Chapter 3600: Pill Poison
Helen watched as Alex brought the pills out of the cauldron.
Since the pills hadn’t formed any Pill Clouds, the only reason would be because they had some missing energy on the inside. That meant that Alex would have to fill them up manually later on.
She supposed this method was indeed faster than manually going through each ingredient one after another, so she said nothing and simply waited for Alex to continue.
However, Alex didn’t do anything. He simply brought out the pills and handed them over to his father.
"Here, these are the pills for you."
Both Helen and Graham looked rather surprised at that.
"What about the Pill Clouds?" Graham asked.
Alex shook his head. "These pills don’t need them. Rather, it’s would be bad if they had them."
Helen took the pills from her husband’s hands and looked through them. The moment she took them, her eyes narrowed in confusion.
"Alex, honey, what are these pills?" Helen asked.
"They’re healing pills. Or at least they’re supposed to be," Alex said.
"Are they?" Helen looked down at the pills. "Okay, putting aside the fact that this is a horrible recipe for a healing pill, why are these pills so weak?"
Graham looked toward her. "What do you mean?"
Helen didn’t answer. She couldn’t be entirely certain based on her own instincts, especially when it was something made by her son, so she brought out a pill tester and placed one of the pills inside.
She activated the tester and watched as the fog rose through the glass. It rose up barely at all.
"18%," Helen said with a frown. "What am I missing here?"
"18%? Isn’t that considered a trash pill?" Graham asked.
In the lower realms, anything below 10% was considered trash, but in the Immortal Realm, that threshold was higher at 50%. There was simply so much knowledge and talent available that if one were to eat a pill, they could easily find one with over 50% harmony.
As such, the pill Alex had made surprised the both of them.
"Your father shouldn’t eat this at all," Helen said. "It’s bad for him."
Alex nodded. "Can you tell me why it is bad?"
Helen narrowed her eyes. She could tell her son was trying to teach her something. What could it be?
She answered the question as well as she could.
"A body’s ability to process a pill depends entirely on the energy that is stored within the powder of the pill. The higher the harmony, the more the powder ends up being destroyed when someone uses up that energy. Conversely, any portion in a pill that doesn’t hold any energy ends up not being destroyed, and instead begins to clog up their meridians."
Alex smiled. "That is precisely what it does. And that is precisely what I want to happen to father."
Helen didn’t understand. "What do you mean?"
Alex explained his thought process. He first began the explanation by telling his mother the exact situation with his father’s meridians, as well as the possible solutions that had already been tried out.
"The solution that worked the best had been when father’s meridians were clogged up entirely. It was a temporary solution and the ingredients for the pills that made it work were expensive, which was why it was put off. At first, I thought of using simple ingredients to have the same thing happen, but then I realized something. That exact scenario is nothing more than pill poisoning."
Helen looked down at the trash pills in her hands. "You want to put your father’s body through pill poisoning?" she asked as she finally understood what her son was attempting to do.
"Yes," Alex said excitedly. "If he were to eat only trash pills, the powder will begin clogging up the walls of his meridians over time."
"Won’t that thin out his meridians?" Helen asked. "Pill poisoning is a horrible thing after all."
"It is, and it will," Alex said. "But in making it worse, it will instead become better for father. A clogged meridian is always preferable to an Inverted meridian. Father’s cultivation speed will increase upon becoming pill poisoned."
Helen slowly nodded. She could understand that much.
"But what about when things get bad?" Helen asked. "Since these pills don’t work the way the actual clogging pill did, these won’t uniformly clog throughout his meridians. What if it creates a large blockage in just one location instead of small ones in many, as we want?"
"My expectation is that father’s body will do the work for us. His body, at some level, appears to be self-repairing, so any issues he may have will be resolved all on their own," Alex said. "Of course, I am not placing all my trust in father’s body doing the work for me. In case it can’t, I have a pill recipe that I came up with while back in the Myriad Spirit Realm that can fully get rid of any pill poisoning. I call it the Dawn Breaking Pill."
Helen slowly nodded. "I think... that works."
There were perhaps things that neither of them were considering for now, but based on everything they did talk about, Alex had the right idea for all that needed to be done.
"Does it have to be Immortal pills?" Helen asked after a moment. "Or can I make Saint pills too?"
"I... I’m not sure. It depends on whether father’s body can absorb Saint pills or not. I assume he can, given his cultivation base."
"He can. It just doesn’t do much for him because of his body cultivation," Helen explained. "But we are not really worried about the effects of a pill, are we? We only care about its physical powder flowing into his meridians."
Alex nodded. "That’s correct. If his body can break down Saint pills, then that works perfectly."
Helen smiled. "Alright, since we know as much, leave the task of making the many pills to me. You can focus on your own cultivation, and I will let you know the outcome of our little experiment."
