Nine Yin Grass, refinement complete.
Earth Dragon Root, refinement complete.
Flame Sense Seed, refinement complete.
…
For more than thirty types of medicinal herbs, Long Chen spent hours refining them one by one until heavy sweat drenched his body.
Concocting alchemy pills was different from brewing ordinary medicine. This process required extracting the essence from each medicinal plant, removing impurities, and refining them into powder.
However, the fire in Long Chen’s hand was absolute garbage. The resulting powder contained too many impurities, but this was unavoidable.
First, Long Chen’s cultivation level was not yet sufficient, and he lacked the continuous energy to fuel the Alchemy Fire, causing the power of his fire to be weak.
Second, Long Chen currently had neither the opportunity nor the ability to subdue other types of fire, so he could only force himself to make do with what he had.
The Wind Palace Pill was a tier-one medicinal pill. Normally, only an alchemy cultivator at the Alchemy Apprentice level possessed the qualifications to refine a tier-one medicinal pill.
However, practicing the art of alchemy not only required a strong Alchemy Fire but also a massive amount of Spiritual Qi. And most importantly, it required an extraordinarily strong Soul Power.
The first two conditions were not too difficult. As long as one had adequate means, they could capture a fire-element magical monster, tame it into a pet, and utilize the monster’s fire to cultivate their own fire seed that was equally strong.
Over ninety-nine percent of alchemists used Monster Fire. Only a few alchemists with ancient inheritances and profound strength were capable of controlling Spiritual Fire—an extremely mysterious and intangible type of fire in heaven and earth.
Spiritual Fire was a type of fire that possessed a soul. In Long Chen’s memories, he seemed to have once mastered an extremely domineering Heaven and Earth Spiritual Fire.
Unfortunately, no matter how great it was back then, now he had to continue concocting pills with a pitiful garbage fire. He could no longer pull out the things from his memories.
After resting for a good while, Long Chen took a deep breath.
“Whoosh.”
A wisp of pale yellow flame half a foot long leapt from his palm, radiating a wave of heat.
“Not bad. After that refinement just now, the strength of my fire has slightly increased. Well, better than nothing.”
After consecutively putting seven medicinal essences into the cauldron, Long Chen began to spread his Soul Power. The fire in his hand suddenly danced and enlarged, becoming several times stronger than before.
“Using Soul Power to fuel a fire… if other alchemists saw this, would they be scared to death?” Long Chen smiled wryly.
To an alchemist, their most precious asset was Soul Power. Human Soul Power was fundamentally innate from birth, and only passively increased along with the improvement of one’s cultivation level.
Soul Power was the root of alchemy. When concocting pills, a massive amount of Soul Power was needed to control the temperature of the fire. The slightest negligence would render all efforts in vain, and the medicine would turn into a pile of ash. If the concocted pill possessed extremely potent medicinal properties, the cauldron could even explode.
Typically, an alchemist would not drain their Soul Power from the very beginning of the burning process. Fundamentally, they would only use Soul Power in the middle and late stages—when the pill was almost formed—to meticulously control the fire’s output.
After all, that stage was the key to the pill’s formation. The fire’s temperature needed to be constantly altered; sometimes high, sometimes low, sometimes fierce, and sometimes gentle. That process massively drained Soul Power.
If the Soul Power was completely drained during that critical phase, then that cauldron of pills would basically be considered a failure. Amazingly, however, Long Chen actually used his Soul Power from the very first second.
And that invaluable Soul Power was used merely to enlarge the flame, exactly like burning firewood! Any alchemist who saw this would definitely curse him out completely. Even a prodigal wouldn’t squander such a precious asset in such a cheap way.
However, Long Chen didn’t mind. According to his memories, his current Soul Power was absolutely not inferior to that of average alchemists.
The ranks of alchemy cultivators sequentially started from: Alchemy Apprentice, Alchemy Practitioner, Alchemy Master, Alchemy King, Alchemy Sovereign, Alchemy Ancestor, Alchemy Venerable, Alchemy Saint, and Alchemy Emperor.
In Long Chen’s mind, memories belonging to a legendary figure of the Alchemy Emperor class were stored. Because of that, he fully understood his own energy capacity.
When Long Chen woke up from his coma, his Soul Power underwent a mutation, becoming abnormally and extraordinarily strong. That was why he had the freedom to act this wildly.
“Buzz!”
The cauldron in front of Long Chen vibrated slightly, emitting a soft humming sound.
“Hehe, pouring oil on the fire, the speed has increased quite drastically.”
