MPCW Ch. 79
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7h
6
The assimilation process took less than six minutes, and when it was finished, a faint layer of purple light flowed across the surface of the furnace. Danqing's gaze paused on it for a moment before he gave a nod and turned his attention back to the lesson.
By now, he had already seen Alexei take out plenty of tools covered in that same purple glow. Yan had explained earlier that the glow came from Alexei's innate ability, which could enhance objects and make them easier to use, so he never found it strange. As far as he was concerned, innate abilities were no different from spiritual flames or special constitutions. They were just advantages cultivators were born with. Refusing to use them out of pride would only make someone look foolish.
"We have reached the final step," he said as he gestured toward the prepared herbs resting on the jade table. "The Butterfly Grass must first be squeezed to extract its juice. After that, drip the liquid into the furnace while maintaining a low flame and continue observing the medicinal properties. Once the compatibility between the Butterfly Grass and the Healing Herb reaches roughly 30%, extinguish the flame and remove the pill."
His refinement was nearing completion, and a faint medicinal fragrance slowly spread from the furnace as excess spiritual energy escaped during the final stage of the process. He guided the finished pill out of the furnace and into his palm before lowering his gaze to examine it.
Nine patterns lined the surface of the pill. One was slightly thinner than the others, but it was still a nine-pattern pill.
"It's acceptable," he said after a short inspection.
Ying looked at him as though she had just heard something absurd.
"You call that acceptable?"
She had already spent years studying alchemy, yet this was only the second nine-pattern pill she had ever seen in person.
To ordinary people, the difference between eight patterns and nine patterns sounded insignificant. It was only one additional line on the surface of the pill. Any alchemist, however, understood that the final pattern was a different realm of difficulty.
Below First Grade, successfully refining a nine-pattern pill was almost completely dependent on luck. Even for a first-rank alchemist, refining the lowest-grade nine-pattern Healing Pill while going all-out would still result in a success rate so low that one success in a hundred attempts was considered perfectly normal.
And how many first-rank alchemists even existed across the Eastern Territories?
Only twenty-two.
Twenty-three if the Pill Fairy was included, although Ying remained convinced that the Pill Fairy had already surpassed First Grade and entered the Saint Grade realm as a true Pill Saint.
Most alchemists would spend their entire lives without refining a nine-pattern pill. Many would never even see one. Yet Danqing had just refined one while explaining the process step by step as though it required no effort at all.
Seeing Ying's expression, Danqing felt fairly satisfied with himself. He had spent quite a bit of effort making it look easy.
His gaze soon shifted toward the other two, only for his expression to pause slightly.
Alexei looked interested, but not particularly shocked. After thinking about it, Danqing found that understandable. The kid had only recently started learning alchemy, so he probably didn't fully grasp what a nine-pattern pill represented.
Yan's reaction, however, caught his attention.
She showed a trace of surprise when the pill formed, but after taking a closer look, she lowered her head and returned to organizing the herbs on her table.
He stroked his beard.
She had an unexpectedly steady temperament.
Most beginners would either feel admiration or become distracted after seeing a successful refinement, especially one involving a nine-pattern pill. Yan, however, regained her focus quickly. She wasn't impatient, nor was she overly affected by outside things. For an alchemist, that kind of mindset was far more valuable than raw talent.
"Ying, you should learn from your master and senior. On the path of alchemy, controlling your emotions is just as important as controlling the flames."
Ying looked dissatisfied with the comparison, but after glancing at Yan's calm expression, she couldn't think of anything to argue with.
Danqing gave a light wave of his sleeve, causing more than a dozen medicinal herbs to appear on the jade tables in front of them.
"I've already shown you the process once. Now it's your turn to try for yourselves."
---
Yan's expression turned serious as she examined the ingredients laid out before her.
Over the past few months, she had been studying medicinal properties by comparing perfect-quality spirit plants with the refined essences extracted by her furnace. The process had given her a much clearer understanding of medicinal composition than ordinary alchemists could ever achieve. By observing the differences between the original ingredients and their purified essences, she could identify which portions were impurities and which contained the true medicinal effects.
As a result, her understanding of medicinal properties had improved at an astonishing pace.
