[Seeking Follow-up Reads] Fire Pills That Could Be Eaten or Explode, a Dou Emperor Battle?

Beast Mountain Range, a certain cave.

"No, I've been sucked dry. Let me catch my breath."

Yao Chen waved his hands repeatedly and decisively separated from Xiao Yan. Half a month of high-intensity Alchemy had left him struggling to keep up.

"That's it?" Xiao Yan glanced sideways at Yao Chen, whose soul had visibly faded, and chuckled.

This possession trick was truly unparalleled when it came to teaching Alchemy.

Xiao Yan had to admit that Yao Chen deserved his constant boasts about having Alchemy unmatched across the continent. Supposedly, he was publicly acknowledged as the number one alchemist on the continent.

While Xiao Yan studied the Fire Pill Technique, pill enchantments, and other aspects of his own unique path of alchemy, Yao Chen had provided plenty of constructive advice.

With Yao Lao's experience, the endless trial and error available in the Gray Mist Space, and Xiao Yan's heaven-defying comprehension, he had reached the threshold of a fifth-tier alchemist in just half a month.

With [Divine Mechanism Hundred Refinements: Mending Heaven] and his own talent, he faced no bottlenecks whatsoever on the path of Alchemy. Every refinement brought tangible improvement.

Naturally, the fourth- and fifth-tier pills he refined were nothing like those made by other people on the continent.

It was not that Xiao Yan was arrogant. Using the same ingredients and the same pill formula, even seventh- or eighth-tier alchemists refining fourth- or fifth-tier pills alongside him would not be able to compare.

He could enchant pills, elevate ingredients, and fuse in his Natal Flame. Others could not accomplish even one of those things.

After all, the heroes of the world might be as numerous as crucian carp crossing a river, but they were still creatures of the river, unlike dragons entering the sea.

"Hmph, I'm not a beast like you. Your physical strength, Dou Qi, and spiritual power can convert into one another. After keeping up with your high-intensity research for half a month, even my soul has faded."

Yao Lao rolled his eyes irritably. He had originally planned to give Xiao Yan some hellish training, yet in the end, he was the one who had been put through military training. Even as a student, he had never been squeezed this hard.

Yet he was not dissatisfied in the slightest. Instead, he looked at a jade box beside Xiao Yan as though it contained a priceless treasure.

Picking up a round, crimson pill shaped like a closed lotus blossom and patterned with birds and beasts, Yao Chen's expression became especially vivid as he examined the fifth-tier Myriad Beast Blood-Coagulation Pill.

"Not that I want to make you arrogant, kid, but your talent really is heaven-defying. In your words, you're straight-up cheating."

As he carefully sensed the breathtaking structure within the pill, Yao Chen's eyes were filled with appreciation.

A true master always carried the heart of an apprentice. Every day he spent with Xiao Yan felt as though a door to a new world had been opened before him. Knowledge he had never imagined could be used in such ways was being brought to life, benefiting him immensely.

Like the previous Eight Extremes series, this was a new Buddha's Fury series developed by Xiao Yan.

Normal Alchemy involved harmonizing violent medicinal effects, dispersing their clashes, and cautiously preserving only the parts that complemented each other.

Once those violent medicinal effects lost control, the best-case scenario was an exploding furnace. The worst-case scenario could endanger the alchemist's life.

Xiao Yan's series, however, deliberately preserved the violent parts. Without excessively violent medicinal effects, how would anyone know that the ingredients in the pill they were taking were violent?

He used powerful soul force to control those violent medicinal effects in a strange balance between motion and stillness, then followed the same internal logic he used to materialize flames and fixed them at the boundary between motion and stillness.

Under normal circumstances, it would not be affected in the slightest whether it was cut with blades, chopped with axes, or bombarded by Dou Techniques.

However, once it was used, whether taken internally or applied externally, the balance between the various medicinal effects would suddenly shatter. Its effect could erupt severalfold in an instant. With the same ingredients, taking several normal pills might not be as potent as this single one. The effect was not additive, but multiplicative.

Generally speaking, ordinary people would not survive taking this kind of medicine. Xiao Yan's Natal Flame could heal injuries, so the requirements were not high. As long as one could withstand swallowing a miniature Buddha's Fury Fire Lotus, the medicinal effects could save them afterward.

