Alchemy

A month later.

Deep in Tiger Hill Mountain, at Zhang Ping's cave abode.

The blue-black demon snake outside was still lazily coiled beneath the sheer cliff.

It naturally had no idea that deep in the cave it guarded with its massive body, a stone chamber concealed behind a wall and protected by a concealment formation lay hidden.

Anyone trying to force their way in from the front would first have to get past this fierce "gatekeeper."

Meanwhile, Xia Dong had quietly slipped into the chamber through the secret underwater passage.

At the center of the chamber now stood a bronze alchemy furnace, a full ten feet tall, with three legs and two handles.

Getting the enormous thing inside had taken every ounce of Xia Dong's strength.

It was a low-grade magical artifact furnace. Its grade wasn't high, but as a specialized auxiliary artifact, it was expensive.

Its biggest drawback was that it couldn't be freely enlarged and shrunk like the immortal treasures of legend.

As common knowledge in the cultivation world went, an artifact had to be top grade at the very least to be freely resized. Above artifacts were "spirit artifacts," which could only be crafted by powerful cultivators who had successfully opened their "Purple Mansion."

According to the cultivation knowledge Xia Dong had acquired so far, opening the Purple Mansion was the ticket to "Spirit Transformation."

Without successfully opening the Purple Mansion, even if one managed to form a core, Nascent Soul Realm was the highest one could reach in this lifetime.

Looking at the enormous furnace, Xia Dong sighed inwardly. The Storage Pouch he'd obtained from Zhang Ping's bones had an interior space of just three feet square—nowhere near large enough to fit it.

The size of an alchemy furnace had nothing to do with its grade.

On the contrary, lower-grade furnaces had to be made larger to fit in enough functions.

In fact, Storage Pouches were precious items in today's resource-starved cultivation world. Ordinary Rogue Cultivators hardly dared dream of owning one; generally, only cultivators in the Late Qi Refining Realm could afford them.

But the Qixia Immortal Sect had deep foundations, and with fewer and fewer inner disciples being recruited these days, True Person Lone Moon had bestowed upon Qin Wan a Storage Pouch with an interior space just over twelve feet across, even though she had only reached the Qi Refining Fourth Layer. It was just large enough to hold this furnace.

Xia Dong naturally wouldn't reveal to Qin Wan that he had already cultivated mana and spiritual sense. After accepting the furnace from her, he had relied on his astonishing strength and Wind-Riding Technique to bring it to Tiger Hill Mountain, then dragged it bit by bit through the underwater passage and into the chamber.

Fortunately, he had finally gathered everything he needed.

Over the past month, Xia Dong had quietly collected nearly all the auxiliary ingredients required to make Qi-Gathering Pills through the He Family's medicinal herb channels. As for the few main ingredients that truly contained spiritual energy, he had asked Qin Wan to acquire them from the Immortal Sect's Marketplace.

With everything ready, Xia Dong took a deep breath and began making pills for the first time in his life.

He placed the Spirit Firewood he'd bought beneath the furnace and rubbed his fingers together with Dragon-Capturing Hand. The wood caught fire.

Whoosh!

Blue flames surged up in an instant, and the chamber's temperature rose sharply.

Only after he had truly begun alchemy did Xia Dong deeply understand what the Basic Alchemy Sutra meant when it said that "controlling the fire is the soul of the alchemical path."

The difficulty was simply maddening.

First came the precise control of the heat.

Xia Dong had to sense the furnace's temperature with his spiritual sense while splitting his focus to use mana to control the vents beneath it, precisely regulating the airflow and thus adjusting the flames.

A touch too much air, and the Spirit Firewood would burn too fiercely, reducing the herbs to ash in an instant. A hair too little, and the fire wouldn't be hot enough to fully draw out their medicinal properties.

Xia Dong's spiritual sense was like an enormous, invisible net of fine mesh, enveloping the furnace inside and out.

"First ingredient, Purple Orchid Leaf."

