Chapter 4: Condensing the stars of Fengfu

Nine Yin Grass, refined.

The ground “dragon root” had been refined.

Flame Seeds, refined.

Long Chen spent several hours refining more than thirty kinds of herbs and was drenched in sweat from exhaustion.

Alchemy was different from boiling medicine.

One had to extract the essence of each medicinal herb, remove its impurities, and refine it into powder.

But the flame in Long Chen's hand was too weak, and the extracted powder contained many impurities. There was nothing he could do about it.

First, Long Chen's cultivation was insufficient, and he lacked a continuous supply of energy to fuel his pill flame, so the flame was not powerful.

Second, Long Chen had neither the opportunity nor the ability to tame other flames, so he could only make do.

The Fengfu Pill was a first-rank pill.

Normally, only an alchemist at the pill disciple level could refine a first-rank pill.

However, to practice alchemy, one needed powerful spiritual energy in addition to a powerful pill flame.

More crucially, one needed extraordinarily powerful soul power.

The other two requirements were not difficult to meet.

For pill flame, provided one had the means, one could capture a fire-element magical beast and tame it as a pet.

With the help of the magical beast's fire, one could cultivate one's own flame.

It would also be very powerful.

More than ninety-nine percent of alchemists used beast flames.

Only a few alchemists with exceedingly ancient inheritances and tremendous strength could control the extraordinarily mysterious and elusive spirit flames of heaven and earth.

A spirit flame was a kind of flame with a soul.

In Long Chen's memories, he seemed to have once mastered an extraordinarily powerful spirit flame of heaven and earth.

Unfortunately, no matter how powerful he had been, he now had to keep making pills with this wretched, useless flame. He could not retrieve things from his memories.

His rest was almost over, and Long Chen took a deep breath.

“Whoosh.”

A wax-yellow flame about fifteen centimeters tall leaped from his palm, radiating a wave of heat.

“That's all right.

After that refining just now, the flame's power has increased a little.

Forget it. It's better than nothing.”

Seven medicinal essences were placed into the furnace in sequence, and his soul power emerged, making the flame in Long Chen's hand suddenly pulse several times more strongly than before.

“Using soul power to stimulate the flame.

If other alchemists saw this, would they die of fright?” Long Chen smiled bitterly.

An alchemist's most precious asset was soul power.

Human soul power was essentially innate.

As one's cultivation improved, it increased passively.

Soul power was the foundation of alchemy.

When refining a pill, a large amount of soul power was needed to control the heat.

The slightest error in the flame would waste all the previous effort, leaving only a pile of pill ashes.

If the pill was too powerful, it would also explode.

Normally, alchemists did not invest soul power at the beginning, only during the middle and final stages.

When the pill was about to form, they carefully controlled the release of power with their soul power.

After all, that moment was crucial to the pill's formation.

The flame's temperature had to change constantly, sometimes high, sometimes low, sometimes fierce, sometimes gentle, consuming a great deal of soul power.

If one's soul power ran out at that moment, the pills would essentially be ruined, yet Long Chen had actually used soul power right from the start.

And that extraordinarily precious soul power was being used merely to increase the flame's strength.

At the burning of the firewood, any alchemist would certainly curse.

Even a prodigy would not be that much of a prodigy.

But Long Chen was not afraid.

According to his memories, his current soul power was no weaker than that of an ordinary alchemist.

The ranks of alchemy, in order, were Dantu, Danshi, Danshi, Danwang, Danhuang, Danzong, Danzun, Dansheng, and Dandi.

Long Chen's memories contained recollections of a Pill Emperor's power, so he understood his own energy very clearly.

When Long Chen had awakened this time, his soul power had transformed, becoming abnormally powerful. That was why he was capable of doing this.

“Buzz!”

The pill furnace in front of Long Chen trembled slightly and gave a soft sound.

“Hehe, adding fuel to the fire really speeds things up.”

He hurriedly tossed three medicinal herbs into the furnace, but by then sweat had already appeared on Long Chen's forehead.

Long Chen quickly took out a stalk of grass more than sixty centimeters long, placed one end in the medicine bottle, which was full of the prepared Huiqi medicinal liquid, and put the other in his mouth, drawing in a deep breath.

After the prepared Huiqi medicinal liquid entered his abdomen, the pores all over his body rapidly opened and began frantically absorbing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth.

His spiritual power, which had been about to run out, rapidly recovered.

Long Chen had prepared this long ago. It was essential to refining the Fengfu Pill; otherwise, with his current meager spiritual power, trying to refine it would have been futile.

With the stalk of grass in his mouth, he occasionally drew in some of the prepared Huiqi medicinal liquid to replenish the spiritual energy his body was releasing.

Compared with Long Chen's aura, his spiritual energy was very powerful. Only two days later did he feel slightly tired, a sign of his enormous expenditure of spiritual energy.

By then, however, all the medicinal ingredients had already been placed into the pill furnace, leaving only the final work, and a medicinal fragrance was beginning to spread throughout the room.

Although Long Chen believed he could prepare a first-rank pill like this with his eyes closed, things were different now.

This would change his destiny.

It would be a lie to say he was not nervous.

“Buzz!”

Suddenly, something struck inside the pill furnace, a buzzing sound rang out, and the energy within began to grow restless.

Instead of showing any sign of panic, Long Chen smiled.

