Chapter 3650 — A Failure?

With this uneasy feeling gnawing at him, Wei Zhao pressed on anxiously for another hour. Fortunately, though the pill cauldron kept up its humming throughout those two hours, no other mishaps occurred, which let him, for all his trembling worry, manages to breathe a little easier.

At last, with a final hum brighter and crisper than all the ones before, this round of pill refinement was declared finished. By then, even Wei Zhao, a man long accustomed to keeping his composure through any upheaval, had been scared into a cold sweat.

The first two hours had been fine—everything under control—but that last hour had been sheer torture. Had a weaker mind been sitting there, it would have been frightened clean out of its wits!

Gathering his scattered thoughts and steadying his breath a little, Wei Zhao finally rose to his feet and opened the Shennong Cauldron before him.

The instant the lid lifted, a rich medicinal fragrance spread through the entire jade pendant space. One whiff was all it took for Wei Zhao to feel his mind clear and his spirit soar.

Judging by the look of things, this ought to count as a success, no?

Full of anticipation, Wei Zhao leaned in and peered into the cauldron. After rummaging about carefully for a moment, he suddenly froze. A glance at the tablet's display, and understanding dawned...

My god! No wonder it had been acting so strangely for the past hour! No wonder it had nearly scared him out of his mind! So this was the source of all that strangeness!

At that very moment, at the entrance of Cave Residence No. 14 at the foot of the mountain, miserable Senior Brother was waiting in a fever of anxiety. If Wei Zhao had only been on tenterhooks for that final hour, miserable Senior Brother had been on edge the whole night through.

After all, whether Wei Zhao could refine the Barrier-Breaking Foundation Pill bore directly on whether he could shoulder Lu Bianren's charge. When facing Meng Jueming, an early-Foundation-Stage miserable Senior Brother and a peak-early-Foundation-Stage miserable Senior Brother were two entirely different propositions.

The Barrier-Breaking Foundation Pill was miserable Senior Brother's only hope of breakthrough now, and if Wei Zhao failed to refine it, that hope would dissolve into nothing.

Apart from Wei Zhao, the only place to get pills refined was the Pill Hall—and even with the thirty spirit jades Wei Zhao had given him last night, plus his own meager savings, he was still far short of the two hundred spirit jades the Pill Hall demanded! Never mind that even with two hundred spirit jades in hand, the Pill Hall's refiners might not succeed anyway!

As he waited in torment, the sky brightened into full day. Miserable Senior Brother was just wondering whether he ought to go to the Spirit Jade Hall and plead a day's leave on Wei Zhao's behalf when the door of Cave Residence No. 14 finally opened and Wei Zhao stepped out.

"Huh? Senior Brother Ku, don't tell me you've been standing guard here all night?" Wei Zhao was taken aback at the sight of him waiting by the door, and could not help asking in surprise.

"Ha, I was just too nervous to sit still, and I couldn't rest back home anyway, so I figured I might as well wait here." Senior Brother Ku gave a sheepish laugh, then asked tensely, "Well? Did it work?"

So even miserable Senior Brother had moments this tense! Wei Zhao shook his head with a laugh, which made miserable Senior Brother's heart lurch. Stammering, he said, "F-failed? Well, it's no great matter—just a dozen or so spirit jades..."

Miserable Senior Brother reflected that a failure meant, at worst, the loss of some materials—and truly, that was nothing much at all.

Wei Zhao said nothing. He simply stretched out his hand, and there in his palm lay two snow-white pills, their medicinal fragrance overpowering. In shape and appearance they were none other than the widely known Barrier-Breaking Foundation Pills!

Gulp! Miserable Senior Brother swallowed hard. At first he could scarcely believe his eyes; once he was sure, he was beside himself with joy. "It actually worked? You're something else, Junior Brother Lin! No wonder even Senior Brother Lu praised you for keeping your light under a bushel!"

Truth be told, though he had set all his hopes on Wei Zhao's success, deep down miserable Senior Brother had still felt Wei Zhao might not measure up to the Pill Hall's refiners. After all, those people were the mainstream of North Island, and though Wei Zhao was a refiner too, he had come up from the secular world—hardly on the same level as they were.

If even North Island's native refiners had such a low success rate, one could well imagine that Wei Zhao, a refiner from the secular world, would fare even worse. Yet in a single night, Wei Zhao had produced two Barrier-Breaking Foundation Pills at once—it was simply like a dream!

This was not miserable Senior Brother looking down on the secular cultivation world; it was simply the truth. In cultivation heritage, the secular world and Cloud Terrace Island had never been on the same plane to begin with—and pill refinement was precisely the field that demanded heritage most of all.

As far as miserable Senior Brother knew, only one person from the secular cultivation world had ever come up and looked down upon Cloud Terrace Island's native refiners in the art of pills—the Divine Physician and Pill Sage, Zhang Lifeng. What he did not know was that the Wei Zhao standing before him now was none other than Zhang Lifeng's betrothed disciple.

Wei Zhao grinned and handed the two pills to miserable Senior Brother. "Two Barrier-Breaking Foundation Pills—this ought to guarantee your breakthrough, Senior Brother Ku!"

To his surprise, miserable Senior Brother took only one of them. "One is enough for me," he said gratefully. "Keep the other for yourself, Junior Brother Lin—you'll surely need it sooner or later."

Seeing that Wei Zhao meant to insist, miserable Senior Brother hurried to persuade him: "If it were the Pill Hall, and they refined two in one go, they'd not only keep one for themselves, I'd have to pay the two hundred spirit jades up front as well! Counted that way, I've already come out far ahead! So please don't refuse, Junior Brother Lin—otherwise I'll never feel right about it!"

"Heh heh, Senior Brother Ku, when did I ever say I only refined two Barrier-Breaking Foundation Pills?" Wei Zhao asked with a smile.

"Huh? More than two? Don't tell me it's three?" Miserable Senior Brother's brain promptly seized up.

He had supplied only three portions of materials, and Wei Zhao had succeeded in refining three Barrier-Breaking Foundation Pills in one go—did that not mean a hundred percent success rate? Even if Wei Zhao had said before that using waste jade to assist in refinement could raise the success rate, this was simply too outrageous!

If word of this got out, those so-called refiners of the Pill Hall would be shamed to death!

Even now, in his wild elation, miserable Senior Brother had not yet noticed that the two Barrier-Breaking Foundation Pills Wei Zhao had given him each bore rings of pill halo!

Even for the same kind of pill, one with a pill halo and one without were worlds apart.

A pill halo meant the very finest of its kind, its effects far beyond the ordinary run. Such things were rare finds that could not be sought, only encountered—and no amount of spirit jades could necessarily buy one!RS