Sword Sect Outer Sect

Chapter 192 Bankruptcy (Combined)

I always feel that by looking at the traces of these sword cultivator predecessors, the era when the way of the sword was once prosperous is right before my eyes.

Where did they go...?

Song Yan shook his head, dispelling the unrealistic thoughts from his mind.

"Without strength, one cannot even protect oneself, let alone seek the traces of predecessors."

We turned our attention back to "Qian Dan Yi Fang".

This sword energy alchemy is a technique for refining pills.

In other words, as long as one can fully master and skillfully apply it, one can directly try to refine other elixir formulas in the future.

However, more practice is needed to ensure the success rate of the pill.

The next seven or eight days were exceptionally fulfilling for Song Yan.

Cultivating spiritual power, cultivating divine sense, practicing swordsmanship, and studying alchemical texts.

This alchemical text is not just "The Thousand Elixir Formulas," but also includes many basic alchemical texts obtained from Granny Qin.

Some of the drug properties and pharmacology still need to be studied in detail.

During this period, Ji Linjun had also been completely forged.

The entire flying sword is now completely renewed and possesses the power of a top-grade flying sword.

Although I really want to start studying sword formations right away, I've only just started learning alchemy, and it would be easy to become mediocre at everything if I tried to study too many things at once.

Trying to do too much at once will only lead to failure; we should take it one step at a time and first get the Dao of alchemy on the right track.

On this day, the restrictions on the courtyard of Earth No. 21 and the gate of the cave were completely closed.

Even Xiaohe was "ordered" by Song Yan not to enter the alchemy room.

Xiao He strongly condemned his sneaky behavior.

However, there is no way around it; alchemy requires a very quiet and stable environment.

Especially for a novice like him who is just beginning to understand alchemy, if he is disturbed during the alchemy process, both his soul and meridians can easily be affected.

Having prepared everything, Song Yan sat cross-legged.

Then, the hands that were originally resting on the knees were slightly turned over and slowly lifted up, forming an embracing shape.

Suddenly, sword energy arose in the alchemy room.

Song Yan's hair and Taoist robe trembled slightly under the surging sword energy.

Before him, a surge of sword energy slowly gathered, forming a spherical sword energy field.

This is the most crucial step in replacing fire refining.

Senior Chen Yi called this the "Sword Qi Alchemy Furnace".

In fact, a true sword qi alchemy furnace can completely remove impurities from spiritual materials and pills using extremely condensed sword qi.

Song Yan's swordsmanship is far from reaching that level.

Fortunately, he had just refined the Burning Karmic Fire.

According to "Qian Dan Yi Fang", if one's sword cultivation is not yet at that level, then the sword energy imbued with the supreme spirits of thunder and fire can make up for it to some extent.

However, it is not as effective at removing impurities as pure sword energy.

Furthermore, during the alchemy process, some of the spiritual essence is lost, resulting in a reduction in the final number of pills produced.

This is easy to understand; it's essentially a combination of two alchemy methods.

It's okay, as long as it doesn't affect the success rate of pill formation.

Song Yan thought to himself.

For him, even if he succeeds just once, even if it's just one pill, it will give him hope.

With a thought, the aura of burning karmic fire enveloped the entire sword energy field, and the originally transparent and whitish sword energy was now covered with a layer of dark red.

The temperature inside the alchemy chamber began to rise rapidly.

With clean hands, he picked up a Spirit-Nourishing Grass, casually found an angle, and gently tossed it into the sword energy field.

sieve.

A very faint sound came from behind.

As soon as Ningling Grass was thrown into it, it was quickly decomposed by the violent and scorching sword energy, turning into a pile of dregs.

"hiss……"

Damn, the sword energy is too intense and not solid enough.

He held his breath and focused his mind, slightly reducing the sword energy, and then further condensing it.

He grabbed another Ningling Grass and threw it in.

sieve.

Unsurprisingly, it failed again.

Fortunately, this time, a trace of the Ningling Grass's medicinal liquid was visibly extracted, but it was evaporated almost instantly by the intense heat of the Burning Inferno.

"We need to reduce the intensity of the burning aura slightly."

Come again!

Again, again, and again.

Song Yan originally thought that refining pills with sword energy would be extremely boring at the beginning.

But in reality, he discovered that during this process, his extremely rough control over sword energy gradually became more refined.

After consuming countless Ningling Grasses, he finally managed to achieve a certain special balance.

A herb was thrown into it, and its stems, leaves, and solid impurities were decomposed one by one. As the sword energy furnace surged, it turned into dust and was thrown out.

A mass of medicinal liquid was squeezed and slowly moved towards the very center of the sword qi furnace, reflecting a dark red luster.