This heralded the pill's formation and was the most critical moment in alchemy.

His soul power surged at full strength, without the slightest reserve, and the flame in his hand suddenly flared as an invisible force tightly sealed the entire pill furnace.

This technique was called “Sealing Heaven and Sealing Earth.”

It was a technique Long Chen had created in his memories.

It was used to prevent pills and furnaces from exploding.

This highly practical technique could also seal in all the pill's essence in the shortest possible time, without major losses.

Ordinary alchemists usually used it at the final stage, because the pill was violent and gentle methods were used to stabilize it.

Although doing so greatly reduced the danger, the loss of the pill's essence was enormous, making the pill's effects quite ordinary.

“Bang!”

Under the full suppression of Long Chen's soul power, the entire pill furnace gave a muffled sound, then fell completely silent.

Looking at the quiet furnace before him, Long Chen could not help panting wildly.

His entire body was soaked in sweat, and he felt dizzy.

After a while, Long Chen recovered a little.

He excitedly opened the furnace lid, his hands even trembling.

Five round pellets appeared before Long Chen's eyes, filling the room with a rich medicinal fragrance.

“Two low-grade pills and three useless pills. Ah, it would be embarrassing to tell anyone.” Long Chen was very excited, but inwardly he sighed.

Long Chen froze, then could not help laughing.

He had merged with the memories of a generation of Pill Emperors.

It seemed that Pill Emperors were simply too proud.

Whether it was embarrassing or not, he quickly took all five pills into his hands and examined them carefully.

The two low-grade pills were round all over and gave off an invigorating fragrance that refreshed the heart and spleen, their aroma producing a feeling of euphoria.

Long Chen could not help feeling ecstatic.

A finished pill could be sold for at least hundreds of thousands of gold coins in the imperial capital.

And the three discarded pills in his hands were far better than those his mother had begged for.

At least thirty percent of their medicinal potency was medicinal essence, all concentrated within them.

When medicinal essence made up fifty percent of a pill, it was called a low-grade pill. These pills accounted for more than eighty percent of the entire pill industry.

Sixty percent medicinal essence was called medium grade; seventy percent was called high grade; eighty percent was called high grade; ninety percent was called high grade; and so on, up to one hundred percent...

Hehe.

Long Chen did not want to think about that now.

It was far too abstract.

Perhaps someone might ask: what difference was there between fifty percent and sixty percent medicinal efficacy?

Wouldn't taking two low-grade pills be much better than taking one medium-grade pill?

Anyone asking that would be slaughtered.

Besides essence, pills also contained impurities.

Those impurities were substances the body could not absorb, and more crucially, they prevented some of the essence from being absorbed.

The saying “three parts medicine and three parts poison” was not merely a folk saying, but a truth.

When pills condensed, one inevitably produced another.

If this poison was not ingested over a long period, it would not have much effect.

But for a cultivator, pills were often essential for survival, and there was no telling how many one might consume over a lifetime.

When the pills within the body accumulated to a certain point, they became deadly poisons.

Pill toxins were the hardest kind of poison to eliminate, penetrating deep into the flesh, bone marrow, and even the soul. The more advanced the pill, the fewer its side effects.

The difference in effect between this pill and medium-grade pills would be more than tenfold, while the price would differ by more than a hundredfold.

Long Chen put away the five pills and tidied everything, including the pill furnace. Unable to hold on any longer, he fell asleep.

After sleeping for an unknown length of time, Long Chen felt a pair of warm hands stroking his face and heard faint murmurs, but he was too tired to wake up.

When Long Chen woke again, three days had already passed. He was ravenous, and after devouring a meal, he began another period of seclusion.

He swallowed a discarded pill and used his soul power to guide its medicinal power into the Yongquan Point beneath his foot.

That was where the Fengfu Star, the first star of the Nine Star Hegemon Body Technique, condensed.

“Bang!”

Long Chen shook his right foot, and the floor beneath him exploded, cracks spreading across the ground and throughout the room.

“Very good.

I've found the meridian route and the precise location.

Now I can truly make the attempt.”

Long Chen smiled slightly, and a low-grade Fengfu Pill appeared in his hand.

He tossed it straight into his mouth.

An extraordinarily pure energy erupted.

Under Long Chen's guidance, it rushed straight toward the Yongquan Point beneath his foot.

When the Yongquan Point on the sole of his foot stirred, it was like a dry riverbed being moistened.

With the influx of medicinal power, it was like a dragon raging there.

“Boom!”

There was an explosion, and terrifying energy overflowed.

Long Chen remained expressionless as a terrifying aura erupted.

The entire room shattered, smoke and dust billowed out, and waves of air spread in all directions.

The smoke and dust slowly dispersed, revealing Long Chen's handsome face.

His eyes shone with excitement.

Feeling a small, bean-shaped protrusion beneath his foot, he sensed boundless energy coursing through his entire body.

Long Chen wanted to look up at the sky and roar.

Long Chen's activity suddenly drew the attention of the entire marquis's manor, and everyone came over one after another.

Seeing that his mother had also arrived, Long Chen hurriedly said, “Mother, today is the day the crown prince enters Taixue Palace to study.

I just hurried through here.”

After he said this, a group of stunned people and a pile of rags withdrew, changed clothes, and headed straight for Taixue Palace.