Not long after Wei Yuan returned to Qingming, an immortal boat arrived from the Palace of Grand Beginning's main mountain.
The vessel was laden with tens of thousands of jin of medicinal ingredients and seedlings for dozens of varieties of herbs. While none were of precious stock, these supplementary ingredients were essential to many fundamental Body Casting pills. Combined with several hundred jin of primary ingredients, it was just enough to refine thirty thousand Origin-Nourishing Pills.
Daoist Zhidan had naturally seen through Wei Yuan's intentions, so he had generously included saplings and seeds for every variety in massive quantities.
The moment the shipment arrived, Wei Yuan was overjoyed. He immediately summoned Old Daoist Chuhe and Xu Henshui to take delivery of the ingredients while discussing Qingming's grand future in pill refining.
Acquiring ingredients was straightforward enough; after all, the Hall of Jianmu's primary enterprise was cultivating medicinal herbs.
Most of the Palace of Grand Beginning's medicine gardens were held by the Hall of Jianmu. Cultivators of the Palace of Grand Beginning could only consume pills from the Monastery of Creation, and if the Monastery of Creation wanted to sell pills, it had no choice but to purchase ingredients from the Hall of Jianmu.
Through a thousand years of back-and-forth tug-of-war, a balance had formed in the price gap between pills and ingredients: the Monastery of Creation gnawed on the big bone, while the Hall of Jianmu took a slightly smaller one.
These ordinary ingredients for Body Casting naturally did not require demanding environments; practically any spiritual field could sustain them. Old Daoist Chuhe took inventory and determined that Qingming could currently clear another five thousand mu of spiritual fields.
Under Qingming's power of Jianmu Life-Mystic, even ordinary spiritual fields enjoyed eight times the growth rate of the outside world, allowing these herbs to mature in just a single year.
By now, the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World had already completed the optimization of the recipe for the Origin-Nourishing Pill, along with a redesign of the refining process and the layout of the pill workshops.
According to preliminary estimates, once the five thousand mu of fields were fully planted, the annual harvest would be enough to refine six hundred thousand Qingming-edition Origin-Nourishing Pills—sufficient to supply fifty thousand Body Casting cultivators in the Sinew and Muscle Realm for an entire year.
Meanwhile, the ingredients just delivered by the Palace of Grand Beginning were enough to refine three hundred thousand Qingming-edition Origin-Nourishing Pills.
The medicinal potency of the Qingming version was only one-tenth that of the original, to the point that even Wei Yuan felt embarrassed calling it an Origin-Nourishing Pill. Xu Henshui suggested naming it the Lesser Origin-Nourishing Pill, but Wei Yuan's conscience still pricked him. Ultimately, borrowing the naming convention of Dao Foundation flying swords, he dubbed it the Origin-Nourishing Lesser Pill.
This was purely an internal designation within Qingming; to the outside world, they would still be marketed collectively as Origin-Nourishing Pills.
Wei Yuan also prepared to establish a medicine firm dedicated solely to selling Qingming's pills in the future.
Regarding the firm's name, the group deliberated for quite a while before Old Daoist Chuhe finally spoke up: "In my view, why not call it One-Stripe Medicine Firm?"
"What is the meaning behind that? Could it be we'll only sell one-stripe spirit pills in the future?" Xu Henshui asked in surprise. Even the Monastery of Creation would not dare make such a bold claim.
"Of course not! We will sell every kind of pill. Heh heh, you wouldn't know, but out there, people are accustomed to linking the name of the medicine firm directly to the pill—like Benevolence Firm Angong Bolus or something. That way, whenever people mention our pills, they will be calling them 'One-Stripe Origin-Nourishing Pills'!"
Xu Henshui was shocked. "Isn't—isn't that swindling people?"
"How is that swindling? We truly are called One-Stripe Medicine Firm! A name is nothing more than a gimmick; reel everyone in first before worrying about the rest," Old Daoist Chuhe explained with a chuckle.
Wei Yuan also thought it made sense. Once people showed up, they wouldn't be leaving anytime soon. He immediately declared, "A fine name! That settles it."
Wei Yuan acted with swift decisiveness, and the moment the gathering dispersed, work got underway. One-Stripe Medicine Firm's first pill workshop was built not far from Xu Henshui's pill abbey. The spiritual energy here was rich, and Xu Henshui could drop by at any time to offer guidance.
The workshop was planned on an enormous scale, spanning dozens of mu. Once the boundaries were marked out, Yu Zhizhuo arrived with over a thousand Dao Foundation cultivators. Working in a fever of activity, they erected four massive refining halls, each fifty zhang long and five zhang high, in a single breath.
Afterward, over a hundred cultivators led several thousand Body Casting porters to haul in countless strange and bizarre pieces of equipment. Yu Zhizhuo personally supervised placing each device into its designated position.
At first, only Xu Henshui watched. Soon, however, the pill masters from his abbey discovered that they had never even heard of the refining apparatus being brought in, let alone seen it. What was more, each device was more complex than the last, entirely beyond comprehension. When had pill refining ever required such contraptions?
Curiosity was piqued among the pill masters, and every day after finishing their routine alchemy duties, they would gather at the construction site to watch the spectacle.
Xu Henshui merely watched in silence. He often stood there for hours on end, the smile on his face gradually fading.
With a thousand Dao Foundation cultivators laboring together, construction naturally progressed with astonishing speed. In a mere half a month, a brand-new pill workshop had risen from the ground.
Once the framework was complete and he looked upon the four colossal, elongated refining halls and the square medicinal-processing hall before them, Xu Henshui could not help feeling that his own pill abbey looked like a humble farmhouse courtyard.
