883 Many pills
Alex started his preparation.
Since he was going to be making pills all day long, he needed multiple cauldrons for sure to make all those pills.
He needed to make nearly 600 pills in a day. Excluding the time to rest and cultivate back his Qi, which would be about 4 hours, Alex would have to make 600 pills in 20 hours.
“30 pills an hour,” Alex thought. Considering he could do about 5 sets of pills realistically, he would have to make about 6 pills at once.
“That’s going to be hard,” Alex thought. He could make about 3 pills at once in two separate cauldrons, but they would require a heavy focus on his end because of how many ingredients there would be for him to keep track of.
He couldn’t just put 3 ingredients at once and treat it the same as when he made a single pill. He had to split the ingredients into 3 parts and make sure they were getting equal heat.
“Sigh, will I even be able to make 6 good pills at once?” Alex wondered. “What if every pill I need to make is different? No, that’s not realistically possible.”
“I guess I will have to wait and see.”
Alex closed his eyes and started cultivating.
Come morning, someone knocked on his door and Alex walked out to see that it was the elder from the sect that was responsible for looking after him during the day.
“I heard about your arrangement with Elder Xuan. I will be making sure you don’t cheat and do indeed make all the pills that have been requested,” she said.
“I see, thank you, elder.”
Alex took the bag full of ingredients and recipes and took it back into the room to start preparing the pills.
“I don’t have time to waste,” he said to himself and looked at the two cauldrons that were heating up already.
He took a few minutes to then look at the entire list of pills he had to make and separated them based on the amounts. There were 3 pills with amounts in the hundreds that needed to be made.
“I will have mental fatigue by the end and won’t be able to make different pills one after another without taking some break,” he thought. “If that’s the case then leaving these 3 pills for the end might be a better idea.”
Alex started with other pills.
He prepared the ingredients and lowered the temperature on both the cauldron before putting in 6 of the same ingredients into the 2 cauldrons.
Once they were in, he started moving them all around with proper caution. Then, he dumped more and more ingredients as time went on.
When it was finally time for the pills to be made, Alex split the powder into 3 parts on his own and clumped them together to form a ball.
Since there was no technique to be used here, at least not without wasting some time, he had to do it manually.
The pills popped out of the cauldrons and he placed them in the formation one after another.
56%. 61%. 62%. 59%. 62%. 57%.
‘6 is really pushing it,’ he thought. Aside from not being able to use all of his ability, he was also making some obvious mistakes for the sake of not wasting time while making these pills.
Fortunately, they were still Heaven grade.
“I will need to be more careful,” Alex thought to himself and started making the pills once again.
Over the next hour, he managed to do the same 4 more times. It was slow, of course, but he was only starting, and there were also way too many different pills he had to constantly change between.
Not to mention there weren’t always 3 pills he had to make. Sometimes, they would be only 2, and in those cases, he was forced to make only 2 instead of 3.
As such, by the end of the hour, Alex had made about 26 different pills in total.
“That’s… not bad. I do need about 30 pills an hour, don’t I? I can surely improve further later on,” Alex thought and started making the pills again.
In the next hour, he made 28. Then after that, 32. By the fifth hour, Alex was starting to make 30 pills on average. Some hours it was more, some hours it was less.
When the 6th hour ended, so did Alex’s saint Qi. All the Saint Qi he had prepared for making this pill had ended as he made nearly 180 pills in the 6 hours.
However, that didn’t mean he was out of Qi. Before beginning the day, Alex had eaten a pill to improve his passive Qi collection, and as such had gathered enough True Qi to fill his cultivation base all over again.
It wasn’t as good as Saint Qi of course, but it was plenty powerful still. With his entire Qi as True Qi, Alex was able to keep going for another 4 hours and ended up with nearly 300 pills made in the first 10 hours.
Then he was out of Qi.
“Time for my break,” he thought and went to sit down by his bed where he started cultivating. Alex was quite happy with the result he had. With how many pills he was making, he was certainly going to pass in 3 days’ time.
“Actually, I will have to improve my timing around the 3rd day, right?” he thought. “The elder did say she was leaving around the evening.”
He would have about 12 hours to make pills on the 3rd day. “Well given the pills I left for the final day, I should be fine,” Alex thought.
In 2 hours, Alex cultivated with many different resources to regain all of his Qi. Then, he went back to making pills again.
The first hour back, he made 32 pills.
In the second hour, he made 31 pills.
In the third hour, he made 32 pills.
On the fourth hour, the door opened and the elder walked in.
“Elder? Is something the matter?” Alex turned around with confusion. Why was she disturbing him?
“How many pills did you make?” She asked him.
“Uhh… 401 pills,” Alex said.
“401?” the elder had seen it all happen, but the number still struck her as something crazy. She sighed for what she had to do next. “Good, hand it over,” she said.
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“You don’t need to make pills anymore,” the elder said.
“Why not?” Alex looked at her with a confused expression.
“Your 15 hours quota for the day is over. You can make more pills if you want after I leave, but any pill not created in my presence will go towards contribution points, rather than your quota,” she said.
“Wait, what? No! Elder, I still have 1400 pills to make,” Alex said with panic clear in his voice.
“Yes, and you will do so when I return back tomorrow. For now, rest,” She said and turned around to leave.
Alex tried to stop her, but the elder didn’t listen to his words. She left the building and left Alex with 1400 pills to make in what he now realized was just 30 more hours.
“No, with 12 hours on the final day, I only have 27 hours to make 1400 pills.”
That was going to be a problem.