By the time he returned to the castle, the sun was about to set.
When Gerald reached the greenhouse door, Professor Sprout was crouching inside, repotting Mandrakes. She looked up at the sound of the door opening.
"Mr. Green? Just in time. Two more flowers have opened on your Heaven-Subduing Flower. Look."
Gerald walked to the corner of the greenhouse. The Heaven-Subduing Flower grew quietly in its pot, all five of its pale gold buds now in full bloom.
"It's growing better than I expected. I can pick two flowers to make a potion."
Naturally, Gerald could not say he intended to refine pills with them. Making a potion was the best excuse.
Professor Sprout crouched beside him and smiled.
She was very fond of this boy. He was both clever and hardworking.
These past few days, besides tending his own herbs, he had also helped care for the other plants in the greenhouse.
"I've never seen a first-year grow an unfamiliar plant so well. When you reach your third year, I can recommend you for a greenhouse assistant position. It's paid."
"Thank you, Professor," Gerald said with a smile.
After leaving the greenhouse, Gerald went straight to the Room of Requirement on the Seventh Floor.
He needed somewhere quiet to extract medicinal liquid from the spirit herbs he had gathered that day.
Gerald extended his left hand, and a ball of flame sprang up.
With a flick of his finger, he sent the flame beneath the pill furnace.
He could perform the extraction process for Ironwire Vine with his eyes closed: preheat the furnace, add the Ironwire Vine, then wait as it slowly simmered into an emerald-green liquid.
Half an hour later, the twenty-four Ironwire Vines had yielded a full twenty-one bottles of Foundation-Stabilizing Liquid.
[First-tier spiritual liquid: Foundation-Stabilizing Liquid, quality (excellent)]
Gerald felt a surge of delight. It seemed that as his cultivation advanced, the purity of his medicinal extracts improved as well.
This batch of Foundation-Stabilizing Liquid had reached excellent quality, far better than the average quality of his first attempt.
He would keep a few bottles as gifts and sell the rest to Aberforth.
But now that the quality had improved, selling them for two Galleons would mean selling himself short.
Oh well. I'll deal with that when the time comes.
With that thought, Gerald sat cross-legged before the pill furnace again.
He looked at the six Darkgold Fruits laid out before him and the two pale gold Heaven-Subduing Flowers he had just picked in the greenhouse.
This would be his first attempt at refining pills.
Unlike extracting medicinal liquid, pill refinement required placing several materials into the furnace together, allowing them to fuse and condense under the combined effects of flame and spiritual qi.
Heat control, the proportions of the ingredients, and the timing and intensity of spiritual qi infusion-every step would affect the quality of the finished pills.
Gerald was not nervous, though.
The Darkgold Essence-Gathering Pill was described as a third-tier pill, which sounded far more advanced than a first-tier spiritual liquid.
But it still fell within the category of low-grade pills. After all, he only needed to combine two ingredients.
By Gerald's estimate, his chances of successfully refining the Darkgold Essence-Gathering Pill should be over eighty percent.
The furnace's temperature rose slowly. Gerald closed his eyes, sensing every minute change in the heat within.
Gerald opened his eyes and placed the six Darkgold Fruits into the furnace.
The purple-gold fruits rolled around a few times inside before settling in the center of the furnace's base.
He adjusted the flame, shifting from fierce heat to gentle heat so that warmth could seep slowly and evenly through the skins.
As the Darkgold Fruits began to soften in the heat, Gerald added the Heaven-Subduing Flowers to the furnace.
Gerald never withdrew his spiritual sense from the furnace. A fraction too hot, and the medicinal properties would be ruined; a fraction too cool, and the ingredients would not fuse completely.
Time passed swiftly in his concentration.
The medicinal liquid inside the furnace began to change. A pale gold sheen appeared on the surface of the deep purple liquid, which grew viscous as it shifted from a flowing liquid to a semisolid state.
"Condense!"
At Gerald's shout, a faint hum came from the furnace.
All nine vents in the lid released wisps of pale gold mist at once. The mist gathered in the air without dispersing, slowly swirling like a miniature cloud.
Gerald withdrew his true fire and let the furnace cool naturally.
Gerald waited with his eyes closed for about fifteen minutes, then reached out and lifted the lid.
A rich medicinal fragrance surged from the furnace. At the bottom lay five pale gold pills, each the size of a longan.