"Remember this feeling..."

He then tried countless times, finally engraving this feeling into his instincts.

Actually, it's not a standard answer. The required sword energy state varies for each kind of spiritual herb and each kind of elixir at different stages.

But it provided a standard for Song banquets.

In the future, no matter what kind of pills you use to refine with sword energy, you can start by adjusting from this standard and you will soon get the hang of it.

Similar to fire-based alchemy, this is the "fire control" in sword-based alchemy.

Many of the materials used to refine the Qi-Nourishing Pill were still available, and since the required materials were relatively few, Song Yan planned to start with that.

Alchemy, though different in its methods, ultimately leads to the same goal and is quite similar in many aspects. It is the perfect tool to familiarize oneself with and get started with "sword qi alchemy".

He finds it absurd whenever he thinks about it.

In this "Thousand Elixir Formulas", the lowest-grade elixir used in the example of sword qi alchemy is actually the Foundation Establishment Pill.

It seems that to them, pills slightly less powerful than Foundation Establishment Pills are like sugar pills, with little value in refining them.

This has both advantages and disadvantages.

The advantage is that if Song Yan needs Foundation Establishment Pills to break through to the Foundation Establishment Realm in the future, he will have found enough materials.

With this alchemical manual at your disposal, even if you refine elixirs step by step like cooking, you'll still be able to produce a few pills.

The downside is...

All the pills and detours before that point had to be figured out by myself, little by little.

At this moment, a large mass of orange-yellow spiritual liquid floated inside the sword qi furnace.

This is the best part of the dragon liver melon.

Song Yan carefully manipulated and adjusted the changes in sword energy. At this moment, if there was even the slightest instability, the ball of spiritual liquid would be instantly evaporated.

Or they might simply be flung away by the sword energy.

At a certain moment, some fine impurities slowly appeared in the spiritual liquid, and slowly sank along the direction of the sword energy flow.

Ultimately, it was dispelled by the sword energy.

This process was repeated many times, and the original fist-sized amount of spiritual liquid was gradually compressed.

It condensed until it reached the size of a lotus seed, and then slowly surged within the sword energy furnace.

Song Yan made a hand seal with his fingertips, and two Ningling herbs were thrown into the container, one on the left and one on the right.

After numerous experiments, he now knows it by heart.

With the impurities removed, the two smaller clumps of spiritual liquid slowly converged towards the center.

It condensed together with the central ball of spiritual liquid, and in the process, some impurities were removed.

At this moment, it floated like a bright green dewdrop. The sword energy showed faint signs of weakening, but the alchemy process had reached its final stage.

Song Yan decided to finish refining this batch of pills.

Finally, a Spirit Fruit was taken out and thrown into the Sword Qi Furnace.

At this moment, the original emerald green spiritual liquid was basically free of impurities. As soon as the Form Spirit Fruit entered it, it instantly transformed into wisps of clear spiritual liquid that flowed in.

It slowly rotates and shrinks outside the original emerald green dewdrop.

laugh……

The moment the two came into contact, a wisp of white smoke slowly appeared.

The prototype of a pill is slowly emerging from within.

At this moment, a medicinal fragrance already filled the alchemy room.

It has a stimulating effect on anyone who smells it.

However, the sword energy dried up at this moment.

"not good."

He quickly dispersed his sword energy, and at the same time took out an empty pill bottle from his Qiankun bag. He then used a wisp of spiritual power to support the pill and put it into the pill bottle.

"call--"

Song Yan slowly exhaled a breath of stale air.

I had a bad feeling about this.

He probed the elixir bottle with his divine sense, feeling a mixture of joy and sorrow.

The green color of this Qi-Nourishing Pill is very mixed, and it is far inferior to the Qi-Nourishing Pill that I previously refined using the fire method.

It's a low-grade Qi-nourishing pill, and a rather poor one at that.

The good news is that the first attempt at the new alchemy technique was a success.

And it was because he had tried too many times before, and ultimately his sword energy was insufficient, so he hastily finished absorbing the essence.

In comparison, he could clearly feel that for sword cultivators, the benefits of refining pills with sword energy far outweighed those of refining pills with fire techniques.

Normally, sword cultivators use sword energy to fight their enemies.

The sword is nurtured in its case, where sword energy also plays a role.

This is something that sword cultivators are most familiar with.

With enough practice, one can become proficient in alchemy and master it.

Just like those cultivators who specialize in fire-based cultivation manuals and whose entire cultivation and methods are contained within flames, they use fire-refining methods to refine pills, which is exactly the same.

