After Dugu Bo left, Feng Lingtian sat down at the pill-refining station. The True Explanation of the Dao of Alchemy still lay open on the table, its pages displaying the pill formulas for the seven immortal herbs. Feng Lingtian went over the medicinal properties of each herb in his mind-infernal delicate apricot was the fiercest; once refining began, its medicinal potency would surge outward like magma, requiring gentle heat first, then fierce heat. Octagonal mysterious ice grass was the coldest; its cold Qi seeped into every opening, requiring him to begin refining with his Soul Power at its fullest and suppress it all the way through in one sustained effort. Singular velvet sky chrysanthemum was the heaviest; its medicinal potency was dense rather than buoyant, requiring steady heat and slow simmering. Each had its own temperament, and each required a different approach.
Only after thinking it through did Feng Lingtian take out a thread-bound booklet from beside him. Its cover bore the words: Lingtian's Notes. He had already recorded quite a few things in it-observations of Soul Power circulation, analyses of medicinal properties, and the core principles behind resonance stones, all insights from his research at the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well over the past several days. He turned to a fresh blank page and wrote down the key refining points for the seven formulas, one by one. Heat control, proportions of supplementary herbs, responses to clashing medicinal properties-he put each point to paper only after repeatedly working through it in his mind. This writing took two full days. Only when every idea, every mental simulation, and every method of response had become words on paper did he set down his brush.
Early on the third morning, Feng Lingtian officially began refining pills. He pressed his palm against the pill furnace and slowly fed in Soul Power, lighting the furnace fire. For his first batch, he would refine the herb with the fiercest medicinal properties of them all-infernal delicate apricot.
The instant he opened the jade box, the temperature across the entire refining station began to soar. The infernal delicate apricot had been sealed inside for days, yet its scorching presence had not diminished in the slightest. Feng Lingtian picked up a jade spatula and removed a single petal from the stem. As the petal came free, it gave an extremely faint hiss, like a red-hot blade quenched in water. Feng Lingtian swiftly carried it into the furnace on the spatula.
The instant the petal entered, the furnace fire exploded with a roar. Crimson flames nearly surged out of the opening, casting the entire refining station in dark red. Feng Lingtian held the lid down with all his strength, sending Soul Power seeping through the furnace walls. The medicinal potency was like a ferocious beast trapped inside, battering incessantly against the restraints of his Soul Power-each impact tore a breach in it, and Feng Lingtian could only grit his teeth and patch it layer by layer. Scarlet sun grass, fire-pattern vine, and earthcore lotus seeds went in one after another, each addition sending another tremor through the flames. His sleeves curled slightly from the heat, and beads of sweat fell from his forehead onto the refining station with faint hisses.
He had written in Lingtian's Notes that infernal delicate apricot required gentle heat first, then fierce heat. He could not start with a raging fire, or its medicinal potency would devour all the supplementary herbs. Putting it into practice now was more than ten times harder than writing it on paper. Gentle heat first, then fierce heat-during the gentle phase, the medicinal potency gathered strength inside the furnace; during the fierce phase, that accumulated force erupted all at once. Failure to suppress it meant a ruined furnace and spoiled pills. Gritting his teeth, Feng Lingtian divided his Soul Power into three layers: one to seal the furnace walls, one to envelop the medicinal potency, and one to guide the supplementary herbs into the mixture. He constantly switched between the three layers, and he had to switch faster than the medicinal potency could batter against them.
Two hours later, the furnace fire settled. Feng Lingtian lifted the lid. A row of crimson pills lay at the bottom, eight in all. Fine golden markings covered each pill, like embers left behind after a fire. These were called Primordial Martial Awakening Pills · Fire. But their medicinal potency was too fierce, and much had been lost during suppression. Producing eight was already the limit of his current abilities. He placed the pills in a jade bottle and wrote a line in his notes: gentle heat first, then fierce heat; three-layer division. The mental simulation was correct; actual practice was harder.
Feng Lingtian did not immediately continue. He sat cross-legged, closed his eyes, and guided his remaining Soul Power to recover slowly. The infernal delicate apricot had consumed nearly seventy percent of his Soul Power. Every round of refining was a tug-of-war of Soul Power; he had to prepare thoroughly and restore himself to peak condition before facing the next immortal herb's challenge.
Four hours later, he opened his eyes and stoked the furnace fire again. This time, it was octagonal mysterious ice grass. Feng Lingtian picked up the gold box containing it.
The instant the gold box opened, an intensely cold presence spread outward, freezing the water droplets on the refining station into frost. Feng Lingtian's fingertips turned white with cold. The herb's eight leaves trembled slightly amid the frost, each carrying cold Qi accumulated over hundreds of years. With gold scissors, he carefully snipped off half a leaf and put it into the furnace.
