Immortal Cultivation: Starting as a Fortune Cultivator - Chapter 22

After refining all the Qi Gathering Pills,

Ye Qingxuan prepared to start refining Spirit Increase Pills!

Among the spiritual herbs used for the Spirit Increase Pill, the main ingredient was the Earth Spirit Flower.

The Earth Spirit Flower has twelve petals of different colors, each containing the essence of one of the twelve major elements of the Di Xuan Realm.

This is also the main reason why the Spirit Increase Pill can be suitable for everyone and enhance the conversion efficiency of spiritual roots.

The Earth Spirit Flower has a wide range of uses. Flowers of different ages can serve as the main or auxiliary ingredients for different pills.

For example, the Earth Spirit Flower used in the Spirit Increase Pill is the lowest grade, one-year-old Earth Spirit Flower.

It’s not that higher-year versions aren’t used, but rather, with a Qi Refining realm cultivation level, one simply cannot withstand the excessively potent medicinal power of an older flower.

The so-called ‘one-year’ doesn’t necessarily mean it grew for one year; it refers to the level of medicinal power it contains.

The concentration of spiritual energy varies greatly in different places, so the time required for a spiritual herb to accumulate one year’s worth of medicinal power also varies.

In the Profound Heaven Mountain Range, the growth speed of spiritual herbs is astonishingly fast, not to mention within the Blessed Lands controlled by the Profound Heaven Sect’s Blessed Land Cultivators.

Even a mere first-tier Blessed Land, influenced by other high-grade spiritual veins and assisted by the Blessed Land Cultivator, boasts spiritual energy concentration comparable to second-tier or even third-tier spiritual lands in the outside world.

This is one of the reasons the Profound Heaven Sect vigorously develops the Blessed Land Cultivator path.

Ye Qingxuan took out the spiritual herbs required for the Spirit Increase Pill and mentally reviewed the refinement process.

Confirming everything was correct, he began his first attempt at refining the Spirit Increase Pill.

One by one, the spiritual herbs were placed into the cauldron at different times, slowly refined by the Dao Fire.

It had to be said, refining the Spirit Increase Pill was indeed much more complex. The number of herbs used alone was seven!
That was four more herbs than those used for the Qi Gathering Pill.

Furthermore, refining the Spirit Increase Pill had strict requirements regarding the timing of herb insertion, refinement duration, and even the sequence and timing of fusion.

If not for Ye Qingxuan’s astonishing memory and his Perfection-level Fire Control Technique, he might have failed long ago.

As time passed, Ye Qingxuan proceeded step by step according to the Spirit Increase Pill formula.

Soon, half an hour had passed, and Ye Qingxuan reached the stage of fusing the herbal essences.

Under Ye Qingxuan’s control, the essences derived from the herbs began to merge one after another, with extremely precise timing and sequence!

As the herbal essences began to merge, the cauldron gathered spiritual energy!

Seeing this, the corner of Ye Qingxuan’s mouth lifted slightly.

But the next moment, the gathered spiritual energy suddenly became chaotic and dispersed. The herbal essences inside the cauldron instantly evaporated as a result!
Witnessing this scene, Ye Qingxuan said in disbelief:

“How is this possible? I didn’t make any mistakes. How could the Spirit Increase Pill condensation process fail?”

Ye Qingxuan was puzzled and confused in his heart, but he had no teacher at this moment to resolve his doubts.

The Profound Heaven Sect naturally had its own Alchemy Hall, where dedicated individuals answered the questions of the sect’s alchemists.

However, that required spending contribution points.

Unless Ye Qingxuan could pass the Alchemy Hall’s assessment and join the hall, he could get some opportunities for free guidance.

To continuously ‘freeload’ alchemy knowledge without cost, he would need to display astonishing alchemy talent, become a disciple of an Alchemy Hall Elder, and then naturally receive the elder’s full support and cultivation.

However, this was not the path Ye Qingxuan wanted to take.

If he joined the Alchemy Hall as an elder’s disciple, he would likely not be permitted to become a Blessed Land Cultivator!
As a long-lived being with low innate cultivation talent, becoming a Blessed Land Cultivator was Ye Qingxuan’s best form of camouflage.

The long lifespan of a Blessed Land Cultivator would allow him to lay low within the Profound Heaven Sect indefinitely, without worrying about his public-facing lifespan.

A temporary setback was not enough to make Ye Qingxuan waver from his chosen path!
“Even relying solely on myself, I refuse to believe that with my comprehension, I cannot forge a path in alchemy!”

Ye Qingxuan thought to himself. He then took out the Spirit Increase Pill formula and carefully read through it again.

After confirming he hadn’t made any errors, Ye Qingxuan closed his eyes and began recalling all the details of the alchemy process he had observed with his spiritual sense.

He immersed himself in the previous refinement attempt, deeply contemplating his own techniques.

Watching the replay of the refinement process in his mind, a sudden realization dawned on Ye Qingxuan:
“It’s too mechanical!”

