1157 A Short Alchemy Session
Alex sat back in front of the furnace where the Sun’s Womb was and thought about the pill he had to make.
He was going to have to make some antidote pills for the toxins in the people he had brought back, but that wasn’t going to solve all their problems.
The toxin was one thing, and the source was another.
His pills could get rid of the toxicity in their body, but it could not get rid of the red dust that had gotten into them. And there was no way leaving a large amount of minuscule rock and metal particles was in any way a good thing at all.
He had to think of a way to remove those somehow as well.
‘But how can I do it?’ he wondered. He couldn’t make pills that could just destroy the lead powder, so he had to think of another way.
“Maybe someone has some ideas?” he thought. He wasn’t the only one that had to be working on helping them after all, so he could try and get other more experienced doctors to help him.
‘Yeah, I should think about it later,’ he thought and focused on the task at hand.
He needed to make around 80 or so antidote pills, given that he had healed many of the others already.
‘That will take some time,’ he thought, but he wasn’t in any hurry. He took out what ingredients he had and started working on it.
Alex hadn’t cultivated yet, but he had eaten a pill to restore his Qi. That Qi wouldn’t be as good as the Qi he would gather from cultivation, but that was only in the context of battles and breakthroughs.
For alchemy, he could use any sort of Qi as long as it didn’t mess with the pills and allowed him to control the energy and powder inside.
The Sun’s Womb was hot, so he started putting in the ingredients one by one. He did not bother improving the ingredients to become their best self as he wasn’t going for pill veins at all.
He simply needed good ingredients that could achieve a Heaven-grade or maybe even an Immortal-grade pill. As long as he could acquire that, the people could get rid of their toxins.
The ingredients he was using were quite expensive, and if he hadn’t found them in the Forbidden Orchard, he would be losing about a million spirit stones worth of ingredients.
When turned into a heaven-grade pill, the antidote would go on to cost around 10 to 15 thousand True spirit stones. While that wasn’t necessarily high for purchasing just a few times, if one had to do it month after month, buying up to 200 different pills each time, he could see why the Kang Family would resort to not using workers that required the help.
It did not make their actions justifiable, but it did explain why they did what they did, no matter how horrible it was.
His ingredients went into the cauldron in batches, with about 4 of the same ingredients going in at once as he wanted to make 4 different pills at once.
The Sun’s Womb was large enough to handle the amount, and even fatigued, Alex had enough of his mental faculties to not make any unnecessary mistakes.
He was getting done with the first pill when he noticed that the energy in the cauldron was quite high but not as much as he would want it to be. It was enough for a Heaven grade, even a high Heaven grade at that, but it wouldn’t reach anywhere close to an Immortal grade.
However, he really wanted an Immortal grade if he was so goddamn close to it already. It was a difference between 70% and 75%, and it was just numbered at the end of the day, but for some reason the alchemist in him really wanted the pills to reach the next grade.
‘Sigh, so stupid,’ he thought to himself and pulled out something from his storage and looked at it for a moment.
It was a small, white mushroom that he never really got the chance to use as often as he would like to.
The World Defying Mushrooms were capable of replicating any energy they came into contact with, so Alex was going to use them to increase the amount of energy that was in the cauldron.
The mushroom went into the cauldron, and after coming into contact with the heat for a bit, slowly started diffusing its energy into the cauldron.
The energy mixed into the energy of the cauldron, changing into it and not even 5 second later, Alex had an additional portion of energy that would not be there unless he was using really good ingredients.
With this much energy, even after not using proper techniques to form each individual pill, he would end up with very highly sought-after pills.
He continued for a bit longer and the pills came out, each over 75%, just as he expected.
‘Damn, these mushrooms definitely are something,’ Alex thought as he put the pills into a ceramic bottle. ‘I should go and check if more of it is open soon. I wonder if they’ll let me in.’
From what he understood, it should be anytime now that the Forbidden Orchard was open again. While he hadn’t had the time to keep track of how often the pollen explosion was happening in the City of Many flowers, he could guarantee that the orchard would open any day.
If his luck were so bad, it might even have opened and closed already.
“3 years isn’t nearly enough to grow something like this, most likely,” he thought. “I should give it some more time.”
Once everything was ready, he went on to make more of the pills.
He made 4 pills at once each time around and just 3 hours later, he had a bit more than 50 pills ready. He felt not so good continuing, but he wanted to keep going since there were 30 or so more to go.
He was in the midst of another batch of pills when his father knocked on the door. “Alex, are you inside?” he asked.
Alex opened the door and his father walked in. Graham saw his son sitting in front of the fire, and for a split second wondered if he was healing himself in the Phoenix fire.
However, there were no such colors to the flame, so he could only be confused as to what he was doing.
“3 more minutes, father,” Alex said and concentrated on the pill. He was mentally fatigued enough by now that he didn’t believe he could hold a conversation while making 4 pills at once, so he had to prioritize the pills.
After he was done with the pills, he finally took the cauldron off the heat and put it into his storage ring.
He turned around to his father. “How are you feeling?” he asked. “Are you well rested?”
“I am,” Graham said. “What were you doing just now? Were those pills?”
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“You can make pills? How does that work?” Graham asked, very curious about it all.
Alex smiled. “Come on, sit down. I will explain everything to you.”