National Alchemy

Chen Wu was still a high school student, and among the Hundred Arts, the only one he could access was alchemy.

Alchemy could be called an all-purpose skill. It was also a key national support program and would be Chen Wu's next focus of study.

Chen Wu carefully recalled everything in his mind related to the alchemy classes taught at school, along with the precautions involved.

After sorting through it, he remembered the three pill formulas taught by the school: the Spring-Nourishing Pill, the Origin-Restoring Pill, and the Qi-Accumulating Pill. They were the easiest pills for beginners entering the path of alchemy.

Among them, the Qi-Accumulating Pill was quite useful for high school students, allowing trainee martial artists to store qi currents for cultivation.

The Spring-Nourishing Pill had certain detoxifying and healing effects; the Origin-Restoring Pill, meanwhile, could help trainee martial artists at the Three-Temper True Essence realm recover.

The ingredients and related equipment for these three pill formulas could be purchased from nearby pharmacies by any ordinary high school student with a student ID, with corresponding subsidies and discounts.

As soon as he made up his mind, Chen Wu paid with his phone and headed to a nearby pharmacy.

After presenting his student ID, he ordered fifteen sets of ingredients for the Qi-Accumulating Pill, ten sets each for the Spring-Nourishing Pill and Origin-Restoring Pill, as well as the equipment needed for alchemy.

With the monstrous physique Chen Wu possessed after receiving the Holy Demon Embryo's blessing, even if he successfully refined the most valuable of the three formulas, the Qi-Accumulating Pill, it would be of little use to him.

Still, selling them for money to help support the household was not a bad choice.

Moreover, cultivating the path of alchemy to greater depths would also benefit Chen Wu.

Speaking of which, the government's related support policies had to be mentioned.

The government's original intent in offering alchemy courses in high school was, on the one hand, to train talent in this field, and on the other, to help students facing financial hardship.

Thus, pills of all kinds were uniformly classified into four grades according to quality: low-grade, mid-grade, high-grade, and supreme-grade.

Different qualities naturally produced different effects.

The better the quality of a pill, the less pill toxin it contained and the lower its drug resistance, allowing martial artists to take it more times each day.

As for supreme-grade pills, there was no such thing as drug resistance or pill toxin. They could be swallowed without limit.

This was also why the Republic went all out to support alchemy.

A good alchemist could greatly promote the development of martial arts in a region.

For this reason, the Republic spared no expense in building up its alchemy system, ensuring that its channels remained open.

After all, even if beginners wished to develop in this field, they definitely could not produce high-quality pills at the start.

Over time, apart from wealthy young masters who could throw money at the craft and those with truly extraordinary talent, everyone else would be shut out of alchemy, unable to rise above the rest.

Given enough time, the so-called path of alchemy would inevitably form industry barriers.

That would be extremely detrimental to both the Republic's original intentions and the development of its future strategy.

In the fierce wars against vicious beasts and the exploration of secret realms, pills played a crucial role.

At a critical moment, a single pill could save a martial artist's life.

It was for these reasons that the government sought to turn alchemy into a low-threshold profession open to the entire population.

Considering that martial arts examination students from poor families were also beginners in alchemy,

even if they saved up enough money to buy ingredients and refine pills, they would inevitably be unable to compete with veteran alchemists who had immersed themselves in the craft for years.

Therefore, whether the pills were refined by official alchemists or beginners, the government would purchase them at set standard prices, and private sales were forbidden.

(Of course, some still made their way onto the black market. But as long as the amount was not large and remained within the scope of oversight, the government would turn a blind eye.)

Even waste pills were only waste in relation to humans.

Among the vicious beasts domesticated and raised by humans, some possessed strong digestive abilities. These waste pills could be mixed into the feed of such highly digestive vicious beasts to improve the quality of their meat.

And that was merely one use for waste pills.

Not to mention that mid-grade pills and above had an even wider variety of uses.

As for students who had just stepped through the gates of the alchemy profession, even if they lacked the money to buy ingredients and equipment, they could apply to the government for a batch of ingredients.

Once the refinement was complete, the government would provide labor fees based on the quality and quantity of pills they produced, serving as startup capital.

This could both increase economic benefits and give newly entered alchemists the initiative to continue their studies.

Alchemy was a typical path where the deeper one cultivated, the greater its usefulness became. Above all, it required time and experience.

What the government did was lower the barrier to entry as much as possible, giving ordinary people more opportunities.

Under the pharmacy clerk's guidance, Chen Wu used his smartphone to fill out the online information for beginner alchemists. The government database would automatically retain his personal information on file.

After paying five hundred Red Coins, he finally completed the ordering process.

Having received the clerk's assurance that the goods would be delivered to his door tomorrow, Chen Wu tucked his student ID into his pocket and returned to the martial arts gym on the fifth floor of the mall to continue cultivating martial arts.

There were far more people at the gym in the afternoon than in the morning, most of them nearby residents and office workers.

Seeing this scene of everyone practicing martial arts, Chen Wu repeatedly warned himself not to become arrogant or complacent.

There were always heavens beyond heaven, and people beyond people.

After returning to the training room, Chen Wu continued sparring with his secondary body, Zhu Wu.

Fists and palms collided, filling the room with a constant string of bang bang sounds.

The two used everything they had learned without needing to worry about exhausting their true qi.

After an afternoon of cultivation, he finally touched upon a trace of the threshold to perfection.

Moreover, during his sparring with Zhu Wu, he discovered another wondrous use of the Holy Demon Embryo's three souls.

Although his cultivation was still insufficient for the three souls to manifest as Primordial Spirit avatars,

their existence had given rise to a powerful ability to simulate and deduce.

This ability specifically allowed for uninterrupted twenty-four-hour simulated deduction of technical skills such as martial techniques and alchemy.

Without question, this would greatly increase Chen Wu's cultivation speed in every aspect, including martial techniques.

Thinking of this, Chen Wu immediately handed the three pill formulas he knew, along with their refining methods, over to the three souls for deduction.

"Come to think of it, you and I sparred at such high intensity for four or five hours, yet we only sweated a little and did not even gasp for breath. The mouthful of true essence above the qi sea actually grew much stronger instead."

"That is the wondrous function of the Holy Demon Embryo. Otherwise, it would not be called the most perfect immortal body."

As mentioned before, the three paths of essence, qi, and spirit were only formally divided upon entering the Ninth-Rank Martial Artist realm.

The reason was that, for trainee martial artists who had yet to open their qi seas, these three things were far too illusory and intangible.

Martial artists at this stage needed to temper their bodies, hone their wills, and painstakingly cultivate their internal arts. Every day, they extracted a thread of true qi from the heaven-and-earth essence and their own qi and blood, gathered it above the qi sea with their thoughts, and transformed it into a mouthful of true essence, tempering it without rest to prevent qi currents from leaking away.

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