Unfortunately, understanding alone wasn't enough to refine a true nine-pattern pill.
No matter how close she came, she always fell short when using ordinary materials. She had remained stuck at the limit of eight patterns without being able to take the final step forward.
However, after listening to Danqing's explanation, she understood where the problem had been.
It wasn't her comprehension that lacked depth, but her control.
During the alchemist examination, she had managed to refine a seven-pattern fifth-grade pill because her cultivation was still too low. Her spiritual energy control and refinement techniques couldn't support anything higher yet. Even reaching seven patterns at her current realm was already considered extraordinary.
If she wanted to refine an eight-pattern fifth-grade pill, she would first need to break through to the Dharma Aspect realm. Without sufficient cultivation to support the refinement process, forcing a higher-quality pill was impossible no matter how deep her understanding became.
Ying had already started processing the herbs beside. The Healing Pill was one of the most basic beginner recipes, and after refining it several times already, she didn't really need any guidance.
Alexei, meanwhile, sat in front of his own pile of ingredients and realized he had a problem.
Danqing's earlier explanation had gone by far too quickly. At the time, he had assumed he could figure things out as he went along, but now that he was sitting in front of the furnace, he discovered that he barely remembered the order of the ingredients, much less the finer details of the refining process.
Danqing noticed his situation, he had no intention of helping. After giving the two of them their instructions, he closed his eyes and entered meditation.
Nobody succeeded at alchemy on their first attempt. Even he had ruined several batches before successfully refining his first pill. This lesson was mainly about familiarizing themselves with the refinement process and learning how medicinal properties reacted to pill fire inside the furnace. Whether the final product succeeded or failed was secondary.
After staring at the ingredients for several seconds, Alexei turned his head toward Ying's workstation.
Ying noticed what he was trying to do. A helpless look crossed her face, but she still shifted her medicine grinder to give him a clearer view of what she was doing.
From that point onward, the process turned into Ying completing each step first while he followed along beside her. Whenever she processed a herb, he processed the same herb. And whenever she adjusted the flame, he adjusted his own right afterward.
Sometimes the assimilated furnace refined the ingredients faster than a normal furnace, which left him sitting there waiting for Ying to finish the next step before he could continue copying her again.
Before long, Ying began to suspect he was trying to learn alchemy by copying her directly.
If he truly wanted to imitate someone, shouldn't he be copying Danqing instead? She was only an apprentice alchemist herself. More importantly, alchemy couldn't be learned by reproducing another person's actions.
The medicinal properties of spirit herbs constantly changed throughout the refinement process, and the spiritual fire had to adapt alongside those changes. Even two herbs of the same type could behave differently depending on their age, quality, and growing environment. No refinement process could ever be copied perfectly.
When she glanced toward Alexei again, she discovered he had already finished the current stage before her and was now staring directly at her furnace.
The sight nearly disrupted her concentration.
Was he seriously throwing ingredients into the furnace first and figuring things out afterward?
His pill fire had already gone out several times during refinement, yet he still looked unconcerned. At this rate, she would be shocked if he managed to produce anything other than burnt ash.
Realizing she was getting distracted, she forced herself to refocus on her own pill.
The refinement had already entered the final stage. All that remained was extracting the juice from the Butterfly Grass and pouring it over the forming pill inside the furnace. Unfortunately, this was also the most exhausting part for a Qi Refining cultivator like her.
The spiritual energy in her body simply wasn't sufficient.
Under normal circumstances, the spirit stones placed inside the furnace were enough to maintain the spiritual flames throughout refinement. But preserving the Butterfly Grass' medicinal essence required the herb to be crushed by hand while spiritual energy continuously wrapped around the user's palm. Otherwise, too much spiritual energy would dissipate during the extraction process.
Alexei copied her movements, only for his eyes to widen when the herb in Ying's hand crumbled into pulp.
Looking down at the herb resting in his own palm, he tightened his grip, but instead of breaking apart, the herb merely wrinkled before slipping toward the edge of his hand.
He quickly tried to catch it, only for his fingers to close around empty air as the herb dropped straight into the furnace below.
FWOOSH!
Spiritual flames surged upward the instant it fell inside, swallowing the herb. Under the heat, the plant dissolved and turned to ash within seconds.
