The sun just started rising as Drake began his rank three pill refinement practice. Along with the sun, the dust storm also slowly started building up.

Everyone spread over the village, either looking into the distance, meditating, or taking a well-deserved rest. Sylvia was also taking a break from drawing up her map.

As dawn arose, Cyrus got up and called everyone.

“Thank you all for letting me travel with you so far,” he said, cupping his fists. “However, I think I know where the other cultivators from my family are, so I’ll get going before another dust storm picks up.”

“How do you know?” asked Blaze.

“Well,” he replied. “I detected a battle earlier and the techniques and summons used in that battle seemed to resemble our family’s unique moves, so it is most likely them. I should go help them out. Then I can continue my journey with them.”

“Oh… okay,” said Blaze. He would also want to go and help if he thought one of his party members was fighting outside. He then added, “In case it turns out it’s not them, you can always come back to us.”

“Thank you,” Cyrus replied.

Blaze nodded, and Helen also said goodbye. “Thank you once again for helping us earlier.” Sylvia nodded to show her agreement.

“No worries,” Cyrus replied. He waved everyone goodbye and left the village, leaving Blaze, Sylvia and Helen together. They looked towards the building where Drake was going through the alchemy test and wondered how he was getting along.

‘Since he’s still inside, that means that he hasn’t failed the test yet,’ thought Sylvia.

They wanted to go in and check, but hesitated. They didn’t want to interrupt him accidentally during a critical moment, so they decided to return to their posts.

A few hours later.

The sun was high in the sky, casting hot rays onto the vast plains. A large dust storm covering the entire area had formed, similar to when the cultivators had originally entered the inheritance grounds.

There were several village ruins protected from these elements, inside one of which, was a perfectly intact building. A young boy was sitting inside this building, pouring his mana into a cauldron, while sweating profusely.

BOOM!

A mini explosion sounded out and the young boy coughed from the backlash.

“Another failure…” Drake murmured.

Immediately, the owl statue’s eyes glowed and it sent a beam of light to enter his forehead. Drake’s eyes became blank for a moment before returning to normal, at which point he closed his eyes and meditated on the new information for a while.

After a few minutes, Drake slowly opened his eyes.

‘I have already failed five times, but…’ after every failure, he made much more progress than before. Whilst initially, he failed in the very beginning, now, he was able to complete many more steps successfully before failing.

Normally, he’d have to analyse his failure personally which would take a long time and he would still not catch all of his mistakes. However, the owl statue was giving him a detailed and thorough analysis of everything. Hence, Drake could tell his understanding of alchemy was improving by leaps and bounds.

‘In a sense, even if I fail this test, the improvement to my skill in alchemy is worth it,’ Drake thought to himself.

After calming his mind, he went through his mistakes once more before taking out another batch of materials.

Thirty-five minutes later.

BOOM! Another failure.

Forty minutes later.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Another failure.

Fifty minutes later.

Drake failed again. He used his sleeve to wipe the sweat off his brows as he finished going through the mistakes he made again. Although he failed, he was extremely happy, because he was already able to refine about 50% of the pill before failing. He still had another twelve attempts left, which, he hoped, would be enough for him to practice and learn the rest of the refinement.

Six hours later.

The sun was slowly beginning to set again.

Inside the building, Drake had his attention completely focused on the cauldron in front of him.

‘This is my last chance, I can’t mess this up…!’

Drake carefully controlled the temperature in the cauldron. There were dozens of materials inside the cauldron which he had already purified. Now they had to combine in different ways. Some had to be combined in colder temperatures, others when they were hot, and at precise moments, depending on what materials they were, while the rest still had to be maintained at a specific temperature.

‘No wonder they gave this cauldron,’ Drake thought to himself. ‘It’d be impossible to refine this pill with the basic cauldron I bought.’ He shook his head and focused on his refining again.

