Later this night, Cao Yun received a message from Zhi Yin to come and see her. Apparently, she had just come back from the woods.
"Faction Leader, I hope your hunt was successful."
"It was. Brother Chen, I heard that you became a 1-star Earth alchemist and that you went to the Dragon's Fire Faction."
"Faction Leader, I'm not thinking of defecting. I just had some pills to sell."
"I know. I'm not suspecting you of anything. But you should realize that selling pills in the Wubei Merit Market is as difficult as climbing Mount Tai. The Dragon's Fire Faction will do everything they can to stop you. Most outer disciples won't even dare buying from you by fear of offending them."
"I'm not naive, but I hope that Wen Zhu won't be too stubborn and will prefer buying my pills rather than seeing me as competition."
"It's very unlikely... How many points do you need?"
"Faction Leader, the pill I need costs 499 points."
Zhi Yin got silent. "This is not a small cost. I'm afraid we can't help you."
The problem with buying with points was that you not only needed the points to cover the price, but you also needed to have enough left for keeping your privileges within the sect. For example, if Cao Yun went under 200 points, he would lose one small spirit stone by month and a one hour slot in most array formations among the training facilities. These were both options he could not accept.
-
Cao Yun waited several days. He kept on pestering the Dragon's Fire Faction for an answer. But he kept receiving messages telling him that Wen Zhu was sincerely trying but the other factions would just not budge.
During this time, Cao Yun's cultivation even advanced. He opened another meridian, his fourth, the Triple Burner Meridian. He stuck to his routine of training his mind cultivation, but it was advancing very slowly. Each day he added one repetition and some strokes. With this progress rate, he would probably need two months just to achieve True Success.
His 'Azure Dragon's Seven Piercing Stars''s second star was forming steadily as he practiced with the array formations and once in a while went to the martial art pavilion. Apart from that, he still kept enough time to play with Mei Ying who was reverting to her more lively character.
-
He also regularly went back to the alchemy pavilion to study under Meng Jia.
"You should not try to go too fast in your alchemy. it's a very slow process. Some alchemists, as soon as they pass the 1-star Earth qualification, tend to immediately go on refining 2-star Earth rank pills. But the best thing to do for you is to keep training your 1-star Earth refinement process.
We'll train again with the Low-Level Qi Gathering Pill today, then we'll go on more difficult pills. Your goal today is first to try and recall every tiny detail of your first refinement. We'll talk about that together. I want you to be able to tell me exactly what happened at every single second. Not only what you did, but what you think happened in the cauldron as well. Under Spirit Warrior, you can't see what's going on in the cauldron but you can use your other senses to try and smell or hear what's going on. By coupling that with your reasoning, you can almost be as perceptive as a Spirit Warrior alchemist."
Then Cao Yun began recollecting his first refinement. Each time, Meng Jia asked him to be more specific and when he didn't remember, he asked him to make an educated guess. Some times he did not say anything more and some times he added a bit of information.
...
"You see, this bitter smell indicated that the essence of the Rotten Skull Pine Bark was interacting with the Purple Rotten Keelback Snake's blood. If you had changed your flame at this moment, less medicinal essence would have been lost."
...
In this discussion, Cao Yun was using his sea of consciousness to try and imagine the process. With his Yi, Zhi and Shen, he was able to vividly picture the cauldron and furnace as if they were before his very eyes. No detail could escape him and he even simulated the changes his instructor suggested.
...
"You did not hear the low whistle there. That's when the Frozen Dragonfruit Seed cracked. If you had, you would have realized that it was beginning to lose some medicinal essence by evaporation. If you had lowered the temperature, you could have saved more of it."
...
"Well, I think we went through everything."
The real process had taken less than fifteen minutes but this thorough analysis kept on going for three hours.
"I believe you still have enough time to try out one batch of Low-Level Qi Gathering Pills. If you apply everything I said, you should have ten Pure pills by the end of it. If you get one or two True Essence pills, it's good, but remember, even great alchemists must rely on luck to get one. Sometimes you'll be very lucky, and sometimes you won't. One day, I got four True Essence pills in a batch of five pills and then I did not get a single one in my next seven attempts."
