Cultivation: I Can Solidify Equipment Attributes

Chapter 280: Chapter 270: Advancement in Both Alchemy and Techniques

The Pill Furnace in the stone house had hardly cooled down recently.

Since his Tier One Alchemy reached Great Success, Li Yuan had been filling every spare moment at the Pill Furnace.

After finishing his business in the marketplace, he would return to the stone house to refine a batch.

If he had even an hour to spare before heading to the ruins, he could start a batch then, too. After many consecutive days, his control over the heat, division of ingredients, and Pill Collection process all grew more and more practiced.

At this stage of repetitive practice, he no longer needed to go through trial and error.

Li Yuan already had a clear idea of which fire intensity to use for which pill, which ingredients were prone to clashing midway through, when to suppress the flames, and when to stabilize the Pill Liquid.

Furthermore, thanks to the Pill Completion Refinement buff, pills he previously had only a sixty to seventy percent chance of making now succeeded at a stable rate of around eighty percent. The quality of the finished pills was also far more uniform. Fewer failed pills meant more successful ones that truly counted toward his practice, and so his progress in Tier One Alchemy naturally accelerated.

One day, after Li Yuan collected a furnace of Wood Spirit Pills, the panel finally vibrated softly.

[Skill: Tier One Alchemy — Perfection (0/5000)]

Tier One Alchemy, Perfection.

Li Yuan glanced at the panel but didn’t stop. He first dispersed the lingering heat in the Pill Furnace before sorting the medicinal ingredients on the table again.

Tier One Perfection had been reached.

Li Yuan took out the special pill formula he had traded for earlier and examined it, placing it alongside several sets of Body Refining ingredients.

He had already familiarized himself with the method for this Skill.

Infuse a pill with one’s blood essence, add medicinal ingredients, and finally use it to nourish oneself.

This type of pill followed a path not commonly used by ordinary Cultivators; it was inherently geared toward Body Refining.

Now that his Tier One Alchemy had reached Perfection, he was finally qualified to attempt it.

Li Yuan didn’t rush to start. Instead, he first went over the materials one by one.

Once everything was sorted, Li Yuan fired up the furnace.

This first part wasn’t too different from normal Alchemy. The real trouble was the step of infusing his blood essence into the furnace. If he was too early, the ingredients wouldn’t have dissolved yet, and the blood essence would be wasted. If he was too late, the Pill Liquid in the furnace would have already stabilized, preventing the blood essence from entering.

Li Yuan stared at the Pill Furnace, waiting until the ingredients had melted into the most suitable liquid state before raising his hand and forcing out a wisp of blood essence.

The moment the blood essence entered the furnace, the Pill Liquid immediately began to change.

The liquid, which had been gradually condensing, seemed to come alive. It didn’t surge outward; instead, the entire mass grew heavier, and its color rapidly deepened. Li Yuan pressed a finger down, stabilizing the flames, then slowly guided the process according to the Skill’s method.

The entire process was not easy.

Once the blood essence was added, every small change inside the Pill Furnace became much harder to control. Fortunately, with his foundation in the Alchemy Dao at Tier One Perfection, Li Yuan didn’t panic and steadily pushed forward along the prescribed path.

The first batch ended in failure.

Li Yuan didn’t even frown. He simply cleared the residue from the furnace and started again with a new set of materials.

This kind of Tier Two pill was difficult to begin with; failing on the first try was normal.

Not until the fifth batch did the Pill Liquid in the furnace finally stabilize.

The medicinal power, brewed from both blood essence and ingredients, finally stopped dissipating in the final stage and slowly condensed into two dark-red pellets.

Li Yuan raised a hand, beckoned, and collected the pills.

The surface of the pills bore a faint, blood-red pattern. Their medicinal power wasn’t ostentatious, but it was profound.

The Body Refining Pill. A success.

[Skill: Tier Two Alchemy — Initiate (0/200)]

His Tier Two Alchemy had also reached the Initiate level.

Li Yuan had just placed the pills on the table when the panel popped up.

[Equippable item detected: Body Refining Pill (Complete)]

[Equipment Trait Preview: Medicine-Refined Strong Body (Green)]

[Effect: Body Refining pills will not leave impurities in the body. Your physical strength will increase by up to 30%. The increase is determined by the number of Body Refining pills consumed.]

