Chapter 4014 — Han Jingyi's Contribution

No wonder Hong Zhong was puzzled—anyone with even a shred of common sense would be. It was common knowledge that pill refining was a supremely time-consuming and labor-intensive endeavor; a refiner of middling skill might well fail to produce a single pill in three days.

As for top-grade pills, unless one were a Pill God like Zhang Lifeng, even a refiner only slightly inferior could offer no guarantee whatsoever.

After all their previous dealings, Hong Zhong believed absolutely that Wei Zhao could refine top-grade pills—but to claim he could mass-produce them in a mere three days was far too extravagant.

"Treat the dead horse as a live one. There's no other way at present, so why not give it a try?" Wei Zhao said with a faint smile.

Since Wei Zhao had said as much, Hong Zhong could think of nothing else to do. He simply nodded. "Very well, then I'll leave it in Young Master Lin's hands. When it's done, you will be richly rewarded. This old man will go make the preparations at once."

Hong Zhong immediately set about preparing the spirit herbs and materials, while Wei Zhao asked for a private guest room and began to sit in meditation, resting his mind.

His offer of help this time had not been impulsive but the fruit of careful deliberation. For one, it would repay Hong Zhong for the many favors he had received and deepen their friendship; for another, by demonstrating his immense value to Hong Zhong's face, future cooperation would flow all the more smoothly.

Half an hour later, Hong Zhong had men carry in several full sacks of assorted spirit herbs. To save time, he had bought them from Steward Song; such herbs hardly counted as important goods here and could be purchased casually with spirit jade.

The pills these ingredients could produce were, like the Foundation Establishment Barrier-Breaking Pill, the sort commonly used by capable Foundation Establishment cultivators. Since Wei Zhao could refine the Foundation Establishment Golden Pill, these would naturally pose no difficulty either.

Along with the herbs, several pill formulas were handed to Wei Zhao as an advance boon—after all, to any refiner, every pill formula was a treasure of extraordinary worth.

After roughly sorting the ingredients, Wei Zhao had Hong Zhong arrange the borrowing of a refining chamber, then entered a state of secluded refinement. Time was short; the hour had come for the Divine Farmer Cauldron to unleash its might.

Wei Zhao had never handled these pills before—the mortal world did not even have Foundation Establishment cultivators, let alone pills—but that did not hinder his refining in the least.

Even for pills he had never seen, the way of pill refinement came down to the same principles in the end; the underlying truths were always the same. And one must not forget that Wei Zhao still possessed the notes Zhang Lifeng had left in the mortal world—even as reference for refining Foundation Establishment pills, they were of enormous benefit.

It was worth noting that, while studying those notes some time ago, Wei Zhao had stumbled upon no small inspiration—not concerning pill refinement, but a devastating technique that could utterly surpass even the top-grade true qi bomb. Even now it remained in the exploratory stage, not yet fully mastered.

Beyond the aid of Zhang Lifeng's notes, the Divine Farmer Cauldron, under Han Jingyi's genius modifications, had become a thoroughgoing semi-automatic pill-refining artifact. This "semi-automatic" merely meant that Wei Zhao had to manually channel true qi into it; everything else the cauldron handled entirely on its own. Even pills he had never encountered were no challenge at all.

One need only input the pill formula, and the Divine Farmer Cauldron would automatically analyze the refining curve. What remained was simplicity itself: follow the cauldron's prompts, add the corresponding ingredients, carefully channel true qi, and wait for the pills to emerge.

An hour later, the first batch of pills was successfully produced. The result was exactly as Wei Zhao had anticipated: as a test, he had loaded five portions of ingredients at once, and this time three finished pills emerged while the remaining two were duds.

A sixty percent success rate on the very first trial was already astonishing by any refiner's standards—and it was the Divine Farmer Cauldron's subsequent performance that truly revealed its legendary power.

With the same pills, the second batch's success rate approached eighty percent, and from the third batch onward it held steady above ninety percent—at times nearing perfection.

With every refinement, the Divine Farmer Cauldron automatically corrected the refining curve, step by step elevating an already astonishing success rate to an unparalleled height. The first two batches still produced duds, but after that, duds all but vanished—this was the true marvel of the Divine Farmer Cauldron!

For two full days, Wei Zhao did not set foot outside, devoting himself wholly to refining. Hong Zhong had no idea how things were progressing within, but even if Wei Zhao could not produce enough top-grade pills, his gratitude toward the young man would not diminish in the slightest.

The only two crates of auction goods had been lost en route, and the island branch houses were simultaneously short on supplies. The sudden four-island auction exposition had instantly thrust Hong Zhong into the eye of the storm.

At this rate, the Hong Clan Merchant Guild was certain to suffer a humiliating downfall. Never mind whatever more dangerous and deadly moves those people might make later—for Hong Zhong himself, his career as a manager holding sole authority over a region was as good as over.

To overawe the rank and file and to give an accounting to everyone high and low, the Hong Clan Merchant Guild would certainly push him out as the scapegoat this time, laying the blame for the whole debacle at his feet. This was only logical, and no one could change it.

And so, driven by circumstance, Hong Zhong—once a man with influence in every quarter—had been left, thanks to his rivals' concerted scheming, with only one last straw to clutch at: Wei Zhao.

If Wei Zhao succeeded, he might yet escape disaster; if not, there was nothing he could do but leave it to fate.

And so it was: during the two days Wei Zhao spent refining at full stretch, Hong Zhong's potential adversaries were hardly idle. They gathered together and went to see Steward Song.

"Tomorrow is the auction. By my reckoning, if Hong Zhong had any way of bringing in supplies from elsewhere, they should arrive today. The odds are slim, but we can't afford not to guard against it." The first to speak among them was Manager Hao, once a close acquaintance of Hong Zhong's.

"Manager Hao, aren't you being a bit too cautious? Under the Anti-Hong Alliance's maneuvering, the Hong Clan Merchant Guild's Mid-Island headquarters and the branch reserves on all four islands are completely depleted. And with the tricks we played on the way here, even his last two crates of goods have gone into the sea to feed the fish. And you think Hong Zhong still has a way out? You take him for some kind of immortal, ha ha ha!" A short-haired young man with somewhat yellowish hair threw back his head in wild, arrogant laughter.