“So the Living Elixir Technique has complete and incomplete versions?”
Well, after all, this was only the first lesson. No matter how anxious Qiongdann Laoren was, she wouldn’t teach them the complete technique.
Besides, some high-level cultivation methods can only be cultivated at higher realms; teaching them to Qi Refining disciples too early would do more harm than good.
But since they were already learning it, why not learn the complete version instead of the censored one?
Mu Yanxi directly chose: “Learn.”
Soon, she sank into the Taiqing Immortal Domain and experienced the refining process of the Living Elixir in the illusion realm collected by the Heavenly Tome Library.
At the same time, she viewed various records of the Living Elixir Technique, including many experience notes from seniors of the Spiritual Moon Palace.
Soon, Mu Yanxi realized that she had indeed underestimated the Living Elixir Technique. She thought it was just a purely service-oriented technique for benefiting others, but that wasn’t entirely the case.
First, the principle of the Living Elixir Technique was somewhat similar to cultivators forming golden cores and demonic beasts forming monster cores, but it also incorporated much knowledge and content from external alchemy.
By swallowing heavenly materials and earthly treasures, the most essential medicinal properties were concentrated into a single miraculous pill. The stronger the medicinal properties, the more valuable the living elixir.
To filter out the medicinal properties from the heavenly materials and earthly treasures, the cultivator relied on a powerful digestive ability to extract and condense the useful components into a living elixir, while separating and expelling the useless parts.
In external alchemy refining, this step usually required the alchemist to carefully and repeatedly purify by hand. Even one small mistake could ruin the raw material.
This was one of the key points of the Living Elixir Technique.
The swallowed heavenly materials and earthly treasures included not only spiritual herbs and immortal flowers, but also materials from demonic beasts, monster cores, and even spirit mineral essence, immortal gold, divine iron, and so on.
The Living Elixir Technique had a matching digestion and metabolism method that could digest, purify, and separate anything eaten, distinguishing the most essential components, the useful parts, and the completely useless waste.
This digestion method was especially crucial. Only by mastering it could one separate medicinal properties from dregs and truly begin refining a living elixir.
The higher one’s cultivation, the more advanced the heavenly materials and earthly treasures one could swallow.
In fact, this digestion method was the foundation of the Living Elixir Technique. Only after learning it could one practice the Living Elixir Technique.
But then, there was content not recorded in the Living Elixir Technique books, but accompanied by a large number of experience notes and annotations.
That was: in the Living Elixir Technique, one could artificially decide how much of the ingredients to incorporate.
Of course, that was obvious. The key point was that the person refining the living elixir could choose to intercept some of the medicinal properties and store them in the body, not injecting them into the living elixir.
According to the experiences of successive seniors of the Spiritual Moon Palace, among ordinary heavenly materials and earthly treasures, only about ten percent were truly essential; thirty percent were very useful medicinal properties; forty percent were relatively useless scraps; and the last twenty percent were completely useless waste.
This ratio would fluctuate, but generally it was like this.
Alchemy refining was the process of purifying impurities as much as possible and retaining the essential parts.
The purer the retained essence, the higher the quality of the final pill. Completely pure quality was the nine-cycle immortal pill.
Mu Yanxi was indeed aware of this, since she had studied alchemy before.
How to purify heavenly materials and earthly treasures had always been the biggest problem and challenge in alchemy.
No matter which sect’s alchemy path, they would research various methods of refinement. Whether the fire refining method or the water quenching method, the purpose was the same: purification!
And in the Living Elixir Technique, after separating the essence and waste of the heavenly materials and earthly treasures, the essence went into the pill, the waste was expelled from the body, and the rest was absorbed by oneself.
Seeing this, Mu Yanxi almost let out an exclamation.
‘There’s actually such an operation?’
But the notes showed that all the seniors had done this, and the customers had no objections. On the contrary, they generally believed that the smaller the proportion of raw materials in the final living elixir, the better the pill.
That was certain, as it was the same in alchemy. The higher the purification level, the closer to pure essence, the more “waste” was refined away.
The higher the quality of the pill, any extra impurity would affect the final quality. This was basic common sense.
And high-level cultivators who chose the Living Elixir Technique would definitely think that quality was more important than quantity.
After all, since they chose a method that only produced one pill each time, if they wanted quantity, they might as well open a furnace to refine pills themselves.
Therefore, the higher the female cultivator’s level in the Living Elixir Technique, the better her purification, the higher the quality of the pill she refined, and the more benefits she herself received. After all, the useful intermediate components were all intercepted.
Seeing this, Mu Yanxi had a very strange expression.
How to put it? Although she knew that the employers wanted the highest quality pill, and as long as the Spiritual Moon Palace female cultivators produced a pill of acceptable quality, the employers wouldn’t care about the other “waste,” it still felt like the female cultivators were taking a cut in the middle.
The following notes further verified Mu Yanxi’s guess.
If the previous part was still legitimate benefits, then a large portion of the following notes discussed the techniques of interception.
For example, certain medicinal materials complemented each other, and when combined, could enhance medicinal properties, so one could intercept more without affecting the final pill quality.
Or simply absorb some of the essence oneself and ask the employer for more materials. As long as the pill was refined, those were considered reasonable losses.
Or even more excessively, one could intercept a portion from each medicinal material, refine Yin-Yang twin pills, and finally produce one finished pill to satisfy the employer while keeping one for oneself.
Seeing this, Mu Yanxi directly exited the Taiqing Immortal Domain, a nameless anger rising in her heart.
Were these sneaky and crafty techniques supposed to be recorded by the respected great seniors?
Wasn’t the Spiritual Moon Palace’s tenet to provide the highest quality service to high-level cultivators?
If you are greedy today, and she skims tomorrow, how could such parasitic behavior refine good living elixirs?!
In her previous life, Mu Yanxi had seen alchemy techniques written by alchemy grandmasters, all of which were about striving for perfection and pursuing the ultimate pill with the sincerest and most dedicated attitude.
But this Living Elixir Technique, in the later stages, instead of researching how to produce the most perfect pill, pursued how to take a cut without reducing the pill’s quality.
If one had even a trace of this mindset, it was doomed that they could never refine an ultimate pill.
The Dao of alchemy was called Dao precisely because it required an attitude of pursuing the extreme. No matter how clever the skills of intercepting and skimming, the Living Elixir Technique could only be a technique.
“Yanxi, what’s wrong? You look angry?”
Shangguan Yun’s voice came, interrupting Mu Yanxi’s thoughts.
“Ah? No, it’s nothing. Cultivating the Living Elixir Technique made me a bit uncomfortable.”
Mu Yanxi quickly explained, and she was telling the truth.
“Hmm, it’s indeed uncomfortable to swallow foreign objects into the body at first, but the teacher will soon teach a digestion method to help us quickly refine the medicinal properties. It’ll be easier then.”
Shangguan Yun thought it was just physical discomfort.
“I know.”
Mu Yanxi smiled bitterly. She already knew this digestion method.
And the most uncomfortable part was precisely this digestion method.