The steps of Gu refining were simple. He only needed to gather all the Spirit Insects required by the Gu Recipe, place them into a Gu pot, and starve them for a time, forcing them to devour one another. Given enough time, a Gu would emerge.
For insect species that did not enjoy fighting, other methods were needed to stir the ferocity within them. However, those methods were beyond his current understanding.
Spirit Insects needed time to digest each other after devouring one another. Some required seven times seven, forty-nine days; some required nine times nine, eighty-one days; some powerful Gu species even needed three years. There was no fixed rule.
It did not matter that Gu refining took a long time. The difficult part was that it had a failure rate. Some Gu Recipes had a one-in-ten chance of success, while others had a one-in-a-thousand chance. Those with terrible luck might fail to produce a Gu even after ten thousand attempts.
Once Gu refining failed, all materials were lost, and every resource invested vanished like meat buns tossed to a dog.
Long Xuan had no idea what the success rate of this Gu Recipe was. He simply prepared ten sets of materials and bought ten Gu pots, intending to refine them all at once.
Many Gu Masters refined Gu this way, casting a wide net to catch a big fish while saving time.
Even if they refined duplicates, it did not matter. They could sell the extra Gu Insects, not only avoiding losses but making a profit as well.
It was worth mentioning that Gu Insects ate their own kind. Therefore, every Gu Master could only keep one Gu Insect of the same type. If they refined too many, they could only trade them away as quickly as possible.
However, Long Xuan soon discovered that his preparations seemed unnecessary. He had found another use for his golden finger.
During Gu refining, he could see progress on the Gu pots as well. Once the progress reached 100%, the Gu would be completed.
Then the question was: if the Spirit Insects inside a Gu pot were doomed not to form a Gu, would it still display progress?
Did a Gu pot that displayed progress guarantee success, while one that showed no progress was destined to fail?
Could he immediately open any Gu pot that did not show progress, then choose a time when heaven, earth, and man were all in harmony to refine again, repeating the process until the Gu pot displayed progress?
Long Xuan felt his scalp about to explode.
In other words, his Gu refining success rate might be 100%. He would not need to gamble on that damned success rate like other Gu Masters, nor would he need to worry about wasting materials.
He felt that he could challenge those heaven-defying Gu Recipes with a one-in-ten-thousand success rate.
Long Xuan's breathing quickened. This golden finger was a little too heaven-defying.
In the blink of an eye, seven times seven, forty-nine days passed. At last, Long Xuan's ten Gu pots showed movement.
Just as he had expected, once numbers appeared on a Gu pot, the success rate was certainly one hundred percent. The instant the number turned into 100% was the day the Gu was born.
It was also because of the numerical reminder that Long Xuan had waited early that day and personally witnessed the sight of Gu Insects breaking out of their pots.
Long Xuan's eyes widened, unable to suppress his excitement.
The ten Gu pots changed almost simultaneously. Ten little red cockroaches crawled out of the Gu pots one after another.
Sure enough, all ten Gu pots had produced Gu. Not a single batch of materials had been ruined. The Gu completion rate was one hundred percent.
To everyone else, this would have been utterly unimaginable.
Long Xuan ran over excitedly, took out Gu jars, covered the insects with them, and separated them into ten containers.
He had not forgotten the taboo of Gu Insects: they ate their own kind.
To keep them from devouring one another, he had to separate them immediately.
Only after finishing all this did Long Xuan have the time to bring one close and study it carefully.
He had already named this new Gu species, making its first appearance in this world, Cockroach Gu.
Long Xuan pricked his finger with a needle and dripped a drop of blood onto the Cockroach Gu's head, simply completing the blood pact ritual.
From the moment he established a soul connection with it, although Long Xuan could not communicate with it through words, he quickly learned its abilities through the power of his soul.
As expected, the Gu Insect refined from a hundred cockroaches possessed Cockroach Gu's undying ability.
Of course, it was not truly immortal. Because his research funds were too limited and he had used only the most ordinary materials, there were still countless forces capable of killing Cockroach Gu. Still, it could be summed up as being immune to ordinary attacks from opponents of the same rank.
To truly achieve an immortal body, he would probably need to use Supreme-grade Spirit Insects—cockroaches—to refine Gu.
Cockroach Gu refined from low-grade cockroaches could be killed by far too many methods. It was nowhere near an immortal body; calling it more resistant to beatings would be more fitting.
Its ability to take a beating might not amount to much in the eyes of great clans, but among Rogue Cultivators, it absolutely counted as a rather excellent ability.
Long Xuan was already very satisfied. He had never imagined that a pile of the cheapest materials could create a truly immortal body. That was simply impossible.
He contentedly placed Cockroach Gu in the center of his palm, loving this first creation of his beyond measure.
According to this world's classification of Gu Insect quality, his Cockroach Gu should belong to the low-grade Gu Insect category.
In this world, Gu Insect quality was divided into low-grade, mid-grade, high-grade, and supreme-grade.
Supreme-grade Gu worms were the kings among Gu, the things all Gu Masters most longed to obtain.
