The Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World summarized the alchemy process into a few simple steps:
First came the breakdown and purification of medicinal herbs. Next, the various medicinal ingredients were combined in distinct stages. Then, those components were refined and transformed to yield new structures—namely, medicinal properties. Finally, the structure was stabilized into finished pills.
However, this summary from the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World came with a prerequisite: it stripped away the variables of celestial spiritual qi and karmic luck. Factor those two back in, and everything turned unpredictable.
In the history of the Monastery of Creation, there were plenty of cases where someone suddenly found themselves blessed with immense luck. A cauldron of pills would finish forming almost as soon as the fire was lit, and every single pill would emerge as if etched with tattoos.
The difficulty in refining the Great Sun Morning Splendor Pill lay in the sheer size of the ingredients and the cauldron. A cultivator's divine sense could not hold out for long within the alchemical fire, yet the refining time was exceptionally protracted.
This was an intense fire method, offering no chance to replenish one's divine sense. Its requirement for seven continuous days of refining was far more demanding than three months over a gentle simmer. Even water or cold refining lasting three to five years did not demand nearly as much divine sense.
Guided by Xu Henshui's pointers, Wei Yuan had corrected every mistake the man pointed out, and through those corrections, he had uncovered seven or eight more that Xu Henshui had missed.
By now, the alchemical fire in the cauldron roared upward. Inside, the leaves of the Huiyang Grass gradually melted like ice. When they were half dissolved, Wei Yuan added the first batch of auxiliary herbs, followed by the second and the third.
Once all the ingredients had been placed into the cauldron in sequence and the primary herb had completely melted, Wei Yuan used his Dao power to shut the lid and stoke the flames.
The challenge at this stage was grasping the cauldron's internal conditions with absolute precision. Even Wei Yuan's current divine sense was hard-pressed to achieve this, and Xu Henshui was even less capable of it.
Xu Henshui relied mainly on practical refining experience, combined with alchemical texts left by predecessors, to make approximate judgments and raise his precision as much as possible.
Although Wei Yuan's own divine sense was not quite sufficient, his awareness was by no means confined to his physical body.
Three more figures appeared in the alchemy chamber. The two Weis, Wen and Wu, seated themselves to the east and west of the cauldron, while Wei Yuan sat facing south from the north. Longying cupped his hands to Wei Yuan and said with a smile, "This is my first time concocting pills. I shall do my best not to disappoint you, Fellow Daoist."
Wei Yuan returned the courtesy. "There is a first time for everything. Please, take your seat, Fellow Daoist."
"Very well." With a sweep of his sleeve, Longying sat down to the south.
Soon, four strands of divine sense wove back and forth, sweeping continuously through the cauldron, keeping every subtle shift under absolute control.
Within the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, an enormous, transparent alchemy cauldron materialized, displaying every change within clear view. With every sweep of the four divine senses, the conditions inside the cauldron updated in real time.
Seated around this manifestation were over a thousand mortals, all exceptionally gifted individuals with a keen interest in alchemy. At this moment, they were busily analyzing and learning in tandem.
A prompt sounded by Wei Yuan's ear: "The alchemical fire in the cauldron has not reached optimal temperature. Certain auxiliary ingredients are dissolving too slowly. Consider adding external true fire or spiritual fire to improve the process."
With a thought from Wei Yuan, three Dao Foundation warriors appeared in the chamber. They sat cross-legged and began blowing Dao fire toward the bottom of the cauldron.
An hour later, their Dao power was spent, and Wei Yuan swapped them out for three more. With so many Dao Foundation warriors at his disposal, he could keep replacing them indefinitely.
A moment later, another reminder sounded: "Primary material particle size is too high; large fragments remain. Addition of Metal-phase celestial qi required."
Wei Yuan immediately retrieved a wisp of aura from the Langya Divine Wood. An instant later, another notification came: "Quantity excessive."
Wei Yuan returned half of it before sending the rest into the cauldron.
The entire process proceeded through fine adjustments of this sort. At times, the timing demanded of Wei Yuan's interventions was so strict that even he found it rather tedious.
