Tempered Immortal

Chapter 24: Pros and Cons

While clearly analyzing the situation, Lin Xuan attempted to resolve the problem. 

By first increasing the speed of the blue lights, there would be a more powerful force pushing against the impurities.

However, the problem lied in figuring out exactly how much he should increase the speed of the flow.

If the increase was too low, nothing would change, but if the increase was too high, there would be more than what the pill can handle, and the pill would explode, resulting in a failure.

Lin Xuan began by increasing the speed slightly, increasing the pressure on the impurities, and pushing them out a bit further, Lin Xuan continued in such a careful manner, and little by little, the impurities were finally pushed out after an hour.

“Whew!”

Lin Xuan laid on his bed tiredly with his clothes drenched in sweat. The purification exhausted him more than a whole day of cultivation.

He also held the hint of a pleased smile on his face, moving his right hand in front of his face. Lin Xuan took a look at the pill in his hand and a refreshing fragrance to drift by his nose.

The result, mid-grade Purifying Essence Pill.

Although he has never seen one before, Lin Xuan recognized it from the descriptions in the medical books. It had the same color and appearance as the book, a genuine mid-grade pill.

With a pale blue surface, and exuding a thicker herbal smell than the low-grade pill, the success rate of refining one was less than one fifth, usually, when one prepared five furnaces worth of pills, there would often be four trash pills. But the success rate was still not too low. However, this was only possible under the hands of an experienced alchemist, as such behavior was extremely extravagant, and only a few large factions could afford to do so. As a result, in a small sect such as Whirlwind Cloud Valley, there are no mid-grade pills.

In theory, a mid-grade pill could be exchanged for ten low-grade pills of the same kind; however, there was no real market price, since the few clans and sects that could produce mid-grade pills would never sell them.

Holding the pill in his hand, he studied it over and over again. In the end, Lin Xuan decided to finally stop thinking about it and see just how much better a mid-grade pill is.

Getting up from his bed, and sitting cross-legged on the ground, Lin Xuan threw the small blue pill into his mouth.

As he focused his Spiritual Sense into his Dantian, Lin Xuan began cultivating as the pill began dispersing warm energy into his Dantian.

Similar to the time when he took nine low-grade pills at once, the mid-grade pill gave off warm energy, although the heat is not as hot as that time.

As the pill fully dissolved, the energy produced is truly on a different level, and although it was hot, it gave a feeling similar to soaking in a hot spring.

Since the pill had fewer impurities than the low-grade pill, the energy it gave off was purer and stronger.

Although there are some records in the medical books telling what to expect from a mid-grade pill, it was completely different to experience it after all. Lin Xuan’s heart is filled with joy, but he did not allow it to affect his mind, as he concentrated his Spiritual Sense into refining the pill.

His Dantian gathered the Spiritual Qi, and compared to how it was at the first layer, both the quality and quantity of Spiritual Qi has changed dramatically.

If it was originally a fine strand of hair, it was now as thick as a matchstick, with a much deeper, almost dark color in comparison to the previous pale white color.

After gathering the Spiritual Qi, it began to flow, slowly passing through his kidneys and eventually mixing with the energy from the pill.

This was the most important step, as it was when one used the energy from the pill to nourish one’s own Spiritual Qi.

Similar to how the roots of a plant would absorb nutrients to grow, his Spiritual Qi was doing the same thing as it circulated.

He circulated the Spiritual Qi nine times!

…

From the time Lin Xuan took the pill ‘till now, it has already become noon. It seemed that the time it took to refine a mid-grade pill was slightly longer than the time for one low-grade pill, so of course, the effects were also more pronounced.

Using his Spiritual Sense to look over his body, Lin Xuan felt that the spiritual power in his body has undergone significant growth. It seemed that the effects of a mid-grade pill at the fourth layer were much more significant than a low-grade pill.

In other words, it seemed that the grade of the pill really matched up with the grade of cultivation.

Although this was only a guess, from his own experiences, the problem that lied in front of Lin Xuan now was how difficult it was to refine a mid-grade pill.

After six months of using the blue lights, Lin Xuan of course had a lot of experience and could purify a low-grade pill easily, but a mid-grade pill…

Honestly, just having that one success was lucky, as Lin Xuan was not sure he could do so again. It wasn’t that he couldn’t purify it, but rather the process was too time-consuming and cost too much energy, on top of the low success rate.

For example, right now Lin Xuan could purify a whole bottle of trash pills after spending one day and night working, with a success rate of about one in three. His body could now support six to seven low-grade purifications without rest.

However, with his current amount of energy, he could only purify one mid-grade pill, with a very low success rate.

In other words, he could get mid-grade pills, but it was extremely inefficient, and it would decrease the speed of his progress.

What to do now?

Lying in bed, Lin Xuan began to think in silence for a moment until finally deciding to purify mid-grade pills.

The reason for such a decision was that continuing to cultivate under the effects of low-grade pills showed very little effect, and if he wanted to break through the next bottleneck like that, he did not know how many months it would take.

Purifying mid-grade pills would take more time, but the more he does it the better he will get so in the long run mid-grade pills are more beneficial.

He couldn’t allow himself to become complacent with just low-grade pills, since if he were to back down from mid-grade pills because it was too hard, that mentality would also affect his cultivation.

So he was only left with the option to overcome.

Lin Xuan believed that with constant practice, the efficiency of his purification will also increase, which will in turn increase his cultivation speed.

Looking at the long run, although it would take time to master purifying mid-grade pills, it was still absolutely worthwhile.

After carefully going over the pros and cons of the situation, Lin Xuan decided on his plan for future cultivation, and once again continued in his efforts.