It could be said that aside from someone like Xiao Yan, who was completely unafraid of injury, only those with exceptionally powerful physiques or genuine experts could take this pill.

This pill was not Xiao Yan's original creation. Instead, he had modified it using the sixth-tier Blood-Coagulation Pill formula Yao Chen had provided as a foundation, with Myriad Beast Spirit Flame as the main ingredient.

This sixth-tier Blood-Coagulation Pill was not a healing pill like Blood-Coagulation Powder. It was a pill that refined bloodlines, and it was especially effective on magical beasts with thin traces of ancient bloodlines.

Yao Chen had served quite a few magical beast experts back in the day. After all, he had been the only peak eighth-tier alchemist in the world who accepted commissions from across the entire continent, revered as the continent's number one. He had collected a vast sea of strange and unusual pill formulas.

The countless collections in his remaining Storage Ring were all bizarre things he had gathered while still alive—martial-world folklore, unofficial histories, strange tales, and miscellaneous anecdotes piled up in stack after stack.

Xiao Yan's pill had pushed Myriad Beast Spirit Flame's ability to refine magical beast bloodlines, promote evolution, and return them to their ancestral origins to the absolute limit. Yao Chen even suspected that this thing might work on humans as well.

If he still had a physical body, he would have wanted to try one himself and see whether it could stir his bloodline power. There was a ninety-eight percent chance it would not work, but trying would not get him pregnant.

Although Xiao Yan's pill had a rather narrow market and he had spent so long researching only a pill that almost nobody could take, Yao Chen was not dissatisfied in the slightest. He was simply delighted to add another collectible and gain another heap of knowledge.

As long as one's thinking did not go downhill, there would always be more solutions than problems. So what if ordinary people could not take this pill? They could just develop another pill that increased fire resistance or strengthened internal defenses.

Even if Xiao Yan's Buddha's Fury Fire Lotus essentially ignored defenses, could the two of them not research something that temporarily turned the body into flames?

And even if that did not work, this kind of pill could still be taken by experts and thick-skinned magical beasts.

"What do you think, Teacher? How's my [Buddha's Fury] Myriad Beast Blood-Coagulation Pill?" Xiao Yan asked with a smug smile.

Yao Lao had been about to praise him, but after thinking of something, the corner of his mouth twitched.

"There's nothing wrong with the pill. It'll be fought over by sixth-tier and even higher-tier magical beasts.

"But honestly, your naming talent is truly terrible. I can understand that it's a Blood-Coagulation Pill modified with Myriad Beast Spirit Flame as the main ingredient for the Buddha's Fury series, but this name is still a little too abstract..."

Xiao Yan rolled his eyes. This was nothing.

Back in Konoha, he even had a junior named Minato Namikaze. He should be grateful Xiao Yan had not called this pill the Buddha's Fury Supreme Flash Primitive Return Mega Pill.

After exchanging their insights on Alchemy, Xiao Yan happily put away the Liuwei Dihuang Pill and Golden Coffer Qi-Replenishing Pill formulas Yao Chen had prepared for him earlier.

Myriad Beast Spirit Flame could stimulate the body, make the blood surge, greatly increase yang energy, and awaken the body's primal instincts. Refining something like a Buddha's Fury version of the Liuwei Dihuang Pill would be pretty good. Not only would it be a powerful tonic, but it would also be useful for healing injuries.

If he was going to refine something, it had to be potent. Although Yao Chen said that every alchemist had refined this kind of pill before, Xiao Yan still felt that it was best to secretly refine such things in private.

Another half day passed. Xiao Yan opened his mouth and swallowed the flame-forged furnace before him.

The insights brought by Alchemy were truly abundant.

He spent half the day refining all sorts of strange little things before finally digesting all the realizations in his heart.

After putting away everything scattered casually across the ground, Xiao Yan stretched and loosened his muscles.

He had been in seclusion for half a month. It was time to get moving.

Just as he stepped out of the cave, Xiao Yan raised an eyebrow. In the distant sky, a surge of purple fiery aura abruptly rose within his perception.

It seemed that Dou Emperor-level experts were fighting?