He finished combining the last set of materials successfully. Now, three balls of light were rapidly flying around inside the cauldron. Drake increased the mana he was pouring into the wind rune to bring them under control. Once they slowed down, Drake added the final ingredient, the powdered tooth of a commander class demon, solidified into the shape of a double helix.

As soon as it entered, the three balls of light wanted to rush towards it. However, Drake couldn’t let that happen. He carefully controlled them to move together at the same speed. When they were less than an inch away from the helix, he let them go and the three balls of light touched the helix simultaneously.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Immediately, a large burst of light and energy was released as the helix melted and flowed over the three balls of light, before slowly combining and condensing into a single ball of light.

‘This is it…’ thought Drake, using all of his concentration to keep the temperature and everything else steady. He was at the last and crucial step, as long as he completed this, the pill would be refined.

Drake waited patiently for the balls of light to combine, not wanting to rush the process.

Fifteen minutes later.

BOOOOOMMMM!!!!!

A loud sound echoed from the building as a large wave of energy was released by the cauldron. Blaze and the rest were startled and looked worriedly towards the building.

In contrast, inside the building, Drake had a huge smile.

Brilliant white light was being released from around the lid of the cauldron, lighting up the entire room.

After a few seconds, the light and energy disappeared and the lid flew open. A small orb of light slowly floated out, radiating a powerful aura.

Drake opened his palm and the orb of light flew towards him. The light it was radiating was quickly diminishing as the orb flew into his palm. When it was a few inches away, the light disappeared, revealing a round pill painted pitch black and bright white. However, the colours were not stagnant. They kept moving around as if liquid paint was flowing over the pill.

Upon reaching his palm, the pill calmly hovered on top. Drake couldn’t contain his joy.

He successfully refined a rank three pill!

The owl’s eyes began glowing again and a voice spoke out.

Congratulations. You have completed all the tests. You are now worthy of receiving my inheritance!

The black vortex appeared again and a huge treasure chest floated out of it.

Drake was delighted. He wanted to open it immediately but then changed his mind. He first took all the remaining herbs and materials into his storage pouch, and then looked at the cauldron.

‘I’m going to call this the ice fire cauldron,’ he thought, giving it a simple name. Then, he took the ice fire cauldron into his storage pouch as well before leaving the building.

To his surprise, Blaze, Sylvia and Helen were waiting outside.

“Is everything okay, master Drake?” asked Helen.

“Did you complete the tests?” Blaze questioned.

Sylvia just looked at him curiously as usual.

Drake smiled and replied, “Why don’t you come in and see?” and walked back in.

Everyone shared a glance before following behind.

They saw the empty room and the large treasure chest in the middle and gasped.

“You did it!” Blaze yelled enthusiastically, catching up to Drake and slapping him on his back.

Sylvia also caught up and stood on Drake’s side, before leaning forward and asking interestedly, “What were the tests?”

“Just had to refine three rank one, two rank two, and one rank three pill,” Drake replied.

Everyone gasped in shock. They knew Drake was practising alchemy as a hobby, but they had no idea he could refine rank three pills. That was unbelievable for someone his age, who was self-taught, and only started recently.

“You’re amazing, master Drake!” Helen exclaimed.

Seeing everyone’s surprised looks, Drake rubbed his nose and asked a different question, “So, should we open the chest now?”

“Yes,” replied Sylvia. “The sun has started setting and the dust storm is also mostly gone. We’ve already spent a long time here, we should get this inheritance and continue forward.”

“Great,” Drake replied.

Everyone jogged to the chest and Drake opened it up. A bright light flashed across the room before disappearing, revealing the contents. It was filled to the brim with a large number of gold coins, as well as numerous mana stones. There were even several mid-grade mana stones!

As they split up the gold and mana stones between them, they also spotted buried inside the gold, a large scroll. Drake picked it up and sensed that it recorded several rare pill recipes. Drake happily transferred the scroll to his storage pouch. No one protested.

