Chapter 79: Advancement: Tier 1 Mortal Pill Refiner
Translator: Sparrow Translations Editor:
After resting for half an hour, Mo Wuji felt a lot better as stood up to find a safer place to rest and make sense of the situation.
Mo Wuji struggled to carry the pill furnace, trekking for less than one kilometre. That was when he saw a dead corpse. He recognised that corpse; it belonged to one of the seven pill refiners.
Theoretically, Tier 3 pill refiners were cultivators who had already advanced past the Channel Opening Stage. When Mo Wuji encountered this pill refiner’s corpse, he really thanked his lucky stars. It was really a stroke of luck that he managed to survive the failure during the transfer.
Mo Wuji started to search the pill refiner’s body and collected all the useful items; he even found some spirit stones. These stones rich in spiritual energy were items Mo Wuji only dreamed of obtaining. However, he really couldn't lift his spirits even as he kept the stones. He also found some healing pills which he ate to recover himself.
After thoroughly searching the pill refiner's body, Mo Wuji dug a pit and buried the pill refiner.
A Tier 3 pill refiner was an illustrious existence in the mortal world. However, one of them just died silently in some unknown place. This fragility and vulnerability of life really struck Mo Wuji.
After consuming the pills, Mo Wuji felt the cracks in his bones healing rapidly. He could not help but sigh in his heart; the pills concocted by pill refiners were really heaven defying even when compared to a modern drug like penicillin. Even though penicillin was impressive, it still required time for recovery. However, the effects of these pills were immediate.
If anyone were to tell Mo Wuji that the effects of Western medicine are faster than Chinese medicine, Mo Wuji would definitely spit on his face. These pills are concocted with herbs. Even though they did not originate from China, Mo Wuji still considered them Chinese medicine.
Afterwards, Mo Wuji no longer saw anyone, not even an ant.
Two more days passed and Mo Wuji's injuries gradually recovered. Just when Mo Wuji was thinking that this was the end and that there was no more hope, he saw an abundance of green in the distance.
He literally dashed over, ignoring the weight of the heavy pill furnace.
Ten minutes later, Mo Wuji was standing in a lush green valley. Gu Ran was right, this place was filled with spiritual herbs!
In his study of pill refining, Mo Wuji read up on the introductions of many spiritual herbs, and knew a thing or two about a myriad of spiritual herbs. However, he was unable to even name a single one of the herbs here. The vibrancy and variety of herbs satisfied and excited him.
Not bad… It's extremely vibrant and fresh here.
As Mo Wuji was thinking of the three words 'vibrant and fresh’, he was reminded of the place he just came from. If this place was described as ‘vibrant and fresh’, then that would definitely be ‘barren and death’.
It's the same mountain, but why were there places abundant with spiritual herbs but also places where not even a single weed can grow?
As he started thinking, Mo Wuji realised that something wasn't right; these two worlds were too different.
As he observed further, Mo Wuji could see that the spiritual herbs at the borders seemed to be withering. In that instant, Mo Wuji finally made sense of the situation: the loom of death from where he came from did not spread over yet. However, in time, this lush valley would also cease to exist.
Even though Mo Wuji did not want the Formless Blade Mountain to turn into a barren land, he did not know what to do. He was a mere service disciple, he did not have any means of stopping this. Furthermore, he did not even know whether he would survive this situation.
With so many spiritual herbs, he needed to collect all of them before finding some place where he could try his hand at purifying.
Large patches of spiritual herbs were collected by Mo Wuji. It was only until the evening when Mo Wuji’s back finally gave up. That was when he found a natural cave in the valley and rested inside.
After resting for a night, Mo Wuji retrieved the firestone he found on that pill refiner's body and installed it under the furnace. He was going to practice purifying.
Even though he was surrounded by spiritual herbs, Mo Wuji remained careful during the purification. He knew that spiritual herbs were extremely valuable; if not for this journey to the blade mountain, he would never have had the chance to have a whole valley of herbs for him to practice purification on.
The days passed; Mo Wuji cherished this opportunity and made use of the days to purify different spiritual herbs. Initially, his purification resulted in failures. However, by the end of three days, he could retain 80% of the herbal essence. After another eight days, this number increased to 90%.
Afterwards, he no longer saw any improvements. It was simply too hard to exceed 90%.
