MENTAL REJUVENATION TEST: LONG HAUL ELIXIR
Mortal tier recipe. No cultivation requirements
This recipe is a test for the preceding technique, as it requires hours of constant attention. It should only be attempted if you have enough spare time, recently slept well, and enough dedication to watch a recipe for hours.
The long haul elixir is another old recipe, created before the GCC like many of these ancient kingdoms. The potion’s effect is rather useful for mortals as well, effectively allowing them to stave off the necessity of sleep for a week, and originated from a nameless alchemist playing about with various ingredients. Records show that his cultivation made sleep more of a personal enjoyment, so focusing on alchemy for several hours was part of his normal routine. After babysitting this concoction for long enough he jokingly called it the ‘Long haul elixir’. The name is accurate and fun, so alchemists keep it as such.
INGREDIENTS AND RECIPE
* Low-tier enchanted water, 150 ml – natural gathering stage fluid
* Dry spell lotus, 1 flower – natural gathering stage flower
* Oskat beetle powder, 10 grams – non magical bug part
* Shocker juice, 20-35 ml – non magical fluid
Once again, buy your low-tier enchanted water!
If you can’t, then make it by constantly infusing water with Qi. Please do know that a peak natural gathering stage cultivator can only produce 10 ml of water with their entire storage of Qi. Only spirit forming stage cultivators and above can produce it in non-mediocre amounts.
Dry spell lotus is a type of lotus that exclusively forms in desert oases, requiring the intense temperature disparity of a desert to form itself, obviously still requiring water as sustenance like most plant life. Upon harvesting you should remove the roots immediately before storing and keep the flower. This flower must be kept in water, otherwise it quickly withers.
Oskat beetle powder is described in the recipe for it, simply asking for an Oskat beetle’s shell. Crushing the shell, after killing and removing the insect, will leave a powder perfect for relieving sleep requirements. Although it does stink to high hell.
Shocker juice is more of an entertainment drink than use in most cases. Upon drinking it will send strong electrical shocks throughout your body. All the shocks are too weak to induce heart attacks or damage brain functions, but they certainly leave a kick. Muscles constantly jerking, incessant twitching, and the occasional dead limb are side effects. Make it by juicing the fruit of a shocker tree.
With all the ingredients gathered, add the Oskat beetle powder to the enchanted water. Now wait for the powder to dissolve, this takes 10 minutes on average providing you adeptly stir once a minute.
The Dry spell lotus is a strange plant, and its effects are only active if ground up in its withering phase. For that reason, take the flower out of its water container and leave it on a table to dry slightly. Upon the first notice of wilting leaves you must start grinding it in a mortar and pestle. It’s fine if you forget to stir the beetle powder during this, the powder will dissolve even without stirring anyway. If you obtain dust then you’ve taken too long grinding it, but if you obtained a ball of bulb that’s slowly hardening then you’ve completed this step.
Please note, only the outer layer of the pulp should harden, effectively leaving the internals rather moist and unwithered.
With the Oskat beetle powder dissolved fully, add the shocker juice, and stir. Check to see if the quantity of juice is sufficient by dipping your finger into the liquid. If you feel shocks travelling up your arm, not just into your finger, then you know the amount to be sufficient. Shocks to your chest mean a slightly too high quantity, but safe overall. If the shocks fail to move past your wrist then add another 5 ml of juice and try again.
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If the shocks make it to your head then restart the process. You cannot add more beetle powder now that the juice is added. You can try, but I guarantee you’ll be lucky to survive. The powder will immediately energize and spew the solution into the air, a resulting electrical cloud can stop your heart.
From here you should change over to a glass container if you already aren’t. The following stage requires you to see into the liquid. You will know that everything is still okay if the liquid is a dark orange, like ash dissolved in watered down orange juice.
Providing your measurements are complete, add the dry spell lotus and begin your babysitting. First and foremost, the lotus produces odd states within the liquid.
The most likely state is a sudden boiling, this can be stopped by rapidly stirring with a glass rod. On average, this effect occurs once every minute.
Additionally, you may find large sparks appear within the liquid which are stopped by removing the lotus for a second. Note that if the lotus is not removed within 15 seconds of the sparks starting then the electrical build-up will cause the bottle to explode from sheer force.
Another two states are rapid spraying of fumes, one will send off a nauseating scent while the other forces you to sleep. The mental rejuvenation technique can offset the desire for sleep given by the fumes, but it's barely a solution. Both these effects can be resolved by completely blocking the container’s opening. A cork is likely the most suitable object.
The last, and only deadly, effect is a Qi wave the lotus may give out. Recognizing the approach of this wave is easy, as the enchanted water, which is normally transparent, will turn a deep shade of red. In fact, the red is so intense that it will completely overcome the other colours in the solution and make it opaque. Stop the Qi wave from happening by removing the lotus and placing it in a bowl of water, you will notice the withered shell is a deep red as well, when it returns back to its brown colour you place it back into the solution.
The Qi wave takes 59 seconds to charge up and a single second to release, a cultivator at natural gathering can die if they do not protect themselves in the process.
If you can sustain yourself for long enough with that, then a second fact must also be juggled. You should be capable of seeing the hardened lotus pulp, and you must actively crush that layer. Unlike regular water, any revealed internals will still wither in this enchanted water, such that you must crush every formed layer and wait for the solution to eat away at it.
The eating speed is entirely dependent on a random distribution of Qi and shocker juice contained within the solution, so it may only take 5 minutes for a layer or up to 20 minutes as the currently recorded maximum. Either way you’ll have to go through roughly 10 layers before the entire ball of pulp is dissolved like this.
This massive list of effects and additional tasks is why the mental rejuvenation technique is required, since it’s hard for a normal human to constantly work without rest for so long. The recipe is incredibly tedious with a high chance of death if negligent, which is why it was especially saved as a test.
There are ways to speed this up, but they all require extremely precise Qi technique and a higher cultivation. The only issue with this idea is that better potions exist at those tiers anyway, so why bother with this middling mortal tier recipe?
USAGE
Okay, so you babysat an elixir for all these hours. Now you get your reward!
Some may remember that Oskat beetle powder allows a normal person to reject the necessity of sleep, but their body still requires it. This is due to expended mental power, of which a mortal body can only naturally regenerate through sleeping.
This elixir fills that gap, not only staving off sleep for an entire week, but also refilling any expended mental power in the process. Do note that without Qi the reservoir of mental power cannot be stopped, so you cannot sleep even if you wanted to. This also means that the reservoir cannot be saved without Qi, as such this potion is far more useful for someone that recently broke through to natural gathering and wanted all the time possible to cultivate without feeling tired.
Many generals will also take it on the eve of a major battle, allowing them to focus throughout the entire ordeal and constantly make proper plans whenever asked of them.
Its uses are practically endless for mortals! Who doesn’t want more hours in a day?