Having now 531 points, Cao Yun could finally ask for a cauldron and a new furnace. Thus, he went to the alchemy pavilion.
"Senior Sister Guo, I got enough points, so I'd like to request a cauldron and a furnace."
"I know, Brother Chen. I already got them ready and they should both be in your room when you get back." She looked around and leaned forward. Maybe this senior sister was a bit paranoid. "I heard that Wen Zhu is very upset about your small shop. He almost ruined the faction just to try and ruin you."
"Well a little competition is always good for business."
"You don't understand. He didn't go overboard because of your connections, but he seems really upset. You should be careful from now on."
"Thank you, Senior Sister." Cao Yun had no intention of stopping as long as he hadn't the Praying Demon Pill, but he saw that Guo Lüye was sincere. It was not her trying to make a veiled threat.
-
When he got back, sure enough, the cauldron and furnace were both set up and the old furnace was in a corner, ready to be discarded.
"Mei Yuzhi, please do not throw that old thing yet."
"Yes, I understand. It's your first furnace, you must be a little bit attached to it..."
Indeed, it was stupid because he only used it for a few days, but it was the first furnace that was his.
He examined his new tools. The furnace was exactly the same as the old one but perfectly clean and with no mark at all. The cauldron was also rather simple, a bronze tripod with no sculpture or engravings.
Cao Yun began by cleaning the cauldron as best as he could, just to make sure it was in the best condition possible. Even though he could not buy ingredients anymore, he had already bought two batches previously, enough for twenty pills.
One last time, he meditated in his sea of consciousness about this refinement and circulated his mind cultivation. Then he was ready to begin the process.
As the ingredients were already masterfully prepared, he only needed to follow the recipe. Using all his mind, he focused entirely on it and finished the first batch in thirteen minutes. When he took the pills out, he was able to correctly identify their grade. He wasn't yet able to give the exact number, but he had enough experience to differentiate Perfect, Pure and True Essence.
All the pills he had just made were Pure and one was even True Essence.
The time he had spent replaying the refinement process in his sea of consciousness had been worth it. Just when this thought crossed his mind, he got an idea. He washed the cauldron again. But this time, he spent more time washing his cauldron than using it. Keeping a cauldron perfectly clean was essential. So essential that it was the first of the Five Golden Elixir Principles.
Cao Yun's idea was pretty simple. "Why not use my sea of consciousness in real time while I refine the pill?"
He did not know that this technique was called 'Spiritual Sea Refinement'. It was supposed to help a Spirit Warrior use his spiritual senses during a refinement process. A Mortal could only use his normal senses. Even a Mortal Warrior who could inject a bit of Qi inside the cauldron wasn't able to see through it. But by combining his mind cultivation and his sea of consciousness with the information he got from his senses, he could have a vivid picture of what was going on in his cauldron. It was more akin to a deduction than a real perception, but unknowingly, he had found a way to imitate a Spirit Warrior alchemist.
As he worked on his second and last batch, it was as if his cauldron was transparent. Of course, what he saw was just his imagination but it was almost perfect. Without the Shen at a high enough level he wouldn't have had such a result, as it was the element that was synchronizing and harmonizing everything else. That made him realize how important it was to advance it even faster. He could also use that in a fight and be able to foresee his opponent's moves to a degree by combining all the sensory cues with his deduction.
When the refinement was finally over, he opened the lid and was astonished. Eight of the pills were True Essence and the other two Pure. If only he had another batch of ingredients, he would try again. It was said that getting a True Essence was pure luck but Spirit Warriors were able to do so with low level pills thanks to their spiritual senses. Perhaps he could do the same.
If he sold all the pills he had just refined at the same price than before, he could get 670 points, enough to buy the Praying Demon Pill.
-
The following day, he went to the alchemy pavilion in order to train with Meng Jia. He was too impatient to try his new discovery with another pill. And his instructor had told him that they were going to work on the Cold Blood Clotting Pill, an intermediate 1-star Earth rank pill.