He bustled about in this frantic fashion, entirely lacking Xu Henshui's effortless elegance.
In the blink of an eye, the seventh day arrived. Three bouts of hearty laughter drifted from the neighboring alchemy chamber, followed by the faint hum of celestial music and an intoxicating fragrance. A beam of radiant light even pierced through the roof.
Alchemists across the entire academy were stirred by the commotion, flocking to the door of Xu Henshui's chamber to offer congratulations.
A moment later, the door swung open. Xu Henshui stepped out with a smile amidst swirling herbal fragrance, twelve pills dancing around him in flight. Five of them shimmered with faint silver veins.
An ordinary Morning Splendor Pill increased the chances of a breakthrough by five percent, while one bearing pill veins raised the probability by ten percent, its price leaping straight from fifty thousand to one hundred and fifty thousand ounces of immortal silver.
Xu Henshui's cauldron had yielded two extra pills, and two more than usual had developed veins, bringing the entire batch's value to 1,100,000 ounces of immortal silver. Moreover, due to his renowned reputation as a master alchemist, his creations commanded a ten percent premium, reaching 1,200,000 ounces.
The value of this single batch slightly exceeded twenty times the investment cost. It was the peak of Xu Henshui's recent years, so it was no wonder his complexion looked so radiant.
Hearing strange noises from the chamber next door, Xu Henshui glanced over and said, "Wei Yuan still needs a little more time. Let us not disturb him. Who knows, perhaps he might manage to produce up to six. For a first attempt at refining an elixir of the Great Sun Morning Splendor Pill's caliber, avoiding a cauldron explosion is already proof of extraordinary talent."
The gathered alchemists nodded in agreement. Given their modest cultivation, none of them had yet refined a Morning Splendor Pill, so they naturally lacked the right to critique Wei Yuan. Intense fire refining was notoriously prone to exploding; virtually every alchemist had suffered a few blown cauldrons in their life.
Right as they were chatting and laughing, a deafening boom erupted from Wei Yuan's alchemy chamber. The roof was blasted into the sky, and a column of black smoke shot a hundred feet upward! From within the plume of smoke, the cauldron lid soared through the air, crashing down several hundred feet away.
Xu Henshui wished he could slap himself across the face. Of all things to mention, he had to bring up exploding cauldrons, and his jinx had come true. But wasn't the explosion from Wei Yuan's cauldron a bit too violent?
The alchemists rushed over, directly tearing down the chamber walls to rescue him. With a cauldron explosion of this scale, anyone whose physique was slightly lacking could be severely injured by the shockwave alone.
Inside the room, everything was scorched black with smoke and fire. The massive cauldron lay overturned on the ground. Wei Yuan stood there soot-stained and disheveled, his robes in tatters, with scattered debris covering the floor. Amidst the clutter, however, treasures gleamed with swirling light.
Evidently, his robes and storage treasures had failed to withstand the devastation and were ruined once more. His physical body, on the other hand, was vastly tougher than any robe, leaving him merely dusted in a layer of ash.
Seeing that Wei Yuan was unharmed, Xu Henshui finally felt a great weight lift from his chest. Yet as he rubbed his eyes, he thought he caught sight of a red figure rummaging through the pile of debris, only for it to seem like an illusion. In the brief moment it took to rub his eyes, the figure was already gone.
Facing the crowd of spectating alchemists, Wei Yuan said with a hint of embarrassment, "Martial Uncle Xu, this cauldron of yours is a bit too small. It couldn't hold that many pills."
When pills formed, many of them repelled one another, so the cauldron had to be of appropriate size. Too small a space easily provoked an explosion, unless the cauldron possessed the property of containing a Sumeru within a mustard seed.
Many of the alchemists wore strange looks, thinking to themselves: *How many pills could you possibly produce in one batch? How can you complain that such a large cauldron was too small?*
While clearing the debris from the floor, Wei Yuan picked out soot-black pills one by one. Scanning them with his divine sense, Xu Henshui recognized that every pill Wei Yuan retrieved was fully formed and considered a finished product, and he nodded inwardly.
Yet as he watched, Xu Henshui's expression gradually shifted. Why was the boy still picking them up without end?
