364 First Success

Alex's forehead was full of sweat. He was on his 4th start of the night and he had already burned 3 of the same ingredient. Although they were easily acquirable ingredients, his heart still bled a little when he thought of them getting ruined.

But that was the life of an Alchemist. He was lucky enough to get the Alchemy God's Knowledge, however, the other Alchemists didn't get such an opportunity. So, they had to work hard to get these ingredients and then burn them while trying to learn something from them.

An alchemist that was successful had more burnt ingredients and more exploded cauldrons than one that failed.

So, Alex suck it up and started the process a fourth time. Fortunately, the last 3 tries weren't wasted at all. Thanks to them, he had come to learn of the correct temperature and the correct movement required to extract the most energy from the ingredients without burning it.

So, once the cauldron had heated enough, he put in the first ingredient. He knew what to do this time, so he followed what he learned and moved the ingredient around to extract the most energy possible.

Once the ingredient had released almost all of its energy, it started burning and turning to powder. Once that happened, Alex knew it was time to put in the next ingredient.

He chose the next ingredient based on what ingredient was on the cauldron right now. Since the energy released right now was a low amount of Water energy, he decided to use a wood energy ingredient that would absorb the water energy and grow.

He knew that he was very much likely going to burn this ingredient, but he still bit his tongue and put it in. The ingredient was something he had just used last night, so he was quite used to it and knew exactly what it released.

Suddenly, a thought came to him. "Do I need to create an entirely new temperature and movement for the ingredients, or can I just follow the recipes?" he wondered.

He tried following the instruction for that exact ingredient from other recipes. The same movement at the same temperature, and it worked. He was quite happy when he learned that. So, he chose the next ingredient after that one.

He decided to go for an earth energy ingredient that he could control with the wood energy in the cauldron and thus lower the overall wood energy a bit

Following the previous recipes had worked for the wood energy ingredient, so he decided to do the same for this one as well. However, when he did the same thing for this ingredient, he didn't get his desired result at all.

When he put in the ingredient, everything was fine. But then, he started moving the ingredient around and it violently released its energy. The amount of earth energy that was released was very large in a very short amount of time.

The same thing happened in the other pill recipe as well, and it was helpful there as it was required to rein in the high fire energy, but in the current one where the existing energy was wood, the violent release of energy sought to ruin all of the wood energy in the cauldron.

As soon as that happened, Alex was sure what was going to happen next. He quickly used his Qi to grasp the entire cauldron and threw it as far away as he possibly could.

BOOM

A massive explosion rang out from everywhere around him. Due to the formation disorienting him, he couldn't even tell that the explosion was coming from one direction.

He quickly wiped his sweat and sat back down. 'I will need to think more regarding the ingredients,' he thought. He decided to see if there were other variations of movement and temperature for that exact ingredient in his list of recipes he knew.

He couldn't find another recipe where this one was used in a different way, so he decided to change the ingredient for a different ingredient that produced earth energy and restarted the whole process once more.

He took out another disposable cauldron and started practicing once more. He redid the first two ingredients and when he got to the third one, he put in a different one that didn't violently release its energy.

This time, what he had expected happened. The earth energy from the third ingredient was released slow enough that the existing wood energy could overwhelm it and thus decrease itself overall.

Alex sighed in relief when he realized that he had succeeded this far. He just had to do this a few more times and he would probably have enough energy and powder to make a pill.

He tried a fourth ingredient, and it ended in failure. He had to toss away that batch as the ingredient caused another violent reaction and nearly exploded on his face again.

He changed that ingredient and tried once more. This ingredient didn't work either and this too exploded. He decided to use an ingredient that produced entirely different energy.

This one he successfully mixed in with the energy. He chose his 5th ingredient carefully and also managed to mix it with the rest of the ingredients.

On the 7th one, however, it was getting harder and harder to expect what would happen when one put in the ingredient. There were multiple hidden energies that he couldn't sense at all and they could all immediately show themselves when he put in this ingredient.

And that was exactly what happened, so he had to throw that cauldron away as well.

On the 5th try did he find the right ingredient for the 7th one, and it took him 8 times to find the right ingredient for the 8th one.

Once he realized that the energies had come to a good enough state, he decided to turn them into a pill. He used elemental guidance to have the powder absorb the energy and then formed the powder into a ball.

Once it was ready, he finally brought it out onto his palm. He had succeeded in making a pill of his own.