Chapter 4014 — Han Jingyi's Contribution
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
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.