Book 6, Chapter 69: Refining Medicine 2
Su Chen was immediately able to identify that this a Vitality Realm had opened up in front of him.
This thick, dense aura of vitality was impossible to fake — there was definitely a Vitality Realm on the other side of the tunnel.
However, that didn’t necessarily mean that he would be able to enter it. After all, different realms had different environments, many of which were not suitable for humans to inhabit. Only humans with powerful enough cultivation bases would be able to survive in a hostile foreign environment.
Su Chen didn’t know whether his strength had reached that threshold yet, but he could sense that this other realm was not very dangerous.
Regardless, since he had opened up a tunnel, he had no choice but to go.
He needed raw resources.
As such, Su Chen made his decision in almost an instant.
Instead of activating his Light Shaking Phantom technique and escaping, Su Chen stepped into the tunnel bridging the void and that Vitality Realm. The tunnel closed up immediately after he entered, and the Sovereign was left empty-handed yet again. All it could do was howl angrily in the void.
On the other side of the tunnel, Su Chen could feel that something irritating his body, causing his entire body to itch uncontrollably.
Su Chen hurriedly applied an Origin Energy barrier to himself, hermetically sealing himself and cutting off any direct contact to the outside atmosphere. This was an absolutely essential skill for anyone who wanted to enter a foreign realm. After all, it was impossible to know what would be harmful. The visible opponents were usually not much of an issue; rather, the silent killers that could not be seen posed the greatest threat.
As soon as Su Chen set foot in this world, he could see with his microscopic eye that the air was packed with countless microscopic creatures with incredibly powerful group offensive capabilities. The irritating itchiness he had felt just moments ago stemmed from them.
Su Chen wasn’t very experienced at exploring new realms. As such, he had been immediately ambushed upon entering, and even though he had quickly applied an Origin Energy barrier to himself, his body was still covered in these microscopic organisms.
A moment later, however, a powerful wave of flames burst out from Su Chen’s body, incinerating all of the microscopic organisms around him. The fact that his clothes weren’t singed in the slightest clearly indicated that his comprehension of fire Method Power had improved as well.
Only after this baptism of fire was Su Chen able to catch his breath and carefully inspect his surroundings.
He was surrounded by exceptionally tall trees, each one seemingly stretching into the heavens.
Based on the complex ecosystem that Su Chen had observed so far, it was quite apparent that there were a number of valuable resources here.
And since that was the case, Su Chen needed to hurry up and locate the resources that he needed the most.
As such, Su Chen ignored the situation around him and hurriedly began to search his surroundings.
With his microscopic eye, Su Chen was able to sample the hundreds of plants around him without fear. Soon enough, he started harvesting them stalk by stalk. With his consciousness crystal functioning at its maximum output, he automatically memorized any herbs that were useful so that he could pick them if he ever came across them in the future. This would greatly increase his harvesting rate.
As Su Chen flew through the Vitality Realm, he began to accumulate a large stockpile of useful herbs.
However, as time continued to pass, Su Chen slowly felt a sense of discomfort rise in his mind.
Su Chen knew that this was the sign of the foreign realm rejecting him.
Unless two realms were very similar to each other, any lifeform from one realm entering another one would experience great amounts of dissonance. This dissonance was not something that just an Origin Energy barrier alone could deal with. Because the alien lifeform wasn’t of that realm in the first place, everything in that realm’s environment would have an adverse effect on it.
The greater the difference, the greater the effect would be; the same held true for the amount of time that the alien lifeform was in the realm.
The difference between this realm and the Primordial Continent wasn’t too great, which was why Su Chen was able to remain here for some time. If Su Chen had found himself in a fiery realm or an icy one, his expedition would have been even shorter. A place like the Shadow Realm, which was incredibly sinister, was so different that it wouldn’t have even let him in.
Upon recognizing that his situation was starting to take a turn for the worst, Su Chen knew that it was time to leave.
In any case, he had noted down this realm’s spatial coordinates, so he could always return after he recovered. There was no need for him to force things too far.
Just as he was about to leave, however, he heard an ominous rumble off in the distance.
He glanced up and found a giant beast furiously sprinting in his direction.
This beast looked similar to a rhinoceros, but it had six hooves, and every step it took caused the ground to tremble violently.
Clearly, it was very unhappy with Su Chen’s arrival. As it closed in on Su Chen, it actually lowered its head, attempting to gore Su Chen with its mighty horn.
Su Chen chuckled. “Not bad!”
Right before the horn was about to skewer Su Chen, he jumped aside, grabbed the rhinoceros by the tail, and hefted it up into the air.
A moment later, Su Chen brutally slammed the rhinoceros down into the ground.
Boom!
The giant rhinoceros howled in pain as the ground trembled beneath its weight.
Its fighting intent, however, was not diminished in the slightest. Purple lightning began to flicker across its body as it gathered its strength to attack Su Chen again.
Su Chen lifted his hand and calmly dispelled the lightning attack. “Not bad.”
This rhinoceros was not exactly weak. According to the Primordial Continent’s standards, it would have been classified as a Demonic Lord.
Unfortunately, this Demonic Beast stood no chance against Su Chen.
An instant later, Su Chen’s fist slammed into the rhinoceros’s head, splitting it open like a watermelon and causing the rhinoceros to roar in agony.
With three more rapid punches following that, the rhinoceros’s skull shattered. Su Chen reached his hand inside and groped around for a moment before pulling out a white, viscous object — it was the rhinoceros’s medulla, the place where its essence was located.
Su Chen’s studies of anatomy had reached the point where he was capable of easily identifying which body parts and organs were valuable with just a glance.
