Chapter 72 Chapter 72 Alchemy
Yun Miao looked down at Xiao Hei with pity: "Xiao Hei, he's so mean, he despises you."
Xiao Hei raised his head and looked at her calmly: [No, he is disgusted with you.]
Tian Laokou: "I dislike you!"
Xiao Hei and Tian Laokou's responses came almost simultaneously. Yun Miao curled her lips and said, "Fine, forget about the test questions. But... I'm your nephew after all. This is my first time signing up for the sect competition, so you should at least give me some financial support, uncle."
Tian Laokou immediately covered his storage bag and said cautiously, "I don't have any money, and I don't have my life either!"
Xiao Hei looked at Yun Miao silently. The way she covered the storage bag in front of him before was exactly the same as the way Tian Lao was doing now.
"What are you talking about, Uncle Master? Why would I want your life?"
Yun Miao chuckled and said that she just wanted Tian Laokou to give her an alchemy furnace, the alchemy formulas that might be won in the lottery, and the materials needed for these formulas.
Tian Laokou: "On the day of the competition, all participating disciples will use the alchemy furnaces and materials prepared by the sect. There is no need to bring your own."
Yun Miao: "I'm planning to practice before the competition."
Tian Laokou scoffed at this. Yun Miao had no foundation in alchemy, and there were only three days left before the competition. What could he achieve in three days? He'd probably not even be able to make a useless pill, only a pile of waste.
He advised Yun Miao to go to the Deacon Hall to withdraw from the competition before it even started, so as to avoid crying on the stage if she lost.
"No, I want to compete!"
Yun Miao tried to appeal to Tian Lao's emotions and reason with him. Three days was indeed a tight time. Even if he was unwilling to give her the alchemy furnace and materials, he should at least give her some of the required alchemy formulas.
Tian Lao, who was sitting on the chair, turned to the side and didn't look at Yun Miao: "No."
Yun Miao ran after him and said sadly, "Uncle, am I not your most beloved nephew? Why won't you help me with such a small request?"
Tian Laokou immediately turned to the other side and said, "No help."
Yun Miao chased him again, and he spun again, the two of them spinning like tops for several rounds. Old Tian scratched his face without blushing or panting, but Yun Miao couldn't hold on any longer. His head was spinning, and he stumbled and slammed into a nearby pillar.
The pillar shook violently, and her forehead quickly turned red, enough to show how hard she had just hit it.
Yun Miao touched his forehead, then sniffed, holding Xiao Hei in one hand and wiping his tears with the other, he walked out crying: "Wow, I'm going to tell my master that you bullied me! QAQ"
Tian Laokou couldn't sit still any longer. He jumped up from his chair as if his butt was on fire: "You bumped into the pillar by yourself, can you blame me for this? Hey, don't leave! Don't cry, it's not okay for a grown-up to cry like this. Okay, okay, I'm scared of you, I'll give it to you!"
Upon hearing this, Yun Miao lowered his hand, his eyes curved in a smile, and he looked like he had succeeded in his evil plan: "Uncle Master, this is what you said, you can't cheat!"
Seeing that there wasn't a single tear on her face, Tian Laokou immediately guessed that he had fallen into this monkey's trap again. But he had already made a promise, so he could only give the things to Yun Miao with a sour face.
*
Yun Miao returned to her own courtyard and sat down on the ground. In front of her was a tattered alchemy furnace half a person's height. She was studying hard with an equally tattered book in her hand.
The booklet that Tian Laokou gave her recorded hundreds of pill recipes. Unlike the ones collected by Xinyi, they were not particularly precious or rare, but they were the most practical and cost-effective ones recognized by the world of cultivation after so many years of trials and tribulations.
In addition, the recipes in this booklet not only have very detailed steps, but also have handwritten instructions on the side for processing materials, necessary precautions and insights, and the words "Tian Xin" are also written on the first page of the booklet.
This is obviously the notes of Tian Laokou's experience. It goes without saying how precious the notes of an elixir king are.
Yun Miao silently raised his hand and tapped the old name on the first page with his fingertips. His eyes were filled with emotion. "I've been calling him Tian Laokou so often that I almost forgot his real name is Tian Xin. Since my uncle is so kind to me, I'll give him the first batch of pills I refine later."
