Chapitre 171: A New Dilemma
📆 A month later
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Jayde and Ash rushed to their Pill and Potion Refinement class, today Sor Dinia Nelius was going to start teaching Ash and Jayde how to refine pills. For the past four months Sor Nelius had only taught the two how to mix potions, but finally last week both Ash and Jayde had created their first intermediate healing potion, and Sor Nelius had deemed them ready to start pill refining.
Jayde and Ash were sitting at their desk quietly chatting when Sor Nelius breezed into the classroom.
"Ah my two favorite disciples," Sor Nelius greeted them jovially.
Sor Nelius had changed over the past four months. While he still had no time for any of the other students in his class, he doted on Jayde and Ash. Initially, the other teachers and professors at Damonia had been surprised but happy when Sor Nelius started to interact with them. But it didn't take long before they began to miss the rude old man.
Who would have thought that the short old man would become such a dotting master, he would spend hours bragging about his new disciples. He had even gone to the extent of having many portraits made of Jayde and Ash which he whipped out each time to show off to his fellow colleagues. Now when the teachers and professors saw Sor Nelius coming, they quickly made an excuse to hurry off, if Sor Nelius caught them they knew they would have to spend hours listening to every single deed that Jayde or Ash performed.
Jayde and Ash quickly stood and greeted Sor Nelius. The other three students sat sullenly ignoring Sor Nelius. Rarely did Sor Nelius interact with them. Ever since the disaster when one of the boys had caused a small explosion while mixing a potion and slightly injuring Ash, Sor Nelius had refused to allow them anywhere near the lab at the back of the class.
One would have thought from Sor Nelius reaction that the small burns Ash had suffered were a colossal calamity. He had even forced Ash to take an advanced healing pill, causing the head of the medicine department to nearly faint from the sheer waste of such a valuable pill. To this day Sor Nelius would glare hatefully at the young student.
Sor Nelius quickly led Ash and Jayde to the lab in the back of the class. While pills and potions used the same ingredients the difference between the two was vast. Pills were always more potent than potions, but the main difference was that potions always contained impurities which would slowly build up in a mage's body, and these impurities would have an adverse effect on a mage's cultivation later on.
Due to the purifying method used creating pills, these impurities were removed, which made pills more potent and a lot more efficient than potions with no side effects.
Sor Nelius patiently lectured Ash and Jayde, he explained that creating pills took longer than potions, as each ingredient has to be refined separately. Sor Nelius directed Jayde and Ash to take a mortar and pestle each. Then giving them each a handful of Dragon Grass, he made them grind the Dragon Grass extracting all the juice. Once the sap of the Dragon Grass had been extracted, he then demonstrated how to place the small crucible bowl with the liquid from the Dragon Grass into the already lit furnace.
A mage would then use their mental strength to control the fire within the furnace, while at the same time mentally purify the liquid, burning off all impurities until only a pure power substance remained. Since Jayde had earth and fire magic, controlling the fire within the furnace was easy, while her earth magic helped her located and eliminate all impurities with the Dragon Grass liquid.
After all the ingredients for the basic healing pill had been refined, and five small crucible bowls containing their pure powers lay in front of Jayde and Ash. Sor Nelius then demonstrated the most challenging part of pill refinement.
Each of these purified powers had to be fused together within the furnace but in a specific order. Not only did a pill refiner have to 'hold' these powders together mentally, but they also had to ensure that the fire within the furnace stayed at a constant temperature, any fluctuation in heat would cause the pill to fail to form.
Jayde watched as Sor Nelius demonstrated the pill refining, she could see that Sor Nelius face was dotted with small droplets of sweat as he stared intently at the furnace in front of him. Suddenly a tiny bang sounded, causing Ash to jump slightly. Sor Nelius smiled in triumph as he opened the small door to the furnace. Reaching in, he removed a small bowl containing ten pale cream pills with two golden stripes down the side, indicating that he had just created ten advanced healing pills.
Ash stared at the ten pills in the bowl in amazement, those ten advanced healing pills were worth a small fortune. Both Jayde and Ash couldn't wait to get started, but since it had taken over an hour for Sor Nelius to create the pills, he informed them that they could only begin their own refinement the next day. Seeing the disappointed look on their faces, Sor Nelius couldn't help grinning.
Jayde and Ash walked to the front gate of Divinity Square after Sor Nelius made them leave class. It was already growing dark. Jayde shivered slightly, now that it was autumn the temperature was dropping, and with the days becoming shorter the school had arranged small carriages for the students to use so that they didn't have to walk home in the dark.
Jayde removed her new school cloak from her satchel while putting it on, she noticed that Ash was giving her a strange look.
Jayde frowned as she looked up at Ash.
