Chapter 77: Concocting Pills
Translator: GGP
To the current Liu Ming, due to the limits of his cultivation prowess, he was unable to exhibit the true power of this short sword. Of its sixteen layers of restrictions, he would at most be able to use three to four layers.
However, even if this was the case, once Liu Ming was able to refine this sword, he would able to expand or shrink the sword to his liking. In addition, when activated, the power of the restrictions were not something Practitioner Weapons could compare with. TL: Think of restrictions as “spells” that are on the sword
Liu Ming finished thinking and immediately threw the sword in front of him. It unexpectedly floated in the air while Liu Ming’s hands constantly moved making hand signs. Simultaneously, he started to recite an incantation; puffs of refined Fa Li were unceasingly blown onto the short sword. After quickly absorbing the refined Fa Li, the sword started emitting an increasingly cold dense glint.
However, the difficulty of refining the short sword far surpassed Liu Ming’s previous expectation.
Furthermore, he didn’t know if this was because his cultivation was too low in comparison to the middle grade totem, or if refining a totem simply wasn’t an easy task.
Just refining the first restriction layer on the flying sword took seven days. The second layer took half a month and the third restriction layer took two additional months before he could finally use it with great difficulty.
As for the fourth restriction layer, after refining for a few days, there wasn’t even the slightest reaction, so Liu Ming knew that the current him would be unable to refine it. He would most likely have to wait until his cultivation reached the peak of a Late Spirit Apostle before there was a bit of hope.
Moreover, within the past three months, the mysterious bubble hadn’t shown any indications of breaking out.
This caused Liu Ming to be slightly scared. After removing the thought from his heart, he began to research the book of “Comprehensive Guide of the Foundation for Refining Pills” which he had bought in the Wei Zhou Market.
After becoming a Late Spirit Apostle, the price of pills that would increase his Fa Li had abruptly become much more expensive. Furthermore, the options he had severely lessened because relying on low quality medicinal pills was far from enough to help his Fa Li reach the peak of its realm.
Therefore the quality of medicinal pills was a necessity to the current him.
Once he became a Spirit Master, the requirements for the quality of Fa Li increasing medicinal pills would be even more harsh. Perhaps in the future, he would not be able to rely on Spirit Stones to purchase satisfactory medicinal pills.
Since this was the case, Liu Ming naturally realized that the sooner he could concoct pills the better.
Although this “Comprehensive Guide of the Foundation for Refining Pills” seemed basic, it introduced the fundamental knowledge for concocting pills and a few common methods to concoct pills.
According to what was written, it would be best if the alchemist was a cultivator proficient in fire or wood type Cultivation Methods. Of course, if one possessed Spirit Flame of the legends, that would naturally be the best.
For newbies, learning the technique of concocting pills was quite easy. After all, the fundamental principle was separating and recombining medicinal ingredients. Afterward, one only needed to place the mix over a high temperature to condense the ingredients into pills. As long as one wasn’t a complete fool, he or she would easily learn the process.
The only problem was that learning how to do these things was not tantamount to actually refining a medicinal pill. TL: Basically, anyone can help with refining medicine but there are many more steps than just heating up medicine
Ultimately, the requirements to concoct a pill successfully lay in the alchemist’s ability to blend materials, control high temperatures, timing of when to remove the pill from the furnace, and other control aspects.
Even if only one of these areas was slightly imperfect, it could lead to a failure.
At the same time, most of these things were not teachable through words. One could only rely on continuous practice to truly master such a delicate art.
Thus, even if it were a high level alchemist, facing even the simplest pills, they would never say that they would be able to refine the pill a hundred percent of the time.
As for those who just started concocting pills, even if they were the simplest of pills, the rate of production would be so low that one’s hair would stand up in anger.
Over a hundred attempts at concocting a pill without success was normal to a new alchemist.
As for concocting mid-high level medicinal pills, since the remedy would be even more complicated and the materials were harder and more expensive to find, how could there be chances for trial and error? One could only rely on his or her previous concocting experiences, thereby making the requirements for being an alchemist even harder.
Unfortunately, a genuine alchemist always needed continuous practice and a huge volume of resources before reaching this stage.
This naturally led to a lack of alchemists in the cultivating world. So much so that really only huge sects with large influence and power were able to cultivate a genuine mid-high level alchemist.
Barbarian Ghost Sect’s number one alchemist who resided in Poisonous Spirit Faction could only barely qualify as a mid level alchemist. However, like this, his position in the sect was completely different than other Spirit Masters. Nobody dared to provoke him.
After Liu Ming finished looking through the entire “Comprehensive Guide of the Foundation for Refining Pills”, an eager feeling arose in his heart. He slightly hesitated before locating the remedy for a Fasting Pill, an extremely common pill. After meticulously looking over the formula, he retrieved his concocting pill tools and a few materials. He then started his attempts to concoct the pill using trial and error.
Five days later, a “peng” sound rang out from the cultivation room. In front of Liu Ming, black smoke arose from a white cauldron heated by a torrential flame. Faintly, there was a burning smell within the black smoke.
Seeing this, Liu Ming’s face darkened. He dispelled his hand technique and the flames surrounding the cauldron disappeared in the air.
The amount of times he had failed was somewhere in the dozens. Yet, he wasn’t even able to concoct even one Fasting Pill.