Even creatures that he had never seen before were no exception.
The medulla was the rhinoceros’s essence, and it would be higher quality the fresher it was harvested. This was why Su Chen had chosen to rip it out from the rhinoceros while it was still alive. Even though this method was slightly barbaric, the result was much better. If it weren’t for such savagery, then where would the human race be?
Also, this guy was pretty barbaric for trying to gore Su Chen in the first place.
After removing the beast’s medulla, Su Chen stored it in a white jade box that had an Origin Formation which would keep the medulla fresh for a longer period of time.
Su Chen then reached out and ripped the rhinoceros’s horn off as well. Apart from its medulla, only its horn could be considered useful; even so, this horn was only useful for refining Origin Tools, so it was still next to useless for Su Chen.
After stowing these two items away, Su Chen grabbed the rhinoceros by its leg and activated his Single Realm Teleportation Boots yet again.
The Single Realm Teleportation Boots could be activated directly if Su Chen had fixed spatial coordinates locked in his mind, so a tunnel directly connected to the island of safety appeared.
Diomedes was quite surprised when he saw Su Chen step out of the tunnel entrance, carrying a strange rhinoceros-like creature behind him.
“This is……”
“Meat,” Su Chen replied simply.
They had been on the island for an extremely long time, and Su Chen hadn’t eaten meat the whole time. He was beginning to develop a craving for it.
Diomedes was speechless when he heard this. “I meant, where did you get it?”
“Where else could I have gotten it from?” Su Chen countered insipidly.
Diomedes immediately grew excited. “You found a foreign realm?”
“Yes, one that seems quite primal too. However, the creatures there aren’t exactly weak either. This guy that randomly jumped me was as strong as a Demonic Lord,” Su Chen said as he prodded the rhinoceros corpse beneath him with his foot.
“A primal realm bubbling with Origin Energy…… Your luck is not bad,” Diomedes said.
“Bubbling with Origin Energy?”
“Yes, that’s what we use to describe the primal ages. You know that the Origin Energy back then was much denser, which allowed the Origin Beasts ruled the continent. However, as the world continued to evolve, and as the Origin Energy grew thinner and thinner, the Origin Beasts were eventually forced to slumber, allowing the Intelligent Races to take center stage,” Diomedes explained.
“Are you saying that every realm follows this pattern? At the very beginning, every realm will be virtually bursting at the seams with Origin Energy, allowing Origin Beasts to dominate. Then, as the Origin Energy weakens, the Intelligent Races will take over?” Su Chen asked.
“The Astrals spent a lot of time researching this question, and yes. That’s the conclusion that we arrived at.”
“Interesting. If this is happening in almost every realm, then where is that missing Origin Energy being siphoned to?”
This question stumped Diomedes as well.
After a moment’s thought, Diomedes shook his head and said, “Perhaps it returns to the sea of Origin Energy.”
“Then where does Origin Energy itself come from? Does it come from the sea of Origin Energy as well? And what route does the Origin Energy take to accomplish this? Why does every realm seem to ultimately lead there?”
Su Chen’s string of questions rendered Diomedes speechless.
The old specter’s embarrassment soon turned to irritation. “How would I know these things? If you have the ability, then go and figure out the answer yourself.”
Unexpectedly, Su Chen nodded sincerely in response. “I will. One day, after I complete the Flying Immortal Cultivation Techniques, I might try to discover the truth behind the transformation of worlds.”
Diomedes was stunned when he heard this.
Su Chen, however, put his conjectures aside and began butchering the rhinoceros.
On that day, he ate his fill of barbecued meat. Even the Void Seahorse managed to eat its fill, and its gaze towards Su Chen was no longer filled with enmity.
After all, they had been stuck in the same place for so long that it was only natural that some camaraderie would build up between them.
Unfortunately, there was too much that Su Chen needed to do, and he had no time to cater to the whims of a Void Seahorse. This feast, however, improved the Void Seahorse’s impression of Su Chen by quite a large margin.
In the following days, Su Chen would constantly go to the Vitality Realm in search of more resources.
Just as Diomedes had said, that realm was incredibly primal. No signs of civilization could be seen anywhere, and singular powerful creatures roamed the lands everywhere. As a result, however, the realm was also filled with an abundance of resources.
By relying on the Single Realm Teleportation Boots, Su Chen was able to easily travel between the island and the realm, gathering a large amount of precious resources.
Unfortunately, he still lacked an ingredient that could stabilize the accelerant Origin Substance.
On this particular day, Su Chen was still working on his new pill.
A fierce fire heated the cauldron as the medicinal ingredients inside bobbed around aimlessly. A pale blue smoke gently wafted into the air.
Su Chen’s expression was stolid. He had seen success slip from his grasp at the last second far too many times, which was why he felt no emotion just yet. Almost instinctively, he was even anticipating the sound of a medicinal pill shattering yet again.
But despite his expectations, the shattering sound never appeared. Instead, the pill within the cauldron began to glow with a crystalline sheen, creating clear clanging sounds whenever it collided with the walls of the cauldron.
When the final inscriptions emerged on the pill and the medicine began to glow, Su Chen was stunned.
He had succeeded?
He had actually succeeded?
Just when Su Chen was sure that he was about to add one more failure to the list of countless failures, he had finally managed to successfully refine the pill.
Su Chen forcefully suppressed the excitement in his heart as he took the pills out from the cauldron.
There were three of them in total, each one glowing with a jade-like luster.
“This really is a powerful medicine!” Diomedes sighed in wonder.
Even though he couldn’t use it, Diomedes could still sense the dense medicinal fragrance wafting from the completed pills.