Cao Yun had read about it in the 'Four Seasons Cycle Classic'. He knew the ingredients and the recipe. So just before going to see his instructor, he tried to imagine the refinement process in his sea of consciousness. It was harder as he had never actually done so in real life. As such, he couldn't test whether what his imagined was accurate, but he had already tested the flame alone and knew how it reacted. Now, he needed to do so with the actual ingredients.
If Meng Jia had asked him to refine this pill, it was to see which progress he had already made.
"We'll get on a matter that's rarely studied by alchemists of the Earth rank, toxins minimization. It's a small principle, unlike the Five Golden Elixir Principles. It's part of what's called the Minor Principles of Silver. There are several of them and their count can vary from one alchemist to another. Toxins minimization is a principle simple to understand and difficult to grasp. First of all, just make the pill."
This time, Cao Yun was way more comfortable with the preparation of the ingredients even though he had never worked on some of them. His time spent training on the Terrified Fox Root was really paying off. He prepared everything nicely, compared to an expert, he still took too much time, but less than double the time.
Then he ignited the flame and began to use his new technique. As he put the first ingredient in, he realized that it behaved differently from his prediction and he adjusted his visual image. Then it went pretty smoothly. Each time there was a difference between reality and his expectations, he could adapt it in a few moments and it flowed nicely.
By the end, almost three fourths of what he had imagined happened as he had foreseen. But now he had an even better understanding of the refinement process. While Meng Jia was examining the pills, Cao Yun was mentally comparing what he had imagined to what actually happened. Slowly, he understood where he was wrong to enhance his next refinement.
The batch was smaller than for the Low-Level Qi Gathering Pill, so there were only four pills.
"92%, 96%, 95% and 97%. For a first try, it's very good." Meng Jia almost woke up when he spoke, but his right eye quickly closed up again.
With only one eye half open and some yawns, he continued.
"Toxins minimization consists simply in trying to let as few toxins as possible in your pill. Let's take yours for example. Your pills have between 15 to 23% of the toxins from the ingredients. If your quality was lower, there would be more toxins simply because there would be more space in the pill to harbor them. The first way to minimize them would be then to increase the quality, but you cannot absorb more medicinal essence than there is in the ingredients. So the true principle is about preventing the toxins to get in.
Refining a pill consists in absorbing the medicinal essence from the ingredients in suspension in the cauldron to fuse them into a pill. So when you refine your pill, you try to absorb as much medicinal essence as possible but you also let many toxins in by doing so. But if you try to block the toxins, you will also block some medicinal essence. So you must be able to absorb when the medicinal essence is strong in the cauldron and block the absorption when the toxins are. When you become a Mortal Warrior, you can even try to use your Qi to guide the medicinal essence in and the toxins out, but it's difficult to do so without seeing the interior of the cauldron. But, unless you're a Spirit Warrior, you can't. That's where the principle of toxins minimization comes in handy.
To master this principle, you must be able to identify when the medicinal essence is strong in the cauldron and when the toxins are strong. Then you will control your flame to stop the absorption or promote it. Toxins minimization is also called 'The Art of Absorbing and Rejecting'. The first time, I'll watch you refine a new batch and I'll tell you when you should block and when you should absorb. Then we'll discuss to see if you were able to get why from the clues you got."
Cao Yun got back to refining. The process was three times longer as Meng Jia kept telling him to block the absorption, so Cao Yun had to change his flame accordingly. But it also trained his new technique as it had to adapt to the new changes and derive new understandings from the reactions. During the process he was even able to guess how his instructor determined whether the toxins were strong are not.
By the end he even guessed such a moment just as Meng Jia told him to block the absorption.
When he took the pills out, their quality was a little lower.
"87%, 89%, 92%, 91% and 90%. It's still pretty good! I was expecting a decrease of at least 15 to 20% to all your pills. Now let's watch the toxin levels. It's between 8% and 17%, very good as well. You adapted fast. Now, why do you think I told you to stop the first time?"
