It didn't take Alex long to realize just how much time he was going to have to spend on this one pill. He was thankful that he had realized that very early, so the months he would have to spend in his room working on it would no longer affect him as much.
Day after day, week after week, Alex continued trying out different pills he made the swine eat almost daily.
The only freedom he was even getting from this was when he was making pills for the others, or getting his information sent to him from the insight pavilion. Other than that, he spent every single day making these very pills.
Each variation brought out a different result and each result needed checking. However, no matter how much he checked, none of the pills actually worked at all.
He went through all the pill swine that were brought here and had to replace them too. Still, he wasn't successful.
At some point, Alex decided to stop what he was doing and try out his other method. He wanted to make a pill from scratch to follow the earth pill's recipe.
However, not even a month later he was forced to stop. Unfortunately, the two energies were fundamentally different and too unique to try and copy what one did for the other.
He was trying to use equivalent ingredients for each recipe to copy it. Instead of Earth energy, it would be Water. Instead of Metal and Water missing, it would be Wood and Fire, leaving Earth and Metal energy which would be the equivalent of Wood and Fire for the Earth ingredient.
He found a few such ingredients and was happy to start working on them when he noticed something. The water ingredient equivalent of an earth ingredient did not have anything in common at all.
Those two ingredients did something completely different from each other and had zero connections between them.
When Alex realized this, he was frustrated. He was frustrated that he had to go back to the first method, which was basically trial and error.
At least, he was getting better at it.
His mental simulation of a pill being made with the recipe at hand was getting improved by what he was doing. Experimenting with every possible variation he was thinking of made it easier for him to iron out the few errors his mental simulations had.
He was getting to the point where finding errors between the pill in his mind and the pill in his hand.
After months of experimentation, he was starting to have to rely less and less on actual pills, and with each answer, he was getting closer and closer to the correct one.
More time passed and he broke through to Saint Foundation 2nd realm at this time, but for some reason, he couldn't find himself to be excited about it. His days had been consumed by this one pill and he worked towards it all the time.
He was more excited about the fact that he was getting ever so closer to the water spiritual root pill.
It had been nearly 400 days since he started working on it, and on this day, after thousands of different variations, Alex came upon one that just felt right.
There were about 7 additional ingredients for this recipe in addition to the 6 that were already there.
He got very excited about it and quickly started making it. He still struggled with making the pill due to his lack of experience with the ingredients that were involved, but that did not stop him from doing his best to make the pill.
About 15 minutes later, he had a pill ready to be used. He instantly teleported outside the palace and ran up to a pill swine that was being kept there.
He fed the pill to the swine and excitedly waited for the energy in the pill to make its way through the swine's body.
It went through its meridian down to its core-like dantian. Most of the pills failed here as they were either absorbed by the dantian or flew out to either do something else or cause havoc on the swine's body.
Alex waited patiently. For a moment, it looked like he failed again, however, a moment later, the water energy burst out of the dantian and into the swine's spiritual roots.
It lingered there for a moment before disappearing completely.
Alex's eyes went wide when he realized that the spiritual root had absorbed the water energy… and had improved.
The water spiritual root had improved because of his pill.
"Yes!" he couldn't help but exclaim in happiness. So many days of work, torturous days had finally paid off.
He had found the recipe.
He checked the swine for a bit longer and waited to see if there would be any lingering changes that came with the pill. There were none.
Immediately, rejuvenated by the discovery, Alex returned back to his room and made the pill again.
The pill came out to be around 43%, nothing good in his eyes, but it was still good enough for him to test with.
This was the final test that would tell him how good the pill was. He knew the pill worked, he just wanted to know to what extent, and see if there was anything else it did to a human that it didn't do to a pill swine.
While pill swine were almost the same as humans, the 'almost' made all the difference. He needed to make sure one could use the pill even as a human.
He quickly cleared his cauldron and brought out a separate group of ingredients. This one was going to be used to make a Saint Nullifying pill for himself.
He wasted no time and made the pill. It took some time since this was a pill he couldn't hurry with, but he still made it relatively quickly.
Once the pill was ready, he ate the water pill in his hands and brought out the nullifying pill as he got ready for the water pill to take effect.
Similar to the earth pill, the water pill also diffused into his bloodstream and found its way through his meridians going down to his dantian. Unlike a swine's dantian, Alex's was clear and could be seen through, a sign that he was in the Saint realm.
He saw the energy go through his Qi nearly unobstructed and came back out through either water spiritual roots.
Alex quickly swallowed the pill in his hand before the water energy could take effect. He sensed the water energy start its process to improve the spiritual root, but before it could do so, the volatile energy from the nullifying pill quickly erased the water energy, leaving simply neutral energy behind.
The neutral energy didn't do anything helpful or harmful, so Alex quickly circulated it out of the spiritual room and pushed it into his dantian.
His dantian had grown a bit stronger now, having thicker crystal pillars made up of Qi, so they could store a bit more Qi as well.
Alex ignored that for now and simply held a satisfied smile. It worked exactly as intended.
"I should finish it all quickly," he thought and started working on the recipe.
He had the recipe, so now it was time to improve it. Surprisingly, he was done with it before he could even realize it.
He had been working nonstop for so long that this small stretch of time went by in a flash for him. Now that he was done with it, he finally had the perfect recipe.
So, it was time to make the pills.
Alex wasn't sure just how many of the pills he was supposed to make, so he decided to do the same thing as he had done with his earth pills.
He was going to make as many as he could with the ingredients he had, and then sell them. He had received a hefty sum of money for the last ones he had sold, so these ones should sell quite well too.
He started making the pills and a day or two later, he was done with it. There weren't many ingredients for him to work on, so he was done quite quickly.
Now that he was done, he left his room.
Kang Xuefeng and Gong Liuxian were meditating in a lounge area in the palace when they noticed Alex's arrival. These were the two people that were not in deep cultivation as they were in charge of taking care of the continents in case of some emergency.
"Senior Kang, Senior Gong," Alex called out as he walked in.
"Young man, what are you doing here?" Kang Xuefeng asked. "Do you need something?"
"No, I'm here to give you these," Alex said as he handed over a storage bag to the old men.
"Hm? What's this?" one of them asked.
"It's the pills I've been working on," he said. "The one that improves your water spiritual roots."
"I see— wait, you did it?" old man Kang couldn't believe it.
"No way! You finished the recipe?" Gong Liuxian asked.
"Yes," Alex said. "Where is senior Lei? He will be happy to know that his broken recipe is now full."
"He's in deep cultivation, and won't be out for another 8 months," old man Kang said. "But don't worry, his excitement won't dwindle when he finds out about the pill."
Alex nodded. "Please give it to the others who can make use of it," he said. "As for the rest, can you help me sell them?
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