Alchemy? Isn't That Something Anyone Can Do?

Alchemy? Wasn't That Something Anyone with Hands Could Do? Zhao Hao's mind sank into the system light screen, and he directly dragged the entry [Alchemist: First Rank (Beginner 0/100)] into the main enhancement slot.

Then he opened the utterly empty materials slot.

An option suddenly appeared before his eyes—[Inedia Pill (Beginner 1/100)].

Select.

[Enhancement Success Rate: 20%]

Sure enough, it was just as he had thought!

Pill proficiency could, in turn, be used as enhancement material for the alchemist level!

It was just that a mere single kind of pill only provided a 20% success rate, and that success rate was far from enough.

Zhao Hao did not hesitate. Instead, he plunged headfirst into the dull grand undertaking of pill refining.

Qi Gathering Pill, Injury Healing Pill, Detoxification Pill, Spirit Recovery Pill.

He tried refining one kind of pill after another.

Four muffled "pfft pfft" sounds rang out in succession, and four furnaces of pitch-black failed pills came fresh out of the furnace.

But this was already enough.

On the system panel, the proficiencies of those pills had all successfully lit up.

[Qi Gathering Pill (Beginner 1/100)]

[Injury Healing Pill (Beginner 1/100)]

Zhao Hao once again dragged [Alchemist] level into the main slot.

This time, he had no hesitation at all, tossing the proficiencies of all five kinds of pills into the materials slot in one breath.

[Enhancement Success Rate: 100%]

"Confirm enhancement!"

A vast yet clear torrent of knowledge instantly surged into his mind.

The medicinal properties of over a thousand kinds of spiritual herbs, their ages, how they generated and countered one another... countless obscure pieces of alchemy knowledge seemed, at this moment, to become instincts he had been born with.

He even had the illusion that, as long as he had enough spiritual herbs, he could deduce brand-new pill formulas out of thin air.

[Alchemist: First Rank (Skilled 0/200)]

It was done!

Zhao Hao suppressed the excitement in his heart and picked up the jade slip again to examine the refinement process for the Inedia Pill.

This time, even though he was relearning the method for refining the Inedia Pill, those steps that had originally required effort to understand became simple and clear in his eyes. He could even see several places where improvements and optimizations could be made.

He had not even started yet when the data on the panel jumped on its own.

[Inedia Pill (Beginner 20/100)]

Merely using the jade slip again to study the method of refining the Inedia Pill had raised his proficiency by 20 points!

The general alchemy theory of a skilled-level alchemist had already covered part of the alchemy experience for the Inedia Pill.

Zhao Hao immediately got to work and began refining the second furnace of Inedia Pills.

The entire process flowed like moving clouds and running water, without the slightest hitch.

After the time it took an incense stick to burn, the pill furnace trembled lightly, and six pills rolled out.

One of them was round and smooth all over, with pill fragrance spilling in every direction. It was impressively a low-grade pill! The other five were still failed pills.

[Inedia Pill (Beginner 30/100)]

One furnace of pills, under the experiential bonus of a skilled-level alchemist, directly added 10 points to his Inedia Pill experience.

Zhao Hao had a clear idea now. No longer wasting time, he continued refining one furnace after another.

When the ninth furnace of pills was finished, the progress bar finally filled up.

[Inedia Pill (Skilled 0/200)]

He refined the tenth furnace again.

After the pills formed, the number on the panel gently jumped.

[Inedia Pill (Skilled 1/200)]

"Sure enough..."

Zhao Hao understood completely.

The first-rank skilled-level alchemist level could let him rapidly grasp the refinement of first-rank pills at beginner proficiency. Once the pill proficiency also rose to skilled level, this benefit of rapid improvement was gone.

He followed the same method and spent half a day grinding the proficiencies of the other four kinds of pills all the way up to skilled level as well.

When he once again sacrificed these five skilled-level pill proficiencies to the system, his alchemist level rose in response.

[Alchemist: First Rank (Minor Achievement 0/400)]

Zhao Hao casually picked up the materials for a furnace of Qi Gathering Pills and opened the furnace again.

This time, of the six pills that rolled out of the pill outlet, not a single one was a dud!

Four of them were low-grade, and two had even reached mid-grade quality!

He had done it!

"Alchemy really is easy as long as you have hands!" Zhao Hao muttered to himself.

