Taking the box from Tao Yisheng, Luo Chen immediately opened it to look inside.
Ten middle-grade, three top-grade, and even a supreme-grade Colored Chrysanthemum Pill wrapped in six and a half pill patterns!
Luo Chen was thoroughly astonished.
"You actually have such a complete set?"
Tao Yisheng sat down across from him and poured tea as comfortably as if he were in his own home.
Massaging the space between his brows, Tao Yisheng said, "These were left behind by Ancestor Nanshan of our Tao clan. After all, he developed this pill recipe himself and even pushed it to the supreme grade at one point. It's just a pity that, limited by its raw materials, its medicinal potency could never climb higher, falling far short of my sect's Soaring Dragon Pill.
"I couldn't find them in the clan treasury; my elder sister had to go to the clan patriarch to obtain them."
Luo Chen listened to his explanation while carefully scrutinizing the pills in his hands.
His gaze was intently focused.
These items directly concerned the speed of his future cultivation.
He had already anticipated that their potency would be inferior to the Soaring Dragon Pill.
Now, all he wanted to know was whether a higher-grade Colored Chrysanthemum Pill could surpass an ordinary Soaring Dragon Pill in efficacy.
"That old fellow makes too many demands. For just a handful of pills, he actually attached conditions.
"What makes me furious is that my sister actually agreed to that so-called political marriage..."
"Hmm?"
Luo Chen looked up, gazing at Tao Yisheng in shock.
"A political marriage, just for a few pills?"
Realizing he had spoken out of turn, Tao Yisheng hastily waved his hands.
"It doesn't have much to do with that, really. Tao Daonan was just looking for a pretext. What I didn't expect was that my sister would actually agree."
Luo Chen's brow furrowed slightly. He stared at Tao Yisheng, waiting for him to elaborate.
Tao Yisheng sighed and leaned dejectedly against the back of his chair.
"The candidate for the marriage is Fu Li of the Fu clan.
"After the Dao Seed contest, if my sister secures the position of Dao Seed, this marriage proposal will be annulled, and a woman of the Fu clan will become my Dao companion instead.
"If Fu Li succeeds, or if both of them fail, then the original arrangement proceeds, and my sister will be married into the Fu clan."
A convoluted marriage scheme.
Luo Chen turned the words over in his mind, and after a moment's consideration, arrived at a conclusion.
"This must be the result of a mutual agreement between your sister and the patriarch! As far as I know, the Fu clan has a Golden Core Master as their backer, but his lifespan is nearly exhausted.
"Whether one of you succeeds or both of you fail, this alliance benefits both sides."
Tao Yisheng nodded gloomily.
"That is indeed so.
"To compete for the Dao Seed position, my sister has offended quite a few people in Azure Pill Valley. This political marriage was arranged precisely to guard against retribution later.
"Of course, that is all in the future. For now, we have secured the full support of the patriarch's faction. Going forward, the people of his lineage will fully assist me in fulfilling my duties as Clan Head. Moreover, during the first match of the sword duels, the patriarch will personally take the field to help my sister seize a position among the Nine Great True Disciples."
Listening to this, Luo Chen could not help but click his tongue.
It seemed making one's way in a cultivation clan was no easy feat either!
Every turn involved an exchange of interests; every move required compromise to preserve the whole.
Both sides compromised, yet both sides advocated for their own interests.
And in the end, their ultimate aim was for the sake of the entire clan.
Clearly, not long ago, they had been arguing until they were red in the face and thoroughly humiliated.
Now, they were bound tightly together.
Even an old fellow like Tao Daonan, with half his body already in the grave, would personally take action for Tao Wan.
"Brother Luo, I have held the reins of the Tao clan for merely a month, yet every step is fraught with difficulty. I deeply feel a lack of ability and stamina.
"I can hardly imagine how you managed to build up the massive Luotian Association from scratch back when you had nothing.
"Do you have any experience you could impart to me?"