That was right. His approach to pill refinement was too mechanical.

After this realization, Ye Qingxuan slowly opened his eyes and murmured softly:

“So that’s how it is.”

Although he had strictly followed the formula, his entire process was too mechanical, lacking a certain adaptability.

If pill refinement could be successfully achieved simply by strictly adhering to the formula’s steps, then why would the barrier to becoming an alchemist be so high?
The pill formula could only provide an alchemist with a general direction.

While following all the details of the formula might indeed produce a pill, those details were predicated on identical conditions.

Even differences in climate and weather could necessitate changes in the refinement details.

Therefore, to become a true alchemist, one must comprehend and master this adaptability.

Only by gradually understanding and controlling this variability could one truly become an alchemist!
After mastering this variability, using the pill formula as a blueprint, and adapting according to external changes, one could truly become an alchemist.

This was also the key to refining high-grade pills!
The reason he had successfully refined the Qi Gathering Pill earlier was simply because the Qi Gathering Pill was too low-level, with limited variability.

Thus, Ye Qingxuan could succeed using a mechanical approach.

But the Spirit Increase Pill was different!

Although pills are ranked from first to ninth tier, and both Qi Gathering Pills and Spirit Increase Pills are first-tier pills,

pills of the same tier have further subdivisions. Each tier can be finely categorized into four major grades: Low-Grade, Mid-Grade, High-Grade, and Top-Grade!
Under this subdivision, the Qi Gathering Pill is considered a first-tier Low-Grade pill, while the Spirit Increase Pill is a first-tier Top-Grade pill.

This was also why Ye Qingxuan found the market flooded with Qi Gathering Pills.

It was simply because the difficulty of refining the first-tier Low-Grade Qi Gathering Pill was too low.

Basically, as long as one memorized the formula and made a few attempts, producing Qi Gathering Pills wasn’t difficult for many cultivators.

After all, upon becoming cultivators, their bodies underwent comprehensive evolution, and everyone’s memory was quite good.

As for so-called comprehension geniuses like Ye Qingxuan, their soul origin was simply different from ordinary people, with a stronger foundation. Thus, the transformation brought about by cultivation was also greater than that of ordinary people.

This was the fundamental reason why comprehension geniuses could consistently lead others in comprehension.

However, if the cultivation gap was too large, no matter how heaven-defying one’s comprehension was, a low-level cultivator could not compare to a peak expert.

Did they think the cultivation realms others painstakingly achieved were for nothing? Qualitative change caused by quantitative accumulation was also extraordinary!
After understanding the reason for his failure with the Spirit Increase Pill, Ye Qingxuan did not choose to stop refining.

Instead, after meditating to recover his spiritual energy, he started the cauldron again.

To truly comprehend, master this variability, and turn it into his instinct, he needed to continuously refine pills and gain insights through practice.

Relying solely on solitary pondering would not allow him to master this change.

So, over the next few days, Ye Qingxuan continuously attempted to refine the Spirit Increase Pill.

Although each attempt ended in failure, Ye Qingxuan gained significant insights from each failure.

As his accumulated insights grew,

Ye Qingxuan finally, on the third day, barely managed to refine his first batch of Spirit Increase Pills.

He failed again on the fourth day, but Ye Qingxuan wasn’t discouraged; instead, the smile on his face gradually widened.

Success on the fifth day!
Success on the sixth day!
Failure on the seventh day!
By the ninth day, as a batch of Spirit Increase Pills was successfully refined smoothly, yielding five pills, Ye Qingxuan had finally completely mastered this variability.

From then on, in the following days, Ye Qingxuan never failed again when refining Spirit Increase Pills.

Moreover, the number of pills per batch began to gradually increase as Ye Qingxuan’s proficiency improved!

However, the Spirit Increase Pill was, after all, a first-tier Top-Grade pill. Given Ye Qingxuan’s current cultivation level, refining one batch consumed a tremendous amount of spiritual energy.

Therefore, to avoid affecting his own cultivation, in the days that followed, Ye Qingxuan would only refine one batch of Spirit Increase Pills per day.

As the number of Spirit Increase Pills Ye Qingxuan refined increased, his cultivation resources finally became abundantly supplied.

Previously, relying on the thirty Spirit Increase Pills distributed by the sect per month, he could only use one pill per day on average for cultivation.

Now, Ye Qingxuan could use three Spirit Increase Pills for cultivation every day!
One Spirit Increase Pill could sustain its effect for three hours, during which it doubled Ye Qingxuan’s cultivation speed.

By taking three Spirit Increase Pills daily, Ye Qingxuan’s enhanced cultivation time increased from three hours to nine hours, significantly boosting his cultivation speed.

It wasn’t that Ye Qingxuan didn’t want to take more pills, but rather that his body’s meridians couldn’t withstand the prolonged onslaught of spiritual energy.

However, during these long periods of cultivation, Ye Qingxuan’s meridians weren’t without gains; their tolerance limit was also gradually increasing!