[Permanence Condition Preview: Reach Perfection in one Tier Two Body Refining Technique (0/1).]

[Current equipment slots are full (5/5). Replace a currently equipped item?]

A green trait.

Li Yuan’s gaze paused for a moment before he dismissed the panel.

’This trait is powerful.’

’Body Refining pills leaving no impurities, plus a gradual increase in physical strength... that practically smooths over the most troublesome part of the Body Refining path. Especially since I’m already practicing the Nameless Body Refining Technique. If I can equip this trait later, its effect will be significant.’

Li Yuan put away the two Body Refining Pills, then sat down cross-legged and began to regulate his breathing.

Not long after he had successfully refined the pills, he felt a disturbance through his Spirit Vein perception.

Li Yuan’s focus sharpened, and his Divine Sense followed the familiar path of the large Spirit Vein to investigate. In his perception, there were indeed people active again near the underground branch veins.

Not just one person, but several separate auras, and it seemed to be mixed with Demonic Qi.

Li Yuan didn’t move immediately. He first observed the group’s route of advance to get a clear picture.

After watching for a moment, Li Yuan came to a conclusion.

’These people are indeed investigating the Spirit Vein.’

’But they’re following the old routes that the Demon Cultivators already explored.’

Li Yuan had already explored those paths himself. He knew they only led to the peripheral branch veins and a few misaligned perception nodes; they couldn’t reach the true core at all.

In other words, this group hadn’t truly reached the core yet.

Li Yuan memorized these auras and their routes, then remained in the stone house to continue his Alchemy.

Meanwhile, the Mist Forest Marketplace was becoming more and more prosperous.

Several more shops had opened on both sides of the main street, and the temporary residences on the outskirts of the marketplace were getting more crowded.

Loose Cultivators, Array Masters, merchants doing business at the front lines, and even openly active Demon Cultivators all mingled together.

It was crowded during the day and lively at night. Even the once-quiet northern street entrance now had people setting up night stalls.

The livelier the marketplace became, the faster information flowed.

Li Yuan soon heard a piece of news.

The Dark Abyss Association had begun to publicly purchase Spirit Vein-prospecting Magical Artifacts in the marketplace.

Not only were they buying Magical Artifacts, but they were also recruiting people.

At the same time, Li Yuan sensed another development near the Spirit Vein.

The Primordial Yang Sect was also setting up an Array—an Array around the perimeter of the Spirit Vein.

It wasn’t a large, obvious Array, but a Concealment Array being slowly laid out along the Spirit Vein’s perimeter and several of its branch veins.

This Concealment Array also seemed to have some kind of detection function.

When Li Yuan first noticed it, he even thought it was some old Restriction that had been newly activated. But by following the disturbance, he quickly figured it out.

’This isn’t something old; it was laid down recently.’

’And this Array is very interesting.’

Its detection strength wasn’t high, and its intricacy wasn’t particularly outstanding. If you looked at any single node, you could even call it ordinary.

But when linked together layer by layer, it was a different story.

’This thing is extremely complex.’

Many nodes, many circuits, and many layers of concealment.

Some Array Patterns were hidden next to pre-existing old Restrictions, while others simply used the natural reflux of spiritual power in the earth’s strata as camouflage. If not for Li Yuan’s perception of the large Spirit Vein, combined with his now-permanent ’Vein-Guarding Perception Pattern’, an ordinary Array Master on the outside would likely find it very difficult to see the full picture.

This Array obviously didn’t rely on the strength of its individual points to be effective.

Instead, it relied on its many layers, complex structure, and concealed positions to slowly shroud the entire outer perimeter of the Spirit Vein’s branches.

Standing in his stone house, Li Yuan sent his Divine Sense on a slow sweep along the edge of the Spirit Vein, memorizing each of the new, camouflaged nodes.

Li Yuan finished memorizing the last of the changes to the Spirit Vein before retracting his Divine Sense.

The Pill Furnace in the stone house had already heated up again.

On the table lay the newly refined pills and the yet-unsorted ingredients. Outside the window, the lights of the marketplace burned brightly, and the faint sounds of the bustling street drifted in from a distance.

Li Yuan sat down before the Pill Furnace once more, raised a hand to control the flames, and continued refining the next batch of pills.

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