For Just a Modest Sum of Spirit Stones, I'll Take Care of Them for You!

At the entrance of the pill chamber. A petite figure squatted on the ground, absently tracing circles on the stone floor with her finger. Ghostly yin energy flickered in and out of view, occasionally forming sharp claws that left keen scratches in the ground. Her eyes stayed fixed on the busy figure inside the chamber. Earth fire roared. Spiritual power flowed steadily. From time to time, a stream of Foundation Establishment true fire poured in, stoking the flames even higher. One medicinal ingredient after another entered the massive cauldron in a strict sequence. Certain herbs did not go directly into the cauldron. Instead, they required special processing with spells beforehand. Now and then, Bai Meiling could hear the figure muttering to himself. "Hundred Blossoms Dew as the base to envelop all medicinal liquid—that's the foundation, but it's also the crucial step for forming the pill membrane at the end." "The processing can't be as sloppy as the third attempt; I must use both the Washing Brook Hand and Cloud Transformation Hand in tandem." "Cold ginseng, Chinese angelica, polygonum, motherwort, azure aloe... these auxiliary herbs shouldn't be processed crudely through fire alone. The recipe didn't mention it, but if I use water-method alchemy for the preliminary processing..." As he muttered, Luo Chen's eyes shone brightly, locked on the pill cauldron. His projected spiritual sense continuously monitored the herbs shifting within, making sure every minor change was committed to memory. The pill success rate granted by the system seemed fixed. Yet Luo Chen had long since figured out that each batch had to be handled with meticulous care; otherwise, even that baseline guaranteed success rate would fail! The same was true for grinding proficiency. Take his current Yimu Medicine King Scripture, for example. If he merely circulated it cursorily, it would take at least forty to fifty circulations to gain a single point of proficiency. If he went all out, he could boost that efficiency to gaining one point every twenty circulations. It was no different now as he concocted the Jade Dew Pill. In fact, unlike concocting pills in the Qi Refinement realm, the aid of an outwardly projected spiritual sense allowed him to observe all the minute transformations occurring as the extracted medicinal essences melded into a pill. As a result, the feedback he gained from each attempt far surpassed anything from before. Even when a batch failed to produce finished pills, his proficiency still ticked up slightly. The Jade Dew Pill truly lived up to its reputation as a Tier 2 pill. The intricacy of its refinement techniques far exceeded Tier 1 pills like the Jade Marrow Pill or Myriad Wonders Pill. At several points, he even had to run water-method and fire-method alchemy in parallel. Even so, there was an immense benefit to this approach. The proficiency of his various alchemy techniques was rocketing upward at a visible pace. If he kept this up, it wouldn't be long before every single one of those techniques was maxed out. "Time for the Lingting sweetgrass!" With a thought, Luo Chen shifted his gaze to the lowest shelf, where vibrant green shoots growing in pots radiated lush vitality. As one of the three primary ingredients of the Jade Dew Pill, Lingting sweetgrass was a Tier 2 spiritual herb, costing twenty spirit stones a stalk. Most importantly, it could not be processed in advance. It had to be freshly picked and added immediately. Under such conditions, one specific alchemy technique was mandatory—the Pure Heart Hand! Furthermore, only a deeply accomplished mastery of the Pure Heart Hand could handle a herb requiring immediate, on-the-spot processing. Luo Chen showed no panic. His Pure Heart Hand had already reached master level, so processing Lingting sweetgrass posed no real trouble. A stalk of sweetgrass was harvested, and multiple strands of spiritual power interlaced to weave a fine net, instantly sealing the cut. The Lingting sweetgrass was levitated above the cauldron. The fine net suddenly extended upward, slicing the stalk into a grid-like pattern, allowing only the core at the center to slip into the cauldron. That core was the only piece he needed! With ordinary methods, no matter how carefully one picked the herb, the Lingting sweetgrass would be tainted, muddying the potency of its core. Only the spiritual mesh formed by the Pure Heart Hand could