The Incandescent Rat Tiger was finally dead. Jinyue and Jinyang were not harmed, but they were still a bit shaken. Such a fight had been both exciting and scary. By now, they didn't quite know how to react. Very soon, though, exhilaration kicked in. Jinyue burst out in joy. Although such a fire beast wasn't the most powerful or dangerous beast they could encounter, she would have never been able to kill one a few months ago. Clearly, the twins were getting stronger. Jinyang kept her composure, but she wasn't any less excited than her sister. In fact, she was probably even more excited, considering she had cut off the beast's head herself.
Yanzhen immediately intervened. The fire beast had quite a few precious materials. Before its ingredients were spoiled, Yanzhen started to cut it apart. Some organs rapidly rotted if they were not taken out soon after death. Moreover, it was important to gather the blood of the fire beast. In fact, Yanzhen had the idea of using the blood and the fire energy within to help his cultivation, and the cultivation of the twins, of course. Honestly, this blood would probably be useless to him, but he could at least test out his ideas. Based on Cao Yun's cultivation method, using this blood to strengthen both the heat meridians and the flow of Fire within those meridians seemed logical.
While all of that was going on, the woman had calmed down. She was rocking the baby in her arms to soothe him. Indeed, she could tell that Cao Yun was focused on helping her husband. The man had lost a lot of blood, but he was stable. What truly worried the woman with tears literally evaporating from her face was her husband's arm. She knew that his life would be hard, if not impossible, if he lost the full use of his arm. At the moment, Cao Yun was clearly working on that.
Usually, the woman would have dismissed the idea that it was possible. But Cao Yun appeared like a creature from another realm entirely. After all, he had been so fast that they had simply disappeared from the ground and appeared on Hongyu in an instant without realizing anything. To be fair, she had been extremely emotional at the time. Well, she still was extremely emotional since her husband was in a serious condition.
Yanzhen had helped Cao Yun reattach the arm, but it wouldn't be fully functional. Fortunately for the couple, Cao Yun had decided to help them. Honestly, it was mostly a whim. Fate had made him meet them twice in a couple of days. Besides, they reminded him and Hongyu about their pasts. Thus, he had decided to help the man as much as he could. Moreover, this could help him test out some theories about Flameborns.
It had been a long time since Cao Yun had refined a pill. With his better understanding of the Dao of Fire, he had become an even better alchemist. Making a pill to regrow a limb was difficult. Thankfully, the limb didn't need to be fully regrown, he simply needed to make the man's body connect the reattached limb properly. This was an easier pill to make, a pill that would promote healing and help the heat meridians get stronger.
From his hunting, Cao Yun had many ingredients from fire beasts. Besides those, he also had a lot of ingredients he had prepared before leaving the Piaolu planet.
For an instant, Cao Yun hesitated, but he decided not to take out either his cauldron or his furnace. For a more difficult pill, he would still need them, but for the moment, he wanted to test his own Dao of Fire. In various manuals, he had heard about a technique, the Transparent Fire Refinement. It was quite simple to understand and almost impossible to practice for most alchemists.
Instead of using a cauldron, the alchemist could recreate a cauldron of pure fire. Of course, this also made the furnace useless. However, one's control over fire needed to be incredibly high. The only advantage, except the ability to refine without artifacts, was the ability to actually see inside the fire cauldron. As a matter of fact, this Transparent Fire Refinement technique was supposed to be a teaching method for students. A teacher would use it to show what was actually going on inside a cauldron. Apart from that, there was barely any advantage since an alchemist who could use this technique could also sense everything within a cauldron, so he didn't need to see it with his naked eyes. That being said, this was also a useful exercise to work on one's control over fire. As such, Cao Yun wanted to try it.
With his alchemy knowledge, Cao Yun quickly imagined a pill meant to restore the full use of the man's arm. Thankfully, he had thought about the bodies of the Flameborns for a long time already, so he had a good understanding of them. As such, it really wasn't difficult for him to create a pill he was confident could help the man. Of course, he only used ingredients he had on him. This would probably be a 1- or 2-star Human pill, so nothing too difficult in theory. With his cauldron and furnace, Cao Yun could refine it in an instant. If the man's life was still in danger, Cao Yun would have done it, but the man was stable and time wasn't much of an issue. If he failed, he could still refine the pill with his artifacts.
Anyway, Cao Yun asked Hongyu to land and to keep an eye out. He also asked Yanzhen to stay with the twins. They could review their fight and improve while Cao Yun was making the pill. Of course, they wanted to watch and were distracted while they were talking with Yanzhen. The woman, Caichu, stayed with her husband. The poor man was barely conscious, but she was holding his hand, and he was squeezing hers as if he could feel her presence. At least, that was what she liked to believe. She kept talking to him and even put the baby on his chest.
While Hongyu was making sure that no one distracted Cao Yun, the alchemist started to work. He produced a large ball of fire almost as large as his chest. It was entirely made of the Solar-Orchid Flame, he had put no Black Heart Flame in it. However, it was too large. Cao Yun focused and slowly crushed the ball. Thus, it was denser and hotter while being smaller. For quite some time, Cao Yun adjusted it and made sure that it was exactly the environment he wanted. Following Yanzhen's advice, he was focusing more on the result and how the fire should behave than on every single little detail. Apparently, it was working.
Finally, he was satisfied and started to take out ingredients from his spatial ring. For Caichu, this was incredible magic, of course. Spatial rings were rare for most Flameborns outside of larger tribes. To be fair, the Ancient Obsidian tribe had sold many of its spatial rings in recent decades. Most of the spatial rings came from the Great War against Demon God Da Mo. After all, demons had brought many spatial rings with them, and Flameborns had never actually learned how to produce them.