The furnace fire did not explode. Instead, it abruptly dimmed. Ice-blue flames burned quietly inside, like moonlight reflected on a frozen lake during the polar night. But quiet did not mean easy-the cold Qi seeped into every opening, following his Soul Power bit by bit into Feng Lingtian's meridians. His fingers began to tremble, and his breath condensed into white mist in the air. The cold of mysterious ice grass was entirely different from the ferocity of infernal delicate apricot: the ferocity surged outward, while the cold burrowed inward. Feng Lingtian had to guide the medicinal potency to merge with the supplementary herbs while resisting the cold Qi's erosion of his meridians.
Cold marrow grass, ice soul flowers, and snow lotus roots went in one after another, each addition thickening the frost on the furnace walls. Feng Lingtian's lips turned purple from the cold, and his fingers grew so stiff that he could barely hold the jade spatula. He had written in his notes that octagonal mysterious ice grass had to be suppressed all the way through in one sustained effort while his Soul Power was at its fullest. Now he was testing those words-his Soul Power was constantly consumed under the cold Qi's erosion, and the slightest lapse would let the cold Qi follow his Soul Power back to attack his meridians. He held on.
Two hours passed, and the furnace fire went out soundlessly, as though it had frozen solid. Feng Lingtian lifted the lid. A row of ice-blue pills lay at the bottom, seven in all. A faint layer of cold light flowed over each pill's surface. Looking at those seven ice-blue pills, Feng Lingtian let out a long breath. The Primordial Martial Awakening Pills · Ice were finally complete.
Together with the previous eight fire-attribute pills, these two batches of ice and fire had yielded only fifteen. The attributes of these two immortal herbs were far too extreme and overbearing; the losses were indeed considerable. Still, with the remaining supreme-grade immortal herbs whose medicinal properties were mellow and rich, each batch should yield another two or three pills, barely bringing the total to around ten. As for ordinary medicinal herbs, refining them would be much easier. Reliably producing thirteen or fourteen pills per batch would pose no problem.
He refined only two batches that day. The infernal delicate apricot had consumed seventy percent of his Soul Power, and he had begun the second batch only after recovering. The octagonal mysterious ice grass required suppression all the way through in one sustained effort, exhausting his entire restored reserve of Soul Power. After two rounds of high-intensity refining, Feng Lingtian felt that even his spiritual power was beginning to buckle-that constant contest with the medicinal potency was more exhausting than the consumption of Soul Power. He needed a breather. Once his spiritual power had fully recovered, he would continue tomorrow.
Feng Lingtian bottled the two kinds of pills separately and wrote a review in his notes: his judgments during the mental simulations had been correct-the Primordial Martial Awakening Pill · Fire required a three-layer division, while the Primordial Martial Awakening Pill · Ice required suppression all the way through in one sustained effort with his Soul Power at its fullest. Execution was far harder than simulation, but the direction was correct. He had made it through both ice and fire; at least he now had some footing for the road ahead.
He turned a few pages farther. He had reserved several blank pages there, with a drawing at the top of a bead surrounded by rotating coils. Beside it were the words: Soul Core. The Rotational Compression Method, internal toxin circulation, the effects of the Soul Poison Pill inside Dugu Bo-all of these had already been recorded there. A few more lines followed, his conjectures on the universal applicability of Soul Cores: the Soul Power of any Martial Soul could be compressed, rotated, and formed into a self-sustaining cycle, but Soul Masters of different aptitudes would require different catalysts. Beside every point, he had marked "awaiting verification."
Looking at those lines, Feng Lingtian's lips curved slightly upward. From the Poison Core to the Soul Poison Pill, he had felt his way along this path little by little. The records in his notes were the best proof. Then he gathered his thoughts and told himself, No rush. There's still time. Finish refining the seven kinds of pills first.
He closed his notes, sat cross-legged, and guided his Soul Power to recover slowly. During his recovery, his gaze swept over the row of jade boxes on the refining station. He had taken only one petal from the infernal delicate apricot and snipped only half a leaf from the octagonal mysterious ice grass. Narcissus jade muscle bone, nine-grade purple ganoderma, aromatic silk beauty, eight-petal immortal orchid-most of the immortal herbs were still sealed in their boxes. The jade boxes could preserve their medicinal properties in the short term, but those properties would inevitably diminish over time. He had the faint outline of an idea related to Soul Power patterns. But his Soul Power had not yet recovered. He would write it down first and think it over tomorrow.
The furnace fire flickered across Feng Lingtian's face, brightening and dimming. He was restoring his Soul Power, and waiting for tomorrow.