Chereads / the long journey of cultivation / Chapter 8 - pill refining

Chapter 8 - pill refining

ken arrived at his house in just a few minutes from the stall which was near the entrance gate from where he entered the sect for first time . his house was located at the end of the outer city which was located at the boundary of the sect city and outer sect area was the largest area . the city was a circle when looked carefully from above and outer sect are was the largest area that also circled the city . Ken's house was located near the south gate of the city whereas the entrance from ocean was the north gate . so ken only needed few minutes to run so many kilometers to reach his house . of course he followed the shortest route but still the huge distance was really small for ken as his body was more than 50 times stronger than before he started cultivating.

the body of a dragon is of course much much stronger than a human or even other races so ken whose body art was that of a dragon will become much stronger everytime he breaks through a realm . usually the realms for a body cultivator are different and are classified as tier 1 , 2 .. and so on . but Ken's devouring dragon is different and his energy increases more than 7 times a normal cultivator everytime he breaks through a realm and his body becomes stronger then too while also transforming his bloodline into that of a mutated dragon and human little by little. so let's just say ken can now easily kill a peak 5th level qi condensation realm cultivator with a simple punch and a peak 6th level qi condensation realm with using his qi with the punch . so he pretty much doesn't need to practice martial arts right now with his strenght.

the qi condensation realm cultivators mainly temper their bodies and convert the energy into qi . their qi is stored inside their body mainly so Ken's body which becomes too powerful every time he advances a small realm is just too much for others in the same realm .

right now ken has arrived inside the refining room inside his house . his house only contains a bed room , the small room for cultivating , bathroom and the room on the only upper floor which he has of course reserved as the pill refining room now .

one thing that is most important for pill refining is missing from the room . every cultivator would almost raise this question as the cauldron in which pills are refined is missing . pill refiners first remove the herb essence slowly one by one or two or more herbs at a time while maintaining the right heat temperature of the pill fire . then they combine the esence according to the pill receipe after closing the lid of the cauldron with only their mental power . then they form the shape of the pill again with only their mental power while maintaining the right fire temperature which changes delicately too many times during the pill refinement process.

the timing to mix the necessary ingredients is really delicate and the process will fail instantly if the timing is even slightly late or early . so the pill refiners who exhaust their mental power while checking the structure changing of the ingredients after their essence is being removed or what not are required to have mental power that is many times more than a normal cultivator .

that's why the crucial mental power which even alchemists fall short during the process of pill refining and fail many times , ken has too much of it so he can easily become the great genius of alchemy with some hard work. the knowledge which is another requirement for pill refiners about the structure of herbs , the substitutes for some herbs etc., ken has infact too much of it so the hard work which was only a little becomes more and more little to become a great genus alchemist. so practically this is the greatest genius of alchemy which is of course ken .

ken now will start refining pills for the first time using the method used by the greatest masters of alchemy from the divine alchemy sect . in this method, the process is much fast pace than normal for the same pill receipe as they dont use the cauldron at all and refine only using pill fire and their hands.

this requires much more mental energy as the process is faster so to ensure there are no mistakes, ken would have to expend much more mental energy . and to maintain the fire temperature which also becomes way more delicate he will need to expend more and more mental energy as even though his knowledge is supreme but it's his first time when refining pills . but ken who has too much mental energy , it's not much of a burden on him to maintain complete focus during the fast process .

he knows every herb's internal structure like the back of his hand with the knowledge so he just has to keep an eye on that while extracting the essence . ken finally was ready so he separated the herbs on the table in a line and took them one by one in his hand and examined the difference in their structure from the knowledge inside his brain . well the herb can be a little small or long or older etc so the structure will be different. he only used less than a second to scan the herbs as his mental power was strong so he could even see their cellular structure easily .