"What wrong?" she asked as she climbed into their carriage. Since their class had run late, the two were the last to leave, so they didn't have to stand in a queue waiting for their transport.
"Nothing, I just thought that you have really grown up in the past four months," Ash said as he sat down opposite Jayde.
"Huh? What do you mean by that?"
"Well you no longer look like a fifteen-year-old, one would think you seventeen or eighteen looking at you now."
Jayde's head jerked back slightly at Ash's comment.
"Ash didn't your parents ever teach you, it's not good to tell a woman she looks older than her age."
"Ha! What woman you still a young girl," Ash said, but realizing that he might have hurt her feelings about looking older, Ash quickly changed the subject to Jayde's up and coming challenges. Ever since Jayde had reached the fiftieth rank with the martial combat division, she had received numerous challenges every week.
For the past fourteen weeks, Jayde had been slowly advancing up the martial combat board. Initially, she had challenged those five level above her, but in the past four weeks, she had only been challenging the person ahead of her. She still had eight months to go to reach number one, and Jayde was still playing it low key to avoid attracting too much attention.
Much to Nova's delight Jayde also put a lot more effort into dragging out her fights, so that she didn't look too strong, although no matter how much Jayde tried to avoid attention she had gained a lot of attention as it was unheard of to have a first-year student ranked within the top fifty.
***
After dinner, Jayde stood in front of her mirror in her bedroom. She hadn't forgotten Ash's comment about how much older she was looking. Gazing at herself critically in the mirror, Jayde had to agree with Ash. She really looked seventeen years old. Jayde had been so busy with her studies, practicing in the Blood Tower as well as her manufacturing of cosmetics that she had forgotten that she still aged normally while she was in her own dimensional space.
So while it had only been four months outside the artifact for her, it had been twenty months, since she just spent her evenings in the artifact, but each evening outside was five days inside her dimensional space.
This is going to be a severe problem, Jayde thought as she teleported to her cottage inside her dimensional space. Once Jayde arrived she decided to find Isha and speak to him about her aging problem.
As Jayde walked over to Isha, the three hatchlings flew over to greet her. Now that Ash had made her aware of the problem, Jayde realized that the three hatchlings had really grown up. Even though it had only been just over five months since Jayde had bought Yinxin and her children to Doha, they had in fact been in her dimensional space for just over four years.
The hatchlings had only just learned how to fly and while still quite ungainly in the air. The three hatchlings couldn't fly for long, but Yinxin made them spend most of their time flying building up the strength of their wings. Once the three hatchlings 'landed' if one could call belly flopping to the ground landing, Jayde bent down to give each of them a hug and a cuddle. The three were too big now for Jayde to pick up.
[Mama Jayde you home,] Shenxin called out mentally.
The three hatchlings were now old enough to mentally talk Jayde, their cute mental voices always made Jayde grin. All three hatchling called Jayde Mama Jayde, even though she had told them to call her Auntie, but they were stubborn and refused to call her anything but Mama Jayde. Jayde had no idea how much of a headache this was going to cause in her in future with one very possessive man if she did she most likely would have spent a lot more effort trying to get them to change their address.
After playing around with the hatchlings, Jayde strolled over to the Pavilion. Finding Isha in the herb garden, Jayde walked over. Isha was busy attending to the hamadryad tree. Much to Isha's delight, the hamadryad tree seed had sprouted and once it's roots had developed Isha had quickly planted the tree in Jayde's herb garden.
Since Jayde had upgraded the time cheat for the herb garden the hamadryad tree was now three years old, Jayde still had to 'fed' it some of her blood every week, initially the hamadryad tree had been quite sickly, but with Jayde's weekly infusion of blood and magic, it had quickly gained strength. Now the tree was nearly as tall as Jayde, and whenever Jayde visited the herb garden the leaves and branches of the tree would dance with joy.
Isha estimated that it would be another ten years or so before the tree would be able to manifest a physical presence, walking over to the tree Jayde gently stroked the bark of the hamadryad tree, while the tree was still too young to communicate with Jayde, she could feel its joy at her greeting.
Although the tree was only three years old, its presence in the herb garden had already increased the quality of the soil and Qi, and the herbs harvested from Jayde's herb garden were of a much higher quality. Due to the top grade of Jayde's herbs, Isha had managed to set up many lucrative trading agreements with various different parties on the inter-dimensional market.
"Hey, Jayde what's up?" Isha asked, seeing the grave look on Jayde face.
"Isha is there any way to stop me from aging within the artifact?" Jayde asked.
Jayde was anxious about this side effect. If she couldn't find a solution, she would have to stop spending her evenings within the artifact. If this carried on then by the end of the school year, she would age another eighteen months, while she could most likely get away with it, for now, very soon people were going to start noticing that Jayde was growing up too quickly.
📝 Notes
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État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
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