Alex woke up sometime after 6 am. He was inside a room in his residence. After coming back from his new work of collecting ingredients in the alchemy garden, he had decided to train a bit more with his spiritual sense and see what else he could do.
He had made a few different discoveries.
First of all, his spiritual sense could expand beyond the 20 meters normal radius. However, doing so caused his spiritual sea to massively dry up, and the maximum he could expand to was 30 meters anyway.
The next thing he found out was that he could use his spiritual sense to move around objects similar to his Qi manipulation as well. However, his spiritual sense wasn't powerful enough to pick up even the smallest stones, and could only sway the blades of grasses in the ground for now.
The final thing he realized was that getting an item out of his storage was way faster than using the inventory. His superior memory now allowed him to remember where everything in his storage bag was, so the inventory was basically useless now.
He had nearly a million Qi now, but since his master told him breaking through too many times at once was harmful to one's cultivation, he decided to not breakthrough right now, and wait until his current cultivation was stabilized. Which he felt was done or very close to being done.
He logged out to get some breakfast. After breakfast, he logged back in once more. Today was Friday, one of the three days when he didn't have any classes.
He waited in the courtyard for a while unsure whether to go find his master for the morning lesson or wait for her in his house. Thankfully, Ma Rong came by herself just like yesterday.
"Oh, you are awake today. Come to the alchemy room." He heard a voice from far away. He felt something wash over his body, and quickly retract back.
He was surprised. Then he walked to the alchemy room and said, " Congratulations master, on unlocking spiritual sense."
"It's all thanks to you. Now sit, we skipped our lesson yesterday, so we can't waste any more time. Bring out your cauldron." Alex immediately brought out his cauldron and placed it on the fire.
"Tell me, what are the most vital things during a pill-making process?" Ma Rong asked.
Alex thought for a second, and answered, "Temperature of the fire, method of burning the ingredients, and timing of everything." He answered confidently. He had made his pills before and knew the answer.
"Wrong!" she said. Alex was taken aback. "Aren't those the most important things to remember and keep track of when making a pill, master?" he asked.
"Those are important, but not the most important thing during a pill-making process." She looked straight into his eyes, and said, "The most important things are the cauldron, the ingredients, and the elemental synergy."
Alex's full attention was on her words now. She continued, "Tell me, why did you say the temperature was important?"
Alex answered, "Because the recipes tell you that you need to burn certain ingredients at a certain temperature. Also, you have to constantly change the temperature throughout the entire pill-making process according to the recipe. So, having the fire at accurate temperature is necessary."
Ma Rong smiled and said," That is correct. Having an accurate temperature is important. But tell me, what burns the ingredients? The fire or the cauldron?"
"Uhh… the cauldron?"
"Yes. So, it doesn't matter if the temperature of the fire is accurate or not, if the temperature of the cauldron isn't accurate at all. However, we can prevent this from happening. We can make the transition of heat from the fire to cauldron very fast if we use the right type of cauldron."
"For example, the Golden Jade Cauldron can take and give out heat in less than a single second. Compared to the normal black cauldrons you see in the alchemy hall, which take around 3 seconds to change their temperature according to the fire."
"So, it doesn't matter how well your fire manipulation is if your cauldron itself is garbage. This just leads to a bad pill."
Ma Rong then proceeded to the next topic. "Next on the list is the ingredients. This is pretty simple. If you have good ingredients, you end up with good pills. If you have bad ingredients, you end up with bad pills. However, while the concept itself may be simple, applying it not very much."
"There are 3 things in an ingredient that determines whether it's good or not. The first one is age. The older the ingredient is, the more energy it contains, making it better in general. The second is the time from when it was obtained, to the time it was made into a pill. The third one is the elemental affinity of the ingredient."
"Age is pretty easy to determine based on how much energy it has. Once an alchemist has been used to the ingredients, they can usually tell its age just by feeling the energy in it."
"The second point about the time can be fixed using some wooden or jade boxes that don't leak the ingredients aura. This way you can conserve the energy inside the box, and have it be more useful during your alchemy process."
"As for the third part, the elements are a way vaster topic that I am not able to teach you fully, because I myself do not know a lot about it. However, I still do know quite a bit, and knowing about this topic is absolutely crucial if you ever want to be an earth grade or a heaven grade alchemist."
"The third point is about an ingredient's element also is in part the third most important thing to remember when making a pill, the elemental synergies. This basically means that every element has a certain elemental energy in it, and based on the different elements in the ingredients you can either make an incredible pill or end up with your cauldron exploding."