30 One Step Forward

Alex ran his qi through the inside of the cauldron to wipe away any little impurities that had remained there. He had seen the other inner sect disciples do this trick to prepare for their next batch of ingredients.

He once again took a deep breath and put in the first ingredient. He used his Qi to move it around, slowly turning it into powder. He lowered the heat to 800 Celsius but made sure to not do it very fast.

While he did end up not getting the timing right, it was still much better than the first time. He took out the second ingredient and put it in, while constantly monitoring the first ingredient.

After a while, he turned the heat up to 1500 Celsius. He followed the recipe and did as it asked. However, keeping his attention on 3 different things, while at the same time constantly remembering what he had to do next was too hard for him.

He started to lose focus from time to time. Still, this turn went better than the last one. Finally, once all ingredients were inside the cauldron, and fully turned into powder, he started condensing them.

Slowly but surely, he turned them into a pill. He pulled the successfully formed pill out and held it in his hand.

[Qi Improvement Pill: 12%

Improves cultivation speed by 12% for 12 hours]

He smiled. He had successfully created a pill for the first time. He was one step closer to making money by playing the game. He now had 5 more sets of ingredients left.

Alex took a small rest. While alchemy wasn't physically taxing, it was mentally very draining. Doing 3 different things, all with smalled different things from time to time was too much for Alex.

Suddenly, Alex thought of something.

"Wait, what if I slow downtime? Wouldn't that reduce the load off my mind?" he thought that was a brilliant idea. He decided to try it.

He slowed downtime and started putting in the ingredients. As soon as he put in the first ingredient, he realized he made a mistake. Since he was now in focus mode, time was now slow. But, he could not tell how slow he had to move the ingredients since he didn't know how slow time was. He didn't have a clock to look at.

He now wished the clock at his vision's top right corner showing the seconds.

He had already put in the ingredients so, he decided to follow it through. Since he couldn't follow the timing as the recipe dictated, he decided to go off of his instincts.

He instinctively slowed down every process by what he assumed was the rate of time dilation. He followed the recipe and did what the recipe told him to, only at a slower rate.

The slowed down time helped with every other aspect of the pill-making process, however.

Finally, after a while, he managed to condense the ingredients into a pill. He took the pill out with nervousness, as he didn't know how it would turn out.

[Qi Improvement Pill: 10%]

He had succeeded. It was barely at the cusp of being accepted as a mortal-grade pill. He had managed to successfully create a pill, even though focus mode.

After a short rest, he started once more.

This time he managed to create a 12% harmony pill. He was getting better at creating pills with Focus mode activated.

After a short rest, he started on his 5th set of ingredients.

He followed the same technique all the way through until the end when suddenly something happened within him that startled him. As he was started to condense the powders into the pill, a bunch of Qi inside his body started to move.

Similar to when he activated Flame Mastery Scripture, they moved in a certain path through his meridian. This path was different from the one Flamer Mastery Scripture activated.

Once the Qi moved through his entire body, it arrived at his hands and diffused from it. The arrival of the new Qi made him intuitively use it.

He slowly guided the Qi to enter the cauldron and split it into 2 portions. Both portions of the Qi started to condense the powder into 2 separate balls.

And as a result, they turned into 2 different pills. Alex was astonished at what had just happened. How did he know that he had to split the powder into two portions to form two pills?

Also the pathway the Qi took through his body was the first time they had been used. He only had 2 techniques as of now. Since this wasn't the pathway of [Flame Mastery Scripture]…

"Could it be the [Alchemy God's Knowledge]?" he wondered. He quickly opened his techniques to check the description and realized what had happened.

With Level 1 of [Alchemy God's Knowledge], he had a 50% chance to create an extra pill. That chance had just activated. Alex was both shocked and happy with learning that he could make 2 pills from a single set of ingredients.

He took out both of the newly formed pills and checked.

[Qi Improving Pill: 15%

Improves cultivation speed by 15% for 12 hours]

"Wow! That is the best pill I have made as of yet." He was shocked. He turned his attention to the other pill in his hand.

[Qi improving pill: 15%

Improves cultivation speed by 15% for 12 hours]

This was the same pill as the first one. "Will the harmony level always be the same between the two pills when the 50% chance is activated?" he wondered.

He soon got his answer. After resting a bit he started once more and got 2 pills. One was 12% in harmony, and the other was 14%. He didn't know why that was, but he was glad to know it was possible.

He started with the last pill and succeeded in making it. The last pill came out with 16% harmony. He was really happy to see that.

Seeing that all his ingredients were gone, he walked up to the door and took out his nameplate. 15 points were taken off of the nameplate, meaning he had been here for 3 hours, making pills.

Once he made sure all the pills were in the ceramic bottles, he walked out.