With a thought, Xia Dong used his spiritual sense to wrap around a purple spirit herb and send it into the furnace. Under his careful control, the flames instantly swallowed it. Just before the leaf could turn to ash, he had to forcibly extract a single drop of deep purple medicinal essence with his spiritual sense, suspend it in midair inside the furnace, and discard every last bit of impurity and dross.

Purifying this one main ingredient alone took an immense amount out of Xia Dong.

Next came the second ingredient, the third...and then the auxiliary herbs.

As more and more droplets of medicinal liquid hovered inside the furnace, the most dangerous and difficult step—"melding the pills"—arrived.

Different herbs had completely different properties. Some belonged to fire, others to water. Forcing them together was incredibly difficult.

Sss! Sss! Sss!

The instant two drops of medicinal liquid touched under the pressure of his spiritual sense, a fierce sound of rejection rang inside the furnace. Violent fluctuations of spiritual energy nearly broke through Xia Dong's spiritual-sense barrier.

"Hold steady!"

Xia Dong gritted his teeth. His spiritual sense became two invisible hands, gripping the unruly medicinal liquids tightly. He seared them with the flames as he searched for a point of balance, then forcibly kneaded them together.

A sharp ache pulsed through his head. This extreme fine control and straining of his spiritual sense was ten times more intense than making talismans.

Just as the medicinal liquids were about to merge into the shape of a pill—

A tiny spark suddenly burst from the Spirit Firewood beneath the furnace, causing the local temperature to fluctuate ever so slightly.

That tiny fluctuation was all it took. The medicinal liquids, barely held in balance, instantly went out of control.

Boom!

A muffled explosion rang out inside the furnace.

A pungent burnt smell gushed from its vent and filled the entire chamber.

He had failed.

Worn out as if he'd just been pulled from the water, Xia Dong leaned against the cold stone wall and steadied his breathing.

Looking at the charred dregs in the bottom of the furnace, Xia Dong smiled bitterly, yet a sudden understanding rose in his heart.

If he hadn't happened to cultivate spiritual sense ahead of time and reached the strength of the Fifth Layer of Qi Refining, and if he hadn't tempered and strengthened its resilience by making talismans, then no ordinary martial artist or low-level cultivator could ever make a batch of pills—not even if they were given ten thousand years.

No wonder the cultivation world often said, "All the Hundred Arts of Cultivation are founded on spiritual sense."

Whether making talismans, laying formations, crafting artifacts, or refining pills, without the fine control of spiritual sense, it was all empty talk.

"Again!"

Xia Dong wasn't discouraged. After resting and recovering a little, he grabbed another handful of Spirit Firewood and resolutely tossed it into the enormous bronze furnace.

The pungent smell of burnt herbs had grown so strong inside the chamber that it seemed impossible to disperse.

No one knew how many times he had failed.

Xia Dong sat cross-legged before the enormous bronze furnace, fine red veins webbing his eyes. After days of going without sleep or rest, his face was etched with deep exhaustion.

Alchemic refinement consumed far more than he had expected.

The main ingredients Qin Wan had procured for him, and the auxiliary ingredients gathered by the He Family, had all turned to furnace dregs over the course of this month.

The Spirit Firewood, too, had burned down to the last few pieces.

Every time the furnace exploded, or a clash of medicinal properties ruined the batch, it pushed his mana and spiritual sense to their limits.

If the innate qi refined by the Evergreen Qi-Circulation Art hadn't constantly protected his internal organs and nourished his mind, he would have long since been mentally and physically exhausted, with his qi running wild.

"Three batches of ingredients left."

Xia Dong took a deep breath, but didn't hurry to begin.

He closed his eyes and circulated the Evergreen Qi-Circulation Art, calming his roiling blood and mana until he entered the still, undisturbed state of "womb breathing."

Once his vital essence, qi, and spirit had climbed back to their peak, he abruptly opened his eyes. A flick of his fingers sent out the force of Dragon-Capturing Hand, and blue flames once again roared beneath the furnace.

