Conpoy was easy enough to explain. It had a unique texture, and people often bought it to brew in soup.
Fire hound whip, on the other hand, had rather limited uses.
*A lad so young—why on earth does he need this stuff?*
*Heh heh...*
"No need to call me Senior. Just call me Shopkeeper Liu. How should I address you, young friend?" the plump shopkeeper asked with a beaming smile.
"Greetings, Shopkeeper Liu. My surname is Luo; you can just call me Xiao Luo."
Luo Chen had no choice but to be this humble. The genial, chubby shopkeeper before him radiated an aura that made him deeply uneasy.
He had felt such an aura before, and it had always come naturally from experts at the Foundation Establishment stage.
Before such an expert, he naturally had to adopt the utmost deference.
Shopkeeper Liu smiled faintly. "So it's Fellow Daoist Luo. I do have the two medicinal ingredients you mentioned, though not in very large quantities."
Luo Chen had expected as much.
Dahe Market sat on the borderlands near the Eastern Desolation, part of an inland region stretching tens of thousands of li.
Of the two ingredients he had requested, conpoy was a marine spirit herb that usually had to be transported from great distances.
A limited supply was entirely predictable, but as long as they had it, that was enough!
"Can you put together a hundred portions of conpoy? As for fire hound whips, I need ten."
"I do have that many, but the price won't come cheap," Shopkeeper Liu said with a chuckle.
When he said it was not cheap, he did not mean it was astronomically expensive; rather, it was steep relative to Luo Chen's cultivation at the third level of Qi Refinement.
Moreover, judging by Luo Chen's clothes, he certainly did not look like someone flush with coin.
"What is the price?"
"Ten low-grade spirit stones for a hundred portions of conpoy, and ten low-grade spirit stones for ten fire hound whips."
Luo Chen's eyelids twitched.
He even suspected the fat shopkeeper had x-ray vision and could see that he had exactly twenty spirit stones left in his robe.
"That expensive?"
"Do you want them?"
"I'll be purchasing from you regularly in the future. Could you give me a small discount?"
"Hundred Herbs Hall is a five-hundred-year-old establishment with branches across four domains. Our prices are fair, we deceive neither the young nor the old, and we absolutely do not haggle!"
"Fine. Wrap them up for me. Here are twenty spirit stones."
Gritting his teeth, Luo Chen reluctantly drew twenty spirit stones from his robes.
With speed almost invisible to the naked eye, the plump shopkeeper snatched the pouch of spirit stones from his hand.
"Xiao Ling, weigh out a hundred portions of conpoy and ten fire hound whips!"
With the goods in hand, Luo Chen hoisted the large sack of herbs waiting by the entrance and departed Hundred Herbs Hall amidst the shopkeeper's knowing smile.
Taking advantage of the remaining daylight before rogue highwaymen could take to the paths, Luo Chen hurried home, coated in dust from the road.
Looking at the pile of goods on the floor, Luo Chen sighed.
Years of savings, wiped out in a single day.
When he added it up, he had saved fifty spirit stones over the years, and today every last one was gone.
The final two primary ingredients alone had swallowed twenty spirit stones.
"Five-hundred-year-old establishment, my foot! More like a den of thieves! May you go out of business soon!"
After cursing the profiteer under his breath, Luo Chen forced himself to bolster his spirits.
"It will come back. It will all come back!"
"The spirit stones I earn in the future will only be more!"
With that, he stripped off his low-grade robe, folded it with great care, and jumped into the nearby creek wearing only a pair of shorts.
This spot was relatively remote. Though it bordered the million great mountains of the Eastern Desolation, most people returning from the wilderness took the eastern route, leaving this area sparsely inhabited.
He did not have to worry about anyone seeing him naked, so there was no danger of being forced to marry anyone to preserve his virtue.
A refreshing wash scrubbed away all the various odors he had gathered throughout the day.
He knew the Cleansing Technique, of course, but that art felt more like detonating a sphere of spiritual power against his skin to blast the dirt away; it was nowhere near as satisfying as an actual bath.
He usually only used the spell to clean his robe.
Returning to the wooden cabin, Luo Chen changed into a clean pair of shorts and casually draped a coarse gray hemp shirt over his shoulders.
Flipping his damp hair back, he retrieved an oxhide-wrapped bundle from beneath the floorboards in the corner of the room.
Unwrapping the bundle, he revealed a roll of yellowed bamboo slips, a thin booklet, and a sheet of parchment.
The content of the bamboo slips was straightforward: the Eternal Spring Art, Luo Chen's primary cultivation method, which only went up to the ninth level of Qi Refinement.
He had heard that this method served as the introductory art of the Medicine King Sect, above which lay the Yimu Medicine King Scripture.
This method had come from a fortuitous encounter in his youth, found on skeletal remains inside a desolate mountain cavern.
