At this time, Wei Yuan did not yet know that his task of studying the Xu family descendants had pulled back the curtain on improving the human race's innate physical constitution.
Over several months, he hurried back and forth while Qingming's national strength gradually rose. In many areas, it ran into bottlenecks of varying degrees. Among them, the greatest bottleneck was a shortage of Dao Foundation cultivators. Qingming currently possessed nearly forty thousand Dao Foundation cultivators, but they were needed in every sector, leaving their numbers far from sufficient and the shortfall growing ever wider.
Yu Zhizhuo, Xu Henshui, Sun Yu, Chuhe, and even Feng Tingyu had all come to Wei Yuan demanding people. Unable to satisfy them, Wei Yuan could only resort to robbing Peter to pay Paul, constantly making do. But this was no long-term solution, so Wei Yuan had long begun contemplating countermeasures.
To obtain more Dao Foundations, one had to take a two-pronged approach: on the one hand, continue lowering the threshold to Dao Foundation, and on the other, increase the number of Body Casting cultivators. This was the orthodox path. Aside from that, Xu Henshui had also invented a heretical path: the Foundation Establishment Pill.
The so-called Foundation Establishment Pill was not a traditional medicinal pill used to break through the bottleneck into Dao Foundation, but rather a pill formula Xu Henshui had devised according to an entirely new train of thought. Many scions of aristocratic clans indulged in taking Five Minerals Powder. Five Minerals Powder could deliver intense stimulation and induce potent hallucinations. Many good-for-nothing aristocratic scions relied on it to fulfill their grand dreams of counter-slaying the heavens and annihilating immortals and buddhas.
In the eyes of these clan scions, the potency of Five Minerals Powder was still not strong enough, so they had continually sought similar yet far more potent drugs.
Using these drugs as a foundation and referencing the essence of Wei Yuan's All Living Beings in a Flash ability, Xu Henshui developed the Foundation Establishment Pill. This pill could overdraw one's vital potential, drastically stimulating human bodily functions to erupt in an instant; combined with All Living Beings in a Flash, it significantly raised the chance of forging a Dao Foundation.
Swallowing this pill lopped five years off one's lifespan on the spot, but it forcibly raised the chance of forging a Dao Foundation by twenty percent. If one failed to form a Dao Foundation on the first attempt and took another Foundation Establishment Pill, another five years of life would be lost, and so on. Taking several simultaneously served as an effective method of immediate suicide.
It so happened that Wei Yuan intended to hold a Dao Foundation Grand Ceremony before the World's Number One Dharma Idol Assembly, and the emergence of the Foundation Establishment Pill at this precise juncture made him take it with utmost seriousness. He came in person and deliberated over the pill formula with Xu Henshui for several days, finally finalizing it.
Speaking of alchemy, Wei Yuan had not tried his hand at it for quite some time. Thus, once the formula was settled, he personally set about refining the first cauldron. Xu Henshui had never refined it either, so he observed the entire process from the side while summoning over a hundred seasoned alchemists from the pill monastery to study alongside him.
With the crowd watching, Wei Yuan grew exceptionally energized. Adding the herbs, sealing the cauldron, stoking the fire—every step was flawless, as if guided by divine assistance.
Moreover, as he surreptitiously tossed in handful after handful of karmic luck, the surface of the cauldron actually turned from black to gold, manifesting countless spiritual birds that circled and danced around it! Such an extraordinary phenomenon immediately left the disciples of the pill monastery slack-jawed. It left Wei Yuan's Dao heart thoroughly illuminated, while Xu Henshui's face turned as dark as still water.
When the time came to open the cauldron, a beam of immortal light shot straight into the sky, accompanied by immortal music echoing across a hundred li!
Looking at that tri-colored pillar of immortal light, even Xu Henshui forgot his petty jealousy and stood dumbfounded. This shouldn't be happening! It was just a Foundation Establishment Pill, barely scraping into a ranked grade—how could immortal light burst forth upon opening the cauldron?
The immortal light entered the clouds and instantly transformed into tribulation clouds, yet several attempts by the clouds to coalesce came to nothing.
Each time they gathered, a purplish-black aura of extraterrestrial demonic will would emerge. As a result, the two types of tribulation clouds clashed with each other, neither able to take shape, leaving Wei Yuan's breath hanging uncomfortably in his throat.
With great difficulty, the heavenly tribulation finally gathered a single bolt of tribulation lightning that struck square against the cauldron. The lid immediately blew off, and a flock of immortal birds flew out from inside, scattering in every direction the moment they escaped the cauldron, seeking to flee!
The disciples remained flabbergasted. Xu Henshui finally reacted, swinging his sleeves to catch them, but he only managed to snag a tiny handful.
At that moment, Wei Yuan slowly rose into the air. With one hand behind his back and the other extended forward, he silently channeled the world power of Splendor of the Many Realms, indiscriminately suppressing the surrounding space! How could a hundred-odd little spiritual birds escape his clutches? Suppressed by the world power, every single one was drawn right into Wei Yuan's hand.
Yet in the eyes of the disciples, Wei Yuan merely stretched out a hand and the spiritual birds willingly flew into his grasp, looking just like a painting of a hundred birds paying homage to the phoenix. By comparison, Xu Henshui batting at birds with his sleeves was distinctly inferior.
His Dao heart thoroughly illuminated, Wei Yuan chuckled softly and drifted down to the ground. Floating above his hand were over a hundred Foundation Establishment Pills, sporting two patterns, three patterns, and even four or five patterns. With so many ranked pills gathered together, ethereal immortal qi immediately swirled around them.