After she said this, she confidently put the recipe book aside and started her first alchemy, and then... bang!
The lid of the alchemy furnace was blown into the sky, and the chaotic and expanding spiritual energy along with the black waste slag quickly gushed out. The seemingly dilapidated alchemy furnace made a muffled sound and was unharmed. Instead, Yun Miao's garden suffered the disaster.
The soil in the vegetable garden was blown away, the grape trellises collapsed, and the leaves of the jujube tree fell down, and a branch was broken and fell directly towards Xiao Hei under the tree.
Xiao Hei swiftly jumped away and then looked at the dusty Yun Miao: [I don't think Tian Laokou would want such a gift.]
Yun Miao: […Shut up!]
Yun Miao made two "Puh" sounds and spat out the waste residue that flew into her mouth. She ignored the black dust on her face and quickly tidied up the vegetable garden with Xiao Hei to its original appearance.
Then she put away the alchemy furnace and the booklet, left the courtyard directly, and found a secluded and deserted place in the bamboo forest to continue refining the elixir.
Bang bang bang!
The sound of exploding furnaces continued to be heard. The originally quiet and beautiful bamboo forest was now filled with billowing black smoke and flying dust, and the surrounding wild flowers and weeds all drooped their heads.
Yun Miao, covered in dust, sat in the bamboo forest, staring at the dilapidated yet sturdy alchemy furnace in front of him for a long time without saying a word, as if he had entered a state of transcendence from the world.
Xiao Hei squatted beside her: [Are you okay? ]
Yun Miao lowered his head and crossed his arms: [Don't make noise, I'm grilling.]
Xiao Hei: ???
While Xiao Hei was puzzled, Yun Miao fell into deeper thought. Many techniques in the world are based on the same principles, and the same is true for alchemy.
The essence of alchemy is to process the ingredients, retaining the useful parts, and then use spiritual consciousness to control the fire power to smelt these ingredients, remove impurities, and retain the essence. Then, these essences containing different spiritual energies are blended and compressed together, finally forming a round pill.
The reason why her furnace exploded every time was due to the final step of blending. Both blending and compression required the help of external forces, that is, the alchemist's own spiritual power. Fire spiritual power was convenient for smelting, while wood spiritual power or water spiritual power was more gentle and suitable for blending spiritual energy.
Therefore, to become an alchemist, one must either be born with dual spiritual roots of water and wood or water and fire, or use magic tools to assist. Yun Miao has five spiritual roots, so naturally there is no need to consider the issue of spiritual power attributes.
However, her control over her own spiritual power was not precise enough, and every time she blended it, a trace of her own spiritual power would be left behind. The spiritual power of a cultivator was essentially compressed spiritual energy that had undergone a qualitative change due to a quantitative change.
The materials needed for the pill recipe are all calculated, and the spiritual energy contained in the materials is also fixed in a fixed amount. More or less will not work. Her residual spiritual energy affects the balance of the essences in the pill furnace, which is why the furnace explodes frequently.
When Yun Miao realized the problem, she frowned immediately. There were only three days left. If she couldn't solve this technical problem within these three days, wouldn't it be so embarrassing if her furnace exploded during the alchemy competition?
She just wanted to join in the fun, and the ranking and reward didn't matter to her, but she absolutely didn't want to embarrass herself on stage.
Moreover, she still has other competitions to participate in after the alchemy competition. She is not worried about the sword competition, the ring competition, the beast taming competition, and the magic fighting competition, but she always has to leave some practice time for the three competitions of refining equipment, drawing talismans, and formations.
Xiao Hei saw Yun Miao's dilemma and suggested: [Why don't you withdraw from the competition?]
Yun Miao immediately refused: "No, I've already boasted about it. It would be so embarrassing for me to withdraw from the competition now."
Xiao Hei tilted his head: [How about I help you make the elixir? ]
If you master one method, you will master all methods. After all, he is in the Void Refinement Stage and has a very deep control over his own spiritual power. Although he cannot refine high-level elixirs, it is still possible for him to secretly help Yun Miao refine a low-level elixir.
Yun Miao: [No, I don't want to cheat.]
Xiao Hei learns and applies it immediately: [It's not cheating, it's a backdoor.]
