Chapter 14: A Great Pill Master Delayed by Cultivation

After seeing off the old beggar and Wu Da's family, Su Han returned to his room.

The moment he shut the door, Su Han suddenly remembered something and slapped his forehead in frustration.

'Why did I just forget to ask if Wu Da has a younger brother nicknamed Wu Er, whose proper name is Wu Song!'

The thought was fleeting, and Su Han didn't dwell on it.

He shut the door tight, lay down on his bed, and closed his eyes, trying to clear his mind.

As Su Han deliberately probed his mind, memories concerning Three-Star Alchemy flooded forth like a tidal wave.

In a daze, Su Han seemed to see a blurry figure sitting cross-legged beside a Pill Furnace, performing Alchemy.

At first, the blurry figure in the vision was very young. Though his face was indistinct, his form suggested he was just a child of eight or nine.

The child performed Alchemy time and time again, failed time and time again, and analyzed his failures time and time again, until he finally succeeded for the first time.

After his first success in Alchemy, he repeated the process endlessly, constantly improving his success rate.

After mastering one type of Elixir, the figure would switch to refining another.

Countless failures, a first success, and then relentless practice—the cycle repeated itself.

And the blurry figure grew from a child of eight or nine into a teenager, then a young man in his twenties, a middle-aged man in his thirties and forties, until at last, he became a decrepit old man.

Throughout this process, his Alchemy continuously improved, and his failures grew fewer and fewer.

The vision reached its end. The old man sat by the roadside with a solemn expression, methodically placing one ingredient after another into the Pill Furnace. Su Han could clearly feel his gravity and tension, even across the gulf of Space-Time.

Once all the ingredients were inside, the old man formed a series of Elixir Formulas with his hands and drove them into the Pill Furnace. The caution in his eyes was the same as when he had first attempted to refine an Elixir.

However...

BOOM—

The same caution led to the same result: the furnace exploded.

Looking at the exploded Pill Furnace, the old man—his hair blasted into a chaotic mess—paid no mind to his appearance. The light in his eyes slowly dimmed.

He looked to the heavens and sighed, a silent question and a dying man's regret all at once.

The vision ended with the old man's heavenward sigh. As a bystander, Su Han had experienced all the alchemical trials, big and small, of the old man's entire life.

As he received these visions, it was as if Su Han had completely understood, absorbed, and assimilated the old man's entire lifetime of experience, making it his own.

Hah...

Opening his eyes, he let out a long breath.

The long life from the vision didn't affect Su Han personally. What he had truly absorbed was the experience of Alchemy and the understanding of medicinal ingredients.

Only after fully receiving this knowledge did Su Han realize... he had truly struck gold.

There were only a handful of Three-Star Alchemy Masters in the entire Jing Country; they held a pivotal position within the nation.

And the Three-Star Alchemy skill he had obtained was the complete life experience of a peak Three-Star Alchemy Master.

This Alchemy Master seemed to possess extraordinary talent for Alchemy, but unfortunately, his poor aptitude for cultivation restricted the growth of his alchemical skills.

Theoretically, refining an Elixir of a certain star-rank required a corresponding level of cultivation to support it.

Foundation Establishment Cultivators could only refine One-Star Elixirs. Those who had forged a Spirit Platform could hope to become Two-Star Pill Masters. The old man from his vision was a Cultivator at the Divine Sea Realm, capable of refining Three-Star Elixirs.

But after his cultivation reached the peak of the Divine Sea Realm, the old man was never able to step into the Immortal Platform Realm. This, in turn, meant he never succeeded in refining a Four-Star Elixir.

Unable to reach a higher peak, the old man could only continue to perfect his craft with lower-ranked Elixirs. In the end, his success rate for refining any Elixir at or below the three-star level had reached nearly one hundred percent.

What's more, in his later years, when refining Three-Star Elixirs, at least nine times out of ten, a Pill Pattern would appear, resulting in a Super Grade Elixir.

The final scene of the vision, the exploding furnace, represented the old man's only failure in the last twenty years of his life. It was also the last time he would ever fail at Alchemy.

By analyzing the ingredients, Su Han knew that the old man had been attempting to refine a batch of Little Creation Pills. The Little Creation Pill, also known as the Pseudo-Immortal Platform Pill, was a type of Four-Star Elixir.

When consumed by a Cultivator in the Immortal Platform Realm, it had a chance to improve the quality of their forged Immortal Platform, potentially allowing them to create a Nine-Layered Immortal Platform, or even the legendary Twelve-Layered Immortal Platform.

If a Cultivator below that realm consumed it, they could forcibly erect an Immortal Platform atop their Spirit Platform, allowing them to step into what was theoretically the Immortal Platform Realm.

Of course, it was only 'theoretical' because the Little Creation Pill could only help a Spirit Platform Realm Cultivator forge a single-layered Immortal Platform. They would become the lowest-ranked of all Immortal Platform Realm Cultivators, and their cultivation... would be unable to advance for the rest of their lives.

Even so, the Little Creation Pill was incredibly rare and one of the most precious of all Four-Star Elixirs.

It went without saying why the old man wanted to refine the Little Creation Pill. Unfortunately... he had failed.

But Su Han had carefully observed every step of the old man's Alchemy. Looking at it with the eyes of a peak Three-Star Alchemy Master, Su Han could tell that the old man had not made the slightest mistake during the process.

The sole reason his Alchemy failed was that his cultivation was insufficient to support the final condensation of the Little Creation Pill.

Therefore, Su Han was confident that, judging by alchemical skill alone, the old man was capable of refining Four-Star Elixirs. It was a pity his cultivation had held him back.

The fact that he had never once in his life succeeded in refining a Four-Star Elixir was the reason his skill was only rated as Three-Star Alchemy.

This realization made Su Han exclaim that he had truly struck it rich.

But once the initial excitement passed, he couldn't help but want to curse.

'That old man's Alchemy was clearly at a four-star level, yet due to his insufficient cultivation, he could only be a Three-Star Alchemy Master his entire life.'

'So... what about him?'

'He hadn't even begun Foundation Establishment. Didn't that mean that even with the skills of a Four-Star Alchemy Master, his own rank would only be One-Star? Or maybe... just an apprentice?'

'Damn it!'