Every Gu Master's dream was to refine a supreme-grade Gu worm within their lifetime. Every supreme-grade Gu worm held a fatal allure for Gu Masters.
However, supreme-grade Gu worms were extraordinarily difficult to refine, and their owners were few and far between.
Long Xuan had set his sights on creating a supreme-grade Gu Formula himself. Refining a supreme-grade Gu worm was also his dream.
Naturally, it was impossible for him to refine a supreme-grade Gu worm on his very first attempt. A Gu Insect's quality was determined by the primary material in its Gu Recipe.
The so-called primary material was the one Spirit Insect among all those in the Gu Recipe that would certainly laugh last after their mutual slaughter.
The primary material had to possess the highest combat power among all the materials in the Gu Recipe and be certain to remain until the end. Otherwise, if the primary material died, it meant the Gu refining had failed.
If the primary material was a Supreme-grade Spirit Insect, then the resulting Gu Insect would be a supreme-grade Gu worm.
By the same token, Cockroach Gu's primary material was low-grade, so no matter how unusual its ability was, it still had to be classified as a low-grade Gu Insect.
Yet in Long Xuan's eyes, although Cockroach Gu belonged to the weakest low-grade Gu Insects, its ability to withstand punishment might be more practical than that of a Mid-Grade Gu Insect.
However, only one Gu Insect of the same type could be used. This round of Gu refining had produced a small accident, resulting in nine extra Cockroach Gu.
What to do with the remaining nine Cockroach Gu became a problem. He could not possibly squander heaven's gifts by feeding them to Chicken Bro.
After turning the matter over and over in his mind, Long Xuan decided to sell the extra Gu Insects, just like other Rogue Cultivators did.
There were quite a few Rogue Cultivators in the market selling exclusive Gu Insects. In this world, creating one's own Gu Recipe was not particularly rare.
This was because a Low-Grade Gu Recipe might require only a single-digit number of materials, sometimes even just two kinds. Even blindly guessing with the Go-with-the-Flow Method might result in a Gu Recipe.
Many Rogue Cultivators without inheritances had stumbled upon their Gu Insects through the Go-with-the-Flow Method. Thus, exclusive Gu Recipes were everywhere in this world, and everyone had the ability to create their own Gu Recipe.
It was merely that Rogue Cultivators' exclusive Gu Recipes often overlapped, and because they used few materials, they were generally weak.
However, a Supreme-grade Gu Formula was absolutely not something an ordinary person could create. Long Xuan could reveal his ability to create Gu Recipes, but he could never reveal his ability to create Supreme-grade Gu Formulas.
Therefore, going to the market to sell exclusive Gu Insects would not draw attention. He could do it openly and boldly.
He was far too poor right now. He urgently needed a large sum of money to buy that piece of Darksteel and that High-Grade Spirit Stone.
He could even set up a stall like other Rogue Cultivators and sell his exclusive Gu Insects over the long term.
Cockroach Gu cost very little to make, yet could be sold at a high price. Even more outrageous, there was no failure rate at all. It was pure profiteering.
As for someone buying it and using it against him, he did not care in the slightest. After all, it was only a low-grade Gu Insect. He actually had a better choice. Cockroach Gu was merely a transitional option for him and would soon be discarded. Others could use it however they pleased.
It was only that he could not possibly find the necessary materials right now, so he could only use Cockroach Gu as a temporary substitute.
The better choice he spoke of was the famously renowned Water Bear from his previous life.
When it came to undying ability, cockroaches were completely little brothers before Water Bears.
Water Bears could withstand scorching temperatures of 151°C and freezing temperatures of minus 272°C.
They could not be killed in the deepest Mariana Trench, could not be killed by atomic bomb radiation, and scientists had failed to kill them even after sending them into space. Even without food or water, they could stubbornly endure for thirty years.
Water Bears could withstand oxygen deprivation, vacuum, high pressure, and low pressure. They could regenerate severed limbs and even repair DNA damage.
The vitality of Water Bears was a miracle of the world. Earth had endured five mass extinction events that wiped out the vast majority of living creatures, yet they alone had not gone extinct.
However, Water Bears were simply too tiny. Most were only three to five micrometers long, so small that they were difficult to observe with the naked eye and could only be clearly seen with a microscope.
Therefore, to refine Water Bear Gu, he first had to refine Microscope Gu.
That would require him to create another Gu Recipe. Water Bear Gu could not be completed anytime soon.
Once Microscope Gu emerged, he would be able to see more microscopic insect species.
One had to know that microscopic insect species had not yet been discovered by the Gu Masters of this world. Their varieties were vast, yet they had never been named or captured. What an enormous treasure trove of resources that was.
The microscopic Spirit Insects of the entire world would belong to him alone.
Besides being divided into the two major categories of Internal Gu and External Gu, this world's Gu Insects could be further subdivided into natural, enhancement, animal, plant, eye, dark, demon, special, production, and other categories...
He might establish a new school—the microscopic school—and become its founding patriarch.
Long Xuan was filled with ambition for the future.
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