Chapter 85: The Miraculous Efficacy of Refined Spirit Powder

This remnant, barely the size of a longan, held within it such a vast reserve of medicinal essence. If this pill had never been corrupted by the poison, how powerful would it have been? Qin Haoxuan thought he finally understood the old saying, “no alchemy, no cultivation.” A single pill contained more spiritual energy than he could absorb in many days of meditation. No wonder those senior brothers who had recruited them had looked upon the “second-generation cultivators” with such envy.

Qin Haoxuan gathered all the jade bottles Pu Hanzhong had left behind, several dozen in total. He then began to work on the pill, increasing the furnace’s fire to separate the essence from the dross. After about the time it takes for an incense stick to burn, the high-grade pill, unlike the low-grade ones, had not completely melted. Instead, a small, soybean-sized hole had opened in its side, and a stream of golden liquid began to flow out, trickling from the furnace’s small spout into a jade bottle. The liquid was like molten gold, viscous and dazzling, and it radiated a pure, dense spiritual energy that astonished him.

He filled twenty full bottles before the flow of essence finally stopped. He looked into the furnace; the pill was still whole, just with a small hole in it. “When I extracted from the low-grade pills, they turned to dross immediately,” he muttered to himself. “But this one is still intact. Could it be that I haven’t extracted everything?”

He sent his Spiritual Sense back into the pill and was stunned. The essence he had just collected was from only one of the ten rainbow-colored bands of light he had seen—the golden one. The other nine bands were still brimming with power. The channel he had emptied had now become just another empty branch in the pill’s internal maze. He drew a sharp breath. He imagined what this pill must have been like in its perfect state, with its thousands of internal channels all filled with multicolored essence. The amount of rare spirit herbs and the sheer difficulty of refining such a thing were unimaginable.

Shaking off his shock, he directed his Art of Essence Extraction at the most well-preserved of the high-grade pills, the one he had been unable to connect with before. This time, he found that the impenetrable white fog was much thinner. “Impossible,” he whispered. “My Spiritual Sense is mostly depleted. How could the fog be weaker now than when I was at full strength?” A flash of insight struck him. “Could it be… has my Art of Essence Extraction reached the second level? Senior Brother Pu said it might take a year of practice, but it’s only been half a day! It must be because I just purified a high-grade pill!”

Though it was a joyous occasion, he felt no great excitement. His Spiritual Sense was almost completely gone, and he was overwhelmed by a bone-deep weariness. He looked at the twenty bottles of golden liquid on the table and carefully hid them away. There was no way he could explain this to Pu Hanzhong. Some secrets, he decided, had to be kept even from his closest friends, for their own good. It was still the first half of the night; he had plenty of time to sleep and recover before his morning practice of the Celestial River Dao Art.

The next morning, he awoke feeling refreshed. After practicing his technique twice, Pu Hanzhong arrived.

“Yesterday I taught you how to extract essence from ruined pills. Today, I’ll teach you how to use that essence to make Qi-Circulating Powder,” he announced. His gaze then fell upon the three bottles of milky-white essence on the table, and his eyes went wide. “You finished all ten of the pills I left you?”

Qin Haoxuan just nodded.

Pu Hanzhong stared at him. He looked perfectly fine, not at all like someone who had overexerted their mind. After a long pause, a single word escaped his lips: “Monster.”

Qin Haoxuan just smiled, secretly glad he had hidden the other twenty bottles of golden liquid. The shock might have given his senior brother a heart attack. Pu, however, had grown somewhat accustomed to his junior brother’s miracles. If he could kill a Twentieth-Leaf expert, then perfectly purifying ten low-grade pills in one night wasn’t so strange, he supposed.

“Qi-Circulating Powder is a little different from other medicinal powders,” Pu began, pointing to two items on the table. “It requires a special ingredient: this is called Qi-Circulating Grass. On its own, it’s not very useful, but it is the essential catalyst for the powder. It costs about a thousand jin of first-grade corn per stalk.” He then pointed to a bottle of liquid. “And this is the essence from two thousand jin of corn. You need a spiritual medium like this to activate the grass’s properties. Today, I’ll show you the simplest method.”

He demonstrated the process, which was straightforward enough, the key being the addition of the grass. The finished powder, he explained, could create a small, fist-sized vortex in the Dantian that would double or triple one’s cultivation speed.

“Can I use the essence from the ruined pills instead?” Qin Haoxuan asked, his mind on his hidden stash of golden liquid. He knew it was an extravagant waste, but drinking the potent essence directly would be even more so.

“You can,” Pu nodded, but then stopped him from using the precious milky-white essence. “That’s too valuable. Use the corn essence for practice.”

After his senior brother left, Qin Haoxuan, confident he had mastered the basics, decided to proceed. He took out a stalk of Qi-Circulating Grass and poured in all twenty bottles of the golden essence he had extracted the night before. The process was more complex with the higher-grade ingredient, but after some effort, he succeeded. The resulting powder was a brilliant golden color, weighed a full two liang, and radiated an absurd, almost outrageous amount of spiritual energy that shocked even him.

He decided not to take it himself until Pu had a chance to inspect it. That afternoon, his senior brother returned and was immediately taken aback by the strange, potent powder. “What in the world did you make this with?”

“Some corn essence, and the pill essence I extracted yesterday,” Qin Haoxuan said, his answer both vague and truthful.

Pu examined it, but unable to identify its components, he resorted to a medicine-testing art. He found that it was incredibly potent but had no harmful side effects. “The purity is terrifying,” he said, stunned. “I suggest you divide this into ten smaller doses. A dose too large could be dangerous. You could literally die from being overfilled with spiritual energy.”

After dividing the powder, Qin Haoxuan took one of the small packets. He sat down to meditate, assumed the five-hearts-to-the-heavens posture, and swallowed it. The powder instantly transformed into a hot current that flowed into his Dantian. He felt a powerful jolt of spiritual energy, but the internal vortex Pu had described never appeared.

Pu was also confused. He had clearly felt the surge of energy. What happened?

Just as he was wondering, a massive, basin-sized vortex of black spiritual energy erupted into existence above Qin Haoxuan’s head. It was like an unfillable black hole, frantically pulling in spiritual energy from all directions and funneling it directly into his Immortal Sprout, nourishing its roots and strengthening its stem. The rate of absorption was more than ten times faster than when he cultivated with both his arts at once.

(End of Chapter)