[Third-tier pill: Darkgold Essence-Gathering Pill, quality (good). Expands meridians, accelerates primordial qi condensation, and slightly increases cultivation.]
Good quality?
This far exceeded Gerald's expectations.
He had thought that successfully producing pills on his first attempt would already be a very good result.
Who would have thought? I'm actually a genius.
Gerald took out one pill and placed it in his mouth.
The pill dissolved far faster than he had expected. The moment it entered his mouth, it became a warm liquid that slid down his throat.
Once the medicinal liquid reached his stomach, a gentle, sustained current of warmth rose from it, spreading along his meridians throughout his body.
Gerald closed his eyes and circulated his cultivation technique.
A moment later, a notification appeared.
[Successfully absorbed Darkgold Essence-Gathering Pill. Cultivation +150.]
Gerald opened his eyes and looked at the line on the panel, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly.
After reaching refining essence into qi, increasing his cultivation had become several times harder than it had been during chain-form essence refinement.
It took two thousand points to break through to the next level. Relying on meditation and breathing exercises alone would take well over half a year.
This single pill was worth nearly a month of hard work.
Pill refinement had been the right path to take.
After putting away the remaining four Darkgold Essence-Gathering Pills, Gerald rose from in front of the furnace and stretched his slightly stiff neck.
He had sat cross-legged for nearly three hours while refining the pills, leaving his knees and back aching.
He packed the twenty-one bottles of Foundation-Stabilizing Liquid into his cloth bag one at a time. The bag quickly bulged.
This is such a hassle.
Gerald had tried to learn the Undetectable Extension Charm, but none of his attempts had succeeded.
Otherwise, even at the risk of a fine from the Ministry of Magic, he would have made something like Hermione's little beaded bag.
Ah, it looks like I'll have to put talisman crafting on the agenda too.
At aperture entry, the first level of refining essence into qi, he could craft three kinds of talismans: Object-Storing, Lightness, and Mist.
An Object-Storing Talisman could seal small objects inside it, a Lightness Talisman could reduce the weight of any object, and a Mist Talisman could create a bank of fog that obscured vision.
The materials required were cinnabar, demonic beast blood, and
yellow paper.
Cinnabar and yellow paper would be easy to obtain. But demonic beast blood...
Gerald rummaged through his cloth bag, took out the bottle of acromantula venom, and examined it.
The dark green liquid swayed gently inside the bottle. Venom was venom, and blood was blood. They were not interchangeable.
But if the panel classified an acromantula as a demonic beast, perhaps the blood of other magical creatures would also count as demonic beast blood.
Would dragon blood work too?
Gerald put the venom bottle away and decided to ask Aberforth at the Hog's Head the next day.
By the time he left the Room of Requirement, it was completely dark outside.
Gerald walked down the corridor toward Gryffindor Tower.
As he reached a corner, a white figure suddenly dropped upside down from the ceiling, blocking the middle of the corridor.
He wore a little hat covered in tassels and an orange-red evening suit. Hanging upside down from the ceiling, he folded his arms across his chest.
His clownlike face split into a wide grin, revealing a mouthful of crooked yellow teeth.
Was this Peeves?
"Someone come quick! Come quick!" Peeves's shrill voice bounced through the empty corridor. "A first-year brat wandering around in the middle of the night again, caught by the great Peeves! Filch! Filch, come take points off!"
Gerald stopped and looked at Peeves.
Peeves somersaulted on the ceiling, then hopped down in front of Gerald.
"Little brat, why aren't you saying anything? Has the great Peeves scared you stupid?"
Peeves hopped again, coming closer.
"What's that look for? Not happy? The great Peeves-"
"Shut up!"
A glimmer of lightning flashed in Gerald's eyes, like a miniature bolt tearing through the night sky in the darkness.
Peeves's voice cut off abruptly.
He froze as though pinned to the spot. The expression on his heavily powdered face shifted from glee to terror.
What's wrong with this brat?
He was a ghost. Physical attacks had no effect on him, and very few spells could harm him.
Ghosts could not die. For hundreds, even thousands of years, all ghosts had believed this, and so had all the living.
Yet facing the boy before him, he could not help feeling afraid.
It was as though, if this boy wished it, he could die a second time.
No, not death. Death was impossible for a ghost.
It would be complete annihilation, leaving not even his soul behind.
He had lived for hundreds of years and had never been as frightened as he was that day.
What a bloody nightmare.
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