As time progressed, pill clouds continued to form multiple times within the same hour, confusing, exciting, and bewildering everyone but Scarlet who was used to it by now.
"No way! How does he keep doing this?" Bai Jingshen asked. He had been excited about the prospect of making free use of an alchemist who could form pill clouds, but the extent to which it had reached was beyond his wildest imagination.
"This… this is impossible," Luo Beihan who was next to them commented. The other wives and concubines nodded as well, but they weren't as knowledgeable in the ways of alchemy so they didn't comment much.
As the lightning strikes continued, Bai Jingshen was getting way too curious to not speak up.
"Nuanhuo, tell me. You must know. How is he doing it?" he asked Scarlet.
The phoenix simply shrugged. "I don't know, I never bothered to learn. As far as I can remember, he's always been able to make pill clouds. The pills he got me always had the pill veins," she said
"What? He's been able to do this since before you two met?" the White tiger was even more surprised. "And is it always this consistent?"
"Yep, once he starts, the sky stays cloudy for the rest of the day. The people in our capital have already gotten used to the random lightning strikes that happen any and all the time," she explained.
"Is… is what my son doing that great?" Helen asked. All of this was very new to her, but seeing how the group was reacting, she couldn't help but feel proud.
"Great doesn't even begin to explain just how good what he is doing is," Luo Beihan explained. "Even in the Immortal realms, being able to produce pill clouds is a sign of an experienced alchemist. Even with all the best conditions, only 1 in every 1000 alchemists can produce such a result."
"1 in 1000?" Scarlet was surprised. "That doesn't sound that hard then."
"No, it doesn't," Luo Beihan explained. "But that's because it really isn't that hard for an experienced alchemist if the criteria are met."
"Elaborate a little more," Bai Jingshen asked.
"Okay, if we are to assume that an alchemist can make no mistake when following a perfect recipe, then there will still be 2 things that will hinder him from making a perfect pill."
"The first obstacle will be finding ingredients that are teeming with energy in it. If the ingredient isn't like that, it's quite hard to make pills with a very high harmony."
"The second obstacle is the act of forming the pill itself in the end. If you make a mistake there, even if you had perfect ingredients, you can still fail to make a pill with very high harmony."
"It is only when both of these problems are taken care of that one can make pills that form pill clouds," Luo Beihan said.
"There are a few ways to get rid of the problems. In the instance of the 2nd problem, you can find a good pill-forming technique that can help you on its own. Most people end up using techniques that allow you to make 4 or more pills at once so that the chances of having a single pill that reaches 100% harmony is increased by just that much."
"I don't know what sort of technique the young man is using inside, but I don't think it's that far off," she said. "But to begin with, this problem isn't that hard to take care of. It's the first one."
"The problem with ingredients is that it is very, very rare to find ingredients that are teeming with energy. As far as I'm aware, there are only two ways to get them. You either have to be at the perfect place at the perfect time to find the ingredients naturally, or you have to artificially inject energy into the ingredients."
"And that's where the problem is," she said. "You can't manipulate an energy to inject into an ingredient if you don't have a basic dao of that element."
"I simply can't imagine how that young man is possibly injecting energy into the ingredients I gave him. Could he have a basic dao of all 7 of the elements?" she wondered.
"No way," Scarlet said. "He only has a Fire Dao and a Metal Dao. He doesn't have the other 5 Daos."
"Then… no, how is he doing it?" the beast couldn't comprehend.
"Are you sure there is no other way?" Bai Jingshen asked. "What if you have a spiritual root of that element, but not the dao?"
"It wouldn't work. The energy a spiritual root produces is specific to that person alone. His energy can never match the energy of an ingredient even when it is the same. You can only do so with a Dao," the woman said.
"But he doesn't have all the Dao," Scarlet said.
"That… I don't know what's going on then," the beast said. The more she explained how it worked to the others, the less she understood what could be happening herself.