leave it washed clean in rippling waters yet unbesmirched, leaving behind only an unblemished heart! Withdrawing his spiritual power, Luo Chen took a deep breath. Next came extracting the jade smoke from the blue smoke jade and blending it into the pill. Finally, he would seal it with Hundred Blossoms Dew to form the pill membrane. Once the pills were left to rest in a freezing environment for a day and night, the concoction would be complete. He had come through almost all the preceding steps. At this juncture, he could not afford to let his past efforts go to waste. Processing blue smoke jade required the Jade Breaking Hand. This was one of Luo Chen's strongest points! Back when he was concocting Jade Marrow Pills, he had processed its core ingredient, washing jade, day in and day out, long since grinding the Jade Breaking Hand to Great Perfection. Using it on blue smoke jade now was mere child's play! In truth, this was one of the reasons Luo Chen had chosen to start with the Jade Dew Pill rather than the Blood Fiend Pill. He already possessed an exceptionally solid foundation for it! Step after step proceeded without a hitch. If a layman had witnessed the labyrinth of alchemy techniques Luo Chen executed over the course of the day, their head would have spun in sheer disbelief. Was all this really necessary just to concoct a pill? A true high-tier alchemist would not even deign to answer! Why did alchemists rank among the very pinnacle of the hundred arts of cultivation? Profit was one reason, its direct bearing on cultivation was another, but the steep barrier to entry and difficulty of advancement were equally decisive. In other arts, a cultivator with a little talent might delve deep and succeed. Not so with alchemy. Talent, diligence, resources, perseverance, comprehension... not a single one could be missing. There were no shortcuts in alchemy. It required pill after pill to take shape beneath one's hands until absolute mastery was attained, letting one casually say, "There is nothing to it, merely familiarity with the craft." Luo Chen possessed every single one of those conditions—except innate talent! And the system had granted him that talent. Or rather, it was a talent he had forged for himself through grinding proficiency in his other skills. Therefore, Luo Chen could declare with a clear conscience, "My achievements in alchemy today are entirely the fruit of my own hard work!" "Xiao Ling!" "Coming, coming!" A graceful figure appeared beside Luo Chen in a flash, holding a round platter resembling a pale moon. Wisps of frigid mist drifted from its surface. The White Jade Ice Platter! A low-grade dharma artifact! Forged in Tianfan City and sold by Wanbao Tower, it was specifically designed to chill wines and fruits. Now, it was ideally suited for freezing and resting the newly formed Jade Dew Pills. With a wave of Luo Chen's hand, his signature pill-retrieval technique appeared. Ten round, glistening pills flew toward him like swallows returning to their nest, landing in the White Jade Ice Platter without gathering a speck of dust. Holding the platter, Bai Meiling asked curiously, "Did it work?" "It did!" Normally, one had to let them rest for a full day until four cloud patterns appeared to confirm success. Yet Luo Chen gave his answer with absolute confidence, as if foreseeing the outcome. It was simple! On the system panel, his Jade Dew Pill proficiency had just increased by ten points. That meant he had successfully refined his very first batch of Jade Dew Pills. With the batch completed, Luo Chen felt a rare trace of fatigue. It wasn't that the pill was too difficult to make. Rather, the process was excessively tedious and delicate. Concocting a single cauldron of Jade Dew Pills took an entire day. Throughout that day, he could not allow his attention to wander for a single moment—a genuine torment. Yet there were upsides. His control over spiritual power and spiritual sense had grown even more precise. Luo Chen was confident that in this regard, he stood at the very top among rogue cultivators. Even against elite disciples of major sects, he would not fall short. After a quick tidy-up of the pill chamber, Luo Chen went to the sitting room and roughly calculated the cost of concocting the Jade Dew Pill. Due to the war, the cost of raw materials for a single batch had spiked to around a hundred spirit stones. And the market was still volatile. Counting ten batches, that came to a thousand spirit stones! At