Alexei looked into the furnace before turning to Ying.
"This shouldn't affect the pill too much, right?"
Ying nearly choked on the spot.
At this rate, whether the pill retained its effectiveness was hardly the issue anymore. They would be fortunate if the furnace managed to produce a pill at all.
She had been holding herself back for the past several minutes. Every time she glanced at Alexei's furnace, she wanted to point out another mistake in his refinement process, but her own Healing Pill was already approaching completion. If she lost focus now, all her earlier effort would go to waste.
She could only force herself to ignore him and focus on the medicinal properties circulating inside her furnace instead. As the herbs continued to melt and merge together, she adjusted the intensity of the spiritual fire.
Several minutes later, her expression suddenly brightened.
"It's done!"
As soon as the pill fully formed, she sensed the difference. The spiritual energy inside it was unusually stable, and the medicinal properties had fused together far more smoothly than in her previous attempts. Even with Alexei distracting her throughout the process, the refinement had turned out better than expected.
The more she examined it, the more satisfied she became. There was a chance she had successfully refined a two-pattern pill.
The thought made her unconsciously straighten her posture, unable to suppress the smug look spreading across her face.
From now on, she wouldn't just be the youngest apprentice alchemist. She would be the youngest apprentice alchemist capable of refining a two-pattern pill.
To her, those were completely different titles.
---
Seeing that all three had stopped refining, Danqing rose from his meditation cushion. Although he hadn't watched them directly during the process, his spiritual sense had been enough for him to understand roughly how each refinement had gone.
Alexei's results were about what he expected.
The boy had copied Ying's movements from beginning to end without understanding any of the principles behind them. Out of the thirteen herbs he handled, not a single one had been processed properly, and when dealing with Butterfly Grass, he had even thrown the entire stalk into the furnace instead of extracting the spiritual juice first.
Still, he had never expected him to succeed in the first place.
Alexei had yet to learn herb extraction, medicinal transformations, or flame control. Letting him attempt pill refinement was a way for him to experience the process and understand how difficult alchemy was. If he succeeded too easily at the beginning, he would only end up underestimating the path ahead of him.
Failure wasn't necessarily a bad thing for beginners.
Only after seeing the gap between himself and real alchemists would he truly notice his own improvement. Once he understood how much he lacked, he would naturally have something to strive toward.
That was why Danqing had arranged Yan and Ying to refine pills alongside him.
Yan would serve as the long-term goal Alexei needed to chase, while Ying would become the rival closest to him in talent and age. Having someone within reach was often more motivating than staring at a distant peak that couldn't yet be touched.
With those thoughts in mind, he reached for Yan's pill first.
Yan's face still carried excitement as she handed over the pill. She had finally refined a nine-pattern pill through her own ability.
The final pattern was extremely faint, so thin that it was difficult to notice without careful inspection. Ever since she began studying alchemy, this was the first time she had succeeded in producing a nine-pattern pill with ordinary materials.
"Judging from your expression, the result should be quite good," Danqing said with a smile.
"I was only able to succeed because of your guidance," Yan replied, unable to hide the satisfaction in her voice. "Please examine it."
Ying leaned closer out of curiosity, but the instant she saw the surface of the pill, her eyes widened in disbelief.
"Nine patterns?"
Her voice rose involuntarily.
Three years ago, when her grandfather refined a nine-pattern ninth-grade Qi Replenishing Pill, he had celebrated the achievement with a banquet that lasted three full days. The entire city had heard about it by the end. Among alchemists, refining a nine-pattern pill was considered one of the highest displays of skill possible. Yet within a single afternoon, she had already witnessed two of them.
Danqing accepted the pill and examined the patterns across its surface before giving a nod of approval.
"Well done. Being able to refine a nine-pattern pill already places you above most alchemists in the Eastern Territories."
He stroked his beard as he looked at the pill.
Her talent in alchemy was far from ordinary. She had most likely been held back by her sect's lack of resources all this time. With enough medicinal herbs and proper guidance, becoming a First Rank Alchemist shouldn't be difficult for her.
As for going further and reaching the level of Pill Immortal or Pill Saint, that would depend on far more than alchemy talent alone. Those realms demanded immense cultivation to support them, and without exceptional spiritual roots, even the most gifted alchemist would reach their limit.
