Alchemies

Chapter 48: The Lesson of Alchemy

Alex woke up around 6 a.m. He was in a room in his house. After returning from his new job of gathering ingredients in the alchemy garden, he decided to practice more with his spiritual senses and see what else he could do.

He made a few different discoveries.

First of all, his spiritual awareness could extend beyond a normal radius of 20 meters. However, it caused his spiritual sea to dry up massively, and the maximum limit he could develop was 30 meters.

The next thing he discovered was that he could use his spiritual senses to move objects similar to his Qi manipulation as well. However, his spiritual senses were not strong enough to take even the smallest of stones, and could only swing blades of grass on the ground for now.

The last thing he realized was that removing items from his storage was much faster than using inventory. His overwhelming memory now allowed him to recall where everything in his storage bag was located, so his inventory was basically useless now.

He had nearly a million Qi now, but because his teacher told him that breaking through too much at once was dangerous for one's cultivation, he decided not to breakthrough now, instead, and wait until his current cultivation stabilizes. Which he thinks is done or almost done.

He's logged out for breakfast. After breakfast, he logged back in once more. Today is Friday, one of the three days when he has no class.

He waited in the yard for a while, unsure whether to go find his teacher for morning lessons or wait for him at his house. Thankfully, Ma Rong came alone like yesterday.

“Oh, you're up today. Come to the alchemy room.” He heard a voice from far away. He felt something wetting his body, and quickly pulled it back.

She's surprised. Then he walked into the alchemy room and said, "Congratulations, Master, for having opened up spiritual awareness."

"It's all thanks to you. Now sit down, we missed our lesson yesterday, so we can't waste any more time. Take out your quality." Alex immediately took out his quality and put it on the fire.

“Tell me, what is the most important thing in the pill-making process?” Ma Rong asked.

Alex thought for a moment, and replied, “Fire temperature, how to burn materials, and time everything.” He answered with confidence. He had made the pill before and knew the answer.

"Wrong!" she said. Alex surprised. “Isn't that the most important thing to remember and take care of when making pills, sir?” She asked.

Alex's full attention was on his words now. He continued, "Tell me, why did you say temperature was important?"

Alex replied, "Because the recipe tells you that you need to burn certain ingredients at a certain temperature. In addition, you must constantly change the temperature throughout the pill-making process as prescribed. So, light a fire at an accurate temperature is necessary."

Ma Rong smiled and said, "That's right. Having an accurate temperature is important. But tell me, what burns the ingredients? Fire or its quality?"

“Uhh... the quality?”

So, it doesn't matter if the temperature of the fire is accurate or not, if the quality temperature is not accurate at all. However, we can prevent this from happening. We can make the heat transition from fire to cauldron very quickly if we use the right kind of cauldron."

“So, it doesn't matter how good your fire manipulation is if your own quality is garbage. This will only result in a bad pill.”

Ma Rong then proceeded to the next topic. "The next list is the ingredients. It's pretty simple. If you have good ingredients, you will get a good pill. If you have bad ingredients, you will get a bad pill. However, although the concept itself may be simple, applying it is not too much."

“There are 3 things in a material that determine the good or not. The first is age. The older a material is, the more energy it contains, so it is generally better. The second is the time it is obtained. , until when it is made into a pill. The third is the elemental affinity of the material."

“Usia is quite easy to determine based on how much energy it has. Once an alchemist gets used to the ingredients, they can usually tell his age just by feeling the energy within.”

"The second point about time can be fixed by using some wooden or jade boxes that do not leak the aura of the material. This way you can save energy in the box, and make it more useful during your alchemy process."

“While for the third part, the elements are a much broader topic that I cannot teach you fully, because I myself do not know much about it. However, I still know quite a lot, and knowing about this topic is very important if you want to become an earth or heaven level alchemist."

“The third point about the element of an ingredient is also the third most important thing to remember when making a pill, which is the synergy of the element. This basically means that each element has a certain elemental energy in it, and is based on the different elements within it. from the ingredients you can make an incredible pill or end up with your quality exploding."