Tao Yisheng looked at Luo Chen with burning eyes full of confusion and yearning.
Luo Chen said casually, "The starting phase is always like this. Once you become familiar with the clan's internal operations, it will get better."
At this, Tao Yisheng bitterly bit his lower lip and shook his head with difficulty.
"Some things cannot be solved merely by becoming familiar.
"These are just internal clan affairs, yet I cannot handle them smoothly. It still required my sister to compromise with the patriarch to secure that lineage's full support.
"If it comes to conflicts outside the clan in the future, what am I supposed to do?"
Between his words lay sheer confusion and dread for the future.
Only then did Luo Chen realize that over the short span of a single month, Tao Yisheng had weathered considerably.
Or rather, it was not that he had weathered, but that he had matured.
He had shed his green naivety and gained a sense of responsibility.
Clan Head—the head of an entire family!
A carefree young man of the past was now fretting over the management of a cultivation clan.
Luo Chen, who had been brushing Tao Yisheng off casually, found himself unable to keep stringing him along.
Tao Yisheng's form of address for him had constantly changed.
During their time in Yuanzhao State, it had been 'Fellow Daoist Luo.' Later, it became the slightly respectful 'Danchenzi.' Then, after Luo Chen had guided him in alchemy for a year, it turned into the respectful and affectionate 'Dao Brother Luo.'
Now, he had already grown accustomed to calling him 'Brother Luo.'
From these shifting forms of address, one could see that his trust in Luo Chen had been steadily growing all along.
Brushing him off would be wrong.
Luo Chen let out a sigh. Looking at the troubled Tao Yisheng, he said seriously:
"Specific situations require specific analysis. What to do depends on the circumstances at the time.
"The experience I can offer you is this: do not limit your perspective to yourself alone."
Tao Yisheng knit his brows and asked humbly, "Brother Luo, could you elaborate?"
Luo Chen straightened his robes, sat up upright, and assumed a solemn expression.
"An individual's personal strength, before reaching a sufficiently high realm, is exceedingly limited compared to a clan or a sect.
"And you are merely at the early Foundation Establishment stage; when handling internal and external affairs, you will naturally feel inadequate.
"Yet if you broaden your perspective, you are the descendant of a Golden Core cultivator. Your clan possesses over a dozen Foundation Establishment cultivators, including late-stage Foundation Establishment experts like your sister and Tao Daonan. You yourself even hold the status of a true disciple of Azure Pill Valley!
"In many cases, these external factors can serve as your leverage.
"When dealing with enemies, you often do not need to act personally. You can entirely borrow another's strength to strike, or form strategic alliances.
"That is the broader direction. On a smaller scale, you must consider the demands of various parties: what can you satisfy, what can others give you, or by balancing strengths and weaknesses, what benefits can you wrest from someone to hand to another?
"To put it more simply: win over one faction to strike down another. You are the one dividing the meat. What others target is not you, but the meat in your hands.
"Furthermore..."
This 'Mohe Garden dialogue' lasted an entire afternoon.
What Luo Chen imparted was no profound wisdom, merely relatively basic theories.
He had never received any systematic schooling in this area either.
Much of it was pieced together from theories of his past life and practical experience in this one, explored step by step.
Nothing more than insights from personal experience!
As for how to implement them, that would depend on the specific circumstances when the time came.
Luo Chen made a point of cautioning him not to copy anything blindly; he had to analyze carefully before making decisions.
Yet at the very least, after an afternoon of guidance, Tao Yisheng had gained a general concept in his mind.
As he handled more clan affairs in the future, these principles would slowly integrate into his instincts.
The cultivation world was just like that.
Those blessed with extraordinary talent were taught cultivation and the hundred arts from childhood.
As for interpersonal conduct and managing subordinates, very few people gave dedicated instruction.
Once one's realm grew high enough, one could naturally suppress all opposition.
Yet obviously, not everyone could scale the highest peaks of cultivation.