Judging from Yan's current cultivation and her age, her spiritual roots were probably only high-grade Earth-tier. That was already considered quite good, but it still fell short of what was needed to truly stand at the peak.
Fortunately, those concerns were still far away.
"At the beginner level, there is little left for me to teach you," he said as he withdrew his gaze from the pill. "From here onward, your progress will depend on your own comprehension and practice. Your future in alchemy is promising."
Ying looked at her master with admiration.
Yan noticed the expression on her student's face and let out a soft laugh before placing the nine-pattern pill into her hand.
"If you like it that much, you can keep it."
Ying lowered her head and stared at the pill.
"You're really giving it to me?"
Her grandfather treasured his nine-pattern Qi Replenishing Pill more than anything else. Whenever someone got too close, he would glare at them. Even she had only ever seen it from a distance.
Seeing Ying's reaction, Yan let out a soft laugh.
"If you like it so much, then keep it."
Ying's eyes lit up immediately.
Danqing watched the exchange quietly from the side. As an alchemist from the Eastern Territories, he understood better than most what a nine-pattern pill represented. Even among First Grade alchemists, very few people would willingly hand over a pill like that.
Most alchemists treated their successful pills like treasures. The more talented they were, the more attached they became to their achievements. Over time, that attachment would slowly turn into a restraint, making it harder for them to move forward.
Yan, however, didn't seem to care about such things at all.
The more he observed her, the more satisfied he became with her temperament.
She really was a good seedling.
"Ying, let's see yours now."
Hearing her name, Ying hurriedly placed the nine-pattern pill into a jade box and stored it before running over to her own furnace.
"I did much better this time," she said proudly while opening the lid herself. "Grandpa Hao, hurry and look."
Her expression made it obvious she was waiting to be praised.
Danqing smiled faintly and raised his hand. The pill flew out of the furnace and landed in his palm.
"Not bad," he said after examining it. "You've improved quite a bit this time. The second pill pattern has stabilized completely."
He lifted the pill and brought it closer to inspect before giving it a light sniff.
"The Bloodstop Grass and Silverbell Flower didn't fully harmonize with the Wood Spirit Mushroom. You were also slightly late when adding the Threeleaf Grass and Purple Dawn Root, and there wasn't enough morning dew mixed in. The other ingredients have a few minor flaws as well, but your biggest issue is still your cultivation. Your spiritual energy control isn't stable enough yet to handle the finer stages of refinement."
Ying listened attentively at first, but the longer he spoke without praising her, the brighter her eyes became with anticipation.
"And? What else?"
Danqing chuckled before nodding.
"Overall, this refinement was very successful. You've improved tremendously, but don't let it make you complacent."
Only then did Ying look satisfied as she nodded repeatedly.
Seeing her reaction, Danqing could only shake his head. She really was too similar to her mother. Both of them were impatient and far too easy to please.
"All right, let's see Alexei's pill next."
Hearing this, Ying walked over to Alexei and placed the pill she had just refined into his hand.
"Failing on your first attempt is completely normal. I also failed many times before I succeeded. This is the first two-pattern pill I ever refined, so I'm giving it to you. Make sure you take good care of it."
Alexei looked at her reluctant expression and accepted the pill.
"Thanks."
Danqing didn't bother using spiritual energy to retrieve the contents of Alexei's furnace. Even if something had formed inside, it was most likely just burnt residue and ash, so there was no reason to handle it as carefully as he had with the others.
He walked over and lifted the lid himself, already thinking about how to comfort the boy afterward. Failing the first attempt at alchemy was completely normal, and beginners needed encouragement far more than criticism.
"What Ying said is correct. Failing your first refinement attempt is no..."
The words suddenly stopped in his throat.
He stared into the furnace with widened eyes, then lowered the lid back into place before opening it again.
The contents inside remained the same.
He closed the furnace once more, took a slow breath, and reopened it more carefully this time as if changing the angle might somehow change what he was seeing.
But it didn't.
"Is something wrong?"
Ying stepped closer, unable to hide her curiosity anymore. Even if Alexei had completely failed, there should at least have been ash left inside the furnace. She had watched him throw in enough ingredients to fill half the chamber.
