Martial Arts: My talent multiplier increased

Noon. Baicaotang (a traditional Chinese medicine clinic). Pharmacy in the backyard.

When Fang Yuan pushed open the door, a strong smell of caramel and rust hit his face. It was pungent and irritating. His eight-fold standing meditation technique suppressed the stress response in his respiratory tract. He didn't cough.

The layout of the pharmacy is completely different from what it was three days ago.

Liu Ruyan reorganized the entire pharmacy. All the medicine cabinets were numbered. The labels for each compartment were changed from Manager Qian's "classification by price" system to a "classification by medicinal properties" system. Cold-natured medicines were on the left, warm-natured medicines on the right, neutral-natured medicines in the middle, and toxic medicines were locked separately in a corner iron cabinet.

The medicine furnace had been moved. From against the wall, it was now in the center of the room. The furnace opening faced south—Fang Yuan walked to the furnace, squatted down, and took a look—Liu Ruyan had altered the angle of the air inlet using two pieces of sheet metal. The airflow from the left and right sides was now uniform.

This modification improved the temperature uniformity of the furnace by at least 20%.

Fang Yuan's gaze shifted from the stove to the table.

In the center of the table. A white porcelain dish.

There was a pill in the dish.

Dark gold. About the size of a thumbnail. The surface is not smooth—it has an extremely fine crack, like the texture of crushed ice. Faint golden threads shine through the cracks.

The light filaments are wriggling.

Fang Yuan's eight-fold stance training maximized his visual precision. The golden light threads pulsated at an extremely low frequency—approximately one complete pulse cycle every three breaths. Like a heartbeat.

A pill with a heartbeat.

Liu Ruyan wasn't at the table. She was sitting under the medicine cabinet, her back against the leg, her head tilted to one side, and her eyes closed.

Fang Yuan's doubled spiritual perception swept over her blood and qi signals. Weak. At least 30% weaker than three days ago. Thin pulse. Shallow breathing. Her fingers were still resting on her knees—the medicine grinder was still clutched in her hand. Her knuckles were blue. She hadn't even loosened her grip while asleep.

I haven't slept for three days.

Fang Yuan walked to the table, squatted down, picked up the white porcelain plate with two fingers, and brought it to his nose.

The medicinal aroma wafted in in layers. The outermost layer was the pure, pungent spiciness of the Crimson Flame Core—irritating but not overpowering, as if neutralized by something. The second layer was the subtle bitterness of the Snow Ginseng Root. The third layer—Fang Yuan's sense of smell encountered an aroma he had never encountered in any elixir before.

It doesn't smell like medicine. It smells like energy.

The aura of the Dark Gold Crystal—a fragment of the Beast God's essence blood—was enveloped in the core layer of the pill by Liu Ruyan using seven auxiliary medicinal ingredients. It was like a bomb being wrapped in layers of cushioning cotton.

Fang Yuan's doubled comprehension allowed him to glean Liu Ruyan's design concept from this structure—after consumption, the outer layer of medicinal properties would be released first, opening up the meridians to their limits. The middle layer of medicinal properties would follow closely, stabilizing the elasticity of the meridian walls. Finally, the innermost layer of beast god essence blood energy would erupt—by then, the meridians would have already been expanded and reinforced by the first two layers of medicinal properties.

One pill. Three nested layers. The release time of each layer is precise to the breath.

Without any system support, it relied purely on pharmacological talent and three days of tireless, repeated adjustments.

Fang Yuan put the pill back into the dish.

Liu Ruyan's voice came from under the medicine cabinet. It was hoarse.

"Don't touch it with your hands. Your hands are sweaty."

Fang Yuan looked down at his fingertips. Dry.

"No sweat."

"Your finger just touched the edge of that pill. I smelled it." Liu Ruyan's eyes were still closed. Her mouth was moving. Her voice seemed to come from a great distance. "There's a very faint layer of qi and blood leaking from your body—your four times the strength of your bone structure is too strong. Even if you suppress it to the lowest level, a trace will still come out from your fingertip. That trace will interfere with the crack structure on the surface of the pill."

Fang Yuan withdrew his fingers from the edge of the plate.