Now, standing from an outsider's perspective, Luo Chen had instilled some conceptual principles into Tao Yisheng.
With Tao Yisheng's intelligence, he would surely benefit from them in the future!
The only pity was that his remarkable talent in alchemy would likely be buried beneath a mountain of mundane chores.
A person's energy in life was limited.
It was impossible to master everything and become an all-around genius of the cultivation world.
Even Luo Chen had learned back during the Qi Refining stage to delegate authority.
He was only responsible for major decisions, leaving the concrete execution to the people below.
Tao Yisheng left.
With his head packed full of ideas and carrying hope for the future, he departed Mohe Garden.
After enjoying a simple yet sumptuous dinner, Luo Chen entered his cultivation chamber.
Taking out a middle-grade Colored Chrysanthemum Pill, Luo Chen swallowed it.
Ever since advancing to the fifth layer of Foundation Establishment, breaking through required far more spiritual energy.
Compared to when he was at the fourth layer, it had more than doubled.
Before opening all hundred meridians, had he relied solely on Tier 2 low-grade pills as supplements, breaking through would have taken at least a decade.
Now, having unblocked all hundred meridians with the aid of the Blood Fiend Pill, and possessing the master-level Ageless Evergreen Scripture as his primary cultivation method, he was confident that, paired with a superior-grade cultivation abode, he could break through to the sixth layer of Foundation Establishment within six years!
Such was the confidence that his skyrocketing cultivation speed brought him after clearing all hundred meridians.
However...
Luo Chen would not be satisfied with merely this!
Across the vast Azure Pill Valley, there were fully a hundred late-stage Foundation Establishment cultivators.
Many among them remained stalled at the seventh or eighth layer of Foundation Establishment, or like Tao Daonan, lingered in decrepit old age at the ninth layer.
Did they not wish to reach the great perfection of Foundation Establishment?
No!
It was simply that the further one progressed in cultivation, the slower the advancement became, to the point that every minor realm felt like an insurmountable chasm.
A mere fifth layer of Foundation Establishment would cost Luo Chen five to six years.
He could imagine how long it would take once he reached late-stage Foundation Establishment.
Fifty years?
A hundred years?
He did not want to wait until he was over two hundred years old, like Tao Daonan, before attempting to sprint for the Golden Core stage.
His targets were supreme talents of great sects like Tao Wan and Shangguan Yan!
Reaching the ninth layer of Foundation Establishment before the age of a hundred and fifty.
Possessing vast swathes of time to bring their Foundation Establishment realm to perfection and charge toward the Golden Core stage.
"My goal has long ceased to be ordinary sect disciples.
"Such peerless prodigies are the ones I should pursue!"
His mind gradually calmed.
Luo Chen concentrated on refining the medicinal potency of the middle-grade Colored Chrysanthemum Pill.
His current cultivation realm could not satisfy him, and better Tier 3 spirit lands were things that could only be hoped for, not sought out.
If he wanted to accelerate his cultivation speed, his only hope lay in pills.
And the Alchemic Dao happened to be the craft in which he possessed the greatest confidence.
...
Three days later.
Luo Chen walked out of the cultivation chamber with an unsettled expression.
He had tested the medicinal efficacy of the Colored Chrysanthemum Pill across every grade.
A low-grade Colored Chrysanthemum Pill offered only half the potency of a low-grade Soaring Dragon Pill.
A middle-grade Colored Chrysanthemum Pill was barely on par with a low-grade Soaring Dragon Pill.
A top-grade Colored Chrysanthemum Pill surpassed a low-grade Soaring Dragon Pill, yet remained inferior to a middle-grade Soaring Dragon Pill.
Only the supreme-grade Colored Chrysanthemum Pill slightly exceeded a middle-grade Soaring Dragon Pill.
Had this sort of increment occurred when Luo Chen was in the early Foundation Establishment stage, he would certainly have been overjoyed.