He quickly threw three more types of medicinal herbs into the cauldron, but beads of sweat were now starting to decorate his forehead.
He immediately grabbed a two-foot-long straw. He dipped one end into the jar full of Qi Recovery Liquid, slipped the other end between his lips, and sucked on it vigorously.
The moment the Qi Recovery Liquid flowed into his stomach, the pores all over his body instantly opened wide and began greedily absorbing the Spiritual Qi of heaven and earth. His nearly dried-up spiritual energy was now replenished in a flash.
This was Long Chen’s brilliant preparation and an essential prerequisite to concocting the Wind Palace Pill. Without this trick, given his current spiritual energy supply, his attempt to concoct a pill would be nothing but a complete joke.
With the straw in his mouth, he gulped down the Qi Recovery Liquid from time to time to maintain the flow rate of Spiritual Qi into his cauldron.
Unlike his limited Qi energy, his Soul Power reserves were truly abundant. Only after two full days did Long Chen feel mild exhaustion; an indicator of just how much Soul Power he had drained.
At this point, all the herbal ingredients had been put into the alchemy cauldron. Now, all that was left was the final step. A sharp, distinct medicinal aroma began to waft out and blanket the room.
Even though according to his memories, concocting a tier-one pill like this was as trivial as closing his eyes, the reality was different. This pill was the deciding instrument that would alter his fate; it would be a lie if he dared to say he wasn’t nervous at all.
“Buzz!”
Suddenly, the alchemy cauldron shook violently, accompanied by a loud hum. The energy inside the cauldron instantly turned fiercely rampant.
There was no trace of panic on Long Chen’s face. Instead, a faint smile bloomed on his lips. This was a sign that the pill was about to form, the deadliest moment in the art of alchemy.
He exerted all of his Soul Power without holding back a single percent. The tongue of flame in his hand surged fiercely, and an invisible force tightly locked the entire alchemy cauldron like a prison.
This technique was called “Sealing the Heaven and Locking the Earth”. This was a self-created move taken from his memory fragments, specifically designed to tame pill eruptions and prevent cauldron explosions.
Moreover, this move was extraordinarily efficient. The technique was capable of sealing every drop of medicinal property inside the cauldron in a split second, preventing its essence from evaporating in vain.
Generally, conventional alchemists would soften at this ultimate step, applying a soothing method to stabilize the medicine’s turbulence inside the cauldron.
Although that moderate method was much safer, the medicinal essence that escaped and evaporated was massive, producing pills of bland and mediocre quality.
“Boom!”
Under the extreme pressure of Long Chen’s Soul Power, the alchemy cauldron let out a muffled boom before returning to a soundless silence.
Long Chen stared blankly at the alchemy cauldron that was now silent in front of him, panting heavily. His entire shirt was soaked with sweat, and the world felt like it was spinning around him.
It took a few moments before Long Chen caught his breath. With his heart pounding in anticipation, he lifted the cauldron’s lid with a slightly trembling hand.
Five medicinal pills as round as pearls greeted his sight. An extremely dense herbal fragrance instantly flooded the airspace of his room.
“Two Low-Tier pills and three trash pills. Sigh, if people found out, where would I put my face?” Even though his face carved a picture of absolute happiness, his mouth still let out dissatisfied grumbles.
A moment later, Long Chen gasped, then burst into loud laughter. Naturally he acted like this; he had just merged with the memories of an Alchemy Emperor who stood at the pinnacle of an era; the Emperor’s standards turned out to be extremely arrogant and far too high.
Now he no longer cared about his pride. Scooping up the five medicinal pills into his hand, he examined them closely.
The two Low-Tier pills were perfectly round and dispersed a fragrant alchemy aroma in all directions, refreshing the lungs. With a single sniff, life energy felt overflowing.
Long Chen’s chest was filled with absolute ecstasy. A single successfully perfected pill like this could at least be auctioned for more than a hundred thousand gold coins in the center of the imperial capital.
On the other hand, the three trash pills in his hand were still many times superior to the shoddy pill his mother had painstakingly obtained. At the very least, thirty percent of the medicinal property’s essence was successfully sealed intact within these failed pills.
A pill that successfully extracted fifty percent of the pure medicinal essence was classified as a Low-Tier pill. And these Low-Tier pills dominated over eighty percent of the supply in the alchemy world.
Pills that retained sixty percent of the essence were named Mid-Tier pills. Seventy percent were High-Tier pills, eighty percent were Supreme-Tier pills, and ninety percent were Perfect-Tier pills. As for the one hundred percent level… hehe.