In the end, under the astonished gazes of the gathered alchemists, Wei Yuan retrieved twenty-eight pills in total, matching the number of the lunar mansions.
Next, Wei Yuan produced a pill that was noticeably larger than the rest. Wiping away the soot with his sleeve, a ray of brilliant light shot straight into the sky! Upon this pill were three distinct purple veins!
Xu Henshui could hardly believe his eyes. A three-veined pill could already be called a mystic pill, boosting the chance of breakthrough by thirty percent! That single pill alone was worth a million ounces of immortal silver!
Wei Yuan continued wiping down the pills. This layer of residue was alchemical ash, capable of blocking divine sense and spiritual qi; until wiped clean, the true quality of the pills remained hidden. As one pill after another began to glow anew, Xu Henshui eventually grew numb.
In a single cauldron, Wei Yuan had produced the number of the lunar mansions. Among them was one three-veined pill aligning with the Purple Subtlety, three two-veined pills subtly matching Seven Kills, Army Breaker, and Greedy Wolf, along with seven single-veined pills, while the remainder were standard pills.
This single batch was worth over three million ounces of immortal silver, exceeding the initial investment by more than sixty times, rivaling True Monarch Danming's achievements in his prime.
Only now did Xu Henshui realize Wei Yuan had not been joking. With twenty-eight full pills, the cauldron truly could not contain them all.
In truth, before the explosion, Wei Yuan's alchemy chamber had been lively beyond measure.
Wei Yuan's true body and his three dharma idols had each guarded one direction, while seven Dao Foundation warriors fanned the flames below and six more blew cold winds from above. Celestial spiritual qi of three varieties had been injected seven times, and karmic luck was infused at every stage of pill condensation—three infusions in total, amounting to over a thousand strands of azure qi. Only then had the cauldron exploded.
At this moment, a flurry of chaotic commotion broke out within the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. Driven by an inexplicable, lingering malice toward their Creation Immortal Venerable, the armchair experts severely criticized this alchemy session as riddled with blunders, tallying over thirty errors of various sizes. Had no mistakes been made and a larger cauldron used, they claimed he could have reaped the thirty-six pills of the Heavenly Spirits.
Other self-proclaimed prodigies asserted that the pill formula itself was flawed, suggesting there was room for optimization.
Wei Yuan had initially taken this very seriously. But upon looking into their backgrounds, he discovered they had zero refining experience, yet brazenly claimed the formula was defective. Thus, Wei Yuan marked these few armchair geniuses for strict monitoring.
Though this batch had been full of mishaps, the harvest was enormous, providing precisely what Wei Yuan urgently needed.
That night, Bao Yun looked at the three-veined mystic pill on the table, her expression a mix of worry and joy.
At midnight, Feng Tingyu returned from her mountain-cleaving exercises. The moment she entered her room, she spotted the two-veined Morning Splendor Pill resting on the table.
Her nose twitched. Before she could even think, the pill was already down her throat. A look of confusion appeared on her youthful face: *Wait, what did that medicine taste like?*
The next instant, the winds and clouds over Qingming surged violently. Tribulation clouds formed in a flash, and pure heavenly lightning cascaded from above, leveling Feng Tingyu's residence in one fell swoop.
Amidst the lightning and fire, a young woman emerged reborn, her skin as fair as snow.
Yet because the heavenly tribulation was so fierce and she had been utterly unprepared, her robes had long since turned to ash. Fortunately, the bodies of disciples from the Hall of the Bright King rivaled dharma treasures, making robes little more than decoration. As she tempered her physique in the lightning fire, enjoying the sensation, she still wondered: *Why did a heavenly tribulation arrive so suddenly?*
At this time, Wei Yuan had already begun refining his second cauldron of Great Sun Morning Splendor Pills. Lost in deep concentration, he remained entirely unaware of the event. Had he known, he would have hurried over to stand guard over her at close range.
As for Xu Henshui, he had left Qingming before nightfall, claiming he needed to retrieve something from his home mountain. From this, Wei Yuan knew his martial uncle's Dao heart had run into trouble once again and still required tempering.
Chapter 602