" I'm ready whenever you guys are .
I told Wi Jon and managed to see the quite tense atmosphere affecting almost everyone currently present in the room, Shi Wuya and even Wi Jon weren't excluded .
They weren't worried about the cost of the pill materials, they were more expectant to what kind of miraculous results would come out of this Alchemy Session and whether this will be the start of the unstoppable rise of their Merchant's Pavilion .
At my words, Wi Jon nodded his head and with a shaky hand, he started the array, then the runes in the room all lit brightly and warmly, completely removing the tensed atmosphere from earlier .
The old man withdraw the material needed one by one and put it at a tray and handed them to some of the assistants of his, their first task was to confirm the state of the Medicinal Energy inside each material .
Then the next step would be cleaning and cleaving any unnecessary parts from the material like the outer cover and the hair on the roots of some materials, they could end up causing a problem with refining the pill .
Then it was time for refining each material and transform it into a Medicinal Essence, this step was the second most crucial after the flame control step I was responsible for .
If this step had any problems then either the pill would fail to get condensed or the pill would be of an inferior quality and it might come out to be a waste pill too, it also the most time consuming step depending on the efforts put into it by the alchemist and the technique he used .
Normally this step would be done discreetly due to the fact that each Pill Refining Technique was a secret that can't be disclosed with anyone, not to mention that it was some kind of an inheritance, so it couldn't be shared with others .
But it seem that Wi Jon had no such issue, he directly start refining each and every Medicinal Material right before me without worrying about me copying his technique or steal it from him, either out of trust or maybe he had other thoughts on mind .
I can't deny that this old man know exactly what he was doing and seemed to be quite skilled in his refining technique, normally due to the fact that each Material required a unique way to deal with its refining, so the alchemist need to focus on refining one Component at a time, the only exception can be tied with how talented the alchemist is and how deep his understanding of the technique he was using is .
For example, Wi Jon might have already reached the Great Success realm of mastery over the technique he was using to convert the ingredients into Medicinal Essence, he is able to use both of his hands at the same time to refine two Medicinal materials into Medicinal Essence .
But even with that the time spent was quite long, I had a more quicker method to quicken the procedure, but if I were to use it in front of them, I might as well end up getting suspected to be an Evil Ways Practitioner, so in the end I kept fiddling with the snake core in my hands while he was still engrossed in the refining process .
I needed to be acting as discreetly as possible, thanks to the fact that there was at least 2 people with strong Soul Power in my range of sight, Wi Jon was more or less a surprise to me, but it was quite acceptable, the guy after all was a talented alchemist .
The other person was Shi Ru Yi that kept stealing glances at me with a bashful expression on her face, the girl gave me a wrong impression when we first met, in addition to her weird body constitution, I initially thought that she was a sly vixen, but this image crumbled with each second I had spent with her before .
The girl in my eyes was still quite pleasing to the eyes, in fact I couldn't help but find her quite desirable, but the second that thought appeared I directly throw it to the back of my mind and after a simple timely nod, I focused on the core bursting with vitality in my hand .
The core of a second grade monster, it was leaning to the Yang attribute as I ordered, but the energy inside was tainted with a small amount of Yin Qi from the Phyton poison and that was the reason I asked for it .
Using this Core won't only enhance the effectiveness of the medicinal energy inside the pill, but it will also help with stabilizing the alchemy process and prevent the Medicinal Energy to conflict with one another .
This step was added by me for the sake of making sure that only with the right recipe that I had presented and through the use of this particular core can the recipe work and the pill be concocted successfully .
If someone dared to use another core that didn't match the Yin and Yang, then the only end waiting for him is a big explosion and costly amount of money getting lost .
This was a small detail that I hadn't written in the modified recipe, but just in case something happened, telling either one of the three here should suffice in preventing any misshape from happening .
The monster core in my hand was the nucleus where the beast store its energy as to prepare for its next evolution and advancement, the core bear a lot of Vitality and Medicinal Energy in it due to the fact that most if not all the Beasts and Monsters in this world, are quite sensitive to the Heaven-Earth energy.
Through this sensitivity, they can have much easier time in locating these treasures and guarding it until it reaches maturity then the will devour the said resource and increase their strength further, it's accurate to say that every Beast could have possibly eaten at least 4 or 5 precious wild resources while still an infant, it gave me headaches just thinking about how much resources could the one in my hand had eaten before it unluckily fall in the hands of humans .