Xu Henshui snorted and carefully inspected the pills' medicinal properties. But upon closer look, his expression abruptly shifted, whereupon he threw back his head and laughed thrice, his own Dao heart instantly illuminated!
During Wei Yuan's refining of this batch, the pills had undergone a mutated heavenly tribulation and been disturbed by extraterrestrial demonic will, causing them to mutate. Their potency had been magnified to an extreme degree, and the Heavenly Dao had even bestowed a name: Immortal-Ascension Foundation Establishment Pill!
The medicinal nature of this pill was overbearing: it raised the probability of achieving Dao Foundation to ninety-nine percent, but shaved off a hundred years of lifespan.
Wei Yuan's expression shifted erratically; he felt an urge to silence the witness. Given his original alchemy skills, had he only added a little bit of mortal luck, the pill's efficacy would have risen modestly—raising the chance of achieving Dao Foundation by thirty percent while only costing ten years of lifespan. That would have been a bona fide divine pill, easily outclassing Xu Henshui.
However, Wei Yuan had been overly greedy and added far too much karmic luck. As a result, he had produced an immortal pill that virtually guaranteed achieving Dao Foundation, but it also completely sheared away all the lifespan gained from advancing to Dao Foundation.
A mortal's body inevitably harbored hidden injuries and physical wear, so the real consequence of taking this pill was that one did forge a Dao Foundation, but one's remaining lifespan would be halved, or cut even worse. Furthermore, this batch was an immortal pill; aside from Wei Yuan, not even Xu Henshui could refine it. Thus, it could not even serve as a desperation drug for mortals in dire straits, because it could not be mass-produced.
Fortunately, the disciples of the pill monastery were still completely bewildered and could not comprehend the immortal pill's properties, assuming that Xu Henshui's loud laughter stemmed from joy at seeing an immortal pill. Wei Yuan glared daggers at Xu Henshui and sent a voice transmission: "Keep laughing and see if I don't betray the sect and destroy the patriarchs by pulling out your Dao Foundation—no, wait, snatching your dharma idol!"
Threatened, Xu Henshui had no choice but to swallow his laughter, though holding it in was an agonizing struggle.
Fortunately, though this batch of Immortal-Ascension Foundation Establishment Pills was useless chicken ribs, it proved that the heretical path was viable. Wei Yuan immediately approved the pill ingredients, slating an initial production run of fifty thousand Foundation Establishment Pills. Xu Henshui promptly distributed the tasks, mobilizing every single disciple in the pill monastery.
Having resided in Qingming for so long, the Good Fortune Pill Monastery had developed a style of operation that diverged further and further from its mother sect. How could alchemy here be done in mere batches of one or two cauldrons?
Anything under ten thousand pills wasn't even called alchemy.
With such massive quantities, the monastery's limited disciples could not keep up. Xu Henshui was forced to devise ways to optimize the alchemical process, recruiting hundreds of good-looking template Dao Foundation cultivators specifically to process medicinal ingredients. The herbs moved along assembly lines, passing through stage after stage of processing, picked and kneaded by pairs of delicate hands, until they were transformed into materials ideally tailored for specific formulas, before being boxed and stored for subsequent use.
To fundamentally boost the number of template Dao Foundation cultivators, one had to increase the base of Body Casting cultivators. The best way to foster Body Casting was to eat more, and eat well. To this end, Wei Yuan set about implementing the "Qingming Comprehensive Nutrition Improvement Plan."
This plan comprised dozens of subprojects, undertaken by the Hundred Professions Engineering Academy and relying on the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World for data processing. It had taken over a year of in-depth research to formulate the final version.
After over a year of comparative studies, researchers discovered that mortals merely eating meat was not enough; they also needed supplementary intake of various other foods. As for what substances those other foods actually contained, Qingming's biochemistry was far from mature, so they naturally could not figure it out.
However, this realm possessed its own heavenly and earthly wonders, and such a trifling matter did not require chemistry. Thus, after several researchers applied for the blessing of karmic luck, they sat in meditation beneath the starry sky. Then, in a flash of inspiration, someone hit upon the key concept of "dietary diversification."
Accordingly, Qingming began adjusting its field cultivation plans to produce more vegetables and fruits, while also starting to breed other livestock and poultry rather than limiting itself to guinea pigs.
According to the plan, within one year the physical constitution of Qingming's mortals would show improvement; within three years, the average constitution would improve markedly, increasing the number of Body Casting cultivators by half; and within ten years, it could double. For the first time in human history, a single province would boast ten million Body Casting cultivators!
This was the orthodox route, and orthodox meant steady and slow. Where there was an orthodox route, there was a heretical cult. Having once been a heretical cult master, Wei Yuan naturally could not forget his old calling. Developing a heretical path naturally could not do without Xu Henshui and Sun Yu. Thus, not long after arranging for the Foundation Establishment Pills, Wei Yuan brought the latest materials and sought out Sun Yu and Xu Henshui.
Sun Yu was an academician himself and was no stranger to this project. He had long pointed out that all the nutrients mortals required could be supplemented through medicinal pills. As long as the pills were good enough, there was no need to care about what the human body was actually lacking; the spiritual qi within the pills could compensate for everything, embodying the philosophy of the profound and mysterious.
Xu Henshui, for his part, retrieved a formula for a Body Nourishing Pill from the monastery's heritage recipes, which perfectly met the requirement.
As for whether taking pills to forge the body was feasible, Wei Yuan specifically consulted True Monarch Chuhe, who was blessed with great fortune and had plenty of adoptive fathers. True Monarch Chuhe pointed out that high crop yields required fertilizer, and if a man wanted to grow stout and sturdy, he had to take medicine.
Chapter 1023