Alex sat in lotus position near the Alchemy furnace and before starting to refine pills, he first checked the pill materials that he had left.
He had 24 sets of Emperor Grade Materials right now, 30 sets of Sky Grade, 34 sets of Earth Grade and above 40 sets of each grade below that.
This was because the higher the Grade the more chances there were of failure. Right now, Alex's chances of refining an Emperor Grade Pill were at 10 percent. This was the best he could do after all the practicing in the past few days.
Alex had found out the root cause of why this was happening as he was following the guidance of the pill formulas he had found in the Book of Cultivation and that was, the temperature and also his pathetic Energy Control.
Right now, the source of fire for the pill refining was the Pill Furnace itself. This was a feature that this furnace provided, i.e. automatic fire generation for pill refining. While this made the pill refining process easier but this was also the root cause of the failures Alex had been getting in the past few days.
The process of refining pills required different temperatures at different steps. However, the furnace was providing a fixed temperature throughout the process, which meant that it was doomed to fail.
Alex should be grateful that he at least got some of the pills refined as they were made from a brute force approach due to accidentally reaching the temperature requirements.
Alex had tried to find the solution for this problem and found out two possible solutions.
The first was to develop his Fire Arts and Energy control to higher levels, thus removing his dependency on the external source. But, this would make him loose the little automation that he had before.
As for the second method, Alex was shocked after learning of this method and understood that if he were to use this method then his worries would be fully gone and he might not even have to worry about refining pills in the future and only have to worry about consuming them.
Although Alex had wanted to use the second method, it was not feasible presently. But Alex had decided that he would definitely use that in the future.
Alex put the Pill Furnace into his inventory and started to think about what to do right now.
'What should I do right now? Should I increase my Energy control or start increase my proficiency in the fire element?'
After thinking about it, Alex had decided to work on the Energy control first and then go on to master the different Elements.
Alex closed his eyes and started to feel his vast pool of energy. His energy levels were similar to that of a newly ascended Divine Origin Realm Cultivator.
Alex had already read the topic of Energy Manipulation from the book of cultivation. He now followed the same method.
Alex had started to make his vast energy to rotate inside his own body. It was very difficult and painful to do this as energy was only meant to be released outside in the forms of offense or defense.
With great difficulty, the first round of energy rotation was completed after a few minutes. Alex immediately started to repeat the same process again and again.
Seconds turned to minutes and minutes turned to hours but both Alex and Qingyue were still working hard.
Just at this moment, Alex had completed his thousandth round of energy rotation.
Alex opened his eyes and let out a sigh and started to sense the changes done to his body by his recent training session.
'Hmm. The flow of the profound energy in my body has become far smoother than before. Moreover, as I continue to improve my energy control, the amount of energy that will be used in my attacks will continue to become more and more precise, leading to lesser waste of energy in battles.'
'Moreover, if I intend to master the space element, I need to have precise energy manipulation down to the atomic level and once I master that, I can become untouchable like a certain white-haired character.'
It had been 3 hours since Alex had started to practice his energy control training regime. He glanced over to the place where Qingyue was and saw that she was still cultivating and smiled
"I guess even after starting to feel her emotions again, her devotion towards becoming stronger hasn't decreased even one bit. I guess I will practice some more energy control."
Alex once again had Alex started to practice Energy Control once again and decided that this time he would only stop when Qingyue were to wake up from her cultivation or if he were to achieve perfect control over his reserves.
And so, three days had passed, we could see that Alex was sitting in the lotus position and still circulating his energy rotating his energy reserves inside his body. The current round of energy rotation was just completed and Alex opened his eyes.
"I have completed my Energy Rotation one hundred thousand times. Right now, I have perfect control in my energy reserves and I am confident enough that I won't be wasting much energy while using techniques if any at all."
Alex then looked at Qingyue and saw her still cultivating in the formation.
Alex sighed, "I guess she is going to cultivate till the effects of the pills fade away."
Alex stood up from his place and started to stretch a little and after some moment, he laid under the shadow of a nearby tree with his hands under the back of his head and he thought while looking into the bright blue sky.
'Now that I have good Profound Energy Control, I should practice some attack and defense techniques.'
'I have Primordial Elemental Manipulation which gives me an innate affinity to all the elements. The first element that I am going to learn a technique of is Thunder!'
'But for now, let's get some sleep first' and Alex closed his eyes and rested under the tree.