Mo Wuji purified the spiritual herbs following the methods from the wordless pill manual. He was cognizant that he was unable to progress any further due to the limits of his cultivation level, and not due to some unforeseen reasons. As long as his cultivation advances, he would be able to improve his purification of spiritual herbs.
Being able to purify 90% of the essence, Mo Wuji was already much better than that Pill Master Shi. From Mo Wuji's observations, that Shi Jun could only purify 60 to 70%.
When he was spectating Shi Jun's pill concocting, the medicinal dregs he expelled contained far too much of the herbal essence. It was simply a waste.
Not only was it a waste, a higher purity would also make the pill condensation process easier and the pill concocted would also be of higher quality
For Shi Jun, if his purification methods did not improve, he would find it hard to improve on his pill refining.
Mo Wuji knew that it would be a long and arduous process to improve on his purification. Thus, he no longer practised his purification but started learning pill refining as he practised cultivation. The spiritual energy here was rich, and he did not need to worry about people discovering the mad absorption of spiritual energy. Mo Wuji finally could be unrestrained and cultivated as he wished.
The pill refining methods illustrated on this manual were completely different from Shi Jun's methods. This manual emphasized on the pill and hand techniques.
There were different kinds of hand techniques; from the cleaning of the pill furnace to the pill condensation to the final pill collection.
Furthermore, the manual taught that the pill and hand techniques were not fixed and unchanging, but they changed and adapted according to the characteristics of the spiritual herbs. This required much of the pill refiner. Some pill refiners were unable to adapt and could only use mechanical methods.
When Mo Wuji was researching on the various ingredients, he became aware of this fact. Anything that wasn't flexible and adaptable would only be doomed to deteriorate.
This was true for many ancient Chinese civilizations. How many of them got lost in the visages of time? This was primarily because they were too fixed in their ways.
When a master passes down knowledge onto his disciple, even if the master didn't hide anything, it would be difficult for the disciple to surpass the master. There would definitely be some lost knowledge. When this disciple passes on to his own disciple, more would be lost. Green originated from blue and is superior to blue; this phrase only applied to a few people. Furthermore, majority of masters do not reveal everything to their disciples.
Even the best of things would ultimately end up as part of history if it continued to degrade in this manner.
Mo Wuji knew how precious this opportunity was. Even though he didn't know how he was going to get out a month later, he did not have the time to worry about it. Since the sect head said one month, then it should not be wrong.
Once he leaves, he would not have such a fertile and abundant cultivation environment, nor would he find such a blessed place for pill refining. Even at the expense of sleep, Mo Wuji spent his days crazily refining pills or madly cultivating. The moment he was tired of pill refining, he would immediately start on cultivation.
During cultivation, he was constantly absorbing spiritual energy from the heaven and earth. This allowed him to only require minimal sleep just to maintain his vigor.
There weren’t many pill formulas on the pill manual, but each of the pills were easy to condense. The formulas were extremely suitable for learning pill refining and incredibly useful for low leveled cultivators.
On the 20th day, Mo Wuji successfully concocted a batch of Tier 1 Energy Gathering Pill. This pill was for Channel Opening Stage cultivators and its effects were better than the Energy Condensing Pill.
On the 21th day, Mo Wuji was successful with a batch of Tier 1 Vitality Replenishing Pills. This pill allowed cultivators to replenish their vigor and vitality and was extremely useful to Mo Wuji right now.
As Mo Wuji wildly cultivated and practised pill refining, he seemed to forget the flow of time. He continued to go through this cycle until all his meridians simultaneously trembled. A strong surge of energy poured down from the top of his head and permeated into his entire body. His spirit cleared and this feeling awoke Mo Wuji from his crazed state.
Unknowingly, he stepped into Channel Opening Stage Level 3. Ever since he started cultivating, in less than 2 months, he advanced from a mere mortal to a Channel Opening Stage Level 3 cultivator.
What made him even more contented was that the time he spent on cultivation itself was little, especially since he was also practising pill refining. Today, he was also truly a true Tier 1 Mortal pill refiner.
Using the wordless pill manual and the resources from the Formless Blade Mountain, he took a month to enter a stage which many would never touch in their entire lives.
Unfortunately, no matter what he did, Mo Wuji was not able to concoct Tier 2 pills.