Devouring Soul Emperor

Drawing on his previous experience, he managed to successfully refine a mass of black Essence of Spiritual Medicine after wasting over sixty Hundred-Year-Old Ink Bamboo Leaves.

Next was the Eight-leaf Lotus, of which he wasted more than forty.

...

As he continued the refinement process, Chu Qingyun’s experience grew, and his control over his Martial Soul Fire became more and more effortless.

After refining one full set of the Essences of Spiritual Medicine required for the One Yang Pill, Chu Qingyun didn’t rush to the next step. Instead, he returned to practicing the refinement process all over again.

With each successive refinement, Chu Qingyun’s success rate grew higher and higher.

His control over his Martial Soul Power was already formidable. Now, after extensive practice and gaining hands-on experience, his speed, quality, and success rate were all improving by leaps and bounds.

He even quickly reached a point where he could instantly adjust his Martial Soul Fire to salvage a Spiritual Medicine the moment he sensed something was wrong.

Achieving this might sound simple, but it required a wealth of experience, precise judgment, and the ability to react quickly while multitasking.

Only a master deeply immersed in the Alchemy Dao for many years could accomplish such a feat!

Chu Qingyun was able to master this so quickly not only because of his strong control over his Martial Soul Power, but also for another crucial reason: whenever he detected even the slightest problem, he could perform countless targeted practice sessions. He could even intentionally recreate the problem to practice solving it.

This kind of "extravagance"—deliberately creating problems where there were none—was something that even the powerful Elixir Medicine Families would be unwilling to do when training their own super-geniuses.

After brute-forcing his way through and destroying over a thousand Spiritual Medicines, Chu Qingyun could be said to know the ingredients for the One Yang Pill like the back of his hand. Now, he could refine them with his eyes closed and not make a single mistake!

Destroying over a thousand Tier Three Spiritual Medicines just to improve his success rate was simply unimaginable in the real world. That was the equivalent of tens of thousands of drops of Primordial Spirit Liquid!

But in this Illusion Realm, it was nothing more than a thought...

After refining the Essence of Spiritual Medicine, the next step was to fuse all the essences together with the help of the Martial Soul Fire, following the sequence and method recorded in the Pill Formula.

Compared to the first step of refining the essence, this one was a hundred times more difficult.

However, since Chu Qingyun had already succeeded in refining all the necessary Essences of Spiritual Medicine, the Illusion Realm could simulate countless copies of them with just a single thought.

With practice session after practice session, Chu Qingyun’s experience and skill were rapidly improving.

Finally, after destroying an untold number of portions of Essence of Spiritual Medicine, he had also mastered the second step of refining the One Yang Pill to perfection.

The third step of refining an Elixir was to take the fused Essences of Spiritual Medicine and use the power of the Martial Soul Fire to nourish them into a truly solid and stable Elixir.

This step was relatively simpler, a test of patience. All he had to do was carefully control the heat—not too high, not too low—and allow the various Essences of Spiritual Medicine to fuse and interact with each other.

After destroying a large amount of materials yet again, Chu Qingyun mastered this final step as well, becoming both fast and proficient at it.

After practicing all three steps individually, Chu Qingyun tried performing them all together in one continuous process. Sure enough, this revealed some minor issues with the transitions between steps.

He threw several hundred more Spiritual Medicines into the endeavor, and on a pile of their ashes, he overcame every one of these problems.

At this point, when it came to refining the One Yang Pill, Chu Qingyun could absolutely be called a master!

The price for this, however, was the consumption of enough resources to bankrupt the entire Ten Thousand Treasures Tower—an exorbitant sum spent just to master the refining of the One Yang Pill.

Such extravagance... Besides Chu Qingyun, who possessed the Light Card, there was truly no one else...

Once the simulations in the Illusion Realm were complete, Chu Qingyun exited and took out his Pill Cauldron and the Spiritual Medicines for the One Yang Pill from his Storage Ring to begin the real refinement.

Refining for real, after all, was mentally different from practicing in the Illusion Realm.

In the Illusion Realm, he was completely relaxed and in the best possible state of mind, as he had no fear of failure. Never mind destroying Spiritual Medicines; even if he blew up the Pill Cauldron, there would be no loss. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

But in reality, it was different. Every destroyed Spiritual Medicine represented drop after drop of Primordial Spirit Liquid...

Nervous during his first real attempt at Alchemy, Chu Qingyun made a mistake during the second step, the fusion of the Spiritual Medicines, and accidentally burned one set of ingredients to ash.

He cleaned out the Pill Furnace while composing himself.

Soon, Chu Qingyun regrouped and tried again. This second time, he succeeded in one go, completing the entire process from refining the Essence of Spiritual Medicine to nourishing the Elixir into its final form with fluid grace!

The moment he lifted the cauldron’s lid and the Elixir emerged, a joyful smile spread across Chu Qingyun’s face.

This was the very first Elixir he had ever refined!

The Spirit Level Elixir, the One Yang Pill, was about the size of a pigeon’s egg and dark red all over. A thin, red, stream-like substance enveloped the Elixir.

He had seen this before when he used a Nascent Condensation Pill, except on that pill, it was white.

Back then, he hadn’t known what it was, but now he did. This stream-like substance enveloping the Elixir was called Pill Mist.

An experienced Alchemist could determine the quality of an Elixir by its Pill Mist.

Having inherited the Alchemy Dao experience of that senior, Chu Qingyun naturally knew all about this.

If an Elixir had no Pill Mist, it meant it was the worst kind of Lower Grade Elixir, and likely wouldn’t even have its most basic medicinal effects.

An Elixir like this One Yang Pill, with a thin layer of Pill Mist, was a Middle Grade Elixir. A Middle Grade Elixir should have no problem delivering its basic effects, but one couldn’t expect any extra surprises.

If the Pill Mist was dense, however, it indicated an Upper Grade Elixir. An Upper Grade Elixir would likely produce even better effects beyond the basic ones.

And above Upper Grade was Top-Grade!

According to that senior’s experience, a Top-Grade Elixir was completely uncontrollable—something one could only stumble upon by chance, not seek out.

To create a Top-Grade Elixir, an Alchemist not only needed outstanding talent and extremely solid fundamentals, but also had to be in the right state of mind. Sometimes, it all came down to a sudden feeling.

Therefore, not even the most supreme Alchemists on the entire continent would dare to claim with certainty that their next Elixir would be Top-Grade!

To have refined a Middle Grade Elixir on his first try—Chu Qingyun was already very satisfied.

Logically, one Middle Grade One Yang Pill should be enough to cure Ye Qingfeng’s cold poison. But to be on the safe side, Chu Qingyun fired up the furnace and refined another one.

The result was another Middle Grade One Yang Pill.

With two pills, success was absolutely 100% guaranteed.

After successfully creating the One Yang Pill, Chu Qingyun entered the Illusion Realm again to begin practicing the refinement of the Spiritual Longevity Pill.