Most Monsters with weak bloodlines can get there cores quite late in their lives, those with a strong bloodlines can get their core from the second they were born, it leave much to imagine on how even in the creatures, the bloodline that they are born with and through can affect their development .
The core in my hand was precious beyond doubt, due to it can be used to replenish their Blood and Blood Qi and effect enhance vitality, but its value in alchemy was even bigger, the core carried also a bit of resentment from both the humans who fell at the hands of this phyton and the snake own resentment for the humans who killed it .
This was the reason that absorbing these cores can only be done cautiously and it was better to not even touch it for the intention of absorbing it at all, due to the fact that the resentment could accumulate inside the body of the person absorbing the energy from the core and the final results would be as severe as him going berserk and losing his mind and as a result losing his life as well .
Everything in this world could kill you, if you only gave it the chance to do so, luckily there was numerous methods that can be used to clean and refine the resentment inside these cores, one of the simplest method was to cook it with fire .
As simple as it seem, it was also the most crude method and needed the supervision of an experienced alchemist, otherwise their was a chance for the energy contained inside the crystal like core to end up dispersing and returning to Heaven-Earth .
The alchemist can indeed help with refining the Energy inside the core, but no matter how skilled the alchemist is, he won't be able to keep 100% of energy intact, there will be some loses no matter what, but even getting past 70% of energy was already a great hurdle for most of the alchemist and only a few can manage to keep and refine 80 and 90% of energy .
After everything got cleared for me thanks to the seal Zi Xue left me, I had an idea of refining serum monsters cores in the future to give myself an easy time with the things I will plant in the Garden, but this will be quite costly, sigh let's just take one step at a time .
After I finished organizing my thoughts, Wi Jon had finally finished refining all the Medicinal Essence and put each one in a different pot, the Medicinal Essences were quite colorful and one looks made me understand that all the materials were of high quality, at least all of them were no less than 100 years old in age .
The life cycle of the plants differed greatly from that of humans, the plants lifeforms as I get to acquire a bit of info about that from the Tree Spirit left me a bit baffled and amazed by what I found, the lifecycle of the plants was both longer and shorter than that of human beings at the same time .
Longer in the sense of outliving human beings in terms of age as long as the place they were in had a suitable environment for them growing .
Shorter in term of the fact that time act weirdly on them than on humans, they age faster, 3 months of age in terms of humans could actually be 3 years old in plants age, this is related to the fact that there method of increasing in age is depending on the way they were cultivated and how much nutrition they can absorb from the ground and Heaven-Earth energy .
It was a fascinating discovery, but now wasn't the time to dwell much on it, since Wi Jon was already ready to start pouring the Medicinal Ingredients he converted into Essence, but was waiting for me to start controlling the fire .
I gave him a nod signaling for him to start and he directly began to pour the first Medicinal Essence just as I start burning my Soul Power according to the method of the Condemned Flaming Soul mentioned in the evil alchemy record .
This method was the most cruel method mentioned in this record, it essentially required the person to refine part of someone's else soul, this part could be taken willingly or forcefully from the victim, it's sacrificed while the person is still alive .
That part is used to bind that victim to the cauldron and the flames burning inside in some kind of a sacrificial ceremony that alllowed the Evil alchemist using this method to be able to control everything regarding the intensity and the effectiveness of the flames inside the cauldron .
But since it was an evil sacrificial ceremony, there was a need for a cost for this kind of advantage, the soul of the victim would be lit on fire and burned to crisp with each second passing after the ceremony is held, it would take a 10 seconds or so for the normal person to completely lose his soul before the cauldron could succeed in producing any pills .
This is why a strong person with a strong Soul was needed, or there will be a need to sacrifice at least 40 normal people if the alchemist was quite proficient in alchemy and the number would increase to a few hundreds of people .
This was a method that left neither the soul or the body have eternal peace after dying and will force a knot of Cause and Effect on the culprit and turn his life into hell, starting with the pill he was trying to make .
It will be contaminated by Ghost Qi which is still obscured to me, but it was mentioned to be a kind of energy that formed from the agony and unwillingness of the deceased person, something that was quite similar to resentment qi but more potent .
