“This was a furnace which I purchased in an auction, before reaching the JieDan stage, when I was traveling the world. Although it’s a low-quality furnace, it just so happens that it can handle your fire arts method and display it to the pinnacle.”
Zhu Chen Tao glanced at the furnace which he had presented with a satisfied look and said:
“I already have the highest quality furnaces, you, however, are roughly at the right stage to use this pill furnace and can improve your pill concocting skills.”
“Many thanks, elder, for your generous grant! To refuse would be impolite of this disciple!”
As soon as Yang Chen took a quick look at the furnace, his face immediately revealed a smiling expression, so without declining, he immediately exclaimed his gratitude.
Zhu Chen Tao seeing him accept it frankly became quite delighted. Compared to the help in finding the path to Yuan Ying cultivation, giving this low grade pill concocting furnace seemed almost too trivial. Luckily he had already granted a favor to Yang Chen, this had let his heart be a little more at ease.
“About the xun qi pill, you absolutely cannot tell others about it, particularly the refining method.”
Before he left, he repeatedly warned Yang Chen about this. He had just recently witnessed Yang Chen’s perfect control over fire, so now he hurriedly returned to ponder over it and experiment. To stay until now was just to give face.
Waiting until Zhu Chen Tao could not be seen anymore and his silhouette had faded away, only then a smile appeared on Yang Chen’s face as if he had gained the world’s most precious treasure. He very carefully held the pill furnace which Zhu Chen Tao had left behind in his hands and began to inspect it from top to bottom. The more carefully he observed it, the brighter the smile on his face became.
Ho Lin had quietly come in, but just at that time she saw Yang Chen rejoicing while holding the pill furnace in his hands. She didn’t dare to disturb him and instead quietly moved back and left the room. A pill furnace left behind by a JieDan stage expert can absolutely make a first qi layer disciple, who has the fire attribute, abnormally excited.
Other people were not aware, but Yang Chen had discovered something regarding the pill furnace, which made him so excited that he was even drooling incessantly. This pill furnace he had before his eyes, even if the color or shape was different, was quite similar to a specific pill furnace which he had heard about in his previous life. A pill furnace, which reportedly was discovered in this mortal world.
Profound Spirit Furnace. In his previous life, this was an extraordinary furnace even within the heavenly court, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that it practically ranked within the top ten. From what Yang Chen had heard, all kinds of elixirs can be refined by this Profound Spirit Furnace. This is the only furnace apart from the eight divinity furnace of the Great Supreme Elder, which can accomplish this. Even the other furnaces ranked higher than this Profound Spirit Furnace have their limitations. Most are incapable of refining all types of elixirs..
The Profound Spirit Furnace, however, doesn’t have this type of restriction, the reason being the unique characteristics of the Profound Spirit Furnace. Initially, this Profound Spirit Furnace was not a top notch furnace; rather it was just a furnace embryo. Only after being used for refining by thousands of masters, and seeing varieties of flames was it able to become a first rate furnace.
Frankly speaking, this Profound Spirit Furnace is a pill concocting furnace that can be upgraded. Only the things required to evolve it are comparatively extraordinary. Apart from the special materials required for a pill concocting furnace, this Profound Spirit Furnace still requires absorbing various sorts of flames. Only then it will be able to upgrade. Presently, within Yang Chen’s hands, it was very possibly just the pill furnace embryo, yet to be discovered by the almighty pill concocting master from his previous life.
This Profound Spirit Furnace was made by an expert, but he only finished half of it, because he didn’t even have the proper materials. Even the creator himself didn’t knew whether his ideas were feasible or not, therefore, he roughly manufactured the furnace embryo and abandoned it afterwards. Even after this, this Profound Spirit Furnace’s performance was still equivalent to a low grade spirit furnace.
Holding the furnace within his hands, Yang Chen scanned it with his spiritual awareness several times and put in his spirit power to check how closely it resembled that Profound Spirit Furnace. Yang Chen did not dare to believe that all of a sudden he would have the kind of good luck to receive this kind of legendary pill concocting furnace. Thinking about this, Yang Chen’s hands begin to tremble a little, as if a large meat pie had fallen from the heavens and landed directly in his hands.
However, Yang Chen also realized that this Profound Spirit Furnace was at the earliest stage. If placed in the hands of someone who doesn’t know what it is, it would only be a low grade furnace. Who would be willing to waste the highest quality materials just for a low grade pill furnace? Who would be willing to part with those precious flames, just to have them spoiled on a low grade pill furnace? No need to speak of regular people, didn’t even the JieDan stage Zhu Chen Tao also just consider this Profound Spirit Furnace as a waste and directly give it to Yang Chen?
