Chapter 142: Chapter 121: Replenishing Yuan Pill Prescription
Translator: 549690339
As the saying goes,
Money can’t solve all problems, but it can certainly solve most of them.
Isn’t it just money?
For Lu Yuan, who has a fortune of over a hundred thousand silver taels, he doesn’t care about spending any amount of money as long as it can enhance his strength.
So after spending a huge amount of money to gather the required century-old herbs, Lu Yuan began a new round of refining spiritual elixirs.
Perhaps it was because of the money he spent.
Or maybe it was because he found the right direction.
In any case, just as he started refining the elixir, he achieved good results.
It was only the first round, but the elixir was already effective.
“This new pill, refined from century-old Kunming grass, century-old Black Crow Lotus, century-old Autumn Frost Flowers, and so on – a total of eight ingredients – was worth the more than five hundred silver taels I spent; it can actually enhance my spirit and vital energy.”
Lu Yuan took the first pill and then meditated to refine it. Half an hour later, he digested the medicine’s effects and opened his eyes with joy, “Although the effectiveness of this pill in enhancing strength is not strong, with one pill roughly increasing an hour’s worth of power, it is equivalent to an ordinary person practicing for half a day.
But this is just my first attempt at refining; I could continue to improve the formula and dosage in the future. and the effectiveness will graduallv
increase.”
Ordinary people practicing martial arts can only cultivate for two hours a day due to physical limitations. Thus, increasing an hour’s worth of strength is equivalent to an ordinary person’s half-day growth.
Although the pill currently costs five hundred silver taels and can only enhance half a day’s worth of strength, it is already a breakthrough worth celebrating for Lu Yuan.
He doesn’t fear spending money on refining pills; he’s just afraid of refining pills without any effect.
It’s just a little over five hundred silver taels. With Lu Yuan’s current financial resources, he can support this kind of consumption for refining pills for more than two hundred times, and it’s not in vain.
Moreover, it’s not like he only refines one pill at a time.
For example, with this new attempt at a formula, Lu Yuan produced a total of eight pills.
On average, refining one pill can increase his strength for four days.
This amount has already reached his original expectations.
What he needs to do now is to change from winning by quantity – with eight pills increasing four days of strength – to winning by quality, where one pill increases four days of strength.
“The results are good, the future is promising, and all I need to do now is to continue to work hard.”
With this in mind, Lu Yuan spent a day consuming the newly-refined pills, and after increasing his Inner Strength by four days, he began a new round of formula research.
In the Pharmacopoeia of Myriad Herbs, there are more than three hundred types of herbs that can nourish the spirit and vital energy.
Now he’s only tried eight, and there are many more options to explore.
He refuses to believe that by trying each and every one of them, he won’t be able to come up with the perfect prescription.
Time slowly passed.
Lu Yuan stayed in the barracks, constantly refining pills.
Occasionally, he would take some time to teach his apprentice disciples and patrol the training of the soldiers.
He does possess professional ethics, after all.
Since he became a county captain and received a stipend, he’d still do some work and not simply let go of everything.
However, with the help of his cheap disciples, he doesn’t have to deal with some of the tasks in the county, such as investigating bandits and patrolling security.
His five apprentices naturally work on behalf of their master, solving problems in advance.
As he wasn’t bothered by official duties, Lu Yuan naturally had more time to focus on refining pills.
Under his full dedication, time quickly moved forward, and it was already Hongdao’s second year in July.
After spending more than fifty thousand silver taels and trying various combinations of medicines, Lu Yuan finally determined his ultimate elixir formula in this month, taking into account the difficulty of obtaining the herbs, the compatibility of their properties, and their medicinal strength.
The elixir, named [Replenishing Spirit Pill], was developed using seventeen types of century-old herbs, supplemented by dozens of common medicines, and was eventually finalized.
This elixir requires a thousand silver taels per round and roughly produces ten pills per round, with each pill increasing the strength of the user by five days.
In other words, a thousand silver taels can help Lu Yuan save fifty days of cultivation time.
On average, that’s twenty silver taels a day.
Alright, this is certainly a luxurious way to cultivate through spending money.
If you’re not a true tycoon, you can’t afford such a lavish cultivation style.
If it weren’t for Lu Yuan plundering the wealth of a county town, he wouldn’t dare to play such a big game.
However, even with this, his remaining savings of ninety thousand taels are only enough for ninety refining sessions.
That’s only enough to increase his strength by four thousand five hundred days, or roughly twelve years.
“With ninety thousand silver taels, I can increase my strength by twelve years, which is equivalent to only three or four years if I were to just practice. But this is enough.”
Given Lu Yuan’s cultivation speed, three or four years are enough to complete the seventh and eighth levels of Replenishing Qi Heart Sutra and the remaining three meridians.
That is to say,
if everything goes smoothly, and as long as there are enough herbs for refining elixirs, he will be able to complete the Replenishing Qi Heart Sutra and cultivate all sixteen meridians by the end of this year.
Those who can cultivate all sixteen meridians are considered to have profound Inner Strength even among top-notch experts.
In the Jianghu, even those children from major sects — who have various spiritual medicines — usually take fifty or sixty years to achieve this.
Now that Lu Yuan is able to reach this goal at the age of twenty-eight, it is truly a shocking feat.
However, Lu Yuan does not take pride in his imminent achievement. He remains as steady as ever, simply staying at home refining pills and cultivating.
His disciples, on the other hand, were sent out to various places to purchase herbs for him.
Century-old herbs are not easy to find.
Many of them are considered treasures of pharmacies and are not easily sold.
Purchasing these herbs requires time and financial investment.
In order to fulfill their master’s orders — and also for the reward of learning the second Cloud Palm Mental Technique —
the disciples rack their brains and put a lot of effort into finding these rare herbs.
However, even so, it would be a stretch to collect ninety sets of herbs within this year.
Fortunately, Lu Yuan has a calm mindset and does not feel too rushed about this.
He has already figured out the formula for [Replenishing Spirit Pill], and even if he has to chew the duck in his mouth a few more times before swallowing, it doesn’t matter much.
He considers it as a way to help digestion by chewing slowly.
If he can’t complete the Replenishing Qi Heart Sutra this year, then so be it.
He has plenty of time and is in no rush.
While Lu Yuan’s progress is going smoothly, his good friend Sun Siwen also experiences a new turning point in his life.
Having procrastinated for nearly a year as the prefect, Liang Xiwu was finally called back to the court, having pulled some strings in the imperial government.
The new prefect, Cui Changqing, was a former Assistant Minister of Rites who had been exiled from the capital for daring to directly criticize today’s Hongdao Emperor.
Regardless of whether he was demoted or not, Sun Siwen, as a subordinate of the new prefect, had to meet him in person.
So on the twenty-fourth of July, County Magistrate Sun went to Shaoyang Prefecture City..