The exterior of these refining halls was rigid, utterly devoid of spiritual charm or vitality, yet their virtue lay in being enormous and expansive, far outstripping Xu Henshui's cluster of two-story pavilions.
Another ten-odd days passed, and all the equipment was installed. After three more days of testing, everything was running without a hitch. Wei Yuan then arrived to ignite the furnaces and refine the first batch.
For such a momentous occasion, protocol dictated that Wei Yuan say a few words before lighting the fires. Thus, thousands of cultivators sat below in dense, dark rows, listening quietly to their Domain Lord.
Facing so many high-level listeners, Wei Yuan felt thoroughly invigorated. Casting aside the draft prepared by the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, he spoke extemporaneously, starting from the ordinary farmhouse courtyard where he had been born, recounting how he had endured hunger and cold as a child, suffered under bullies, and only with great difficulty seized a sliver of opportunity to enter the Palace of Grand Beginning.
And now, in Qingming, as long as one worked diligently, regardless of origin or status, everyone had the opportunity to rise above the rest!
Wei Yuan spoke with such emotion that he nearly blurted out, "Daring to make sun and moon bring forth a new heaven," but managed to rein himself in at the brink.
When he finished, someone in the crowd shouted: "Mealtime!"
With a whoosh, thousands of cultivators vanished on the spot.
Wei Yuan was left somewhat bewildered on the platform; he still had "two final words" left to say.
Yu Zhizhuo apologized sheepishly, "Nephew-disciple, my apologies! Construction ran ahead of schedule and the quality was excellent, so I gave everyone an extra meal. Today's spread is rather good."
Wei Yuan beamed and said, "No matter. Go attend to your business, Martial Uncle."
Inside the medicinal-processing hall, work had already begun early and was bustling in full swing. Several hundred Body Casting cultivators were scattered across over a hundred workstations, processing ingredients. Beside each station stood a placard clearly stating which herb was to be processed there and the exact steps required.
In the vast majority of workstations, there were no more than three steps; most involved only a single operation—shredding, slicing, soaking in liquor, or baking dry. The Body Casting cultivators worked mechanically like puppets. They were not required to do anything else here, much less think.
Meanwhile, Xu Henshui stood inside one of the refining halls, watching in silence.
Nothing about the hall resembled an alchemical chamber, and the furnace was even stranger. It was no longer an elegant, archaic circle or square, but a single long trough divided into numerous compartments, looking just like... a feeding trough for cattle and horses.
Xu Henshui did not know why such a thought had crossed his mind.
Just then, numerous Dao Foundation cultivators entered the workshop. Every one of them was expressionless, paying Xu Henshui no heed. Xu Henshui knew these were Wei Yuan's Dao Foundation warriors, so he kept silent and watched quietly.
A moment later, a bell chimed, and the refining process began.
Several cultivators entered carrying pre-processed ingredients, which had already been measured out and packed into small boxes. Each box held just enough to fill a single compartment of the furnace.
In the blink of an eye, dozens of compartments were filled. The dozens of Dao Foundation warriors flanking the furnace ignited the flames, using Dao fire to melt and refine the herbs, each cultivator responsible for one compartment. Another ten Dao Foundation cultivators, each possessing Dao power of one of the Five Elements, paced back and forth, adjusting the fire in whichever compartment became unbalanced.
Five Dao Foundation warriors patrolled constantly, inspecting the furnace temperature and alchemical fire across the entire apparatus every half an incense stick's time, correcting any imbalance on the spot.
Wei Yuan hurried in, swept his gaze over the hall, and checked the state of the liquid concoction with his divine sense. Highly satisfied, he greeted Xu Henshui and left once more.
Refining Origin-Nourishing Pills was never complicated; half a day usually sufficed. Wei Yuan's method took somewhat longer, but even then it required only a single day.
Xu Henshui stood watching quietly for the entire day.
Finally, the heat of the batch reached perfection. Just as Xu Henshui was about to speak up and remind them to harvest the pills, ten cultivators hurried in. The furnace opened, and countless pills floated into the air to be gathered by the cultivators—the entire process remarkably smooth.
Xu Henshui reached out and drew several Origin-Nourishing Lesser Pills to his hand, examining them closely. The three pills were plump and round, their alchemical quality uniform and medicinal nature mild. Most remarkable of all was that the three were virtually identical; even Xu Henshui struggled to tell them apart.
Each compartment yielded dozens of pills, producing over eight hundred Origin-Nourishing Lesser Pills from this single hall in one batch. The other three halls were likely similar; Xu Henshui even wondered whether the pill count from every hall might be exactly identical.
Calculated this way, this single workshop alone produced over three thousand Origin-Nourishing Lesser Pills a day—a hundred thousand a month, enough to supply a hundred thousand people for their cultivation. The ingredients sent by the Palace of Grand Beginning this time were not even enough to last this workshop four months.
Yet Xu Henshui knew that under normal circumstances, who could possibly need so many Origin-Nourishing Pills? These ingredients had essentially swept clean the Palace of Grand Beginning's medicine storehouse.
By now, the cultivators had begun cleaning the furnace, carting away dross and loading in herbs for the next batch. Their movements were mechanical yet incomparably practiced; they required no rest, demanded no immortal silver in compensation, and never made mistakes.
Looking upon the hall operating in flawless order, Xu Henshui suddenly had a sensation: this hall was rushing straight toward him, about to crush him into dust.
And so he knew that times had truly changed.
Chapter 659