The next morning, a fresh batch of herbs arrived. Liu Feng paid a few coins to the Pavilion workers to unload the crates in his workshop. He confirmed that everything was in order before signing the papers.
These herbs only stayed fresh for about a week, so Liu Feng had ordered enough for five days of refining. Each batch took roughly an hour, and he had refined ten batches yesterday. He planned to keep this pace, ten batches daily, for the next five days.
But he was conflicted. He did not want to be a mindless pill-making machine. To maximize his profits, he needed as many pills as he could refine. He meticulously documented each batch he created and the afterthoughts.
The first batch yielded three standard healing pills. Liu Feng carefully took some notes, trying to understand the process. His ultimate goal was to reach a magical number of ten pills per batch. His thought was simple. If he could make a total of ten pills every batch, what could stop him from making all of those ten pills of standard quality or even higher? Only when he can make ten standard pills every batch, he will truly start to see profits.
For the first time since arriving in this new world, he felt the pinch of being broke. Although he was not desperate, he needed money.
The following batches continued to produce three pills. Finally, on his ninth attempt, he made a breakthrough. He created four standard-quality pills.
"YES!" Liu Feng pumped his fist. This was the minimum number he needed to stay profitable.
"Now let's hope I can continue at least four pills per batch," he was determined to maintain the streak of newfound success.
On this tenth and last attempt, he again made four pills and carefully placed them into their designated bottle. He had refined a total of 32 pills from ten batches worth of supplies. He was not quite profitable yet, but he was hopeful. Today's last two batches had produced 4 pills each, and he felt confident he could maintain that.
The next day, he continued refining. He managed to get 4 pills a couple of times, ending the day with 37 standard healing pills. It was an improvement, but not quite the 40 he had hoped for.
He meticulously documented everything. Before each batch, he reviewed and analyzed his notes. Stacks of paper filled the room as he made progress. He tried to analyze and improve his refinement process with every attempt, but his lack of proper alchemy knowledge slowed him down. Finally, over the next two days, he hit the initial magic figure - 40 pills each day! But he wasn't done yet.
The last day of refining arrived. He was on his last of supplies. All of his nine batches went smoothly and produced four pills each, but only his 10th and final attempt produced 5 pills.
Exhaustion was evident on Liu Feng's face but a wide grin stretched across his face. His six straight days of refining pills had finally paid off. His weeks of hard work resulted in producing a total of 198 pills!
"Manager Qing mentioned a 150-pill monthly quota, right?" Although he was quite relieved being able he meet the quota, now he felt it was somewhat easy. He initially had worried that he had to come up with some impeccable excuses to Manager Qing if he was unable to fulfill the contract.
The 198 pills could easily fetch 792 gold coins at the pavilion, but Liu Feng hesitated. Selling some pills on the open market, where they could go for 5 gold coins each, would significantly boost his profits, thus, he started formulating a plan.
"The Wei family's shop already has a good number of customers," he thought. Liu Feng had initially been hesitant to open a new store. Not only because he was unsure of his skills, but the competition was fierce. Nearly 90% of the city's alchemy pill and herbs market was controlled by the Misty Medicine Pavilion and the Wei family. The pavilion dominated the market, while the Wei family held a strong presence with several popular shops scattered throughout the city.
Opening a store in such conditions was risky and success was not guaranteed and making an enemy out of either of the two was not practical. Thus Liu Feng decided to wait patiently.
There was also the contract issue with the Wei Family. According to his proposal, the Zhang family would get 70% of the profits, leaving only 30% for the Wei family. He also requested them to send their sales records in detail if they agreed.
Three days later, the Wei family responded. They proposed a partnership directly with Liu Feng, but he declined the offer on the spot.
His real goal was to explore this world and reach higher levels of cultivation. He was now convinced, even if it seemed strange in common sense, that there were higher realms in cultivation, and thanks to Zhnag Yan, he was also sure of different worlds existing, but travel between them seemed extremely difficult. During his stay in the Royal Palace, He had already familiarized himself with the geography of this world.
They were on the Fallen Dragon Continent, surrounded by the Endless Mirror Sea. No one had ever found another landmass apart from this one. Powerful cultivators, even those in the Core Formation Realm, went on many expeditions, but all searches were in vain. It was widely accepted that this was the only continent in their world.
Liu Feng was not an adventurer at heart but he never declined any invitation to one. His temporary goal was now to help the Zhang family get back on their feet. Part of this was because of Zhang Yan.
He was not sure if he should leave Zhang Yan and Mei Lin behind for them to go their ways but he was certain that both of them were incredibly talented. No doubt, Mei Lin had something special within her that helped her cultivate faster, maybe a special bloodline or physique. Maybe, like those true Xianxia tropes, she could even be a descendant of an immortal!
'This is a Cultivation World after all…', he sighed.
Zhang Yan, on the other hand, was not a talented cultivator. He had to do a lot of hard work to improve. Although breakthroughs in Body Cultivation were not easy for him, Zhang Yan, for a lack of better words was unusual.
He was gradually gaining incredible durability and a healing factor that was almost on par with that of Liu Feng, despite the later cultivating both his qi and body. Every day, he was getting better in close-quarters combat, using claws as his primary weapon.
Liu Feng originally thought the Zhang family was not anything special. But recently, Zhang Yan revealed something important. Apparently, his grandmother came from a powerful clan and gave his mother a wooden phoenix token with the word "Wu" etched on it. This sudden information intensified his doubts about Zhang Yan being a potential protagonist so he wanted to keep both of them around.
Zhang Ling inherited the wooden token from their mother, but it reacted violently when anyone else touched it. Even Zhang Yan felt a burning sensation in his palms. Liu Feng tried holding it too, but experienced the same thing. He even considered using his system to extract dao points to extract some fragments from the token but stopped himself from doing it.
Back to the matter of the Wei family, they offered the same profit share for the store as the Zhangs to Liu Feng. They seemed to be aware of his pill-making endeavors and even agreed to provide some herbs for free every month. The offer was tempting but with one major condition. Liu Feng had to join their family forces.
This felt too restrictive. With the Zhangs, he clearly had the upper hand and he had no interest in becoming someone else's lackey. So, he rejected their offer. He also personally wrote a letter to the Weis to carefully convey that the said alliance would be with the Zhangs and Zhnags only.
***
//Although I planned on doing regular releases, the last two weeks were brutal. I could not give much time to the novel but the next chapter should probably be released in 2/3 days.
I planned on doing a small mass release till 61 chapters (ch 60 and 61 are done), but it's getting very difficult due to webnovel's limited editing options.
Notice:
I was planning on doing small gradual power-ups for the MC but now I am thinking of a couple of major power-ups that will help him in the future at the end of this arc (~ch 85).