"I'm not too sure, but I guess it's because the bile of the Sun Catching Vicious Tiger was emitting a very faint rancid smell, indicating that it was interacting with the Mushy Spider's Cocoon. The bile probably dissolved the cocoon and by doing so freed some toxins from it. By stropping the process there I think some of the toxins were absorbed by the bile and then I just had to slowly burn them away within it by boiling the bile itself."
"Perfect, that's exactly right."
...
They kept on talking and Cao Yun was able to guess the reason two thirds of the time.
"Great! You're very perceptive!" As they kept talking, Meng Jia's eyes slowly awakened. "You should work on the refinement of this pill until you're able to make a Perfect pill with less than 5% toxins. Going lower is almost impossible without using your Qi because toxins and medicinal essence are intertwined. Even with all the best techniques of alchemy, you can never go lower than 1%, as you cannot absorb more than 99% of the medicinal essence.
To test the toxin levels, it should be too difficult with just your senses. Dissolve the pill in a bowl of blood from a Winter Heavy Stallion, a common 2-core demonic beast. If the blood becomes yellowish, you have too much toxin."
Well, Cao Yun didn't want to tell his instructor that he couldn't buy any of these ingredients, so he simply agreed and left. For the time being, he would simply rely on his new technique to visualize the process. It had worked really well for him. He decided to call it 'Shen Visualization'.
-
During the afternoon, he went back to the Wubei Merit Market. Even before he arrived, the customers were already here.
"Friend, we've come to buy your pill."
"Of course, dear customers. Here it is."
As the second brother took the pill and gave a 50 points contract, the plump little man could not help himself.
"Friend, were you successful in your refinement yesterday?"
"Yes, very. I got 4 True Essence pills and some Pure ones."
The eyes of all the inner disciples were incredulous. What luck was this?!
"I can sell one more to you today since you've been a customer since the first day."
"Great, great. Sister Lan, the third pill was supposed to be for you, so I'll let you buy it in my stead."
The mature woman was happy with this arrangement. "Thank you, Brother Men. Junior, you really are lucky in your alchemy. But isn't luck another word for talent?"
"I wouldn't dare call myself talented, dear customer. I will sell the other three True Essence pills here tomorrow."
Now, Cao Yun had 621 points.
-
When he got back to his room, two young women were waiting for him, Zhi Yin and Ling Hui. While they were waiting, Huang Cixi was preparing some tea.
"Young Master, I'm sorry, but they would not take no for an answer and since Miss Zhi is your faction leader..."
"It's fine, Mei Yuzhi, it's fine."
Cao Yun walked toward the two women. "Faction Leader Zhi, Senior Sister Ling. What business do you have with me tonight?"
"You! It's all your fault and you dare ask?!"
"Ling Hui, please. Control yourself!"
"Sorry... but Brother Zhao is injured because of him!"
"Someone from the faction is injured?!"
"Indeed. We've been attacked in the wild. We have no concrete evidence except our word, but they were part of the Dragon's Fire Faction. So, Brother Chen, tell us exactly what happened during our leave."
These rascals couldn't make Cao Yun give up, so they attacked his faction. As a first-year, Cao Yun could not leave the sect so he was protected, but the other members were relying on their ability to leave to finally earn some points this year. But now, Cao Yun had maybe ruined it for them.
But first, he had to think about this senior brother. He had never met the guy but they were in the same faction, and this attack was probably because of him.
"Faction Leader, how is Senior Brother Zhao?"
"He lost a lot of blood. He's being attended by his sister right now. His life is not in danger but he's still weak."
"Faction Leader, I may be able to help him. We'll talk on the way."
Without waiting for their answer, Cao Yun left the room. The three women inside looked at each other and Zhi Yin and Ling Hui followed him while Huang Cixi tidied up the room.