In any case, as long as Yang Chen has the opportunity to obtain the top notch materials or possibly obtain a precious flame source, he would directly use it on the furnace. Although he was not absolutely sure, Yang Chen had already recognized this pill concocting furnace’s characteristics so he was at least eighty percent confident.
No matter what was said, this was still a low grade pill concocting furnace. Compared to Yang Chen current furnace without a grade, it was many folds better. Even if it was low grade, it could still be included within the ranks of magic tools. If only considering Yang Chen’s strength of the first qi layer, he wouldn’t even be able to to obtain any kind of magic tool and could only use some talisman tools and talisman gems without any grade.
Taking advantage of his good spiritual awareness, which was already comparable to a mid level foundation stage expert, he could at least properly bind the Profound Spirit Furnace. Using his spiritual awareness to mark the furnace, he tried to bind it to himself.
If Yang Chen allowed the Profound Spirit Furnace in his hands to go to others, it would certainly be a truly foolish move. Therefore, without even the slightest hesitation, Yang Chen began to bind the Profound Spirit Furnace.
Formidable spirit power started to bind the Profound Spirit Furnace and began to carve its mark in the furnace’s nucleus. Although his spiritual awareness was very formidable, his spirit power was still quite lacking; so to complete these affairs Yang Chen still spent an entire day’s time.
Shen Da and other servants didn’t dare to disturb him, they were aware, that Yang Chen was attempting to refine that pill furnace. Although they had little hope in their hearts, they still did not dare say anything only feeling a little dejection within their hearts, while waiting for Yang Chen to appear.
After spending an entire day and night, Yang Chen finally succeeded in marking the Profound Spirit Furnace. Until Yang Chen’s formidable spiritual awareness had carved his own mark inside the Profound Spirit Furnace, he did not dare to believe that he was already in possession of one of future top ten furnaces of the imperial court.
Carrying a perfectly satisfied smiling expression, Yang Chen happily walked out of the pill concocting room. He could not help but rejoice. Even in his previous life, when he was a Principal Golden Immortal, he wasn’t even able to touch a magic tool of this status.
On the doorway, Shen Da, Ho Lin, Ting Yuan and Gu Qin all four people had formed a neat row of two people on each side, waiting for Yang Chen to come out. Seeing him come out, all four had a cheerful look and at the same time also had a faint hint of expectation in their eyes.
Yang Chen didn’t say any nonsense, he was well aware what they wanted to know, so while smiling gently, he said:
“The pill furnace was not bad. Oh and by the way, whatever attribute you are, you all can train in accordance with my method to control any of the five phases. Moreover, it also has great advantages for tempering your spiritual awareness.”
The four servants were elated. They had been waiting here precisely to ask about whether a method similar to Yang Chen’s could also be used for the cultivation of other attributes, aside from the fire attribute. Although they had some speculations regarding this, receiving a confirmation made them utterly delighted. The future path of cultivation for these few was immediately determined.
After resting for a moment, Yang Chen immediately ordered Ho Lin to come to the pill concocting room. At the moment Yang Chen’s cultivation was quite lacking, so controlling the flame to refine herbs for concoction was impossible for him alone and he could only depend on Ho Lin for help. This was exactly the opportunity that Ho Lin had been looking for.
Having recently bound Profound Spirit Furnace, Yang Chen could not resist using this furnace to refine the xun qi pill, so he first tested this pill furnace. Since it was already decided that he would use this Profound Spirit Furnace for the rest of his life, naturally Yang Chen would begin to take good care of it. Apart from using the best materials to refine it and to seek a flame to be absorbed, the other means to take good care also include raising the amount of medicinal qi.
How do you increase the medicinal qi? By concocting lots and lots of pills. Regardless of what sort of elixir it is, all elixirs use a variety of drug ingredients, the more these varieties of herbs are refined, the more medicinal qi they leave behind. The pill furnace is also able to balance these varieties of medicinal qi better and better, and only then can it achieve the purpose of any furnace which produces pills.
“Magic tool?”
When Ho Lin saw Yang Chen taking out the furnace, she recognized that it was a magic tool within the time it took for the pill furnace to reach the height of half a person from being palm sized, and didn’t conceal the slightest bit of her envious expression.
“Cultivate properly, and in the future you will also get a chance to acquire one.”
Yang Chen smiled, without saying too much. He just indicated to Ho Lin to prepare the herbs for refining.
Such a large pill furnace naturally can make even more elixirs. Yang Chen asked Ho Lin to prepare ten times more herbs. Afterward, he held the two handles of the pill furnace and began to manipulate the flame. As his cultivation was very low, he had no way to use his spiritual awareness leisurely to control both the flame and the furnace at the same time, so he could only use his hands to grip the furnace.
