'It's time for the third step,' Ye Chen thought as he controlled the ice flame to purify the herb essences.
Even with the extraction process, some impurities remained, and he couldn't allow this as it would lower the quality of the pill.
This purifying step was something optional because it led to explosions a lot of times.
After all, purifying the herb essence meant burning the impurities with flame; if there was even a slight error, all the hard work from before would go to waste.
However, Ye Chen didn't care about this as he wanted the higher-quality pills, so he started to heat the essence at a certain temperature, burning impurities within herb essence.
This process was a lot slower and took him a half hour to purify every herb essence perfectly.
Just as he was doing this, Li Mei got bored because she wasn't able to see anything inside the cauldron.
'How will I learn like this?' she thought with a pout and gazed at his handsome face.
She couldn't help but recall how he kissed her, and she wondered if he would get angry if she kissed him in return.
'Wait! What am I thinking?! He will not!' She hurriedly shook her thoughts with a pout before looking at his handsome face again.
Her heart skipped a few beats, and soon she became lost, staring at him silently.
Ye Chen was focused on the alchemy, so he didn't notice her actions, and after he was done with the purifying process, he started to bond the herb essence together as mentioned in the pill formula.
This step was the most crucial in pill refining, so he was extra careful as it could lead to explosions, especially when bonding these herb essences together.
Each herb essences possessed different properties and needed different temperatures when bonding.
Some even needed the supplementary herb essences in this process.
Although this process was difficult and it was his first time doing alchemy, it didn't pose any difficulties as he had 'Heavenly Comprehension'.
With this, he understood the alchemy at a deeper level, even without personally experiencing it.
Moreover, he had a myriad book and divine alchemy art along with a large amount of spiritual consciousness, so he easily suppressed any small errors and precisely bonded all herb essences together.
Now inside the cauldron, a rainbow-like vortex swirled in the middle.
He didn't hesitate and separated this vortex into ten small ones.
Although he had used twenty sets of herbs, he had purified the herb essences to extreme level, which led to a decrease in quantity.
However, he didn't care about this, as he knew this would happen because these herbs were grown with low-quality methods.
They were only tier 1 and tier 2 herbs, so no one spent too many resources on them, which led to the herbs accumulating some impurities, which made the quality of pills low.
He didn't want the low-quality pills because they can cause problems in future cultivation, hence he didn't mind spending a bunch of extra herbs.
Now was the last step of refining, which was the pill condensation.
In this step he needed to condense the bonded herb essence into a solid pill, which could be done by compressing the essence with spiritual consciousness.
If it was anyone else, they would be only able to do this for one or two pills.
However, Ye Chen was different, as he had a large amount of spiritual consciousness.
Moreover, his recovery was very quick on the mountain, so he wasn't even frowning and was spending his spiritual consciousness however he wanted.
The body-strengthening pill was just a tier 1 pill, and although the difficulty was higher, it didn't pose any problems to a mountain spirit like him.
"Condense!" He uttered, making a small hand gesture.
In that instant, the cauldron trembled a little, and the ten rainbow vortexes became smaller and smaller as an invisible pressure squeezed them from all sides.
It didn't take too long, and the ten-rainbow vortex turned into small white pills that were the size of a fingernail and had one golden ring on it.
"Tier 1 high-grade pill," Ye Chen muttered with a satisfied expression as he stored the pills in different bottles before looking at Li Mei, who was a little flustered.
He was puzzled at this, but he thought she was afraid he would do something, so he didn't care too much.
"Xiao Mei, this is the body-strengthening pill that will make your physical strength stronger, so take it now or tomorrow," he said, giving her a jade bottle.
Hearing him, Li Mei was stunned and became relieved.
'Fortunately, he didn't notice,' she thought, sighing in her heart with relief while taking the jade bottle with a flushed expression.
Even when he was done with refining, she was still staring at his face, and not until he glanced at her, did she snap out.
She was afraid that after knowing this, he would tease her, hence why she became flustered.
But looking at how oblivious he was, she was much relaxed.
However, this didn't mean she wasn't embarrassed, especially after knowing that she was staring at his face for an hour.
"I will take this pill now," she said and hastily ran to her bed while hiding her embarrassed face.
Watching her like this, Ye Chen felt he had missed something great; however, he didn't think too much and took out the different batches of herbs for refinement.
Although teasing the junior sister was important, getting stronger was his top priority, so he once again focused his attention on refining the pills that he needed.