Yun Miao: […My master will be watching the match. Are you sure you can hide this from my master?]
Although the Lianxu stage is very powerful, her master is at the peak of the Mahayana stage!
Xiao Hei thought about it and said regretfully that he couldn't: "In that case, why don't you go to your master and ask for a backdoor? If someone at the peak of the Mahayana stage makes a move, no one will be able to tell anything is wrong."
Yun Miao: [My master won't agree. Besides, others won't be able to see it, but Tian Laokou will definitely be able to see it, and he'll laugh me to death then.]
Yun Miao, who was very concerned about his reputation, frowned and thought, and suddenly an idea flashed in his mind. The spiritual power would remain, so why not try another kind of power?
Yun Miao immediately cleaned out the slag in the furnace, put in the materials, and closed the lid. As she raised her palm and slapped out a stream of fire spiritual power, a scorching flame rose from under the furnace, and the inside of the furnace was also a sea of fire. The materials were melted into balls of liquid and gas under the high temperature.
Now is the time to go, power of cause and effect!
In the dark causal space, a white causal line was moved by an invisible hand, and the liquid and gas in the furnace were separated by some invisible force.
The impurities were separated and fell to the bottom of the furnace. The remaining essence began to collide and fuse with each other, and was finally suddenly compressed!
squeak!
This time, the alchemy furnace did not explode. The lid, which had been tightly sealed, was opened by Yun Miao through the air, and a stream of hot white steam gushed out. Then, twelve third-grade rejuvenation pills flew out and landed directly in Yun Miao's palm, forming a small pyramid. A basic alchemy skill was added to her skill list.
Xiao Hei swung his tail and said in surprise: [You succeeded.]
Yun Miao put his hands on his hips and laughed proudly: "I told you I'm a genius!"
She is so smart that she can even think of this kind of cheating method, hehe!
Then she opened two more furnaces and refined twelve third-grade soul-returning pills and twelve third-grade detoxification pills respectively. After confirming that the method of refining pills with the power of cause and effect was feasible, she immediately picked up Xiao Hei and flew to Danfeng again.
"Uncle Master, look what I brought you!"
Tian Laokou was processing medicinal materials in the medicine house and snorted coldly when he heard this.
"No matter what you give me, I won't help you cheat. Just forget about it. If you bother me again, I'll tell your master."
Yun Miao raised his chin proudly and looked at the man with his nose. "What nonsense are you talking about? How could a genius like me, a once-in-a-millennium genius in the alchemy world, need to cheat?"
Tian Laokou sneered, "I don't even dare to call myself a genius rarely seen in a thousand years in the alchemy world? You, a guy who can't even cook pig food properly, are bragging about it. Do you know what you look like now?"
Yun Miao: "Like what?"
Tian Laokou scoffed, "Like the bald fighting cock I saw at Beast Peak before. Its tail feathers were pecked off, yet it still acted so proud and arrogant."
Yun Miao snorted, "I'm a magnanimous person. I won't argue with you. Genius or not, let's talk about it with facts."
After saying that, she placed a small porcelain bottle on the table and slapped it, signaling Tian Laokou to taste the elixir she had just made.
"A true genius wouldn't brag all the time, nor would he be ashamed."
Although Tian Laokou was muttering to himself, he was honest enough to put down the work in his hands, walk over and pick up the small porcelain bottle on the table.
As he moved, a rolling sound could be heard from the porcelain bottle. He raised his eyebrows in slight surprise. "It's quite good that you can make a pill on your first try. Let me see. As long as it's not a useless pill, then your waste of my recipe and furnace will not be in vain... Hmm? Twelve... third grade..."
When Tian Laokou saw the pills in the porcelain bottle, he was startled at first. Then he poured a detoxification pill into his palm and looked at it again and again, sniffing it again and again. Finally, he looked at Yun Miao in disbelief and asked, "Did you do this?"
Yun Miao raised his chin even higher: "Who else could it be but me? I came to find you right after it came out of the oven. Look, the heat is still there!"
"You treat alchemy as cooking, and you're still angry?"
Tian Laokou retorted subconsciously, then looked at Yun Miao suspiciously: "Did you really do this? You're really not teasing me?"
Yun Miao glared: "What do you mean by teasing you on purpose? Am I the kind of person who would waste time doing nothing?"
