Inside the cave chamber.
Fang Shu was naked, without a scrap of cloth on him.
He sat cross-legged directly inside the medicine cauldron that stored pills. Charcoal burned beneath it, turning the entire cauldron red-hot.
A rich medicinal fragrance continuously wafted from the medicinal liquid inside the cauldron, causing the live fish in the cave's waterways to repeatedly roll up to the surface and gulp at the scent.
At this moment, Fang Shu's blood and qi surged violently. Had his body not been so tough, he would likely have bled from all seven apertures and been forced out of his pill-refinement state long ago.
Suddenly, a series of thuds rang out from his body.
Fang Shu raised his hand and fiercely struck his own chest, forming hand seals and chanting spells as he forcibly stabilized the increasingly agitated blood and qi within him.
Then he slowly opened his eyes and made a grasping motion through the air. A silver-glinting pill appeared before him.
Fang Shu spoke softly. "This is the last one."
More than a month had passed since he entered seclusion. He had already consumed seventeen Innate Bone-Transmuting Pills, purchased at the cost of two merit points.
The pill truly deserved its reputation as a peerless medicine for consolidating one's foundation and nurturing one's origin. Without any need for cultivation, Fang Shu's Dragon Whale Body-Nourishing Art had advanced considerably, while the Cordyceps Spiritual Root within him had indeed become faintly more refined.
Yet there remained a threshold between him and cultivating the true qi of one hundred toads.
This made him vaguely realize that perhaps the one-hundred-toad true qi truly could only be cultivated by those with the legendary heaven-and-earth spiritual roots—or at the very least, superior spiritual roots.
For someone with middling spiritual roots like him, it was