But what's even worse was the fact that the Evil Ways Of Alchemy didn't stop at sacrificing the souls and turning them into ghosts, it went even more further and didn't let that Ghost Qi go, in the Evil Ways Of Alchemy there is an Artificial Ten Thousand Screaming Ghost Flame that could be condensed using that Ghost Qi and absorbing it .
Reading about this back then almost made me reduce the whole book down to ashes, but in the end I decided to see if I can manage to give these methods mentioned in it for my benefits while using on the Panel to negate any negative side effects it had on me, but there was one problem with that .
Condemned Flaming Soul, was a method that I wasn't certain that it would work as I intended for it since I literally have no clue about how will it affect me and whether will the Panel will be able to help me out again this time, after all this was a sacrificial ceremony and not a practice method or secret technique, so I was more or less cautious not to end up losing my life .
I looked at my hands and braced myself to start the ceremony, the ceremony was quite simple and didn't even need me to use neither that much of movements or strength, I needed to imprint a special sigil and carve it into my mind using Soul Power .
I no longer had even an ounce of doubt in me regarding the identity of the person who wrote this record being someone from the Immortal world or at least had some experience with encountering immortals, his way of explaining things and some of the things he named aligned with what Feng Rui had mentioned and the seal on my mind was confirming this as well .
Feng Rui, the author of this book, Zi Xue, all these characters seemed to have come from the same source, the Immortal World outside of this barren lands as Feng Rui detested to even call it as such, I will one day venture outside any boundaries that were made and will find everything regarding this world .
~RUSTLE~RUSTLE~RUSTLE~RUSTLE .
Maybe it was my imagination or maybe it was something related to the process I was engrossed in or maybe it had something to do with my determined thoughts .
I heard the rustling sounds of thunder or the explosion of firecracker sounding in my ears and I couldn't help but turn around me to see if anyone had noticed anything but found nothing out of place, no one seemed to have heard anything, how weird .
Focusing on engraving the seal in my brain and also touching the cauldron, the fire suddenly erupted from the earth beneath and fire energy fluctuations spread around us forcing a few people back and signaling the start of the pill concocting stage .
The second the seal was done, notifications kept buzzing in my head from the Panel, telling me that my gamble was successful, the seal had a rune with the word burn on it and the second it was engraved in my mind, it lit up brightly red like a blazing fire and I already felt my Soul Power diminishing a little .
But this wasn't the most surprising thing I felt, I felt that the burning heat inside the cauldron was actually an extension of my body and mind, I can manipulate them as I want, this realization had me become a lot more focused than before .
We were currently at a delicate step and while Wi Jon was preparing himself for the last step of this process, waiting to condense the pill, my task was to use the flames in my control to purify the Medicinal Essences from any impurities they could still contain, this was a step that made Alchemist struggle the most .
And also the reason for many pills failing to be condensed, too much heat could end up burning the Medicinal Energy to crisp and leave even more impurities, resulting in a waste pill, if the heat was weak, the impurities will be burned to crisp along with the pill ingredients, leaving nothing but black and foul scented ash .
But luckily I have perfect control over the flames in the cauldron, I directly told Wi Jon to go ahead and start mixing the materials together, he showed a bit of struggle against me doing this, but in the end he shrugged his shoulder and muttered something then did as I asked him too .
His eyes opened up and was filled with brilliance a few seconds later as he sensed the situation inside the cauldron, but luckily he was quite experience with the process and calmed down soon after and began mixing the abundant Medicinal Energy inside the cauldron .
It would have normally taken a few hours for the pill to be condensed, but I didn't want to waste that much of time and thanks to my perfect control over the flames inside the cauldron, I was able to shortened the time needed to a bit more than an hour .
After all, even though I had forbidden methods at my disposal, keeping them for an extended period of time was something impossible for the current me, after I finished my job, I had retreated in the back and went to get some rest and remove the sweat formed on my forehead .
Shi Ru Yi seeing this came and offered to help me but her father intervened and his eyes were quite cold, this guy was quite an overprotective father .
Soon Wi Jon had also finished condensing the pill and with a sigh he too let go of the cauldron and opened the lid of the pill cauldron with a frown that made all the people present both nervous and curious at what was going on and whether was the pill making a success or not .