Although the book had stated that this was a common occurrence for neophytes just starting to concoct pills, Liu Ming was greatly impacted by this situation.
At the beginning he was exhilarated and full of zest, but now he had become abnormally dejected.
More importantly, the materials for refining pills which he had bought beforehand almost half had been consumed.
This made his heart hurt as he stopped concocting. He intended to find some time in the future to find a few books on concocting pills, or directly finding an alchemist to teach him before attempting to concoct pills again.
Thus, in the following period of time, with no more medicinal pills to use, Liu Ming could only use his talent of doing two things at once to slowly cultivate his Dark Bone Method.
Time passed a little at a time and in the blink of an eye, another three months had gone by.
In this period of time, nothing abnormal had occurred, causing Liu Ming’s state of mind to be somewhat disturbed. He was debating whether the mysterious bubble had disappeared from his body.
However, on this day, as he was in the midst of training, he suddenly felt his Spirit Sea shake. A devouring force immediately rushed out.
It had been a year since the mysterious bubble last showed, but it finally appeared.
Liu Ming was startled and without the slightest hesitation, called out his White Bone Scorpion first. After using his Spirit Communication Technique and establishing a connection, he started to urge his Dark Bone Method to control the Fa Li in his body as if his life depended on it.
As expected, the devouring this time was even more fierce than last time. If not for Liu Ming becoming a Late Spirit Apostle and his Fa Li increasing by three to four times, he most likely would not have lasted an hour before being sucked dry.
However, even in this situation, close to eighty-percent of Liu Ming’s Fa Li was sucked away by the bubble before it was satisfied and stopped devouring.
In this period of time, Liu Ming didn’t feel his life force being stripped away and he let out a large sigh of relief.
Nonetheless, when the bubble popped, Liu Ming’s vision went black and he appeared in the gray misty space.
It was the identical space, but it was clearly much larger than last time. The circumference was nearly three hundred feet wide.
Emerging with Liu Ming naturally was the White Bone Scorpion ghost that was linked with Liu Ming.
This ghost was evidently slightly startled by its appearance in a different area, but immediately discovered that it had an impression of this area. It quickly started crawling everywhere in excitement.
Liu Ming didn’t bother caring for his White Bone Scorpion as he let out a light breath of air and relaxed his expression.
It seemed that although the mysterious bubble’s devouring was getting progressively violent, the intervals in between its appearance correspondingly grew longer. This was a good piece of news to him.
If it followed a progressively longer interval of double the interval before, there would be two years before the bubble came out again.
Of course, this was only Liu Ming hypothesis; whether it followed this length of time was still up for debate.
He would have to wait for the bubble to at least appear a few more times before he could firmly understand its pattern.
Liu Ming silently pondered a while before bringing his hands together into a hand sign; he prepared to begin training his Fireball Technique already at the large success stage.
……
Half a year later, in between Liu Ming’s two hands, a three feet in diameter enormous fireball slowly revolved without stop. His arm shook and the fireball made a whistling sound as it flew toward the opposite side.
A “hong” sound rang out before a mushroom like black and red cloud soared into the sky as the fireball collided with the opposing mist wall. It unexpectedly caused the entire space to slightly vibrate.
An expression of satisfaction arose on Liu Ming’s face as a scarlet red symbol in his mind disappeared slowly.
Of course, the previous enormous fireball naturally wasn’t a normal Fireball Technique. Instead, the terrifying power was the result of a combination of several fireballs.
Although it was still a low level technique, once the Fireball Technique was cultivated to its peak, the largest area of amplification was still its destructive power. In terms of might, it was still far superior to the Wind Blade Technique. TL: Wind Blade Technique amplifies speed of attacks (wind blades move super fast and are super quick casting)
Liu Ming fell onto his butt and began to recover his previously exhausted mental power.
However, once his eyes glanced around, he found that the White Bone Scorpion was nearby ceaselessly piercing its tail at the adjacent misty wall in a violent manner.
The tail which was originally as fast as lightning had unexpectedly transformed into black streaks of void like shadows under the White Bone Scorpion’s use. Simultaneously, an unceasing sharp shrill cry arose from the faintly discernable black stinger at the front of the tail.
Liu Ming let out a light smile.
Since he had deliberately brought the White Bone Scorpion into this space with him, aside from wanting a living thing to accompany him during this extremely long period of time, he also planned on it practicing.
Since he could increase technique proficiency in this space, the White Bone Scorpion could naturally do equivalent things.
Looking back on it, it seemed that his thought process had been correct. The White Bone Scorpion continuously drilled its hook tail movements and that assassination movement was astonishingly twenty to thirty times faster than half a year ago.
One mustn’t underestimate this twenty to thirty-percent.
The hooked tail’s assassination movement originally was the White Bone Scorpion’s most powerful attack. Since it’s speed had once again increased, its destructive capabilities nearly doubled.
In this way, he was reassured to let the White Bone Scorpion practice on its own.
After resting awhile, Liu Ming started to consider what technique he should practice next. The Water Arrow Technique was not able to match the speed or power of either the Fireball Technique and the Wind Blade technique, Thus, he naturally didn’t plan on wasting time on that technique.
In this situation, he started to consider learning a few other higher level techniques from scratch.
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