Several days later!
Xiao Ding ran all over the city, emptied the Desert Iron Mercenary Group's savings, and exchanged every last bit for medicinal ingredients.
With ingredients on hand and the underground magma still undiscovered, Xiao Yan decided to refine pills for Xiao Ding first.
With his current alchemical skills, refining low-grade pills was as easy as reaching out his hand.
He could produce dozens of first- and second-grade pills in a single batch.
Since mercenaries spent most of their days fighting, Xiao Yan mainly refined pills that healed injuries and restored Dou Qi.
Most were first- or second-grade.
Besides those, Xiao Yan also specially refined some Energy-Gathering Pills for Xiao Ding and Xiao Li.
There was no helping it. In a small city like Stone Desert City, even gathering the ingredients for Purple Heart Barrier-Breaking Pills was difficult, let alone refining them.
So what Xiao Yan refined for Xiao Ding and Xiao Li were Energy-Gathering Pills.
Energy-Gathering Pills contained the purest energy, so Xiao Ding and Xiao Li could take them as well.
Moreover, although Stone Desert City lacked high-grade medicinal herbs, it had plenty of magic cores.
In just two days, Xiao Ding had gathered thirty to forty First-Rank Magic Cores, seven Second-Rank Magic Cores, and one Third-Tier Magic Core.
In the end, Xiao Yan refined a full eighteen Second-Grade Energy-Gathering Pills and seven Third-Grade Energy-Gathering Pills for Xiao Ding and Xiao Li.
These Energy-Gathering Pills were relatively low-grade and would do little for Xiao Yan.
But for Xiao Ding and Xiao Li, advancing several cultivation stages after taking them would be no problem.
The only thing they needed to watch out for was that each breakthrough required spending some time consolidating their cultivation.
Otherwise, their foundations would be unstable, making them liable to encounter bottlenecks in the