Cao Yun got all the ingredients ready. This time, he was not as stressed so it took him less than twenty minutes, a third of the time he had needed before, but still twice longer than a master. Once again, he decided to refine a batch of ten, to replicate the exact same process.
This time, he got attentive to all the small details Instructor Meng had mentioned. By circulating his Yi, Zhi and Shen, his senses became way sharper than any Mortal cultivator's. In his mind, he could almost see through the cauldron, watching as the ingredients entangled with each other and slowly fused their medicinal essence.
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Once he was done, the fragrance was even stronger than the first time when he opened the lid.
The pills flew into Meng Jia's right hand and he rotated them to examine each one.
"95%, 97%, 98%, 95%, 96%, 99%, 98%, 99%, 97% and 95%.
Good, all of them are Pure and you even got two True Essence. You should still train with this recipe when you have the time, but we'll pass to another pill. It's an intermediate 1-star Earth rank pill, the Cold Blood Clotting Pill.
This pill is used to cure an excessive bleeding. If someone has lost a lot of blood, it can make their body produce a large quantity of new blood. It's especially potent in low grade Mortals but it can always be useful in higher grades. As this pill relates to the human body, it's always more delicate to make as a mistake could kill the person. So not only do you need the right amount of medicinal essence, but you also must minimize the toxins.
Well, this is getting late, so we'll stop for now. In the next few days, train your Low-Level Qi Gathering Pill. You should never make one under the Pure stage."
-
When he left, Cao Yun met Zhong Ling once more.
"Brother Chen, good news! The paperwork is done. You're now officially recognized by the entire Hongchen Kingdom as an alchemist. And the sect gave you a spot on the alchemy scroll. It will only update at the end of the month, but right now you're last, 63th."
"Thank you, Senior Zhong. I had a few questions."
"Go ahead."
"I'm in need of a cauldron and a few ingredients. Could the alchemy pavilion provide me with some of it?"
"About the cauldron, it's the same as with the furnace, you need to get 500 points and a ranking on the alchemy scroll. So you only need 500 points now. As soon as you hit this mark, you can ask the sect for a brand new furnace and cauldron. I would like to give you one of my own cauldrons, but unlike a furnace, using an damaged cauldron for alchemy will damage your ingredients.
And about ingredients precisely, I'm sorry but the pavilion only provides ingredients at the demand of an instructor. And even the instructors have quotas they can't exceed, that's why they always keep a part of the pills you forge. If you want ingredients, you can either buy some in the Wubei Merit Market or maybe ask an older disciple to go buy some outside of the sect."
"Thank you, Senior Zhong." Cao Yun realized that Instructor Meng was really generous in the previous sessions. He had never asked him to give even a single pill away.
In reality, Meng Jia had no other student, so he could easily use all his quota of ingredients on Cao Yun. But the young man did not know that.
-
Cao Yun decided to go buy enough materials to make other batches of Low-Level Qi Gathering Pills. Until now, he had relied on the alchemy pavilion's resources but if he were to train at home, he needed a batch of the ingredients and a cauldron.
As he had no cauldron yet, he decided to buy some powders to train his flame control and he found some Terrified Fox Root to practice his Ingredients Preservation. Finally, he bought enough to make twenty Low-Level Qi Gathering Pills. Even though he could not make them without a cauldron, he could still prepare the ingredients. All the ingredients could be prepared beforehand and easily conserved.
After his purchase, he paid 72 points, so he only had 211 points left.
The news of this purchase immediately reached Wen Zhu.
"He shouldn't have a cauldron yet... He's probably just training the Five Golden Elixir Principles. He can't refine any pill without a cauldron and no one in his faction has one. Even with money, he's a commoner so I doubt he has enough to buy a cauldron outside. In the end, he still needs 500 points either to buy the Praying Demon pill or to get a cauldron."
