My First Time Refining a Pill with the Eight Trigrams Furnace, and My Identity as a Seventh-Rank Alchemist Grandmaster Is Exposed

Inside the Secret Chamber he had rented specially for the occasion.

Xiao Yan sat cross-legged on the Stone Platform and took out the pitch-black Mystic Cauldron. Flames ignited at its eight positions, and a mysterious formation slowly took shape. Different runes began to glow at each position of the Eight Trigrams Furnace.

The pills he had refined before were too low-grade to warrant using something like this. A Seventh-Grade Pill, however, was no ordinary thing. Using all eight positions of the Eight Trigrams Furnace for it was hardly overkill.

Humm—

A low hum came from the Furnace.

Xiao Yan's expression turned solemn. Sixth-Grade Pills and Seventh-Grade Pills were worlds apart. The difference lay not only in how the flames were used, but also in the greater demands placed on soul power. Refining one was incomparably harder than refining the other.

He placed the two main ingredients, a Millennium Snow Lotus and some Blood Ginseng, in the Qian Position. It was the most fiercely yang of the eight positions, where the furnace fire burned hottest. Within minutes, the two Heavenly Flames had reduced the ingredients to liquid droplets, which he held briefly at the center of the Furnace.

He then placed more than twenty supplementary ingredients in the Liang Position to be refined slowly over a gentle flame. Ingredients prone to evaporation went into the Xun Position, away from the fire and smoke.

As the trigrams on the Furnace lit up, a wisp of pale cyan gas gathered inside it. It formed a mysterious cycle that brought the yin, yang, and Five-Element Qi into balance. Not only the wood and fire within Xiao Yan, but water, metal, and earth were drawn into it as well.

"Is this... True qi?"

Surprise flashed through Xiao Yan's eyes.

Before this, he would never have