"Even the supporting herb, drunken butterfly leaf, was refined and extracted three times. That's just... too incredible!" a dark-faced man exclaimed.
The others' expressions differed little from the dark-faced man's.
"You can refine and extract sixteen herbs at once, attending to every aspect of each one so flawlessly that there's nothing to fault. What tier of Alchemy Master are you, Young Master Tang?" someone asked.
"Each herb requires a different number of refinements and a different amount of time, yet Lord Tang can perfectly introduce the next herb to be refined, keeping exactly sixteen herbs undergoing refinement in the cauldron. That's truly remarkable!" An Alchemy Master dressed like a pale-faced scholar looked utterly incredulous.
Half an hour passed in the flick of a finger, and Tang Yan finished refining all the herbs.
"Mingshao tea core, eight refinements. Mingluo fruit, eight refinements. Fire sun branch, eleven refinements!" Some attentive observers had already counted the refinements of these three primary ingredients. Their words drew a sharp intake of breath from everyone present.
Taking in everyone's expressions, Tang Yan said sternly, "Everyone, while refining these pills, I used no special techniques or assistance of any kind.
"The entire process consisted of basic methods!
"I had you practice because I wanted you to work every step of alchemy into your very bones.
"That way, even when refining superior-quality herbs, you can handle them with ease."
"If you give it your all, even if you can't purify sixteen herbs simultaneously, surely you can manage eight?
"That will also save time, allowing you to increase the number of refinements.
"If you truly completed fifty thousand repetitions of the alchemy basics as I required, you can test your pill-refining abilities shortly and see whether you've advanced another step."
With that, Tang Yan began the pill-fusion process, explaining,