Danqing began to wonder whether something had gone wrong with his mind. Everything that had happened today already felt absurd enough, but the scene in front of him had pushed things beyond anything he could understand.
For a second, he even suspected he was dreaming.
But that explanation quickly fell apart. The medicinal fragrance lingering in the air was far too clear, and the spiritual fluctuations coming from the furnace felt real.
Dreams shouldn't feel this vivid.
"Ying... come check the furnace for me," he said while keeping his eyes fixed on the interior. "I think my eyesight is failing me. Old age really does catch up eventually."
Yan sighed and pressed a hand against her forehead. She already knew where this was going.
None of Alexei's abilities had ever followed normal logic. Every time he did something, cultivators around him ended up questioning everything they thought they understood about the world.
Danqing's worldview had already taken several heavy blows today. Judging from his current expression, this one was probably going to shatter it.
Ying looked confused by the request. Her grandfather had once told her that Danqing was even stronger than he was, so she couldn't understand how someone at that level could possibly have trouble seeing.
Still, she lifted the furnace lid before pulling the cauldron closer to herself. She narrowed her eyes and looked inside, then froze.
There was only one pill at the bottom.
She picked it up and handed it to Danqing.
"Did you leave your own pill in here?"
As she spoke, she glanced back into the furnace again.
"Where did Alexei's pill go?"
Danqing stared at her.
Did this girl really think he couldn't recognize his own pill?
The pill in her hand was already closer to a true nine-pattern pill than the one he had refined earlier. The final pattern had almost connected into a full circle, while the ninth pattern on his own pill had barely formed halfway.
But that wasn't what shocked him the most.
After leaving the furnace, the pill leaked almost no medicinal aura at all. Aside from the faint fragrance surrounding it, its spiritual energy was so well contained that even other alchemists might fail to notice anything unusual at first glance.
However, he could tell where the real problem lay.
The issue wasn't the pill itself. It was the ingredients used to refine it.
Ordinary spirit herbs should never have been capable of producing a pill this close to perfection. That overturned everything he knew about alchemy.
Yan opened her mouth to explain, but after seeing the expression on his face, she gave up on the idea.
There was no way to explain this properly. Saying that her junior's abilities defied common sense would only make her sound insane, especially when even she still had trouble accepting it.
Danqing sat down cross-legged on the ground. He closed his eyes and circulated his spiritual energy.
Perfection in medicinal utilization should not exist in the first place, let alone appear in the hands of a boy who had never even touched alchemy before today. The more he thought about it, the more unsettled he became, until a terrifying possibility surfaced in his mind.
What if none of this was real?
What if his ascension tribulation had already begun without him noticing?
According to ancient records, the Heart-Questioning Tribulation was capable of trapping cultivators inside flawless illusions without leaving behind the slightest clue. Some people supposedly spent their entire lives wandering inside those false worlds, never realizing anything was wrong while their real bodies slowly withered away outside.
If Alexei's refinement process hadn't been so absurdly unnatural, he might never have noticed anything amiss.
Yet the more he considered the possibility, the less sense it made.
The spiritual energy density of the Eastern Territories was nowhere near sufficient to support an ascension tribulation. Even if he stood only a step away from the Immortal Ascension realm, he should still need several hundred more years of cultivation before reaching that stage.
More importantly, he had neglected cultivation for several centuries.
So why would his tribulation arrive now?
"Master, what's wrong with Grandpa Hao?"
Ying's voice sounded distant to Danqing.
Yan shook her head, unable to understand what was happening either. At first, she thought Alexei's pill might have triggered some kind of enlightenment, but the more she looked at Danqing's pale face and sweat-covered body, the less likely that explanation seemed. Enlightenment shouldn'tleave someone looking this miserable.
She was already considering taking both of them back to the residence to rest when Danqing stood up so abruptly that both Ying and Yan were startled.
"No, that's not right..."
His breathing had become uneven as countless thoughts flashed through his mind one after another.
If this were the Heart-Questioning Tribulation, then he shouldn't even remember what the Heart-Questioning Tribulation was. Once someone fell into it, every related memory disappeared. Even the name itself would vanish from their mind.
But he still remembered everything.
