703 Heat

Once the girls apologized and left, Alex went to the reception to see if he could buy the ingredients.

Fortunately for him, there were more ingredients available for one of 4 remaining ingredients. Immediately, he bought those and waited for them to get transferred to the guild later on.

It took him exactly 3 days to gather everything he needed and two more to finish working on them.

For the next 3 days, He did nothing but study the different shapes of the powder he could produce.

Finally, after exactly 20 days, Alex had done it all. Now, all that was left was to make the pill.

To say that he was nervous was to understate it. He was scared. This was not only a very important pill, but it was also a pill that was going to make or break his relationship with one of the greatest sects and one of the greatest families of the empire.

Also, the reputation he could gain from this was so substantial that he may even be able to find a way to make them search for the ginseng.

Alex took a deep breath and began thinking about all the ways this could go wrong.

His Yang Qi could cause trouble when making the pill. Except, he had already taken care of it using what few Yin element poisons he had managed to find in the Poison Swamp from last time.

His control of heat could be a problem. With the Flame Mastery Scripture, it was amazing. It could be better, but that would mean he would have to be perfect with it.

His cauldron could be better. The Golden Jade cauldron of his that he had been using for the last 3 or so years was a True Earth artifact. Meaning, that there were many other cauldrons that he could find and they would be much better than this.

In fact, he had enough money to go buy a Saint Earth cauldron if he wanted to. But he didn't. This one held a sentimental value that no other cauldron could replace.

Unless push came to shove, he wouldn't budge from his stance of not changing the cauldron.

The ingredients could cause problems if they were bad, but Alex had made sure to use the ones with lesser age for his experimentation and kept the ones with greater age for the pills.

That way, he could guarantee that the pill would have the best of the best ingredients to work with. Also, he was going to weigh them on a formation before using them just to make sure everything is right.

He had the best technique he could use to make those pills as perfect as he could make it, so that side was taken care of too.

Finally, the problem could be the recipe itself. Only, there was no way the recipe would be a problem. After all, having spent the entire night on the recipe alone, Alex knew that it was perfection itself.

Once he was sure there was nothing that could be improved and nothing could go wrong, he began.

Once the cauldron was heated enough, Alex put in the first ingredient. Without missing a beat, he started moving it around the cauldron as per his recipe.

Once that was ready, he changed the temperature of the cauldron in an instant and put in the second one.

Then the third one, then the fourth one, all the way to the last one.

He processed the final ingredient and turned it into powder as well.

Then came the time to turn it into a pill, so Alex started by using the Profound Revolutions of Myriad Combinations technique to bring out his Qi.

Once it was out and hovered around the powder, Alex started to combine the ingredients to make a single particle.

Then, his technique worked on its own to combine the rest of the powder as well. Once that was done, Alex quickly used Elemental Guidance to pour the energy into the combined particles.

Afterward, he used the technique to combine the many particles into a single pill. Alex turned down the heat the moment the pill was formed and opened the lid to bring it out.

He put it in his hands and instantly knew how good the pill was.

76%.

An Immortal grade pill.

Alex frowned.

He really wanted to be happy about it. After all, this was one of the best pills anyone in this Empire had seen until now. But for some reason, he just couldn't bring himself to think of it as good.

He had made Immortal grade pills before when practicing the technique previously, so getting one again didn't bring him the same happiness as it once would.

Having done so much preparation before this, he had expected something better to come out of this.

He sighed. "It's only the first one. No need to get hopeless," he told himself and prepared the next set of ingredients.

Once ready, Alex made the pill once more, and once more, he couldn't get the result he desired.

"How can I do better?" Alex thought to himself. "Is there any way?"

The recipe was perfect. The ingredients were the best they could be. So was his technique.

His Yang Qi was under control so that wasn't the issue at all.

If anything, the only thing he could improve on was the cauldron. But how could he? That was something his master gave him. Did he really need to change it?

"No, that's not the only thing I can improve," Alex thought as he put on a strange face.

There was indeed one more thing he could improve. But could he? Could he turn what was already nigh perfect, into something perfect?

"I have to try," Alex thought and stared into the fire. Or more accurately, Alex started looking into the temperature of the fire, and its heat.

All this time that Alex had made pills, he had been content with his control of fire. After all, what better could he have asked for?

But now, he wanted more. He needed more.

But then again, how could he get more than what he already had? How could he gain better control at Heat?

Heat… what was heat exactly?

If he remembered the science lessons his mother taught him, Heat was one of the forms of energy and one of the fundamental truths of the world.

Heat was the energy stored in a body, manifesting itself as temperature.

Heat was the energy that moved from one thing to another based on the difference in their temperature.

As Alex stared more and more into the fire, he started understanding even more.

Temperature couldn't exist without the concept of heat. Hotness was just the presence of a lot of heat. Coldness was just the lack of heat.

Alex's eyes stared at the fire, but his mind was somewhere else by now.

If he wanted a fire to lower its temperature, he had to take the heat away. If he wanted to increase its temperature, he had to put energy into it.

As Alex thought more and more about it, he soon fell into a trance.

Outside the guild, energy stirred in the air as the worldly laws started to slowly descend onto the ground.

In Heaven's peak school, Shangguan Quan was standing in front of a massive rock that was carved with a spear strike.

The wound on the rock had such an intense Spear intent to it, that Quan felt like he was going to be cut to pieces by it.

Suddenly, he was forced to look to the side as the disturbance nearby caught his attention.

Han Hongqi was the only member of the family that stayed in the ancestral home for now. Most of the other members were in the capital, enjoying their life.

He was cultivating his Earth Demon physique when he too felt a disturbance in the natural law, forcing him to stop and stare outside.

Ga Xueyuan's attention flickered away from her customer as she was forced to look outside with a confused look.

'Was there another Saint realm expert in the city?' she wondered. 'Must be quite lucky to learn a new law while breaking through.'

Then she went back to speaking with her client.

Every other saint realm expert noticed the laws descending, but not a single one of them even considered the possibility of it being someone else aside from a Saint realm expert.

As such when Alex opened his eyes, fully understanding the Dao of Heat, not a single person came to bother him for the disturbances.