1058 Working on Upgrades

Alex lay on his bed as many thoughts went through his head.

The council members had asked him for 2 more pills, which he couldn't make at the moment at. For Alex, it was 3 pills he needed to make.

A pill that would help learn Dao, a pill that would improve Water spiritual roots, and a pill that would improve Earth spiritual roots.

If possible, he would want to make one for all spiritual roots, but that was too ambitious, even for him.

"The Earth one might be the easiest," Alex thought. "I already have a recipe for the True pills, so it's only a matter of improving that to a Saint rank level. If not that, maybe I can make a 9-veined True pill which would work as a normal Saint rank pill?"

At the very least, he knew what he had to do for the Earth pill. For the Water one, he only had half a recipe, so he needed to make up the rest of the ingredients without knowing what they should do.

"That will be hard," he thought. "Even then, at least I already have half the work done for me."

Alex got frustrated when he thought about the Dao pill. "How the hell am I even going to make something like that?" he thought.

If anything, it would have to be something that emulated what he experienced in the lake at the top of the dao mountain, or the fruit he ate back in the eastern mountains of the Western continent.

"I should bother with that once I'm done with the other two pills," Alex thought and simply stopped caring about the Dao pill for now.

Of the two remaining pills, Alex wanted to try out the Earth pill first. If he could make one with pill veins, then he wouldn't have to bother with improving it.

As for the ingredients, he was sure he could find almost everything on this continent, but a single one.

"Can I even find Corrosive Willow in this continent?" Alex wondered. That was one of the plants that were very rare as the only willow plant was in the poison swamp in the Western Continent.

"Where do I find a poison swamp?" he wondered. He knew it didn't necessarily have to be in that sort of environment, but then one had to rear it on his own to make it grow elsewhere.

As far as he knew, Corrosive Willow was not on the market at all. "May the council knows something," he thought and walked out.

He went to find someone and met the tall Hou Xinya wearing his recognizable yellow and orange robe from Dawn's Light sect.

"How can I help you?" the old man asked.

"I'm looking for some ingredients. I know I told you guys to find as many water-type and earth-type ingredients before, but now I need these ingredients specifically," Alex said.

"Sure, I can add it to the list of the things you want," the old man said as he read the list of ingredients.

"No, these have to be the top priority," Alex said. "Please do this as quickly as you can, and sorry if I disturbed your cultivation session."

"No, it's alright. I haven't started yet. I'm one of the 2 people that didn't go to cultivate in case we were needed," the old man said. "Don't worry about these. I will get these immediately."

"Thank you," Alex said and returned to his room.

He did what he could without any ingredients to practice with, but it wasn't very helpful. Which was why he was very excited to learn that the ingredients had arrived just a day later.

"Are you sure these are the ingredients you wanted? It doesn't seem right," the old man said.

"What's wrong with them?" Alex asked.

"They are all True rank ingredients. They won't work on us," the old man said.

"Oh, I'm going to use them to find their Saint rank equivalent. That way, I can make the Earth spiritual root improving pill that I told you I had the recipe for," Alex said.

"Oh," the man got excited for a second before getting dejected. "Well, that's disappointing then."

"Sorry? Why is that disappointing?" Alex asked.

"One of the ingredients you asked for didn't come at all," the old man said. "Apparently it doesn't exist at all?"

Alex sighed when he heard that. "It must be the willow then. Sigh, I have found a single plant before in the other continent and I stripped it clean. I had a few remaining, but…"

He couldn't help but sigh every time he remembered losing all of the ingredients he had gathered. Had it not been for the madman, he would've still had it. But then, had it not been for the madman then nothing here would be happening anyway.

"I will see what I can do without it," Alex said dejectedly and turned around to leave.

"Wait, young man," the old man said. "Did you say it exists? It really does?"

"Yes, I've used it to make the pill before," Alex said.

"If you can guarantee that it exists then we might have a way," the old man said.

"Oh, what way?" Alex asked.

"They say that the Forbidden orchard houses every plant that has ever grown in this world," the old man said. "There is a chance that you might find something in there."

Alex's eyes widened. "The Corrosive Willow grows in a mostly toxic environment. Do you know if there's something like that in the Forbidden Orchard?" he asked.

"Yes, there is. There are places with poison, places with only water, desert, mountain peaks, deep gorge, places without sun, places without Qi, and everything else in between," the old man said. "The people who made that place knew what they were doing for sure."

"If there really is such a variety in there, then maybe I can find something in there," Alex said. "Thank you for informing me of that, senior."

Alex returned to his room after taking the ingredients. While he hadn't received everything, he received the ones he needed, so he could start upgrading the recipe to saint rank if he could.

"How should I go about this then," Alex wondered. There were a few things he had learned about how to downgrade ingredients, so he had to use similar methods for sure.

If it was the old Alex, he would have to use his 'feeling' of the energy in the pill and find something that matched.

However, now he had a much better choice.

Alex picked one of the pills and closed his eyes to sense it properly. As expected, the majority of the energy in that ingredient was the Earth energy.

About 1% of the remaining energy was another 5 energy. As this was a True rank Earth ingredient, this one would not have Metal energy at all.

As for a similar Saint rank ingredient, it wouldn't have Water energy on top of not having metal energy.

"Now, I just need to figure out the ratio the final ingredient will become if I were to replace this ingredient's water energy with earth energy too," Alex thought.

It took him a moment to figure that out as the amount of water energy in there was so incredibly minuscule that simply sensing it alone was a hard task.

Fortunately, his Dao of Five Elements helped him in being keener about the energy and thus Alex figured out what he needed to look for in the Saint rank ingredient.

The other aspects of the ingredients like what they did and what they were came second to this. With just this information, Alex could be sure as long as he came across an ingredient of this exact ratio of energy, he could replace it as a Saint ingredient.

Now that one ingredient was done, it was time to figure out the ratio of everything.

Alex was surprised at how quickly everything went. In just half an hour, he was done realizing all the necessary information about the ingredients that he would need to improve the recipe to saint rank.

The only thing left was to go through all the ingredients that he would get a few days later and try them too.

Then, after he hopefully finds the Corrosive Willow in the Forbidden Orchard, he would be able to make the pill to improve Earth's spiritual root of everyone that was in the Saint realm and below.

"Woah, that's amazing," he thought to himself. He couldn't help but wonder just how much such a pill would sell for.

"No, stop daydreaming," he told himself. There was still a chance that he couldn't find the willow, in that case, he needed to know by context what sort of ingredient was missing.

To know that, he would need to have some other recipe at hand.

"Sigh, I will have to work on the water one now," Alex thought to himself. But he had to wait for a bit before he got the ingredients for that.

Alex decided to spend the next two days cultivating again and so he did. With the pill he ate, the cultivation speed was raised to the maximum and he managed to cultivate 50 days' worth of cultivation in just two days.

Once he was done, he left his room to go find the elders.

Huang Chen was the other one that wasn't cultivating, so he was the one that handed Alex the storage bag. "Here, everything we could get our hands on has arrived for you."