Tian Laokou recalled Yun Miao's daily behavior and said with certainty, "You are it."
Yun Miao: ...
She immediately snatched the porcelain bottle from Tian Laokou's hand and said, "After I refined the first batch of elixirs, the first thing I did was to honor you. But you actually thought of me so much. Give me back the elixir. I would rather feed it to pigs than give it to you."
"I did not mean that."
Tian Laokou quickly dodged to stop Yun Miao, and said with a smile that it was not that he was unwilling to believe Yun Miao, but that this matter was too unbelievable. You know, Yun Miao was refining a third-grade pill with three dan patterns, and a furnace of twelve full pills!
As we all know, nine is the number of perfection, and twelve is the ultimate perfection. Therefore, alchemy recipes from ancient times to the present have a characteristic: the amount of materials they record can produce twelve pills under ideal conditions. Therefore, a furnace that produces twelve pills is also called a full pill.
However, because each step in alchemy is prone to loss, especially when removing impurities, it is very easy to separate a small amount of essence. Therefore, there are very few people in the world who can refine twelve full pills in one furnace. Even for him, the Alchemy King, it is difficult to achieve zero loss when encountering an unfamiliar pill recipe.
Recalling that he started from refining the simplest elixir, learning all the way, until the third year when he was lucky enough to refine a third-grade elixir. And only one pill was produced from a furnace of materials, and the rest became waste pills. It took him fifty years to refine a furnace of full third-grade elixirs.
For many alchemists, a furnace full of third-grade pills is an achievement they have longed for all their lives but have never been able to achieve.
As a result, Yun Miao, a beginner, just took the alchemy furnace, alchemy formula and materials from him, but came back an hour later and said that she had refined a furnace of third-grade full pills. How could he believe it?
He knew Yun Miao was a genius with extraordinary comprehension, but even a genius had to abide by the basic laws, right?!
So Tian Laokou decided to see it for himself and let Yun Miao refine another furnace under his nose.
"If you can really refine a full set of third-grade pills... no, full pills are too luck-intensive. If you can refine six third-grade detoxification pills, I'll admit that I've failed to recognize a true genius. How about giving you a bottle of top-grade hair growth pill as well?"
Yun Miao glanced at Tian Lao's shiny black hair. Although the effect of the top-grade hair growth pill was visibly good, she was not interested in it. She wanted the recipe for the revival pill more.
Tian Laokou gave a thumbs-up seriously: "You are greedy enough, just like me when I was young. Okay, I'll do as you say!"
If Yun Miao is truly an exceptional genius in alchemy, what would happen if he gave out the recipe for a mere sixth-grade pill, let alone a ninth-grade pill?
But if this naughty boy was teasing him on purpose and making him happy for nothing, then he should just forget about his uncle's ruthlessness.
Yun Miao didn't expect that Mr. Tian would be so generous and actually agreed. His eyes suddenly lit up, and without hesitation, he put his small alchemy furnace on the ground, sat on the ground and started to refine the medicine.
Tian Laokou couldn't help but open his mouth when he saw her bold and sloppy behavior, but he swallowed his words in the end, thinking to himself: The head brother and the nephew Shubai are both well-educated, elegant and clean people.
As far as he knew, Huo Xin, Tan Xiaobai and Ning Yu, who were close to Yun Miao, were also good kids who loved cleanliness. As for that brat Mo Aotian, because he was a four-clawed dragon, he was also very careful about his image and never rolled in the mud.
Even the little black wolf's fur was sleek and shiny, revealing a clean wolf. Why was Yun Miao so untidy? Luckily, her apprentice uniform had a built-in dust-removal function. Otherwise, with her slovenliness, she would have gone from a skin monkey to a mud monkey sooner or later.
After lighting up the primary alchemy skills, all the elixir recipes that Yun Miao has successfully refined will be included in the system's "Elixir Collection". Currently, three types of elixir recipes have been included, namely: Rejuvenation Pill, Soul Restoring Pill and Detoxification Pill.
When Yun Miao was refining the detoxification pill, the recipe for the detoxification pill would automatically appear in front of her eyes. After practicing for a while, she soon processed the materials and put them into the alchemy furnace, then lit the fire to refine them.