The first thing that came out of Cao Yun's spatial ring was a silver powder. This was dust, in particular, dust from the bones of a Cold Bone Viper. This would be the basis of the pill and was obviously colder than most elements in the Fire Broken World. Then, he took out blood from a Magma Gasping Fish-Elephant. It was completely opposite to the bone dust because it was much hotter and stronger in Fire. However, the bone dust was also rich in Earth while the blood was rich in Water because of their actual physical states. The Fire aspect would be weakened by the Water aspects of both ingredients while strengthening the Earth aspect of the bone dust. In turn, the Earth would diminish the Water aspect. Cao Yun had to find the right balance.
Afterward, Cao Yun sent various ingredients into the cauldron, especially different types of ashes. He took out a few herbs and plants that he completely burned to ashes. Then he mixed them with the blood of the Magma Gasping Fish-Elephant in order to penetrate the bone dust of the Cold Bone Viper. He was carefully trying to produce a specific pattern within the pills.
Each pill he was producing was imitating the paths within the meridians in the man's arm.
Cao Yun realized that this exercise was extremely taxing. If he had refined this pill with his cauldron, this would have been over already. To be fair, Cao Yun was trying to produce a perfect pill as well. He didn't just want to succeed, he wanted to triumph.
His understanding of Heatless Flame was very important, as the flames within his transparent cauldron had to burn differently everywhere in the cauldron. In some places, they didn't need to burn at all.
Because Cao Yun had not yet mastered Ten Thousand Candles, it was difficult to manage several dozen tongues of fire all at once. However, Cao Yun could still do it. Thankfully, he could simply slow down and even reduce the number of tongues of fire needed at any given time. For some pills, he would have been forced to manage hundreds of them at almost any point in time during the refinement process. This wasn't the case for such a simple pill.
Caichu, but also Yanzhen and the twins, were transfixed by the spectacle of Cao Yun manipulating fire before them. His control was impressive even to them. To be fair, they barely knew anything about alchemy. For them, this was an art only understood by the demons. In fact, it was akin to dark magic for Flameborns. Of course, they knew that humans practiced it as well, but they had never thought that Cao Yun would perform a refinement before them. Alchemy had a bad reputation because demons were said to use ashes from Flameborns or even organs and limbs from Flameborns in their recipes. As such, the demons had to keep the Flameborns alive while extracting and using said organs and limbs. Although those were rumors, many Flameborns had heard second- or even third-hand accounts of such evil ceremonies. Most likely, they were false, to be honest.
When Cao Yun heard about those stories, he quickly realized that they didn't make any sense because the descriptions were akin to mystical rituals that had either nothing to do with alchemy or literally contradicted alchemical principles. Those were just stories to scare Flameborns and make them hate demons even more than they already did.
Finally, Cao Yun was done with the refinement process. From the transparent cauldron, seven pills flew out. Two of them were Pure, one was True Essence, and the other four pills were all Perfect. Only one pill had almost failed to reach Perfect. It was still good, but it had more toxins than the others. Anyway, the Flameborn on the ground only needed one pill to fully restore his arm. As such, Cao Yun hesitated, but he ended up being generous, and he gave him the True Essence pill. This would not only repair his arm but also improve his overall strength as it would strengthen all of his heat meridians.
Caichu was worried, but Jinyang and Jinyue comforted her. She let Cao Yun force the pill down her husband's throat as he was almost unconscious. Then, Cao Yun used his spiritual senses to guide the pill into his body. Cao Yun took control of the medicinal essence and focused it on the man's arm first. He could literally feel the tissues reattaching themselves and even the meridians reforming and growing stronger. Afterward, Cao Yun spread the medicinal essence throughout his meridians.
Soon, the husband opened his eyes. He was shocked because he felt stronger than ever. Still confused, he saw his son on his chest and his wife holding his hand. He looked around and saw strangers. But he also saw his arm. As he was about to stand up in excitement, a force held him down. Suddenly, he heard a voice in his head.
"Stay calm and do not move. I'm helping you recover. This is a great opportunity for you. Feel the movement of the heat within. If you seize this moment, you won't regret it. But if you don't, you won't ever get another chance."
The husband, Caili, panicked. He wasted some time, but he ended up feeling the heat moving around his body. When he finally understood, he had missed a good opportunity, but it still wasn't too late. Caili observed and felt the heat throughout his body. By the time he fully understood the chance that he had, it was over. The voice had been right, he truly regretted his initial doubts. He had still obtained some pointers, but he could have had so much more. However, he wasn't bitter toward Cao Yun, he blamed himself.
The treatment was over. Caili finally sat up and moved his arm around. It was a bit stiff, but Caili could feel even more vigor. His first act with this new arm was to hug his wife and kid.
After a few moments, Caili turned toward Cao Yun and kowtowed.
"Noble Senior, this impudent one has failed to seize your full gift. But I will cherish it for the rest of my life. This insignificant one can't thank you enough."
Caichu also kowtowed toward Cao Yun.
"Noble Senior, please, could you reveal your august name to this lowly one?"
"Cao Yun of the Ancient Obsidian tribe."
The couple had heard poor rumors about that tribe. They had heard nothing about someone like Cao Yun. Of course, they would hear a lot about him in the coming days. At the time, they didn't realize who this senior was.
"Is it too impudent to name your son after your name, Noble Senior?"
"You may do as you wish. I saved you because we crossed paths. Fate helped you, not me. I gave you a lot; use it wisely."
"Thank you, Noble Senior."
By the time they looked up, Cao Yun was already back on Hongyu and had taken the trio with him. Hongyu disappeared in the distance. Caichu and Caili looked at their son, Caiyun.