Long Chen didn’t intend to daydream about it now; that was a realm far too utopian. Some laymen might skeptically ask: What’s the difference between a fifty percent and a sixty percent effect?
Wouldn’t swallowing two Low-Tier pills be much more formidable than one Mid-Tier pill? Anyone who dared to blurt out such a stupid question would definitely drown, mobbed by spit.
The constitution of a medicinal pill was solely formed by two elements: Essence and Impurities. What is called impurities are the waste components rejected by the body’s system. Ironically, these bastardly impurities are what would castrate the body’s ability to absorb the pure medicinal essence itself.
The proverb “every medicine carries three parts poison” was not an outdated pearl of wisdom, but an absolute fact. The pill coagulation process inherently birthed Pill Poison. As long as they weren’t crammed down every day, this mild poison wouldn’t manifest much.
But for cultivation practitioners, medicinal pills were the sole anchor of salvation on the verge of death. Countless were the thousands of doses they swallowed during their lifetimes. When the Pill Poison accumulated until it touched a lethal threshold, the pill would evolve into a life-reaping poison.
Pill Poison was the most stubborn toxin variant to purge; it crept into the flesh, infiltrated the bone marrow, and even rotted the soul dimension. The nobler the tier of a pill, the more nonexistent the traces of its side effects.
That was why the chasm in effects between a Low-Tier and a Mid-Tier pill could exceed a tenfold margin, while the price disparity shattered the hundredfold boundary.
Long Chen wrapped up the five pills and tidied up his alchemy cauldron. When his energy was truly sucked dry, he collapsed on his bed and instantly vanished, devoured by deep sleep.
Who knows how many solar transitions had passed, on the verge of consciousness and unconsciousness, Long Chen felt a warm palm stroking the contours of his cheek. Faintly, his ears caught a soft murmur whose form was unclear. Unfortunately, let alone opening his eyelids, he was out of power just to think.
When Long Chen’s consciousness finally recovered completely, three calendar days had passed. With his stomach howling in hunger, he devoured his food completely like a possessed wolf, before slamming his bedroom door to resume his closed-door cultivation isolation.
He tossed one trash pill into his mouth. His Soul Power became a navigator, herding the current of pure medicinal properties down the labyrinth of his body towards the Yongquan Point at the sole of his foot. This point was the altar for the formation of the First Star in the Nine Star Tyrant Body Art—the Wind Palace Star.
“Boom!”
Long Chen’s right foot stomped hard. The floor beneath his foot let out a crackling explosion sound, creating a severe web of cracks that instantly spread to cover the entire bedroom floor.
“Good, the meridian path along with its accurate coordinates have been locked. Now, it’s time to launch a frontal assault.”
A mysterious smile was carved. Instantly, a Low-Tier Wind Palace Pill floated from his palm into his mouth cavity. A supremely pure energy of terrifying density exploded in his stomach. Under Long Chen’s absolute command, the energy vortex tore a straight path towards the Yongquan Point at the sole of his foot.
The Yongquan Point responded, cracking open like a dry riverbed drenched by a torrential waterfall. When the armada of pill properties surged in, its form was no different from a demonic water dragon violently ravaging everything.
“BOOM!”
The firmament thundered! A flow of destructive energy erupted, flooding all directions. Without a breeze, Long Chen’s clothes flapped violently. A terror-bringing aura exploded from his core center, tearing the entire room apart until nothing was left. Thick smoke and debris particles scattered, swept away by a roaring shockwave like a hurricane.
As the dust storm slowly subsided, swallowed by the void, the contours of Long Chen’s handsome face broke through to the surface. His pair of star-sharp eyes radiated the euphoria of acute madness. Feeling the throb of the bean-like embryo in the sole of his foot—which continuously pumped a boundless supply of power to his entire cellular network—Long Chen was so tempted to look up at the horizon and bellow a roar of victory.
The mass destruction in Long Chen’s room automatically sounded the alarm for all the inhabitants of the noble estate, who instantly came running and swarming in.
Seeing his mother panting heavily while breaking through the sea of people ahead, Long Chen quickly spoke in a loud voice, “Mother! Today is the schedule for noble heirs to study at the Imperial Academy (Tai Xue Gong), I have to leave immediately!”
Without allowing anyone to react, he left the dumbfounded sea of people in front of the rubble pile of his own apartment. As quick as lightning, he wrapped himself in a fresh set of clothes, then shot away and vanished like an arrow towards the Imperial Academy.