After all, once absorbed, medicinal potency at the level of a middle-grade Soaring Dragon Pill was barely shy of half the effect of cycling his cultivation technique once in a superior-grade cultivation abode.
A single pill equaled half a day of arduous cultivation.
No matter how one calculated, it was fantastic.
However!
Luo Chen was now at the fifth layer of Foundation Establishment.
What he craved were wondrous elixirs on the level of top-grade Soaring Dragon Pills!
Mere middle-grade potency could only be called making do.
Yet to make matters worse, Luo Chen had studied the Colored Chrysanthemum Pill's recipe.
While he did not yet know the difficulty of concocting it, based on his wealth of experience, he could already estimate the cost of a single portion of raw ingredients.
A single batch cost a hundred spirit stones—on par with the Jade Dew Pill!
If Luo Chen wanted to refine supreme-grade Colored Chrysanthemum Pills, even leaving aside the consumption required to grind proficiency in the early stages, the mere fact that supreme-grade pills had only a ten percent yield rate meant that obtaining a batch of supreme-grade pills would cost him a thousand spirit stones!
A thousand spirit stones to purchase a bottle of Tier 2 middle-grade pills was quite reasonable!
What was unreasonable, however, was that the pill yield per cauldron for the Colored Chrysanthemum Pill was very likely quite low.
Tao Yisheng had only produced three pills back then.
If Luo Chen took over, he might double it, perhaps even producing seven or eight.
Yet compared to purchasing Tier 2 middle-grade pills directly, it was still not cost-effective.
Luo Chen was no fool; he knew how to do the math.
With just this calculation, one could see that once his cultivation grew high, refining supreme-grade Colored Chrysanthemum Pills was a losing proposition.
Attempting self-sufficiency would only yield half the results for twice the effort!
"True enough. If it were a cultivation pill recipe not inferior to the Soaring Dragon Pill, the Tao clan could never have given it to me.
"I should have anticipated this long ago.
"Just as trash recipes like the Jade Marrow Pill can circulate freely outside, as long as the great sects tightly control the more effective cultivation recipes, they can thoroughly suppress the ordinary cultivation pills refined by rogue cultivators on cost-performance, thereby dominating the vast majority of the market!"
Having figured this out, only a wry smile remained on Luo Chen's face.
The recipe for the Colored Chrysanthemum Pill in his hands had suddenly become utterly useless yet too good to throw away.
To call it useful—it held little practical value for Luo Chen.
To call it useless?
That was not entirely true either. If Luo Chen developed a drug resistance to the Soaring Dragon Pill in the future and could find no substitute, then a supreme-grade Colored Chrysanthemum Pill comparable to a middle-grade Soaring Dragon Pill would not be a bad backup measure.
It was just that this backup measure felt rather feeble.
With a wry smile, Luo Chen walked out of Mohe Garden.
Looking toward the Tao clan's main residence, he fell silent for a moment.
Perhaps not even Tao Wan could have imagined that his standards for pills were so high!
For an ordinary rogue cultivator, being able to refine pills for personal use was already a tremendous stroke of fortune.
Yet Luo Chen's demands far surpassed those of ordinary rogue cultivators.
"Forget it. Perhaps I am being too insatiable.
"My current situation has already far exceeded my initial expectations. How could one become a fat man with a single bite?"
Shaking his head, Luo Chen rode a cloud and departed Mohe Garden.
He intended to go out and clear his mind.
Earlier, Tao Yisheng had mentioned that Azure Pill Valley's sect market was very lively of late.
With the Dao Seed contest imminent, many Foundation Establishment True Cultivators of the sect had returned, alongside many helpers invited from outside, and even quite a few Foundation Establishment disciples from other sects who had come to observe the ceremony.
With so many people gathered in a short time, transactions would naturally arise.
"Frustrated in alchemy, perhaps I can make up for some luck elsewhere?"
Carrying fond hopes, Luo Chen steered his cloud into the Azure Pill Market.
Chapter 331