She could understand that Alex might have a good pill-forming technique, but how was he tackling the problem of the ingredients? She knew for a fact that the ingredients she had given were barely good enough to produce pills with 85% harmony.
"Well, then there's only one way to find out," Bai Jingshen said. "The young man can tell us himself."
They watched the lightning strikes stop after a few minutes and Alex walked out to the garden where everyone had been waiting for him.
The dark clouds had left the sky and the sun finally shined, albeit from the very west.
"Oh, it's already late afternoon," Alex said with a surprised look. "I didn't realize I had been inside for so long."
"Are you doing well? Are you overexerting yourself?" Bai Jingshen asked after he walked.
"Overexerting? No, not in the least. I can keep going for another whole day," Alex said.
"Is that so," the White Tiger seemed amazed. "Alright, we called you here to explain what is going on. How are you causing so many pill clouds to form one after another?"
"I have only formed pill clouds on 10 different instances, young man, and that was over the course of thousands of years. You have beaten my record in just a day alone. How are you doing this?" the female tiger asked.
"I'm just doing what I do normally, I guess," Alex said. "I don't know what to tell you guys other than that."
"Beihan here explained to us that pill clouds are difficult to form without a good set of ingredients, which you don't have. How are you circumventing this problem to make lightning fall one after another?" Bai Jingshen asked.
"Oh, that's simple," Alex said. "I'm using World Defying Mushrooms."
"World… what?" Luo Beihan looked confused and so did most of the people there.
"World Defying Mushrooms?" Bai Jingshen thought for a bit. "I've heard that before somewhere."
"It was in the book I read to you once, my lord," the Lynx, Bai Jingshen's first wife spoke. "World Defying Mushroom is a mutated descendant of the World Tree. It's a mushroom with neutral energy that can copy any energy it comes into contact with upon being heated and adds to that energy."
"That's right," Alex said. "I'm using the mushroom each time I make the pills, so the lack of energy in the ingredients is taken care of easily."
"Such a thing exists?" Luo Beihan couldn't help but ask.
"It's a very rare ingredient from what I can remember reading," the lynx explained. "Most alchemists don't even know about it because it's just that impossible to find."
Alex nodded when he heard that. It was indeed very rare. Even in the Forbidden Orchard, he could only find very few mushrooms nowadays.
"And you're spending those mushrooms to make pills for us?" Bai Jingshen asked.
"I found a place with quite a few of those mushrooms, so I can afford to use them," Alex explained.
"I see," Bai Jingshen said. "Thank you for taking the extra step that you didn't have to. Thanks to you, my subjects can now enjoy 5-veined pills."
"It's nothing, brother Shen," Alex said. "It's a shame I couldn't get them 6-veined pills like I normally made.'
"Hmm? 6 veined pills?" Bai Jingshen's eyes narrowed. "What's stopping you from making those right now?"
"Oh, 6 veined pills require me to handle Saint Soul realm lightning strikes. I could handle them when I had my blood essence before, but after I gave it away, I have to rely on my cultivation base right now. Even that I'm finding to be a little worse than normal, but not by much."
Bai Jingshen's eyes narrowed. "Wait, are you saying that if you improve your cultivation base or your blood aura, you can make better pills?" he asked.
"Uhh… I would have to have a Saint Soul realm strength again for it to be possible, but yes," Alex said.
Bai Jingshen brought out the pool of blood he had once again. "If that is so then stop making pills. You have made enough for today," he said. "Go into closed cultivation right now and use this pool of blood to improve as much as you can."
"Really?" Alex asked excitedly.
"I need a guarantee that you can make 6-veined pills if I give you this though," Bai Jingshen asked.
"I guarantee it, brother Shen," Alex said. He was only a single cultivation realm away from that anyhow.
"Very well then. Go ahead. We will be waiting for you to be done with it," Bai Jingshen said.
Alex thanked the white tiger and was taken away to a secret room to cultivate for as long as he could.
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