Alchemy

In the Cultivation World, alchemy was a profound field of study.

Once a cultivator reached a certain realm, they could guide Pill Flame with their divine sense, roasting medicinal ingredients directly to burn away the dregs and preserve the essence, extracting the medicinal juices from spirit herbs.

The juices of all the different herbs were purified before being blended together.

Once they cooled, they became pills.

This was an advanced method of alchemy.

Clearly, disciples at the Qi Refining Stage and Foundation Establishment Realm could not refine pills this way.

For one thing, their divine sense was not powerful enough to separate the medicinal juices from the dregs. For another, they had not formed a golden core in their dantian, so they had no way to summon Pill Flame.

Thus, the method used by lower-level disciples was simple and crude: boiling.

They added water to an alchemy furnace, washed the medicinal ingredients, then put those in as well.

Then they began boiling.

Through boiling, the essence within the herbs was released into the water. Finally, they boiled the water away, leaving behind the herbal essence.

This method was exceedingly clumsy, and its success rate was extremely low. Often, only one batch out of ten succeeded.

But this was how lower-level disciples in the Cultivation World refined pills. They had no other way.

He Pingsheng could only use this clumsy method for now, too.

The medicinal ingredients and alchemy furnaces had all been enhanced.

What had originally been twenty sets of ingredients had now become forty!

More importantly, all forty sets were supreme-grade ingredients.

Previously, Wang Dun had owned a single alchemy furnace, a low-grade magical artifact with only one layer of restrictions.

Now, after He Pingsheng enhanced it, the furnace had become a supreme-grade magical artifact with four layers of restrictions.

And there were two such furnaces: one square cauldron and one round cauldron.

"Heh heh heh..." He Pingsheng chuckled at the sight of the furnaces. Supreme-grade magical artifacts! Next time I visit Horsehead Mountain Market, I'll sell these. They should fetch quite a few spirit stones.

In the Cultivation World, treasures were classified quite strictly.

From lowest to highest, they were magical artifacts, spirit artifacts, Magical Treasures, Mystic Treasures, and so on.

Generally, disciples at the Qi Refining Stage used treasures classified as magical artifacts.

Foundation Establishment Realm disciples used spirit artifacts.

Golden Core Stage disciples possessed the basic qualifications to nurture Magical Treasures, so cultivators at the third level of the Golden Core Stage or above generally owned them.

Mystic Treasures and the like were treasures used by Nascent Soul Realm cultivators.

Of course, this was not an absolute rule.

For example, impoverished cultivators in the early Foundation Establishment Realm might still be using magical artifacts.

Magical artifacts, spirit artifacts, Magical Treasures, and Mystic Treasures were all further divided into four grades: low, middle, high, and supreme.

Taking magical artifacts as an example, low-grade magical artifacts had one layer of restrictions!

Middle-grade magical artifacts had two layers of restrictions.

High-grade magical artifacts had three layers of restrictions.

Supreme-grade magical artifacts had four layers of restrictions.

And so it continued!

At the spirit artifact level, even the lowest-grade spirit artifacts had five layers of restrictions.

Put simply, the more layers of restrictions engraved on a treasure, the higher its rank and the greater its power.

He Pingsheng reached out and picked up the round alchemy furnace before him.

It was the size of his palm.

"Expand!" he shouted, sending the magic power within his body surging into it with a rumble.

In an instant, the furnace grew to the size of an iron cooking pot, bearing four layers of restrictions.

Unfortunately, none of those four layers had been refined.

That meant he could not hope to control the furnace entirely at will.

Before refining pills, he first had to refine the alchemy furnace.

"Let's do this... I wonder how long it'll take to refine it!"

Next came refining the furnace.

Before he knew it, another two months had passed.

He Pingsheng refined all four layers of restrictions on the furnace.

"Expand!"

"Return!"

"Emerge!"

After refining it, He Pingsheng found the furnace much easier to control. He could bring it out freely or draw it into his dantian.

