Sighing, Xue Wei understood that Bai Tianyi had some reason behind making him learn alchemy, yet he did not explain why. As to the reason why, Xue Wei did not ask.
Shaking his head, he sat down on the floor and took the cauldron into his hands. At first glance, he found that it was not very large; it was only around twenty centimeters in diameter, and it was round and black with a flood dragon engraved on it.
It was a very beautiful cauldron, but knowing Bai Tianyi, it was likely a very ordinary cauldron. Bai Tianyi did not have a lot of a.s.sets, even with the gold and essence stones he had been given by Xue Wei, he was not considered rich. One also had to consider Xue Wei"s current achievements in alchemy. Giving him a unique, special cauldron would be too much of a waste.
Without wasting time, he started sorting the herbs into what kinds they were and placed them in piles around himself. There were so many herbs that he had no clue how Bai Tianyi had managed to produce so many.
Next up were the formulas. He picked them up one by one, placed them on his forehead, and felt how the knowledge poured into his mind.
The formulas were all for Warriors. There were pills for Earth Warriors, Sky Warriors, and Heavenly Warriors. There was nothing for Knights, but Xue Wei was not too surprised. He was a complete novice so trying to bite more than he could chew would be a bad idea.
He quickly picked the simplest of the formulas, a Rising Qi Pill, and studied it thoroughly. It was a pill for an Earth Warrior and it could increase one"s Qi a full layer if the pill was of high grade.
Pills were ranked similarly to cultivation levels, and then further into low, middle and high-ranking pills.
Low-ranked pills had many impurities and would prove problematic to consume. One would only consume these pills if one had no other option, such as in a life and death situation where it could save their life, because it could leave damage on one"s cultivation base that was not easy to manage.
Middle-ranked pills were not as bad, but they still had quite a bit of impurities. If one consumed too many of these pills, it could cause problems down the road, but these impurities could be removed by relying on other pills.
Finally, you had the high-ranked pills. These pills had little to no impurity within them and you could eat them like candy. There would never be any threat to one"s cultivation base.
Xue Wei had never before made a pill, so he would be content if he managed to concoct a low-ranked pill. Having decided on the Rising Qi Pill, he picked the herbs he needed and closed his eyes.
Taking a deep breath, he calmed himself down. When he opened his eyes, he tossed the herbs into the cauldron.
He then summoned the Golden Dragon. It blew a ball of spiritual energy into the cauldron, which lit up with a flame that started to refine the herbs, transforming them into liquid.
Just as he was about to extract the impurities from the herbs, he felt that something was wrong. His control of the spiritual energy was not precise enough, and soon a loud boom resounded in the room. The entire hotel started shaking.
"Okay, not like this then," Xue Wei said to himself as he touched the burn marks that the liquid had left on his face from the explosion. Clearly the process of concocting pills was not as simple as he had thought. Fortunately, the cauldron itself was safe.
"Let us try one herb at a time," Xue Wei decided, completely ignoring the fright his explosion might have caused to others outside.
Putting one herb into the cauldron at a time made it easier to control. This time, he managed to refine it three times, removing impurities three times.
Then after finis.h.i.+ng one herb, he wondered what he was supposed to do. It was now liquid that floated within his cauldron. He could not take it out, but adding another herb to the cauldron meant that the difficulty would increase.
The Rising Qi Pill required seven herbs. But Xue Wei was not one to give up. "Worst that can happen is that it explodes again," he consoled himself before he began refining the second herb and distilling it a few times to remove the impurities.
It went surprisingly easy, but he was at a loss for what to do again when he was finished. Should he try merge the two liquids or should he keep them away from one another? Did it matter? The formula had not described it, all it had said was that the user should refine the herbs and add them together.
"Well, I am not going to be the one eating the pills, so why not try a few different ways and see if the results are different," Xue Wei thought casually. He could always get someone to try out the different pills to see whether or not it mattered in which way he made the pill.
With this in mind, he merged the two liquids slowly. It was not as difficult as he had expected, and he could begin on the third herb.
Everything went smoothly up until the merge of the fifth portion of liquid. Then it once more exploded, making yet another tremor run through the entire hotel.
Fortunately, no one could track the source of the explosion back to him. Many thought it was an earthquake, or someone fighting. Xue Wei was completely safe from being blamed; the only ones aware of it were himself and Bai Tianyi.
Xue Wei was not good at giving up. Although his first two attempts had ended in failure, he was not willing to give up just like this. In the end, he would not give up before he had mastered the trade, and thus he continued to merge the herbs.