The familiarity with sword energy, combined with the familiarity with the Qi-Nourishing Pill, allowed Song Yan to succeed in his first attempt at alchemy using sword techniques.

There are still some materials left over from before, and Song Yan plans to go out to buy more after she has used them up.

After resting and recovering, the sword furnace was lit to refine the medicinal liquid and condense the elixir to disperse the qi.

The medicinal fragrance in the alchemy room only lasted for a short while before it changed.

This time, it seems that the control of the sword energy went wrong during the alchemy process, and the pill failed to even take shape.

"Weird..."

Song Yan was indeed very knowledgeable about Qi-Nourishing Pills, but it was a completely new alchemy method after all, so failure was quite normal.

After failing, he didn't rush to refine it again, but carefully recalled his movements and control.

Thinking of some ambiguous questions, I went to look through those alchemical books and the descriptions in the Thousand Elixir Formulas.

Taking this opportunity, I also slowly recovered my sword energy and spiritual power.

Half an hour later, they continued refining.

……

three months later.

"call……"

A soft, relieved sigh escaped from inside the alchemy room.

Song Yan sat cross-legged, looking slightly haggard, his black hair disheveled, his eyes lowered.

His gaze as he looked into his palm was very bright.

He opened his palm, and there lay three pale yellow pills.

"The success rate of Huangya Dan is now over 70%..."

"Qi Condensation Pill, about 50% complete."

Song Yan stood up and casually tied up her long, disheveled hair.

In front of him was a pile of waste pills and dregs, like a small black and red mountain.

For the past three months, he has been practicing alchemy in seclusion as if he were possessed.

Initially, it took three or four attempts to successfully produce the Qi-Nourishing Pill.

However, once he got the hang of it, thanks to Song Yan's familiarity with sword energy, he was able to achieve an 80-90% success rate in pill formation within just a few days.

It has basically approached the level of his previous fire refining method.

The path of alchemy is inherently interesting, not to mention the speed of progress in alchemy through swordsmanship, which is almost visible to the naked eye.

This feeling and feedback that "as long as you keep refining pills, you can keep improving" made him almost addicted, and he devoted himself to it almost entirely.

With a flick of his finger, three Yellow Sprout Pills flew into one of the pill bottles arranged in a row in the alchemy room.

Now, his success rate in refining Yellow Sprout Pills has reached about 70%, and his success rate in refining Qi Condensation Pills is also about 50%.

However, compared to conventional methods, sword alchemy still has a drawback.

That is, although the grade of the pills produced is generally higher, the number of pills produced is slightly less than that produced by ordinary methods.

At most, he can only produce five pills in one furnace.

Perhaps as my skills improve, I will be able to produce seven pills in one batch.

The reason for temporarily halting this process is not because the alchemy technique has encountered any bottlenecks.

But...

There are no more spirit stones.

He squandered all his savings of thousands of spirit stones, all the available spiritual herbs and medicines, and even his sect contribution points.

Alchemy has already emptied our savings.

"A bottomless pit..."

He is now truly experiencing what it means to "burn money".

In the past, I struggled in the outer sect of Dongyuan Sect, refining small pills and picking up small pieces of trash. It would take me half a year to save up thirty or forty spirit stones.

A furnace of discarded elixirs vanished into thin air.

Fortunately, I didn't get too ambitious back then and start thinking about alchemy.

With the level of expertise available at the time, it would have been completely impossible to sustain oneself on this path, and it's even possible that the journey would have collapsed due to a few failed attempts along the way.

The current efficiency in alchemy is due to the precious alchemy technique of sword alchemy, which is extremely suitable for him; otherwise, the resources consumed would be even more exaggerated.

Such a terrifying investment is something that even many small cultivation families cannot afford.

This is precisely why very few people have made significant achievements in the path of Daoist alchemy.

The stone door to the alchemy room opened, and a foul odor mixed with burnt bits and medicinal aromas rushed out.

Xiao He, who was originally curled up at the entrance of the alchemy room, peeked out when she heard the noise.

Song Yan walked out of the alchemy room and cleaned up all the residue.

After tidying up, he took off his Taoist robe and clothes and went down into the hot spring.

Wisps of water-based spiritual energy flowed from the pool into my limbs and bones, relieving my long-standing fatigue.

The alchemy process caused him to constantly deplete his sword energy, only to replenish it and then deplete it again.

This, in turn, promoted the improvement of cultivation.

Now, his cultivation level has finally reached the critical point.

He planned to wait until he recovered before attempting to break through to the eighth level of Qi Refining.

"The Breakthrough Pill is ready, but we don't have enough spirit stones to prepare anything else..."

Song Yan frowned slightly, still troubled by the spirit stones.

(End of this chapter)