Ranked Elixirs

The further one progressed in martial cultivation, the greater the help alchemy provided.

Whether in terms of financial backing or resource exchanges, it brought enormous advantages.

Lu Chun had long expected Chen Wu's answer.

The alchemical path, the alchemical path—in the end, it was merely one of the many arts that assisted martial cultivation.

No matter how profound one's attainments in alchemy, one could not cast martial cultivation aside and walk alone.

To become a true master of the alchemical path, one needed accomplishments in the path of spirit refinement as well.

There was a famous saying in the alchemy world: a spirit-refinement master might not become an alchemical master, but an alchemical master was certainly a spirit-refinement master.

Only with powerful divine sense could one identify and remedy flaws in time during the alchemy process.

President Lu himself was a sixth-rank spirit-refinement master.

Otherwise, he would not have been qualified to serve as the branch president of a provincial capital such as Golden City.

According to government policy, so long as someone under the branch produced high-quality elixirs or cultivated outstanding alchemists, part of the credit would go to him, the branch president.

Therefore, whether out of personal interest or public duty, he was more than willing to nurture a promising alchemy seedling like Chen Wu.

As for the youth's attitude toward the alchemical path, Lu Chun was in no hurry to persuade him.

As an old hand with more than thirty years of experience who had trained countless alchemists, he knew best how to guide someone like spring rain, moistening things silently.

A scheme sprang to the branch president's mind. Without revealing anything on his face, he deliberately asked, "Student, here's the situation. Although the elixirs you're selling are all of exceptional quality, they are the most basic kinds. Only the 'Qi-Accumulating Pill' is a little more expensive. The association can purchase it for forty-eight thousand Red Continent currency. What do you think?"

The medicinal ingredients and related equipment Chen Wu had previously bought for alchemy had cost only five hundred Red Continent currency, thanks to policy subsidies.

Faced with a profit margin of nearly a hundredfold, Chen Wu naturally had no reason to refuse. "No problem!"

As Capital once said, once there was an appropriate profit, capital grew very bold.

With a ten percent profit, it would be employed everywhere; with twenty percent, it became lively; with fifty percent, it prompted active risk-taking; with one hundred percent, it made people defy every law; with three hundred percent, it made them unafraid of crime, even of the danger of the gallows.

And Chen Wu had earned nearly a hundred times his investment in less than one morning.

If this had happened in his previous life, those capitalists would have gone mad. This was also why most elixirs were uniformly purchased, allocated, and sold by the state.

Such enormous profits had indeed surpassed the expectations of someone who had only just entered the alchemical path. No wonder the driver had been so confident when speaking of his son, who had earned his alchemist certification.

Seeing Chen Wu's expression, President Lu, believing he had taken the bait, said regretfully, "Student, what a pity—you can't refine truly ranked elixirs. Otherwise, even if they were merely mid-grade, the price would double again."

Although elixirs such as the "Qi-Accumulating Pill" were categorized as ninth-rank in the National Herbal Elixir Compendium, strictly speaking, their effects still could not compare with those of genuine ninth-rank elixirs.

Such elixirs were mainly for beginner alchemists to practice with as an introduction, to build alchemy experience, cultivate interest, and lower the technical threshold.

Their effects were limited to ordinary people and prospective martial artists.

Unlike genuine ninth-rank elixirs, which could be used all the way through the ranked realm and were naturally more valuable.

Wealth, fame, and profit stirred the heart. Chen Wu, who considered himself a thoroughly worldly man, followed the slope downward at the lure of profit and surrendered without hesitation. "I can learn too. I can refine ninth-rank elixirs too."

"Student, it is certainly good that you wish to improve. But I must remind you..."

Haste made waste. President Lu did not wish to see such a promising alchemy seedling ruined, so he smiled and reminded him, "Although the Qi-Accumulating Pill barely counts as ninth-rank among elixirs, there is still quite a gap between it and truly ranked elixirs. Not only are the refining steps complicated, but professional equipment is also required. It isn't something you can achieve just by buying a pot and frying things in it."

What President Lu said was indeed the truth.

According to the martial artists, among the three kinds of elixirs Chen Wu had refined, only the "Qi-Accumulating Pill," which could increase a martial artist's true qi, had some effect—but it still fell a certain distance short of ninth-rank elixirs.

Even within the alchemy world, such elixirs were called unranked, to distinguish them from genuine ninth-rank elixirs.

Those genuinely ranked elixirs were not only more potent than the Qi-Accumulating Pill, but also possessed a richer variety of functions.

For example, the "Qi-Concentrating Pill" Chen Wu had previously taken, which the school distributed uniformly, could increase a prospective martial artist's true qi during cultivation.

In theory, so long as an elixir reached supreme-grade quality, it would contain no elixir toxin and have no consumption restrictions.

Prospective martial artists only needed to swallow elixirs like mad to reach the legendary Nine-Turn Origin-Tempering Realm.

However, theory was theory after all.

For supreme-grade elixirs, without elixir toxins suppressing them, their medicinal potency was brought to its fullest extent.

Every elixir required time to digest, which meant they could not be consumed in excessive quantities.

If one ate too many, at best one's foundation would become unstable, making origin tempering difficult; at worst, one's origin seed would shatter, and all previous effort would be wasted.

Under real-world conditions, even ninth-rank Qi-Concentrating Pills were nearly unable to meet demand across Red Continent's population of over two billion.

Even after excluding those who were too old, too young, studying liberal arts, or already at eighth rank, there were still more than twenty million martial examination candidates every year.

The number of elixirs they alone required was a terrifying astronomical figure.

And that did not even include students in first year, second year, and other grades, nor the amount of elixirs required behind them.

Fortunately, the state had developed mid-grade production lines for ninth-rank through eighth-rank elixirs, ensuring that every candidate taking the martial examination could receive one mid-grade Qi-Concentrating Pill for free each week. This allowed them to swiftly condense their true origin seeds and complete foundational origin tempering during high school.

But this was already the limit of what the state could accomplish.

Take "supreme-grade Qi-Concentrating Pills," for instance. Only alchemists who had immersed themselves in refining this elixir for many years could produce them.

Even after they were successfully refined, most were kept by the alchemists for their own children or relatives, with few reaching the market.

Even those that did reach the market were bought up at high prices by provincial and municipal governments and preferentially allocated to geniuses within their own provinces and cities, making it difficult for them to flow into other regions.

Golden City, the provincial capital of Cool Province, did have an alchemist capable of refining supreme-grade Qi-Concentrating Pills.

But because her child would also be taking the martial examination in the next two years,

her output of elixirs had greatly decreased.