As the flame appeared, Yang Chen immediately sensed the ferociousness of the Profound Spirit Furnace. Even if it was low grade magic tool, it was still a magic tool. Compared to Yang Chen’s original worn out furnace, it was simply a difference of heaven and earth.
No matter whether it was manipulation of fire or the quantity of the flame, using this Profound Spirit Furnace was two to three times better, compared to his original pill furnace. Even Yang Chen had a sort of feeling that this pill furnace had a flesh and blood relation with him, it was as if the furnace was aware of what Yang Chen wanted to do.
All herbs were added in one by one, and within the blink of an eye, they turned into medicinal liquid. Soon, the medicinal liquid started flowing along the spiral structure formed from the flames and began to solidify. Everything was same as in the previous refining session, without the least bit of difference. Only the quantity of herbs used was increased by ten times and also Yang Chen didn’t feel as strained as before.
After one hour, a whole one thousand xun qi pills were successfully collected by Yang Chen using his pill collecting technique. The entire process was incomparably smooth.
Yang Chen also did not waste any time, previously he didn’t have a very good method to earn the sect’s contribution points, but now Zhu Chen Tao had already left behind orders to collect those pills in exchange for crystal stones or contribution points as he wishes. So Yang Chen directly went to Nine Earth Manor’s Medicine Hall and asked the Medicine Hall’s disciple to exchange them all for contribution points.
Either Zhu Chen Tao was very generous or maybe because it was related to the Palace Master, but Zhu Chen Tao directly allowed Yang Chen to get one contribution point for one xun qi pill when originally twelve low grade spirit stones could only be exchanged for one contribution point. It is important to know that the xun qi pill was made up of ordinary herbs so the cost of the production could be neglected.
Yang Chen didn’t waste even a single point and directly handed it over to the Hidden Pavilion in exchange for reading time. The next day, apart from cultivating at the usual time, Yang Chen spent all day within the Hidden Pavilion.
In his previous life, Yang Chen’s training in fire attributed cultivation had already reached the extent other people could not fathom, he didn’t have a thorough understanding of the other elements, tho; only a few insights which he had gained during his fights, but they were totally unrelated to training. Yang Chen was also not able to achieve anything this way, so he could only depend on the sect’s ancient records for assistance.
Although the Nine Earth Manor’s Hidden Pavilion is only intended for qi layer disciples, it still possesses a lot of ancient records. Just the number of cultivation methods suitable for qi layer disciples alone would number several hundreds. Adding in many ancestors’ cultivation experiences, lessons, the ancient records just in the field of cultivation, it would number over ten thousand jade slips.
If the knowledge and experience regarding pill concocting, refining tools, talismans, spell methods and other various sorts of classes were counted as well, the number of jade slips just in the Hidden Pavilion of Pure Yang Palace’s Nine Earth Manor alone would reach into the hundreds of thousands.
In general, when the qi layer disciples enter the Hidden Pavilion, they are all divided and marked according to their requirements. Usually, they just wanted to find a suitable cultivation method, and then look for cultivation methods which were written with the ancestor’s experiences and lessons. People like Yang Chen who pick up every jade slip and attentively read it once are truly unique.
Many people looked at Yang Chen acting this stupidly and shook their heads without saying anything. Many were also delighted at his silliness, but no one called out to warn him. Apparently they were all waiting for Yang Chen to make a fool out of himself.
Chu Heng naturally heard of Yang Chen’s activity in the Hidden Pavilion and instantly understood his aim. Yang Chen was certainly having some problems regarding cultivation, but he couldn’t ask the Merit Transferring Disciple, who was Chu Heng, for guidance. As a result, he went to the Hidden Pavilion to find the solution.
However, Yang Chen’s actions also allowed Chu Heng to lower his guard. A first qi layer disciple, who spent every day staying at Hidden Pavilion and was not properly cultivating, what kind of future prospects could he possibly have? There was absolutely no need to suppress him. Reading such a disordered mess of ancient records, he would surely destroy himself. At the first qi layer, he wants to master all them, who does Yang Chen think he is? A JieDan stage expert?
However without caring for other’s opinions, Yang Chen eagerly read these ancestors experiences every day. Using his experience as a principal Golden Immortal, he could naturally differentiate the correct ones from the incorrect ones. Very quickly he gained an intuitive understanding towards the properties of the other attributes.
When he did not have sufficient contribution points for staying in the Hidden Pavilion, he would immediately concoct a furnace full of xun qi pills. This much was enough for him to stay within the Hidden Pavilion for several days. This kind of lifestyle lasted for half a year and during this time, Yang Chen had read the greater part of jade slips within the Hidden Pavilion.
Just when Yang Chen had put down a jade slip and was about to pick up another one, a faint sigh of regret suddenly came from behind him:
“Younger disciple Yang, reading like this will have no use!”