As soon as they took the last piece of the inheritance, the ground started shaking. The party quickly exited the building and jumped over the wall to leave the village.

Once outside, they were welcomed by chilly winds. As the sun set, the heat was slowly replaced by the cold, and the dust storm, by total darkness.

“Where are we going now?” Blaze asked Sylvia. Everyone turned towards her as well, she had spent this time mapping out the surroundings.

Sylvia reached into her storage pouch and took out a wooden board. Carved into it was a map of the surroundings.

“The inheritance grounds is huge. Even after all this time, I wasn’t able to map everything, especially once the dust storm started which reduced visibility.”

Everyone nodded. The dust storm made it very difficult to see more than a few metres, so this wasn't surprising. Seeing their acknowledgement, Sylvia continued.

“It seems that the black structure is at the edge of the plains, with various village ruins and cultivators scattered all around it in a semi circle. Although there are demons everywhere, they seem to become more numerous the closer to the black structure you go.”

Drake thought that made sense as well and continued listening.

“I have managed to map a good chunk of the path towards the black structure, on the section that we are in, so we can hopefully use this to get as many inheritances as possible on our way.” She thought for a moment and then added, “Interestingly, I did spot one area which looked like the ruins of a garden, which could have been the sect’s herb garden.”

This caught Drake’s attention.

One of the main reasons he wanted to come to this inheritance was to get the leaves of the Celestial Willow tree to refine the three-leaf healing pill. If he was going to find the leaves anywhere at all, it would most likely be in this herb garden.

The method of refining the three-leaf healing pill was easier and less complex than the death defying pill he had just refined. With the drastic improvement in his alchemy skill he made with the owl statue's help over this time, he was confident in his ability to refine the three-leaf healing pill now.

“We should go there,” Drake said.

Sylvia nodded in agreement. “Yes, we should. It is a little far away and there are a few other inheritances we can collect along the way, but it is in the same direction that we need to travel in, so we can easily take a look.”

Having a plan for the near future, everyone started running towards the next inheritance.

At the same time, in another location, Theo and the dark mages were inside another village ruins, standing in front of a statue, about to solve its puzzle. After a few seconds, the statue’s eyes started glowing and a black vortex appeared on the ground in front, from which a treasure chest floated out.

The dark mages giggled wickedly as they went to open, however a sudden noise interrupted them.

A group of four entered the village and ran towards the dark mages. Theo’s eyes narrowed. He unsheathed his sword and readied his chains as he turned to face the visitors. The other dark mages followed suit.

Within a few seconds, four shadows sprinted across the village at a ridiculous speed and stopped several metres before them. Once they stopped moving, their figures were revealed to show four young men, wearing the same uniform.

“Silver Crane Sect!” one of the dark mages gasped.

“Dark mages!” one of the Silver Crane Sect disciples shouted.

No words needed to be spoken. The two groups immediately clashed.

Two hours later.

The dark plains were covered in a veil of red by the blood moon.

As Drake’s party ran towards their destination, they encountered numerous demons. Syliva had a smaller number of her pixies out scouting their immediate vicinity to help them avoid large hordes of demons. However, they still encountered and had to fight through smaller groups.

Just as the group finished fighting off a flock of demon birds, Sylvia called everyone’s attention.

“Everyone, I can see a large group of demons to our right. We can avoid them, however, I think they are surrounding and attacking a woman.”

“Is she on her own?” asked Drake.

“Yes,” Sylvia replied. “However, she doesn’t seem to be in trouble. In fact, she’s killing them off very quickly. She seems… quite formidable.”

“Hm… we should still go help her,” Blaze suggested.

“I agree,” said Drake. “Especially as we go further, we are likely to encounter more and more demons, and potentially dark mages too. It would be good to have another strong fighter in our group.”

“I was thinking the same,” said Sylvia, looking into the distance.

After making a unanimous decision, the group ran in the direction indicated by Sylvia. With their speed, they found the demon horde quickly.