he'd just been hauled out of the water.
It took a full half hour of rest for the spiritual exhaustion to ease somewhat.
Su Chen wasted no time. He immediately dragged out a wooden box he'd prepared earlier and hidden beneath the bed.
Inside were ten inferior jade bottles, each identical to the one he'd used before.
They were all he had, bought with the body of the Flame Rat.
He sank his mind back into the consciousness space.
"Out."
With a thought, the ten purified copies of the orange-red flame became ten streaks of light and surged out of the void, each slipping with pinpoint accuracy into one of the ten open jade bottles on the table.
Su Chen quickly plugged each bottle.
Only after finishing did he let out a long breath.
He looked at the ten jade bottles arranged neatly on the table. His eyes blazed with barely contained excitement.
Inside, ten identical orange-red flames burned quietly.
They were no longer violent or struggling, but as docile as tamed cats, steadily radiating a pure, gentle warmth.
Now this was a true product.
It was nothing like the "inferior materials" on the market, which alchemists had to spend great effort suppressing and adapting to.
This was standardized, ready to use, perfect "industrial output"!
Su Chen picked up one of the jade bottles and held it before his eyes.
The orange-red glow lit up his young, resolute face.
"It's time to give you a name."
He murmured to himself.
"Purified Beast Flame"?
Too crude, too blunt. It didn't begin to reflect their value.
"Refined Rock Fire"?
That sounded rather ordinary, no different from anything else.
Su Chen stared at the tiny flame in the bottle.
It was small, yet held the purest power of fire. It was the starting point of everything, the source of every transformation.
It was a seed.
A seed that could let an alchemy apprentice's dream take root and sprout.
A seed that could give Su Chen a foothold on this continent.
A thought suddenly came to him, and everything clicked.
Su Chen's lips slowly curled upward.
"Rock Fire Seed."
He spoke the name in an almost whispered voice.
When the words left his lips, even he paused for a moment.
Rock Fire Seed.
The name revealed its origin while filling it with boundless hope and possibility.
Perfect.
Su Chen gently set down the bottle in his hand beside the other nine.
Ten Rock Fire Seeds.
These were his first official products.
They were the first seed capital he'd earned with his wits, his courage, and even his life.
The mortal terror he'd felt while hunting had now vanished without a trace.
In its place was a powerful confidence unlike any he'd known before: the confidence of a man who could control his own fate.
He knew what a stir these ten little bottles would cause once they appeared on the Wutan City market.
They would be the first lever he used to shift the balance of wealth across the entire Dou Qi Continent.
Su Chen rose and walked to the window. He pushed open the rickety wooden shutters.
The setting sun streamed through the window lattice and fell across the ten jade bottles on the table, gilding them in brilliant gold.
His gaze passed over the low courtyard wall and settled on the center of Wutan City.
There lay the city's busiest marketplace, where countless alchemy apprentices harbored their dreams.
"Who will be my first customer..."
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