Sure enough, after all the female disciples had formed their pill embryos, Qiongdan Laoren began teaching everyone the digestion and purification method and distributed a batch of spirit fruits for them to try.
This batch of spirit fruits was holy fire fruits, rich in fire-attribute spiritual power. They could enhance the power of flames such as heart fire, pill fire, and infant fire among cultivators’ fires, but had no obvious effect on Qi Refining cultivators.
Moreover, these spirit fruits had a high yield, growing in clusters like grapes, so there was ample supply for the disciples to slowly practice digestion and purification.
Mu Yanxi, who had already basically mastered the digestion method, naturally knew how to purify the medicinal properties of the holy fire fruit. But when it came time to actually purify, she began to hesitate.
As mentioned earlier, the purification in the Living Elixir Technique was not like the fire refining method or water quenching method that artificially separated impurities.
Instead, it was accomplished through the cultivator’s powerful digestive capabilities. Simply put, the female cultivator absorbed the secondary components with her body, eliminated the completely indigestible impurities, and what remained was the essence.
Therefore, to forge a good living elixir, the more non-essential components you digested, the better the final pill formation result.
Even the notes had many seniors writing “better to have nothing than something shoddy.” To purify the essence as much as possible, one could even absorb a portion of the effective components along with the essence.
This was acceptable in the employer’s eyes; on the contrary, if residual components affected the pill quality, the employer would be angry.
“I’m not maliciously diverting or taking advantage. I’m just going all out to forge a good pill.”
Mu Yanxi consoled herself like this and operated the digestion method at full power.
Her heart fire grew even more vigorous and merged into the pill embryo.
The scorching medicinal properties of the holy fire fruit were absorbed and thrown into the heart fire, allowing Mu Yanxi, the owner of the grass-type pill embryo, to understand why Qiongdan Laoren had given them holy fire fruits to practice with.
Diverting the components of the holy fire fruit could strengthen their heart fire.
The remaining essence was only a fiery red mass, which, when injected into the pill embryo, made it easier to refine a living elixir. This was mutually reinforcing.
After all the disciples were able to successfully separate the essence of the holy fire fruit using the digestion method, Qiongdan Laoren took out a basket of green eggplant leaves and had the disciples swallow and digest them.
This batch of green eggplant leaves was even more useless; they were just leaves from the green eggplant tree.
What was useful was only the green eggplant fruit that bore fruit once every hundred years. The leaves fell off periodically and had no medicinal properties aside from containing a fair amount of wood attribute components.
However, once wood attribute components were added to the heart fire and holy fire fruit essence, it easily achieved the purpose of adding fuel to the fire, making the fire-attribute spirit pill’s quality higher.
This Qiongdan Laoren truly was a Grandmaster of Alchemy.
While the disciples swallowed the leaves and practiced digestion, Qiongdan Laoren also taught more knowledge about the Living Elixir Technique.
The Living Elixir Technique was actually the same as external pill refining; it also required recipes. Only by using the right recipe could one forge a specific pill.
Although the Living Elixir Technique purified essence through digestion and slowly nurtured the pill with the cultivator’s heart fire, leading to an extremely low failure rate, it did not mean you could just recklessly consume medicine.
If you encountered two medicinal ingredients with conflicting properties that exploded inside your body, congratulations—you could go reincarnate.
Additionally, it also required main medicine and auxiliary medicine, medicinal property fusion, and pill extraction—the process was actually similar to external pill refining.
Furthermore, Qiongdan Laoren also said that if one could refine a Heavenly Fire, they could use that Heavenly Fire to refine pills, and the quality of the pills would be even better.
“That’s all for today’s lesson. The homework assignment is for each of you to forge a holy fire pill. Come to this Danhua Palace to select the required medicinal ingredients.
The disciple who spends the fewest medicinal ingredients and produces the highest quality pill will receive a reward from me.”
As he spoke, Qiongdan Laoren took out a jade slip and said:
“These are my personally recorded alchemy insights. The disciple who gets first place in this assignment will be allowed to see it once.”
“Wait a moment, do you mean these are your own alchemy insights?”
Soon, a female disciple realized what he was saying.
“That’s right, exactly what you’re thinking. Although they are this old man’s personal insights and don’t involve the secret alchemy heritage of Yao Immortal Valley, they are still enough for you to master true traditional alchemy.”
“Perhaps after reading them, you might have hope of becoming a Grandmaster of Alchemy surpassing this old man in the future.”
Qiongdan Laoren laughed.
His words caused an uproar.
Who didn’t want to learn true alchemy?
Everyone knew a common truth: as long as you knew alchemy, you could achieve spirit stone freedom and become a Grandmaster of Alchemy respected by all, even begged on bended knee.
Among all the great paths in the cultivation realm, the dao of alchemy was the easiest path to achieve class jump.
After all, the Living Elixir Technique could only nurture pills internally. Forging one pill might take days, months, or even years or decades, and required immense effort throughout. It could only add icing on the cake, but could never defy heaven to change one’s fate.
Upon hearing that they could obtain Qiongdan Laoren’s alchemy insights, almost all the disciples were in a frenzy.
Most disciples were carefully studying the holy fire pill recipe he had left behind, hoping to become the first place winner and see the Grandmaster of Alchemy’s alchemy insights, to become a true alchemist.
Mu Yanxi, however, sneered inwardly.
‘Isn’t this just a scheme with no capital?’
‘Attract disciples to painstakingly forge holy fire pills for him, and he could take them all with just one word “homework.” In exchange, he offered alchemy insights that cost him nothing.’
Having read several cultivation methods from the Heavenly Tome Library, Mu Yanxi was well aware of the difference between insight notes and true cultivation methods.
Although a Grandmaster of Alchemy’s insights were indeed precious and valuable, they did not come with the alchemy heritage or pill recipes.
They might be very valuable to an already initiated alchemist, but for a completely uninitiated disciple, even after reading the insight notes, they were still far from truly becoming an alchemist.
Moreover, a set of alchemy notes could be shown to disciples repeatedly and used as a reward over and over.
Qiongdan Laoren hadn’t even said these were his most essential alchemy insights; perhaps they were just some casually written beginner teaching notes.
However, Mu Yanxi estimated that if it were truly Qiongdan Laoren’s authentic insights, those uninitiated disciples wouldn’t understand them anyway. Instead, beginner notes like these would be more helpful to them.
Since Qiongdan Laoren boasted that just reading the notes would make one an alchemist, Mu Yanxi estimated that they were indeed beginner notes, which was actually a good thing.
The elite class had over a hundred people, and only one could see the notes, making many feel that the hope was slim.
But there were also many girls who thought the same as Mu Yanxi—that these notes were just a hook Qiongdan Laoren used to lure disciples into refining pills for him, and were actually not precious.
Thus, a girl from a wealthy family directly asked:
“Teacher Qiongdan, I also want to see your notes, may I? I’m just too eager to learn. Name your price?”
“That’s right, Teacher Qiongdan, I also want to improve. Could you teach me too? Spirit stones, spirit medicines, anything is fine.”
Another girl also asked.
“Hehe, this old man likes disciples like you who are diligent and eager to learn.”
“This old man has started an alchemy tutoring class, dedicated to cultivating Grandmasters of Alchemy. 530 spirit stones, come consult with me!” Qiongdan Laoren said with a grin.