From a pharmacological perspective, Liu Ruyan's words are correct. With the support of four times the root bone, the foundation of qi and blood is too strong. When the fingertip comes into contact with the cracks on the surface of the pill, a trace amount of external qi and blood may indeed seep in, disrupting the balance of the medicinal properties on the surface layer.

Fang Yuan did not touch that pill again.

Liu Ruyan slowly opened her eyes. The whites of her eyes were covered in blood vessels. Her eye bags were bluish. A dark red medicine stain from three days ago remained on her cheekbone—it hadn't been wiped off.

She stood up from under the medicine cabinet. Her knees hit the cabinet leg. No reaction. She'd probably been kneeling for too long and her knees were numb.

She walked to the table. Her fingers hovered above the pill for a moment. She didn't touch it.

"The Breakthrough Pill," she said. "I've given it a name."

Fang Yuan looked at her.

"side effect--"

"I already said. The effects last for fifteen minutes. A three-day period of weakness. Your cultivation level will drop by a major stage. Your meridians will be swollen and painful." Liu Ruyan withdrew her finger from above the pill. "If you're unlucky—it could cause permanent meridian damage."

Fang Yuan didn't reply. He took out a piece of paper from his pocket.

The paper was folded into four sections. Unfolded, it revealed Fang Yuan's normal handwriting, written with his right hand—not for outsiders to see.

Yangyan Dan. Complete formula. Original version.

Fang Yuan placed the paper on the table, next to the plate.

Liu Ruyan's gaze fell on the paper.

She didn't look at it immediately. She paused for a moment, then slowly lowered her head, her gaze sliding from the first line of the paper to the last.

Fang Yuan's doubled divine sense recorded every change in her facial muscle groups.

First line – The zygomaticus major muscle is not moving. The orbicularis oculi muscle is slightly contracting. They are identifying the names and proportions of the medicinal herbs.

The third line—the lips parted. The depressor anguli oris muscles at the corners of the mouth relaxed.

Fifth line – Pupils dilated. Respiratory rate decreased from twelve breaths per minute to eight breaths per minute.

The last line—her fingers clenched tightly on her knees. The medicine grinder fell from between her fingers. It hit the ground. It rolled twice.

Liu Ruyan didn't pick it up.

"The core carrier of pure yang medicinal properties... is the bidirectional chelation of red ginseng and yanghuo grass?" Her voice changed. It wasn't hoarse anymore. It was the trembling of her vocal cords after being stretched taut by some intense emotion. "This ratio—the mass ratio of red ginseng to yanghuo grass is three to seven? How did you stabilize the chelated state? This temperature window is only—"

"Fifteen degrees," Fang Yuan said.

Liu Ruyan suddenly raised her head.

"You know there's only a 15-degree window." Her voice went from trembling to stern. "Within that 15-degree temperature window, using a lousy furnace with a temperature difference of at least 15 degrees on each side, you refined a Qi and Blood Pill with a 40% activity retention rate."

Fang Yuan didn't explain. The precise control of palm temperature achieved through the Eightfold Stance Training allows for a secondary correction based on the temperature difference in the furnace. This technique isn't in the recipe; it's in the hands.

Liu Ruyan's mouth opened. Then closed. Then opened again.

"What exactly are your hands made of?"

Fang Yuan ignored the question.

"Side effects," he brought the conversation back on track. "You said that if the pharmacology of Yangyan Pill were incorporated into the recovery potion, the period of weakness could be reduced from three days to one day."

Liu Ruyan's eyes were still fixed on the formula paper. Fang Yuan could tell that her attention was being pulled in two directions—on the left was the drug-obsessed instinct of "wanting to study the formula immediately," and on the right was the rationality of "Fang Yuan asking her about serious matters."

The drug addict's instincts won by two breaths.

On the third breath, reason caught up.

"Okay." She forcefully removed her fingers from the paper, her fingertips digging into the wood grain of the table. "But I need time. The balance between the pure Yang properties of the Yang Flame Pill and the violent rebound of the Breakthrough Pill is complex—it will require at least two days of formulation experiments—"

"tonight."

Liu Ruyan's fingers stopped.