Wen Zhu was absolutely right on all the points. Cao Yun had 40 taels of gold. And even the cheapest cauldron cost at least 50 taels, and even if he asked his faction, they didn't know how to choose a good cauldron.
-
In the afternoon, Cao Yun got better and better at preparing the ingredients with the Terrified Fox Root and then got to work on the Low-Level Qi Gathering Pill's ingredients. He was very satisfied by his work.
The morning with his instructor had given him an idea. Even though he had no cauldron, he could try to visualize the process. In his sea of consciousness, he imagined a transparent cauldron over his real furnace.
He first tried to imagine the entire process in his mind.
Then, he spiced things up. As he was imagining what was happening in the cauldron, he controlled the flame in reality. His flame followed exactly what his mind was imagining.
Lastly, he did the same while also feeling the ingredients, as if he was ready to throw them in the cauldron. This way, the ingredients in his mind were perfect copies of the real ones. He could even smell them in his sea of consciousness.
Cao Yun didn't know but this technique was called 'Spiritual Sea Refinement'. It was taught to Spirit Warrior alchemists to enhance their understanding and perception of the refinement. In the first stages of the Spirit Warrior stage, it was difficult to control your spiritual senses to feel what was going on in the cauldron, but you could usually enter your sea of consciousness. This way, you could train with a fake refinement to accustom your spiritual senses to what they should perceive in your cauldron.
Without entering your sea of consciousness, it was impossible to do. And under the Spirit Warrior realm, no one was known to be able to do so. Cao Yun had even asked Feng Yingyue but she could not. Training the 'Sealing the Seven Demons in the Nine Peaks' had not helped her either. It was a gift from his Drop of Wrath. If the Drop of Wrath had not tried to devour his mind, he never would have been able to get in.
-
Cao Yun had had enough of waiting. He went one last time to the Dragon's Fire Faction but got the same answer.
"Brother Chen, I'm sincerely trying to negotiate with the other faction leaders. But they're unreasonable. Please, wait a bit more. If only you were not in such a small faction..."
He then went to Zhi Yin to inform her that he was going to start a business in the Wubei Merit Market. Unfortunately, all the other members had left the sect to earn some points outside. It wasn't rare and Cao Yun had been warned that this would happen all year long. He still left a note, in case she came back, so that she could be informed immediately.
From Guo Lüye and Zhong Ling, he had learned that he had no procedure to follow to sell anything in the market. To get a stool in the inner parts, he needed to pay a fee, but he could simply set up a blanket anywhere and sell his merchandise.
This morning, Cao Yun set up his small business. He put only five pills up for sale. They were all Perfect grades. And his selling price was 10 points, half the Dragon's Fire Faction's. As soon as he set shop, the tall woman he had seen the first time he got into the market lowered her price from 20 to 12 points.
Anyway, no outer disciple bought from Cao Yun, too afraid to offend a faction of alchemists. After they left the sect, they would need the help of alchemists so it was always nice to have a good relationship with them and Cao Yun was alone. Moreover, their faction leaders wanted to isolate Cao Yun to force him into joining them. Hence, they were not stupid enough to give him points.
On the other hand, inner disciples mostly bought within the inner parts of the market.
But once in a while, an inner disciple got curious. This time, it was a plump little man with a shaved head. As soon as he saw Cao Yun's shop, he got interested.
"Junior, are all these pills Perfect grades?"
"Yes, dear customer, they've been examined by both Instructor Meng Jia and Faction Leader Wen Zhu."
"Then, I'll buy you one Perfect pill. If it's as good as it's supposed to be, I'll be back tomorrow for more."
"I'll be there, dear customer."
The purchase was finalized by signing a written contract. Just like an acknowledgment of debt, this contract would allow Cao Yun to ask the sect for a transfer from this man's points to his. If the man had not enough points, he would get punished accordingly and Cao Yun would still get all the points as compensation. There was no way to cheat your way out of this.