884 Getting Behind
Alex made preparation for the next day. Knowing that he was only going to have 15 hours to work, he needed to make the best of his time.
One thing he realized was that if he wasn’t so extravagant with his Qi, he could extend it to 15 hours, given that he takes two pills with a 7-hour interval in between.
Next, since he was going to have to make more than just 6 pills this time around, Alex started having thoughts of making either 8 pills at once with 4 pills in 2 cauldrons, or 9 pills at once with 3 pills in 3 cauldrons.
After a little thought, he realized that the second one was rather hard, so he had to stick to the first one.
“I should be able to reach about 700 if I did that,” he thought. Of course, making 8 pills at once alone was hard too, but he had no choice.
Alex then ate a pill that improved his mind and waited until the elder arrived.
The moment she was there, Alex began making the pills. He had already planned exactly what pills to make and when, and as such he had no hesitation when he began.
The elder watched him with a pitiful look, as she knew that it was nearly impossible to make 1350 pills in just 27 hours.
He would have to make 50 pills for that, which meant he would have to improve his output by nearly 66%. He had already pushed it to the last day, could he really do it this day?
The elder had only thought that when Alex put in 8 different ingredients in 2 different cauldrons. He was surprised at first and even shocked when he finished making 8 pills at once.
However, when she saw that he took nearly 13 minutes to make the pills, she realized that he could only make 40 pills an hour, when in fact he needed to make 50.
Alex improved his speed in the upcoming hours, but even then he could only make about 45 pills an hour.
The problem with his pill making mostly arrived when he didn’t have 4 pills of the same types to make at once, and he thus couldn’t make the ideal 8 pills at once.
Also, another problem that Alex, unfortunately, didn’t foresee came upon him, forcing him to be unable to make the pills constantly.
Just 4 hours into the pill-making process, he realized that he was running out of Qi and would have to continue on with his True Qi. Not even the pill he ate was helping him.
He had used as little Qi as possible, but he was still spending it on 8 pills rather than 6, so the usage was overall higher than yesterday.
By the 5th hour, he had already started making the pill, and by the 8th hour, he was out of True Qi as well.
Alex started cultivating at once without moving and started counting the pills he had made.
About 360.
Alex didn’t cultivate all the way through and stopped only after an hour or so. Since he didn’t have to go on for 8 more hours, he didn’t bother cultivating the whole time.
Starting from the 10th hour, he once again made more and more pills.
By the time the elder entered the room, Alex had made about 280 more pills.
Overall, he had made exactly 643 pills. It wasn’t exactly a bad result. Hell, this was the most Alex had ever made in his entire life.
Alchemists would be depressed if they ever learned how many he had made with just 14 hours of pill making.
Tomorrow, in just 12 hours or less, he would have to make 706 pills. What he couldn’t do today in 14 hours, he would have to do tomorrow in 12.
That was problematic.
The elder took the pills and left, and Alex was left alone, thinking for himself to come up with ways to improve himself.
What could he do? Considering he wasted an hour to cultivate in between tomorrow’s pill-making session, he would have to make 700 pills in 11 hours.
That meant he would have to make 64 pills in an hour or so.
‘Damn it!’ Alex thought. ‘That’s just not possible.’
Alex could try to make 3 pills in 3 cauldrons, but that meant that he not only had to split his Qi in between 9 ingredients instead of 8, but also to an additional cauldron, and an additional source of heat.
Not only that, he had to split his Dao too to another source, making it way too mentally taxing for him.
But what could he do? That really was the only way to do it, wasn’t it?
Alex rested for a while, with hopelessness filling his heart. He felt depressed for a bit, thinking that he had no chance of visiting the Dao mountain.
However, he quickly picked himself up and went ahead to cultivate for the night.
Whether he had a chance or not, he would find it the hard way by not managing to make all the pills in time.
Alex prepared as best as he could before the elder arrived the next morning and started making the pills once again.
This time, the elder saw him bring out 3 cauldrons, instead of just two.
For a split second, Alex thought of using 12 ingredients, but that would be way too much. The mental fatigue he would suffer from increasing his workload by double when compared to the first day didn’t sound like a good idea when he was already at his limit.
He also couldn’t make it 10 pills, by having the pills split into 3, 3, and 4, as the asymmetry of the whole thing would require more focus than it just being 9 or 12.
So, he was stuck with making 9 pills every time.
Fortunately, now came the span of pills that were mostly the same with their amounts being in the hundreds.
Alex had made the right choice to leave those for the last day, so for the most part, he would definitely only have to make 9 pills in each cauldron and all of them would be the same.
Alex started. Since the 3 cauldrons were pre-heated, he put 9 different ingredients into them and instantly split them into 9 segments in the 3 cauldrons, and individually moved them around while keeping an eye on the heat.
When they were powdered, he lowered the temperature on all 3 cauldrons at the same time and put in the next set of ingredients.
He tried to waste as little time as possible in between the moves and as a result, managed to form the pill in around 9 minutes.
After testing all 9 pills one after another in the formation, cleaning the cauldrons for the next use, and then heating it up again, he lost another minute.
In effect, every pill took about 10 minutes in total.
So, in a single hour, Alex managed to make 54 pills in total. That wasn’t bad. Only, it wasn’t enough.