Chapter 4861 — Alchemy Divine Artifact Peripheral

Still, Han Jingyi lived up to her reputation as a scientific genius. Unable to give a direct answer, she had come up with an ingenious workaround—the very set of wireless cameras and probes she had sent along with the others, known in full as the Alchemy Divine Artifact Peripheral.

In truth, Wei Zhao had simply gotten lucky with the timing. Ever since she upgraded the Shennong Cauldron for him last time, Han Jingyi had toyed with the idea of building an auxiliary peripheral; back then, however, she and Wei Zhao had been too busy tangled up together to find the time. Only after reaching the North Island did she finally carve out a moment to build it, and now it happened to come in handy.

This Alchemy Divine Artifact Peripheral looked exquisitely intricate and complex, yet using it was in fact remarkably simple. It paired via Bluetooth with the tablet computer on the Shennong Cauldron, and from there everything was foolproof, step by step: once its built-in program was installed, all one had to do was mount the probes onto the corresponding alchemy furnace.

That furnace could be the Shennong Cauldron or any other alchemy furnace; the peripheral would then transmit every piece of alchemy data it monitored to the tablet, where its built-in program conducted a comprehensive analysis—revealing the flaws in the process and the reasons for any failure.

The whole principle, plainly stated, was very simple: monitor and analyze, and thereby better assist the alchemy. Han Jingyi glossed over the design process in a few careless strokes in her letter, but Wei Zhao was astonished by her all over again. To her this was a trifling matter done offhandedly; to anyone else it was nothing short of a pipe dream.

Of course, producing this Alchemy Divine Artifact Peripheral owed as much to the existence of the Central Chamber of Commerce as to Han Jingyi's genius. Without access to those precision electronic components, her ideas—however brilliant—would have been useless.

After reading the letter, Wei Zhao was overjoyed. He had kept Qing Xuanzi waiting for days without giving him any response; drag it out any longer and, never mind whether the man might take offense, Wei Zhao himself would not be able to live with it. However special the circumstances, the man was his disciple now—he could not go on misleading the young.

Leaving the Hong Chamber of Commerce, Wei Zhao headed straight for the Qing Dan Pavilion at Morning Star Academy. Sure enough, Qing Xuanzi had long been waiting there, craning his neck in anticipation. Only because he had so recently been taken on as a disciple did he not dare hurry Wei Zhao along; otherwise he would have been at his side long ago, peppering him with questions.

At the sight of Wei Zhao, Qing Xuanzi was overjoyed. He could not even be bothered to put on his shoes, and came padding over on a pair of big bare feet from far off, then performed the disciple's salute with the utmost reverence: "Your disciple Qing Xuanzi pays his respects to Master!"

To be honest, even now Wei Zhao found the situation a little unreal. All of a sudden he had taken a seventh-rank alchemist as his disciple—who would believe it if word got out?

Yet there Qing Xuanzi knelt before him in all reverence, and unreal or not, it was fact. Wei Zhao said bluntly, "Take me to the alchemy room. Let me see how you refine your pills."

"Ah? Yes!" Qing Xuanzi's eyes lit up at once, and he hurriedly led the way to the alchemy room. Generally speaking, alchemists seldom allowed outsiders to be present while they worked—partly for fear of interference and distraction, partly out of the need for secrecy—but Qing Xuanzi clearly had no such reservations before Wei Zhao. He would have been only too glad to have Wei Zhao pick his work apart.

As it happened, this was the first time Wei Zhao had ever observed a seventh-rank alchemist refine pills from start to finish at close range. Before he could find Qing Xuanzi's problems for him, the real beneficiary was this master who had come by his disciple so cheaply: this kind of close observation would do him a great deal of good. Even with an alchemy divine artifact like the Shennong Cauldron, honing his own alchemy skills could only help.

Before Qing Xuanzi formally began, Wei Zhao stepped forward and mounted the probes onto his alchemy furnace. Qing Xuanzi was utterly baffled—as the academy's chief alchemist, he had never seen anything like it.

But since Wei Zhao said nothing, he did not dare ask. Every high-grade alchemist had his own secret techniques, after all, and to his eyes Wei Zhao's move was profoundly unfathomable; he took it for some special method of a Mystic Rank alchemist—the classic case of not understanding a thing, yet being awed all the same.

Everything was ready, when Qing Xuanzi suddenly froze. After a long pause he scratched his head and said meekly, "Master, er… what pill are we refining?"

"Any pill will do, so long as it is seventh-rank—anything you think might go wrong." Wei Zhao said indifferently.

"Oh. Then your disciple will refine a seventh-rank Great Return Pill." Qing Xuanzi promptly fetched the corresponding ingredients from the adjacent spirit herb store and began refining before Wei Zhao's eyes.

The whole process was uneventful, steady from beginning to end, and gave the impression of complete ease—proof that the academy's chief alchemist did not hold the title for nothing. Qing Xuanzi truly had the skill and the confidence to back it up.

Yet at the very last moment, just as the furnace was about to be opened, a low, muffled thud sounded from within. Qing Xuanzi's expression changed at once, and when he opened it, the inside of the furnace was a charred black—this batch was a complete failure.

"Has it always been like this?" Wei Zhao asked with a frown.

"Not always. Three or four times out of ten it turns out like this; the rest of the time it goes perfectly normally. Your disciple has racked his brains and still cannot fathom why. Did Master notice anything?" Qing Xuanzi said with a bitter face.

If it failed every time, that would be one thing—with enough trial and error he would eventually figure something out. But this on-again, off-again business left a man helpless.

Six or seven successes out of ten meant the alchemy techniques he had mastered were themselves sound; otherwise such a success rate would be impossible. But then what was to be made of the remaining three or four failures?

If everyone had this problem, that would be one thing too—at least it could be put down to an unavoidable, natural failing in alchemy. But with Wei Zhao's absolute certainty of success right before his eyes, thinking that way was pure self-deception.

"I need to think this over carefully. I will tell you when I have," Wei Zhao said, putting away the wireless probes. Escorted out with all reverence by Qing Xuanzi, he did not head for the Hong Chamber of Commerce but instead went nearby to the East Sea Pavilion.

Wang Xinyan and Huang Xiaotao were still at their morning lessons, so Wei Zhao went straight back to his own room and opened the tablet computer on the Shennong Cauldron. The alchemy curves and various real-time parameters from Qing Xuanzi's session soon appeared before his eyes.

Intuitive as the display was, alchemy was after all an exceedingly complex process, and for the moment Wei Zhao could make nothing of it. He had only a vague sense that the curves seemed slightly flawed—but where exactly the flaw lay, he could not yet pin down.