Ning locked the door behind him and walked in. Inside the room was an open fire pit with fire spewing out from inside of it.
Ning sat next to it and stopped. 'I need a cauldron now,' he thought and opened the interface. He went to the objects section and voiced in 'Alchemy Cauldron' in the text field.
Once the words showed up, he hit enter.
Immediately, a long list of cauldrons showed up for him to choose from. He looked at the filters specific to the cauldrons and started setting his requirements.
'It has to be wide. It has to be large. Hmm… good at transferring heat, yes. Uhh… fast at losing heat when not in the flame too. Sturdy and durable— it needs to survive explosions from the random mistakes I might make too. What else?' Ning tried to think of all the good ones he could and set the filters.
Finally, once he felt like the filters were perfect, he hit Enter.
A long list of cauldrons showed up, and Ning sort it by price. He clicked on the cheapest one and looked at its information.
"Hmm, everything matches my description perfectly," he thought. "Alright, buy!"
A notification appeared telling him that he had just bought the Hollow Jade Cauldron. Suddenly, a white light appeared in front of him as it quickly formed into the shape of a cauldron. When the light died down, he could finally see the cauldron in front of him.
The cauldron was a black cauldron with slight green outline to it. Except for the simple handles made up of jade, there was almost no other design.
It looked like someone stuck an expensive jade piece on a crappy old cauldron. However, Ning understood that the cauldron was made up of metal that was so extremely rare and was one of the reasons why it cost him nearly 6 Billion Energy to buy.
'Finally, I can start making pills,' he thought and put the cauldron on the fire pit. The moment the cauldron touched the fire, the heat transferred to all of the cauldron immediately.
Within seconds, the cauldron was ready for use. Ning decided to use the first pill that came to his mind. It was a True Healing pill that could heal almost any poison and venom that one might get attacked with as long as the poison or venom wasn't graded 7 or higher ranked.
The ingredients for the pills were Red Lotus' seed, Fate Toucan's Feathers, Black Apple's roots, Ceremonial Ferret's tailbone, Pale Water Lizard's Eye, Alabaster Swan's Talons, Cursing Mushroom, and 3 blades of Crimson Sun Grass.
He put in the first ingredient, Red Lotus' seed, and followed the recipe. After a while, he put in the Fate Toucan's Feathers and stirred the contents a little longer.
After some more time passed, he put in the Black Apple's roots and Ceremonial Ferret's Tail bone together and stirred it up a bit too. He followed that soon after by putting in the Pale Water lizard's eye.
Once the contents inside were more or less ready, he put in the Alabaster Swan's talons, followed by Cursing Mushroom soon after.
Finally, he put in the 3 blades of the Crimson Sun grass and started stirring it in the end. Before he knew it, the powder inside was ready and he started condensing it.
He felt like there was enough powder inside for him to make multiple pills, and he did. He gathered the powders and formed them into 5 distinct spherical shapes and smashed them together.
Once it was all done, 5 pills floated out of the cauldron.
Ning felt the aura and smell given off by the pills and smiled. The first-ever pill he had tried to make turned out to be a 7th Grade pill.
He was quite happy about it. While grades didn't affect what the pill did, it impacted the health of the pill eater and the proficiency in doing a task.
For example, a grade 1 pill would be bad compared to a grade 8 pill, but it wouldn't be so bad that the Grade 8 pill did something 8 times better than the Grade 1 pill.
In fact, with each grade, the effectiveness of the pill started to lower. After 7th grade, there was no point in increasing the pills any further.
However, there was a difference in what the lower grade pills did have that the higher grade pills generally didn't have. That was the existence of harmful byproducts in the pills.
A Grade 1 pill was a pill that could only hold 10% to 19% of the pill's energy. Meaning the rest of it was filled with products that weren't necessarily good for the eater's body.
While it wasn't necessarily bad, the by-products could stay in a person's system for ages and accumulate over time which would cause a negative impact on the person's life.
So, people were always looking forward to pills that had a very high grade, where the byproducts just weren't that many.
Ning tried to make a different pill and was just as equally successful. His pills came out looking glorious and one of them was also an 8th-grade pill.
However, that seemed to be Ning's maximum ability. He couldn't go past the 8th grade at all. He wondered if it was the result of acquiring bad ingredients during his many years around the world, or if he was just too new to get good at this immediately.
Whatever it was, he swore to himself he would improve and decided to try the different pill-making methods in his mind.
One of them, in particular, looked really fun, but similarly really hard, so he really wanted to try that. With nothing to lose, Ning prepared his batch of ingredients to try out this method.
Once everything was ready, he took all of the ingredients at once and put them inside the cauldron at once.. The moment he did that, he knew he needed to give it his all this time.