He did the math. One furnace of low-grade Qi Gathering Pills could sell for five or six spirit stones. Subtracting the material cost of one spirit stone, that meant a profit of four to five spirit stones.

But he was now a Foundation Establishment cultivator. That bit of profit was not even enough to fill the gaps between his teeth.

Time was his most precious resource.

A single Qi Gathering Pill sold for only one spirit stone.

A single Meridian-Impacting Pill could sell for fifteen.

And a second-tier low-grade pill taken by Foundation Establishment cultivators, the Green Origin Pill, was worth two hundred spirit stones each!

The difference in profit was as far apart as heaven and earth.

If he wanted to earn spirit stones quickly, his target had to be high-tier pills!

Three days flashed by in the blink of an eye.

Over these three days, a mysterious man wearing a Bronze Mask quietly appeared in the pill market of Ten Thousand Immortal City.

He rarely opened his mouth to speak with others. His build was burly, and his aura showed Qi Refining perfection. Every time he appeared, he would sell several bottles of pills with astonishing quality.

They were uniformly mid-grade, and occasionally, one or two high-grade pills would even be mixed in!

At first, there were still people who harbored evil thoughts, but over these three days, no one had ever seen him leave the immortal city.

Zhao Hao was like a spinning top that could not stop, running nonstop between his cave abode and the shops.

Refine pills, sell pills, buy herbs, then refine pills again.

His alchemist level, under the burning of vast amounts of spirit stones and spirit herbs, soared all the way from "minor mastery" to "major mastery."

The spirit stones in his storage pouch also swelled up again at a terrifying speed, breaking past the ten-thousand mark.

That day, Zhao Hao had just walked out of a shop called "Pure Alchemy Hut," and there was now an extra jade slip in his storage pouch recording a detailed explanation of refining the second-tier pill, "Green Origin Pill."

However, a piece of bad news came along with it.

Within Ten Thousand Immortal City, all spirit herbs over a hundred years old had recently become incomparably scarce. Not only had their prices skyrocketed, they were simply impossible to buy.

They had all been taken by the City Lord's Mansion and several major merchant associations to prepare for the upcoming Alchemy Grand Assembly.

"Looks like there's no way to start refining second-tier pills in the short term."

Zhao Hao put away the jade slip and looked at the more than ten thousand spirit stones that had once again filled his storage pouch. His heart settled.

Since he could not buy them on the market, then he would refine them at the Alchemy Grand Assembly!

With the Enhancement System, he had been born standing in an invincible position for this Alchemy Grand Assembly.

Today was the day of the Alchemy Grand Assembly's preliminary selection.

He changed into a cyan mage robe, controlled his cultivation aura at Foundation Establishment Early Stage, and walked toward the most majestic Ten Thousand Immortal Pavilion in the center of the city.

The first floor of Ten Thousand Immortal Pavilion was already a sea of people, mountains of bodies and oceans of faces.

Over a hundred alchemy furnaces were arranged in ten rows. Heat waves rolled, and the fragrance of medicine overflowed in all directions.

There were even many cultivators gathered around the scene, pointing and commenting at the alchemists in the field who were wholly absorbed in their work.

The requirement for the preliminary selection was very simple: successfully refine a single first-tier low-grade pill in one furnace.

For most alchemists, this was not difficult.

Just then, a tremendous uproar suddenly erupted from the crowd.

"Look! It's a Meridian-Impacting Pill!"

"My heavens, six pills in one furnace, and three of them are actually high-grade, while the other three are mid-grade!"

"With this level, he could probably already compete for the top ten, right? Why is he even here for the preliminary selection? Isn't this just bullying people?"

Zhao Hao followed everyone's gaze and looked over.

He saw that in front of an alchemy furnace in a corner, an ordinary-looking young cultivator was calmly putting six pills into a jade bottle.

That person wore an utterly unremarkable cyan mage robe, and his cultivation had only just stabilized at Foundation Establishment Early Stage.

His movements were not fast, but they carried a grandmaster-like steadiness.

Under the gaze of countless people, he merely nodded to the steward in charge of registration, then turned and disappeared into the crowd, as if the commotion just now had not been caused by him at all.

The discussions around them were still continuing.

"Who is this person? Why have I never heard of him before?"

"I heard someone nearby say he seems to be called... Li Ming?"

Li Ming?

Zhao Hao frowned slightly. It felt as if he had heard this name somewhere before.