章 10: Alchemy
It took Lucius a week to read and memorize all 9 books since he still had to work out, farm, fight, study and cultivate. Although a cultivator at Lucius's stage only needed 3 hours of sleep at most since they were filled with energy but since Lucius was a growing child that was also training his body he needed at least 8 hours of sleep a day. He would begin the day at 7 AM where he got up and had a shower then went to the School of Life and made himself breakfast which took him up to 8 AM. From 8 to 11 he trained either his body or his fighting skills in the arena, then went back to the farm and farmed until 1 PM where he made food and ate. From 1:30 till 3 he studied in the School of Generality (the time was shortened since there is less for him to learn now as he mostly learnt languages but he wouldn't be needing to use them for a long while so it was fine.) and then trained qi for 3 hours up to 6 PM. He then read the books from 6 till he went to sleep. On days he trained his fighting skills and got beaten silly by Orion he would usually sleep earlier than other days.
Once Lucius arrived at the alchemy room after finishing his 3 hours of qi cultivation, his body was full of energy and brimming with power but his mind was tired and his will exhausted. He walked in and sat by the marble table as his mother then appeared on the opposite seat, she took the book of recipes and turned to the first page and lay the book in front of Lucius. She had already told him to bring the herbs needed to make this recipe beforehand so Lucius looked to the basket he had placed on the far end of the table. She then began to explain to him how to actually refine pills.
"Now that you have read these 9 books and expanded your knowledge base greatly, we shall begin mind cultivation. Those that cultivate the mind have a mind core as well as a qi core, this mind core is located in your head, in the middle of your glabella. You should look through the Cosmological Art and condense your mind core first before we begin."
Lucius entered the mind palace and instantly was filled with information regarding the cultivation method of the mind. He could see that there were 3 separate parts that merged together to create a miraculous whole, refining the mind as pill, as an artefact and as a formation. The arts of creation were interconnected with the base commonality of symbols, he would have to condense his mind into a pill, temper it like in blacksmithing and then establish formations to enhance the mind and for ease of access. Usual mind cultivation methods would only focus on achieving one of these paths but his had encompassed all three in an ingenious way as it merged them together and made it even more powerful. However, this also meant it was exponentially more difficult as he went along it and compared to other methods he would take more time and effort.
Lucius began to follow the method and sensed his soul within his body, gathering the weak dispersed strands of his mind and circulating them slowly. Just like with the qi condensing he started to gather them and merge them then gain momentum and finally condense it into a peanut sized ball within his glabella. He now understood why he only began training his mind after reaching the qi condensation stage as he was able to accomplish condensing his mind core a lot faster with prior knowledge of how to do it. Acacia smiled and began to explain the basics of refining as she touched the cauldron behind her and it shrank to the size of a metre in diameter.
"Good. Now then, we shall begin attempting refining this tier 1 qi gathering pill. The qi gathering pill is the most important pill within the first tier as it is the basis of the pre first boundary cultivation, gathering qi. All pills have different quality grades, from low to peak/top grade, within a year you should be able to refine a peak grade qi gathering pill. Furthermore to refine pills the main method used is burning impurities away with qi fire and having the medicinal essence merged and condensed into pills. You can also have pastes or elixirs instead where you leave the end product in paste for healing purposes as it is sometimes better to heal directly the wound instead of creating a pill that spreads the healing effect throughout the body. An elixir is quite rare but these usually are created because of the rare herbs involved that couldn't be left in a paste but only refined as a liquid or in some very rare cases it is actually more effective to absorb it as an elixir than as a pill. In terms of qi fire, there are also various tiers and ranks or types of flame. You can have a standard tier 0 cooking fire that you can start with a flint and stone or you can have a tier 10 nirvana rebirth flame that the phoenixes develop and grow with them over time. You will be learning a tier 1 Basic Alchemy flame."
Lucius followed his mothers instructions and circulated his qi to his palms and then outside them. He used his newfound soul power ,that comes from his mind core, to shape the qi into a three dimensional diagram of a yellow fire surrounded by 4 rings in an orderly way. After focusing for 10 minutes he was able to produce a weak flame and after filling it with qi it would become bigger and stronger. Using his cooking knowledge and his control over the tier 0 cooking flame he was able to quickly adjust and control the temperature and size of the flame to his will. He then gathered the herbs from the basket and lay them down in the order he would be placing them in, 'Fiery Ginger', 'Icy Garlic', 'Spirit Parsley', 'Spirit Mint' and most importantly 'Spirit Ginseng'. The fire and ice would merge and neutralise to create great amounts of energy and heat in the process and then the mint and parsley would add flavour and help with digestion, while the Spirit Ginseng was another source of qi and energy that was much gentler than the neutralisation energy so it merged together and became a lot mellower. If you have an explosion of violent energy within your body it would be highly detrimental and could even kill you if its powerful enough so it is important to make sure the pills have a mellow nature instead of a violent one.
He warmed up the cauldron with his alchemy flame and then added in the fiery ginger, that he had cleaned and diced. After 2 minutes of it sizzling and cooking he added in the minced icy garlic and stirred it around with his qi, mixing it up and making sure all the ginger and garlic was mixed together. The two spirit herbs were then added 2 and a half minutes after the garlic and immediately an immense fragrance wafted out of the cauldron as Lucius quickly put the lid on after throwing in the whole ginseng. He focused his mind on the inside of the cauldron, listening for the bubbling and steaming off the concoction. After 5 minutes of concentration where he stirred it 3 times in between he added in 20 ml of spirit water and then increased the heat and made it stew thoroughly. After another 5 minutes the inside of the cauldron was filled with a fragrant light greenish-yellow paste that smelt of minty medicine. Lucius used his qi to split the paste into 6 cherry tomato sized pills. They were the same colour as the paste and gave of a strong medicinal smell.
"Well done on refining your very first pills, Low grade Qi Gathering pills. The Grades of pills can be inferred from their colour shading, fragrance and of course more simply how much effect the pill has on someone. A peak grade Qi Gathering pill would be completely green and should smell much stronger than this, also I can still smell a hint of ginger and garlic in your pills which means you hadn't reacted the fire and ice natures completely. For your first attempt you have done really well actually."
Lucius was happy to see that he had created a pill on his first try as he didn't want to waste the herbs he had farmed all this time. In the School of Life there was a giant store room where he had stockpiled a variety of different herbs over the 2 years he spent growing them but he hadn't grown a lot of each one. He wouldn't be consuming these pills though as the formation in the Cultivation room was much better than a low grade pill and even if it were a peak grade pill it would still be worse. The only pills Lucius would need to take would be Body Refining Treasures or Mind Enhancing pills. He wouldn't be using them but they would be useful in the future when he left the Garden as he could sell them and give them to people for favours. It may not be useful to him as he had the Garden but others would heavily appreciate a pill that could advance your cultivation as it essentially saved them months of time.
Lucius went to bed with a smile on his face, tomorrow he would be starting blacksmithing. He was looking forward to improving the Spiders Embrace Prototype.
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