At the same time, he had already circulated spiritual energy through his divine sense several times, yet his consciousness remained clear the entire time.
That meant he was neither trapped in a tribulation nor caught inside some illusion or dream.
As the last possibility disappeared, he came to a realization. Everything he had just witnessed was real.
"Senior Danqing?"
Yan's voice pulled him out of his thoughts again.
Danqing exhaled and forced himself to calm down.
Alexei's process had been wrong from beginning to end, yet somehow every ingredient had fused together under the perfect timing, proportions, quality, and medicinal compatibility by sheer coincidence. In the end, against all logic and common sense, the result was this pill that stood close to perfection.
He could only sigh inwardly.
The world was truly full of endless mysteries. Just because something had never happened before didn't mean it was impossible.
Maybe the problem had never been the alchemists themselves, but the refining method passed down through generations. If the conventional process was flawed from the very beginning, then failure was only natural.
Alexei had stumbled onto a different method by accident.
He stored the pill inside a purple jade box. Even that left him feeling distressed. The box alone was worth a top-grade spirit stone, but compared to the medicinal power the pill had already lost while exposed to the air, the cost was nothing.
No matter what happened in the future, he wouldn't take this pill out again unless it was necessary.
This was no longer just a perfect pill.
Once word spread, the entire alchemy world would be thrown into chaos. Countless alchemists would obsess over reproducing it, while sects and factions across the continent fought to uncover its secrets. The frenzy could easily continue for hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years.
By the end, he was clutching the jade box in both hands.
"Hahahaha! This is destiny! My student has the bearing of a Pill Saint!"
Ying blinked at him in confusion, while Alexei looked at the old alchemist as though he had just said the most ridiculous thing imaginable.
Yan could only press a hand against her forehead. Danqing had misunderstood something about Alexei's abilities, but after thinking it through, she realized his conclusion wasn't wrong either.
So far, every furnace assimilated by Alexei had been capable of stably refining nearly any pill below the Immortal tier. They hadn't tested Immortal-tier pills yet, but everything else had succeeded without issue. The only limitation came from the quality and type of medicinal ingredients used during refinement.
For Alexei, that wasn't really a problem.
His spirit herb plantation produced perfect-quality herbs with such absurd consistency that even she still found it difficult to believe sometimes. Looking at it from that angle, Danqing's earlier declaration was fairly accurate.
Danqing coughed awkwardly into his fist, trying to calm himself after laughing hard. Even now, his eyes remained fixed on Alexei, while Alexei himself was starting to look alarmed by the old man's reaction.
"Could you refine another pill for me to observe?"
Rationally, Danqing knew what they had just witnessed should have been impossible to reproduce. Even so, he couldn't stop himself from wanting to see it happen again.
Alexei shrugged.
"It only takes a minute or two anyway."
For him, refining ordinary ingredients was easy. Most medicinal herbs only needed a few seconds of refinement before they fused together successfully. Earlier, the only reason he had taken longer was because he had been waiting for Ying to finish each step first so he could copy her process exactly.
"Use these ingredients."
After sitting back down, Danqing waved his sleeve and swept away the arranged herbs on the table, replacing them with a disordered pile of fresh materials.
Alexei looked down at the mess covering his workstation and felt a headache coming on. Earlier, the ingredients had already been sorted in order for him, so all he had needed to do was grab them one after another and throw them into the furnace. Now it looked as though someone had dumped an entire herb garden onto the table.
How was he supposed to know what came next?
Fortunately, he still remembered that Bloodstop Grass was the first ingredient. Since he couldn't remember the exact amount, he grabbed what seemed about right and tossed it into the furnace before adding Silverleaf Herb afterward. After that came Blossom Dew, followed by Wood Spirit Mushroom.
"The third ingredient is Century Ginseng, not Blossom Dew," Ying said as she watched him continue reaching for herbs. "And Wood Spirit Mushroom comes fifth. You still need Greenheart Grass and Silverbell Flower before that."
Alexei lowered his head and looked at the ingredients in his hand before turning toward the furnace.
He tossed some Century Ginseng into the furnace as though that somehow fixed the problem, then added Greenheart Grass and Silverbell Flower afterward.
Ying could only stare at him.
Danqing did the same.