The third attempt exploded at the sixth merge of liquids. Fourth attempt was the same. Fifth attempt at the seventh merge of the liquid.
At last, on the sixth attempt he had managed to merge all the liquid together. Now he needed to turn this liquid into a pill, and to do so he needed to catalyze it with spiritual energy.
Too much spiritual energy and it would explode, too little and it would turn to paste and lose much of its power.
The first batch exploded. The second was a goopy liquid that could not even be considered a paste. Another three explosions later and Xue Wei finally laughed like a madman with a small middle-ranked Earth Warrior’s Raising Qi Pill in his hand.
"Not bad, not bad," he laughed. "It’s a middle-ranked pill! Must be because I distilled it quite a few times. Could also have something to do with my merging technique. Oh well, who cares. Got to find someone who can test it."
Having said this, Xue Wei left the hotel room that looked like the aftermath of a hurricane that had ravaged the place after the many explosions.
Walking around town, Xue Wei soon found a youngster who was training to become an Earth Warrior. He was clearly poor, but his talent was rather amazing to have reached the Earth Warrior level as early as he had.
"Hey, you there," Xue Wei pointed at him and smiled. The boy was stunned, but he stopped in his tracks and looked at Xue Wei curiously. "Are you interested in a Raising Qi Pill? I just refined it – it is a middle-ranked pill, but it is also one of my first pills. If you take it in front of me and let me see the results, I will give you a low ranked essence stone!"
The Earth Warrior was stunned by the proposed deal. Not only was he going to get a middle-ranked Raising Qi Pill, he would also get a low ranked essence stone for eating it? That could be used to support his family for a very long time.
"I would gladly be your pill trial!" he said honestly. Xue Wei grinned as he took out the pill.
It was not a pretty-looking pill. It just barely pa.s.sed as a middle-ranked pill, but even so it had quite a few impurities. It was after all his first pill.
"Don"t worry," Xue Wei said when he saw the young man quickly changing his opinion. "I will guard you while you take it. I am an Ordinary Knight, so I should be able to protect you," he promised. The young man no longer stood on ceremony after that.
Quite a few people had noticed that something was going on and were watching curiously, but no one really understood what was happening.
Seeing that the young man sat down at the side of the road and popped a pill into his mouth, many knew that he had accepted a pill test. Many were curious as to what would happen when he consumed the pill. Sometimes miserable things would happen to the pill tester.
Xue Wei was incredibly excited. This was the first pill he had ever created, so he was eager to know what it was like. He saw that the heaven-and-earth essence became denser around the boy before it suddenly shunted into his body at a speed so fast that it could not possibly have been caused by a pill designed for Earth Warriors.
"Did I make a mistake?" Xue Wei muttered to himself contemplatively. The young man was grimacing. The heaven-and-earth essence that was pouring into his body was being refined into Qi as fast as his body could manage, but this was much more energy than anything he had ever had to manage before.
Xue Wei did not really care about the young man’s fate. He had willingly decided to become a pill tester so his fate was up to luck. No one could blame Xue Wei if he died.
Three hours pa.s.sed before the flow of heaven-and-earth essence stopped pouring into the body of the young warrior. His face was red, and blood had trickled out of the corner of his lips for some time, but he was not dead. When Xue Wei observed him, he saw that his strength had risen from the second layer to the fourth. This was an improvement caused by Xue Wei’s Raising Qi Pill, clearly. It was not bad at all.
"I guess merging them like this works," he said to himself after consideration. Seeing that he had gotten such an outstanding result meant that there was no problem in merging the herbs one at a time instead of trying to keep them separate and then merging them all at once.
As to why the result was much more potent than what he was expecting, he had no idea.
"Hey kid, here"s your payment," Xue Wei said casually and gave him a low ranked essence stone before he turned around and left, not caring about the rest. He had already gotten the result he wanted from the test.
After returning to his room, he once more threw himself at concocting medicinal pills. He found that it was incredibly fun and rather challenging. In fact, although inscriptions were difficult, alchemy was much more fun.
Unfortunately, there were quite a few explosions as a result of his attempt at concocting pills. At times it would be every second hour, at other times it would take up to five to six hours before there was an explosion.
The staff of the hotel rushed around everywhere trying to figure out who was the cause of the ruckus, but no one dared believe that it would be Xue Wei, and thus the cause was never found.
After managing to create Earth Warrior pills with no issues – even high-ranked Earth Warrior pills – Xue Wei smiled. He was rather satisfied with his achievements before he threw himself at the next challenge. He would not be satisfied until he could make Rainbow Pills.