The spiritual sense of a cultivator at the Fifth Layer of Qi Refining spread like an impenetrable net, instantly taking complete control of every tiny corner inside the furnace.

"Purple Orchid Leaf, go!"

"Century Blood Ginseng, go!"

"Silver Moon Grass..."

Xia Dong fed the herbs into the furnace in an orderly manner.

After so many previous failures, he could now pinpoint the melting point and the precise moment to separate out each herb's medicinal essence with his eyes closed.

Purify, remove impurities, suspend.

Soon, more than a dozen droplets of medicinal liquid, each a different color and exuding a pure herbal fragrance, floated in midair inside the furnace.

The most difficult step, "melding the pills," arrived once more.

Xia Dong held his breath. His spiritual sense turned into countless tiny tendrils, carefully drawing the medicinal liquids with clashing properties toward one another.

Sss! Sss! Sss!

The moment the liquids touched, the fierce repulsive force erupted again. The spiritual energy inside the furnace grew turbulent in an instant, and the furnace looked ready to explode at any moment.

"Stay down!"

Xia Dong clenched his teeth, pouring every last ounce of his soul force from his sea of consciousness.

He forcibly kneaded the unruly medicinal liquids together with his spiritual sense while controlling the flames beneath the furnace with exquisite precision—sometimes blasting them with a fierce fire, sometimes slowly simmering them with a gentle one—as he searched for that subtle point of balance amid the extreme clashes.

Sweat ran down his cheeks and evaporated the moment it touched the scorching stone floor.

A stick of incense...half an hour...an hour...

As the final piece of Spirit Firewood beneath the furnace slowly crumbled to ash, the mass of medicinal liquid that had been twisting and struggling inside finally quieted under the combined tempering of spiritual sense and flame, fusing into a uniform whole.

"Condense!"

Xia Dong formed a hand seal, and all the Mysterious Yin Mana left in his dantian poured into the furnace.

Hum.

A deep, strange hum rang out from inside the furnace as the unruly spiritual energy instantly drew inward.

An extraordinarily rich pill fragrance, unlike the fresh scent of herbs, burst from the furnace vent, sweeping the burnt smell from the chamber.

Success!

Xia Dong didn't even bother to wipe the sweat from his brow. He shot to his feet and swept a sleeve through the air. The heavy bronze lid rumbled aside.

He peered inside.

At the bottom of the enormous furnace lay three pills, each no bigger than a soybean.

These three Qi-Gathering Pills were nothing like the smooth, translucent ones Qin Wan had given him, with their cloudlike patterns. Their color was dull, their surfaces pitted and uneven, and the spiritual energy they gave off was rather impure.

"The quality's terrible. They barely count as finished pills—nowhere near the better ones among the low-grade batch..."

Xia Dong held one between his fingertips and examined it closely. Yet the corners of his mouth couldn't help rising into a broad grin, which soon turned into a burst of delighted laughter.

He had done it!

He had forced his way across the threshold of the most difficult of the Hundred Arts of Cultivation: the alchemical path.

Whether these pills were ugly or what quality they were didn't matter to Xia Dong right now. Because the moment they were completed—

"Clang!"

Deep in his sea of consciousness, the mottled Bronze Ancient Bell, silent for so long, rang out with a clear chime that struck straight into his soul.

Talent: One Proof Eternal Proof.

During those hours of alchemy, every slight adjustment to the heat, every minute suppression by spiritual sense, every perfect moment when the properties of the herbs came together...had been carved into the deepest parts of Xia Dong's soul and muscle memory, as if by knife and chisel.

From this moment on, making Qi-Gathering Pills was no longer a matter of groping across a river by feeling for the stones and hoping for luck.

As long as he had the ingredients, he could perfectly replicate the entire process.

Then Xia Dong placed the three "inferior" Qi-Gathering Pills, each one precious in its own way, into a jade bottle.