he then closed his eyes and concentrated as this was also another method of the sect to form the calm fire from one's energy . the fire is already a chaotic element so its really difficult to produce a calm fire much less ken who is even forming fire from his energy for the first time . ken had opened his both palms and his hands were at the height of his liver . after a few seconds blue qi appeared on both his hands in the form of a small sphere and the shape started distorting fast . the colour changed from blue to dark blue then light yellow then dark yellow then light red and the finally dark red . then ken controlled the dark red fire which was formed successfully in less than a second after forming the blue sphere. the chaotic candle flames calmed down in a few seconds and again became chaotic and the same process repeated for an hour while ken was maintaning the fire above his hands with his powerful mental power .

actually he had succeeded on locking on the calmest fire after a few tries with his mental power but he tried the process for many more times to get familiar as with his mental power every time he produced the calm fire was perfected little by little as he familiarized himself with the process . ken was glad that he had more than 7 times the reserve of qi from other normal cultivators and his qi was much pure . because just by maintaining an inch long fire above both his hands for an hour, his qi was depleted till only about 75 percent of his reserves remained . this was possible because Ken's qi was much purer than others in same realm as him otherwise even if he had 10 times the qi reserves of a normal cultivator , they would have been completely exhausted in just 50 or so minutes. this was the benefit of pure qi as the expenditure was minimized more the qi was purer .

ken then was confident in his fire so he increased the energy and the fire from above his hands became large enough to reach his chin but still the fire was calm and the shape didn't even fluctuate once like a painting. ken then used his mental power to lift the blood grass and dropped it inside the flame which was connected now and formed one flame. the calm was obviously disturbed but ken had already started controlling the fire and light red essence that was dense and glowing started to excrete from the grass while the meter long herb was becoming less and less in height and finally the black dregs which remained of the herb dropped on the floor as ken used his mental power to make a hole in the fire . now ken was confident as the essence was all successfully removed so he split his consciousness in three and started to remove essence of three herbs at the same time . one above his right hand , one above left hand and one near his chest . only 13 minutes , 28 seconds passed and Ken's face forehead was sweating like crazy . one from the heat and other was the intense focus . but he was smiling as the essence has been perfectly removed from all herbs and he had started the process of merging the essence .

colorful essences were swirling inside the middle of the imaginary cauldron of course ken was imagining and Ken's 3 consciousness were working at fastest speed . ken had started to remove essence from the blood grass which needed more temperature to refine the essence and like this the order for herbs was decided . the process was fast so ken had already calculated the time needed for every single herb essence to heat up just right .

ken was even keeping track on the aroma to not miss any miscalculation. finally the essence was ready and ken started forming pills with his mental power with the essence but different from normal he had divided the esence pool into 15 parts which was unprecedented at least in this realm because the qi nourishing pills he was refining had max number of 9 for the top most grade .

well ken has of course decided this number after calculating properly . the essence in the herbs wasn't wasted a single bit so the essence pool was much bigger and he wasn't using a cauldron which using formations to assist the refiner in determining the number of pills . finally ken was happy after smelling the condensed aroma as he was sure that these 15 little guys were the top grade as there was green light floating over them . this represented the top grade pills and not even one was of lesser grade so of course ken was happy with his achievement after refining pills for first time .

he then didnt waste any time because he wanted to refine the second batch as he was looking forward to more number of pills this time due to the age of herbs being somewhat more than the previous batch . of course ken had decided the batch as so from the start. now there was no shred of doubt in his mind about the grade of the pills much less the process failing . within his mind the process was recorded completely so the process only took 16 minutes and four seconds which was way lesser than 32 minutes and 46 seconds from the previous record . ken wanted to improve the time more as he was like a child who had improved at clearing a game and wanted to play more . alas , the ingredients were not here as with his measly points he only managed to buy two sets .

ken was an easygoing man so he quickly forgot about it and looked at the two blue and white jade bottles which were sealed with wooden caps and weighed like nothing to him . but he was grinning at looking at the pills inside which were 15 in one and 17 in one . hehe... he was too eager to eat them after exhausting 13 or 14 percent of his monstrous amount of mental energy. well ken if didnt yes the conscious dividing technique then the expenditure would have easily surpassed 20 percent ...