Of course, the furnace also had some storage space and could temporarily hold items.

Next came refining pills!

The first step was to summon the furnace, enlarge it to the size of an iron pot, and place it in the courtyard.

It had to go in the courtyard because he still needed to light a fire. Doing that indoors was out of the question.

The second step was to add water to the pot.

Then he added the herbs in sequence and began boiling them.

The boiling process required the greatest care and caution.

Still, that was no great problem. The Thirty-Six Alchemy Formulas clearly recorded the method for boiling down and refining these pills, how to control the heat, and what would happen in the pot at each stage.

He Pingsheng had long since memorized all of this so thoroughly that he could recite it backward.

The first ingredient he added was the immortal bamboo shoot, followed by the seven-leaf spirit herb. The third was the spirit apricot, and the very last was the vermilion fruit.

Everything proceeded smoothly and properly.

Half an hour later, a peculiar fragrance began drifting from the furnace.

It was not particularly strong, however.

Only He Pingsheng could smell it; his neighbors could not.

Even if they had smelled it, they would not have come over to ask about it, because all his neighbors were ordinary people. Not one was a cultivator.

Several more hours passed!

He Pingsheng scooped the dregs out of the pot and discarded them, then began reducing the small amount of blended medicinal juice that remained.

Before his eyes, the pills gradually took shape, finally forming twelve pill pellets.

But before they could fully form, a loud bang erupted from the pot.

Bang...

They exploded!

His first attempt at alchemy had failed!

Still, He Pingsheng found some consolation in the fact that, although the refinement had failed, he had obtained twelve Waste Pills.

They were much like the twelve he had previously obtained from the Alchemy Hall on Bamboo Peak.

"Whew..." He Pingsheng let out a relieved breath and put the Waste Pills away.

To others, these were Waste Pills, but to He Pingsheng, who possessed a heaven-defying item like the Treasure-Gathering Basin, they were treasures.

They could be purified directly. Once enhanced by the Treasure-Gathering Basin, they would become supreme-grade Qi-Gathering Pills.

The first batch had failed!

He Pingsheng did not rush to refine a second batch. Instead, he calmed himself and began thinking it over.

Why had he failed?

Where had things gone wrong?

What was the problem?

How could he solve it?

With those questions and possible solutions in mind, He Pingsheng began refining his second batch.

But the outcome left no room for doubt: the second batch failed as well.

There were few shortcuts in alchemy.

It depended on repeated failures, slowly piling up experience and developing a feel for the process.

Fortunately, though he failed, he always managed to produce Waste Pills.

He Pingsheng spent the following days refining pills.

He refined two batches every day.

One in the morning and one in the afternoon.

Day after day.

When He Pingsheng reached his seventeenth batch, he finally succeeded.

He Pingsheng was wild with joy.

"Hahaha... I can refine pills now... I can make Qi-Gathering Pills!"

What he did not know was that, for an ordinary mid-Qi Refining Stage cultivator, successfully refining a first batch of pills was virtually impossible without a hundred or more attempts.

He Pingsheng had found his touch by the seventeenth batch for two reasons: first, his divine sense was stronger than that of disciples at his level; second, he had the support of the Heaven Tier Thirty-Six Alchemy Formulas.

Otherwise, he would not have succeeded either.

"Again!"

He Pingsheng continued refining pills.

But he did not succeed every time.

His success rate was roughly one in four.

In other words, on average, every four sets of herbs yielded one successful batch of pills.

This success rate was already utterly heaven-defying.

After all, even ordinary, experienced alchemists only achieved about that rate.

As for beginners, some might not successfully refine even one batch out of ten.

Of course, He Pingsheng felt that if he refined pills in Bamboo Peak's Alchemy Hall instead, his success rate could rise further.

Moreover, if his cultivation increased and his divine sense continued to grow, his success rate would improve dramatically as well.