Luo Chen had never stopped practicing it. Besides cultivating every night, on days he did not refine pills, he spent most of his time working on this art.
Yet the results were truly negligible.
Even now, he was still stuck at the third level of Qi Refinement, with any breakthrough to the fourth level remaining far out of sight.
His proficiency with the method, however, had risen quite rapidly, already reaching the adept stage.
Before long, he would likely push through to perfection, and grandmaster proficiency would be within reach!
He was eager to know whether the Eternal Spring Art at grandmaster proficiency could bring about a substantial leap in his cultivation realm.
The parchment bore the incomplete pill formula his previous self had unearthed—the Jade Dew Pill.
Luo Chen had no interest in it. Setting aside the fact that the formula was incomplete, even if it had been whole, he had no intention of delving into it.
After all, this was a Tier 2 medicinal pill used only by Foundation Establishment cultivators. The myriad herbs required were far beyond what he could currently afford to gather.
Back then, the original host had drained all his savings just to scrape together a single set of ingredients, even substituting many materials in hopes of striking it rich overnight.
He had simply been blinded by poverty.
All of Luo Chen's focus now lay on that thin booklet.
Opening it, the first two pages contained the formula for Fasting Powder.
Unlike ordinary formulas that listed only the required ingredients, this booklet was densely annotated with precise proportions for every material, along with instructions for processing each herb.
It even touched upon the control of heat.
It was precisely because of this that his predecessor had been able to learn it with such ease.
After only a handful of failures, he had successfully refined his first batch of Fasting Powder.
From then on, he possessed the means to sustain himself in Dahe Market.
Luo Chen had long since flipped through that formula until the pages were dog-eared.
What he intended to tackle next were the five pages that followed.
"The Myriad Wonders Pill: Harmonies of water and fire, balancing yin and yang, stimulating the yang essence without depleting the foundational source of the kidneys, offering the effects of heightening pleasure and prolonging vigor."
Sharing joy was better than reveling alone; when yin and yang intertwined, the wonders were beyond words!
Hence, the pill was named Myriad Wonders.
To put it plainly, it was the cultivation world's little blue pill.
Though according to the finished description, it was supposed to be red.
If he could refine this thing, a market was guaranteed.
As long as one was human, such desires existed—even among cultivators.
Even here in Dahe Market, one of the six premier commercial establishments was the Tianxiang Pavilion.
Female cultivators were scarce in these parts, so the men who regularly plunged into the mountains to hunt demon beasts and harvest herbs felt an even greater need for such things.
As for why the original host had never attempted to refine this pill, Luo Chen could not guess his mindset.
Had he feared the embarrassment of selling such wares?
Ha! A cultivator's path knew no shame when it came to earning a living!
Calming his mind and focusing his spirit, he meticulously read through the five pages of the Myriad Wonders Pill formula once more.
The processing of every material, the order and timing of additions, the precise quantity for each portion, the control of the heat...
Once everything was committed to memory, Luo Chen opened the interface in his mind.
[Name: Luo Chen]
[Lifespan: 27/75]
[Spiritual Roots: Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth]
[Realm: Qi Refinement Layer 3: 75/100]
[Cultivation Art: Eternal Spring Art (Adept: 235/300)]
[Spells: Cleansing Technique (Novice: 49/100), Entanglement Technique (Practiced: 176/200), Fireball Technique (Adept: 268/300)]
[Skills: Tier 1 Alchemist: Fasting Powder (Grandmaster: 501/1000)]
[Achievement Points: 10 (Usable to initiate arts, spells, or skills corresponding to the current realm)]
His gaze paused briefly on his lifespan before settling on the final entry.
Achievement points!
For every cultivation method, skill, or spell, advancing a proficiency tier yielded a single achievement point.
Once he gathered ten achievement points, he could use them to initiate any method, spell, or skill corresponding to his current realm.
He had acquired the Cleansing Technique not long ago, which was why it had only just entered the novice stage, leaving no time to grind its proficiency.
Besides, spells were generally heavy on spiritual power consumption.
Faced with the pressures of survival, he had devoted most of his energy to alchemy.
In the end, his efforts had not disappointed him. His proficiency in refining Fasting Powder had broken through to grandmaster, yielding a full five achievement points.
Adding the two points from the Eternal Spring Art, one point from the Entanglement Technique, and two points from the Fireball Technique, he had accumulated exactly ten points!
And his entire life savings had just barely secured ten batches of ingredients for the Myriad Wonders Pill.
Success or failure would be decided tomorrow!
And now—Deep Blue, add points!
Ah, wait, wrong script. Initiate skill: Myriad Wonders Pill refining!
With a single thought, the ten achievement points vanished.
In their place, a new entry appeared on the status interface.
[Tier 1 Alchemist: Fasting Powder (Grandmaster: 501/1000), Myriad Wonders Pill (Novice: 1/100)]
Chapter 4