Although Tian Laokou felt that her technique was a bit rough, it was still at a normal level. A hint of surprise flashed in his eyes. When his spiritual sense probed into the alchemy furnace to investigate, he saw an invisible force removing impurities and blending the essence.
He was first surprised by Yun Miao's agile movements, but then he became confused, because that power was obviously not spiritual power. As the King of Alchemy, he couldn't figure out what power Yun Miao was using to refine the pill.
Tian Laokou used his spiritual sense to look carefully, just like he did with the water lotus in the past, trying to see clearly the trajectory and source of this power.
As he increased his spiritual awareness, he vaguely discerned a line of shimmering white light. Its color was hazy and pale, like a thin wisp of smoke rising from an incense burner, appearing and disappearing. A mysterious aura emanated from the line, revealing a power that frightened him.
What is this?
Tian Laokou realized that he couldn't see clearly enough, so he increased the output of his spiritual sense again. However, the next second, he felt a sharp pain in his purple palace, forcing him to retract his spiritual sense.
He covered his forehead and took two steps back. Seeing Yun Miao looking at him in surprise, he immediately waved his hand: "I'm fine, you continue."
He was indeed fine, and his purple palace showed no signs of injury. Although the power of the line itself was strong, it was not strong enough to harm a cultivator in the Nascent Soul stage from a distance.
The sudden sharp pain in his purple mansion was not from the outside world, but a phantom pain caused by instinct, just like the stinging pain a person feels when facing a knife.
There was some huge and terrifying power behind that line, and his instinct warned him not to peek or touch it, otherwise he would be severely hurt!
Tian Laokou's heart was in turmoil. He didn't know what kind of power it was, and he didn't know why Yun Miao had such a terrifying power in her body. Did she know it herself?
"Master uncle? Master uncle? Mr. Tian."
Yun Miao's voice woke up Tian Laokou, who was still frowning in thought. When he raised his eyes, he saw Yun Miao staring at him suspiciously.
"What's wrong with you? You suddenly look so bitter and resentful? Are you trying to shirk your responsibility?"
Tian Laokou immediately denied it: "Nonsense, I, Tian Laokou, stick to my word and never default on my debts. You are the only one who likes to default on debts."
Yun Miao raised an eyebrow. "Really? But why do I remember someone getting beaten up just now because they owed the Peak Master hundreds of thousands of spirit stones?"
Tian Laokou said seriously that Qian Datou didn't beat him because he didn't pay back the money he owed him. He beat him because he took all the Ganoderma lucidum and ginseng from his treasure trove. This is a fundamental difference.
Yun Miao: ...Qian Duoduo really loves Tian Laokou.
She stretched out her hand and asked for it confidently: "Anyway, I have made the pill you want. Where is the recipe?"
"What's the rush?"
Tian Laokou walked over to the alchemy furnace and looked at the still-steaming rejuvenation pills inside. His expression was complicated as he said, "Sure enough, there are twelve full pills, and each one is a third-grade pill. Okay, I was blind to the value of gold and jade. You are truly a genius in alchemy."
He kept his word and gave the recipe for the Dead Tree Reviving Spring Pill to Yun Miao.
Yun Miao took a look at the pill recipe and saw that the ingredients were all very valuable. He immediately smiled at Tian Laokou and wanted to get a few more ingredients for the Dead Tree Resurrection Pill for free.
Tian Laokou was particularly generous this time: "Materials are not a problem, but you have to tell me where the strange power you used to make the elixir just now came from."
strength?
Upon hearing this, Xiao Hei looked at Yun Miao in confusion. His attention had always been on Yun Miao, and he had not used his spiritual sense to investigate the situation inside the furnace, so he had no idea what the so-called power that Tian Laokou meant.
Yun Miao guessed what Tian Laokou meant, and she did not hide it, and said generously that she did not know.
The skill of weaving destiny appeared suddenly. She could only vaguely guess that it might be related to her constant rewinding and forming bonds with different people. However, this was just a guess, and this guess was related to the rewinding, so she did not tell Tian Laokou about her intention.
"Xinyi... that female cultivator from the Buddha Fruit said she was cultivating the Great Dao of Destiny. I have a strong sense of karma. It was also around that time that I gradually discovered a new power within me, so I call it the power of karma."
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