Alex had spent quite a while reading the two talismans and had managed to remember it all. At the same time, he had also recovered much of his spiritual sea.
He had realized that currently, his spiritual sea was actually very small, despite the massive spiritual sea he could see inside his head. If he just let the spiritual sense be used normally, it recovered fast enough that he felt like he had a lot of it. But if he had to use it excessively, it actually disappeared in less than half an hour.
This also meant that it didn't take long for his spiritual sea to recover as well.
He had decided to make the pill once more, so he cleaned the cauldron of any remaining byproducts from the previous pill. He then waited for the cauldron to reach the right temperature and poured in his first ingredient.
Once again, he could feel the energy released from the first ingredient.
'So, this is what a water elemental energy feels like huh,' he thought.
After a while, he put in the second ingredient. When the ingredient started burning into powder and its energy getting released, he realized the energy behind it was actually weaker when compared to the first energy.
'So, the water-energy is stronger than the fire, so according to the theory, the water should either regulate the fire or totally destroy it. Given the current situation, the fire energy will probably be destroyed, right?' he thought.
He watched as the water-energy quickly envelope the fire energy, and destroy it completely— or so he thought was what happened.
'Wait for a second, while the water-energy did get weaker after suppressing the fire energy, neither of the energy has decreased at all.' He was surprised.
He could feel that after coming into contact, the water and fire had tried to attack together, which he thought would destroy each other and only the remaining water energy will be left.
But now that he could tell the energies apart by feeling, he could see that both the water and fire energy that he thought had destroyed each other were actually hidden inside the neutral remaining energy.
The new energy was in an equilibrium between the two energies. Almost as if they had—
"Harmony. When the elemental energies mix together they create harmony with each other. Is that what making pills is truly about?" he couldn't help but shout out loud.
He took out another ingredient and put it in. Soon that ingredient produced different energy too. Based on the talisman his master gave him, this ingredient produced metal elemental energy.
Now the little water elemental energy that remained in the mixed with the mental energy, and suddenly the water energy started getting stronger once more. The metal energy was now harmonized with the water energy such that, the metal energy was 'Empowering' the water energy.
Similar things kept happening, some elements empowered other elements. Some elements overpowered the others. Some weakened the other elements, while some simply controlled the other elements.
He also came to recognize the elements by their energy. As more and more energy got into the mix, the harmony between the elements was getting more and more complicated.
Once the final ingredient was put in., it controlled the remaining elemental energy in the cauldron and the entire energy came to a neutral state with many elemental energies in harmony with each other inside that neutral energy.
Finally, it was time to turn the powder into the pills. Following the recipe, he slowly started collecting the powder to shape it. Suddenly, his Qi started to move on its own.
'Is it happening?' he thought.
Slowly the Qi moved through his entire meridian system and released out of his palm. It moved into the cauldron and started separating the powder into two portions. The separated portions somehow started to shape it into spheres of about the same size as the original sphere.
'Isn't the energy in the pills going to be lower this way? After all, it's one pill split into two, right?' he thought.
From his logical perspective, he should be correct. So he started wondering how the pill is going to overcome that problem. It was then he realized the answer.
Suddenly, his Qi worked on its own to create vortexes that started sucking the energy that we're in the air.
'What sort of technique is this?' he wondered. He couldn't tell how it worked, or how his Qi was even able to manipulate the energy to get into the pill.
It took about 2 minutes for the pills to completely suck in the energies in the air and finally, the 2 pills were ready. He took both the pills out of the cauldron and looked at them.
He first focused on the one on the left.
[Qi Improving Pill: 24%
Improves cultivation speed by 24%]
He was surprised. The pill had separated into two different parts and it was still above 20%. He then checked the second pill.
[Qi Improving Pill: 28%
Improves cultivation speed by 28%]
"Holy S**T," he couldn't help but cuss. He had somehow managed to create two pills, both over 20% harmony, and one of them even near 30% of harmony.
He started thinking, 'If I discount the energies that got away from the cauldron's mouth, does it mean that the total harmony I could have obtained if this became a single pill. Was over 60%?'
He was stunned at that thought.
'What if I keep the energies that got away as well? But I can't control the energies…' He thought. Suddenly, he got an idea.
He looked to the side of the cauldron, where he had kept the lid for the cauldron, and thought, 'I may not be able to stop the energies from going out, but the lid surely can. And now that I have a spiritual sense, I don't even need to keep the cauldron open to look inside.'
He got excited once and decided to try out this new technique at once.