his current beginner stage, his success rate was ten percent. Ten batches yielded one batch of low-grade Jade Dew Pills. "It seems low-grade Jade Dew Pills won't recoup the cost unless I raise the success rate!" The market prices for Tier 2 low-grade pills had long stabilized across the cultivation world. Generally, they started at three hundred spirit stones, with those aiding cultivation hovering around five hundred. As for pills related to realm breakthroughs, prices were impossible to pin down. Essentially, they were priceless treasures with no open market. Take the Foundation Establishment Pill, for example! Strictly speaking, it was also a Tier 2 pill, yet its opening bid at auctions was usually two thousand spirit stones. Winning bids routinely reached four or five thousand, and soaring to ten thousand wasn't unheard of. The Jade Dew Pill naturally couldn't compare to a Foundation Establishment Pill. Its counterparts were things like the Rising Dragon Pill and Qi Harmonizing Pill. Considering it offered extra benefits to female cultivators, its value could be bumped up slightly. In other words, exceeding five hundred and pricing it at six hundred wouldn't be excessive. Factoring in the wartime inflation that had driven up raw materials across the board, setting the price at seven hundred was entirely reasonable. By that calculation, once Luo Chen pushed his success rate to twenty, thirty, or even fifty percent, the profits would be staggering. "Unfortunately, I can't do that." "An ordinary man is innocent, but harboring a treasure makes him guilty!" "The Jade Dew Pill isn't meant to be my main source of wealth. Its true purpose is to be a stepping stone!" Luo Chen's eyes flickered. He had made his plans long before concocting the Jade Dew Pill. Now that the pill was complete, the subsequent arrangements needed to be put into motion. "Xiao Ling, what are you doing leaning over there?" Catching a glimpse out of the corner of his eye, Luo Chen noticed Bai Meiling lounging charmingly in front of the White Jade Ice Platter. Bai Meiling looked up, dazed. "Nothing really..." "Then what are you doing?" "I just think the scent drifting from the pills smells wonderful." Luo Chen raised an eyebrow. "Can you take Jade Dew Pills?" Bai Meiling shook her head quickly. "No, I don't have a physical body, so how could I take them? But I took a few breaths of the pill aura they emit, and it made the yin energy I've gathered circulate a bit faster." Hearing this, Luo Chen fell into thought. He didn't chase her away, letting her stay near the Jade Dew Pills. Casting a Cleansing Art on himself, a refreshed Luo Chen stepped out of the immortal cave. Counting the days, nearly a month had passed, yet Duan Feng still had not emerged from seclusion. Could it be... "Haha! Fellow Daoist Luo Chen, I presume!" A hearty voice rang out abruptly from above. Startled, Luo Chen looked up toward the newcomer. A figure hovered in the open sky, smiling down at him. A look of surprise crossed Luo Chen's face. "Fellow Daoist Chu Kui?" When Luo Chen had emerged from seclusion after achieving minor completion in the Subtle Pill Method of Pure Origin, he had received several voice transmission talismans. Yet aside from Huiniang, he had not met the senders of the other two. Li Yixian seemed busy with something and hadn't returned to his immortal cave in a long time. The other talisman belonged to a powerful rogue cultivator named Chu Kui. Luo Chen had assumed it was merely a polite gesture, never expecting the man to greet him of his own accord today. "None other!" Luo Chen pursed his lips, glanced toward Duan Feng's immortal cave, and made an inviting gesture. "Why not come down and talk?" Without standing on ceremony, Chu Kui promptly descended onto the platform. With a flick of Luo Chen's sleeve, simple wine cups and a flagon appeared on the stone table on the cliffside balcony. "We spoke of having a drink before. How about today?" Chu Kui took the flagon and sniffed it. "Your wine won't do. Drink mine instead!" With a twist of his wrist, an exquisite flagon appeared in his hand. "This is a Tier 2 spiritual wine unique to Taibai Market—truly magnificent stuff. Care to try some, Fellow Daoist?" Luo Chen gave him a searching look. This man certainly made himself at home! Having no misgivings, Luo Chen lifted the cup brimming with spiritual energy and drained it in one gulp. The wine flowed smoothly down his throat. Though mellow, the flavor seemed rather unremarkable. Did this truly qualify as a Tier 2 spiritual wine? Just as Luo Chen was wondering, his expression shifted slightly. Across the table, Chu Kui smiled holding his cup. "Well? Quite the flavor, isn't it?" Luo Chen nodded slowly. "It truly deserves to be called a Tier 2 spiritual wine. What is its name?" "It shares the market's name: Taibai wine." "Fine wine! Truly fine wine!" Luo Chen praised it twice with complete sincerity. He could feel the potent wine vapor sweeping into his sea of qi, rising straight up like burning azure clouds. Under this stimulus, some of the spiritual energy clouds he had accumulated were accelerating in refinement, condensing into droplets of spiritual liquid that pattered down into his sea of qi. Cultivation in the early Foundation Establishment stage was not complicated. It was simply turning the process of liquefying spiritual energy—first achieved during the breakthrough—into an ongoing daily cycle. Normally, when Luo Chen circulated his technique, he drew in the spiritual energy radiating from the spirit vein beneath the cave. At that point, the spiritual power had undergone only the technique's initial purification. Inside his body, it remained gaseous, hanging above his sea of qi in the form of spiritual clouds. Only through repeated daily circulations could it be further refined, transforming into liquid spiritual energy to rain down onto the sea bed. Spirit Purifying Pills could accelerate this process. He hadn't expected this Tier 2 Taibai wine to produce the same effect. It was only slightly inferior to a Spirit Purifying Pill. With a stir in his heart, Luo Chen immediately considered buying it in bulk. Unexpectedly, Chu Kui burst out laughing. "Don't look at me like that, Fellow Daoist. The yield of Taibai wine is exceedingly small. This was merely one of the rewards I earned last year for ranking in the top ten of the Dao Discussion Platform." Luo Chen asked in confusion, "Didn't you say it was a specialty of Taibai Market?" "It is a specialty, yes. But it's supplied exclusively to the Jade Cauldron Sword Sect!" So that was it. No wonder the Dao Discussion Platform could offer such a reward. Luo Chen felt a touch of regret. Resources that could purify spiritual power, whether Spirit Purifying Pills or Taibai wine, were always exceedingly rare. Even at the Spirit Herb Pavilion in Tianlan Immortal City, they were seldom sold. Whenever a batch appeared, it was snapped up instantly. Unless one kept watch there day in and day out, one might not encounter them once in a lifetime. "Fellow Daoist Luo, where do you hail from? I heard you have a gang under your command?" Luo Chen briefly outlined his background. As for the Luotian Association, he glossed over it in a few words. To his surprise, Chu Kui was deeply intrigued. "Running a gang in Tianlan Immortal City brings endless trouble." "I heard you ran into quite a bit of grief right after moving into Danxia Peak. It was the Divine Craft Sect, right? Oh, and the Geng family!" "They aren't pushovers. It might look calm now, but who knows what scheme they're cooking up in secret." "Your methods are extraordinary, Fellow Daoist. Word is you routed three Foundation Establishment cultivators in a single move, even forcing two major factions to back down on their own. Quite impressive!" "Still, a thief can strike any day, but no one can stay on guard forever." "Don't you want to resolve these two headaches once and for all?" Listening to Chu Kui's over-familiar chatter, Luo Chen sensed something off. Especially those last few lines. A look of doubt appeared on his face. "Fellow Daoist Chu, if you have something to say, speak plainly." "Ahem!" Chu Kui cleared his throat. Shedding his casual familiarity, he took on an imposing, masterly demeanor. He said evenly, "I am Chu Kui—a frequent contender on the Dao Discussion Platform, ranked in the top ten of the Prodigy Roll, and a foremost figure among Foundation Establishment rogue cultivators." "Thanks to the flattering regard of fellow Daoists in the immortal city, I was bestowed the Daoist title of Tiankuizi." "I am a man of upright righteousness who delights in taking up the cudgels for others." "Contemptible scoundrels like the Divine Craft Sect, who take advantage of people in peril, deserve to be put down by anyone and everyone." Luo Chen's brow knitted tightly. "Speak! Plainly!" Chu Kui gave a grand wave of his hand. "For just a modest sum of spirit stones, I'll take care of them for you!"