Chapter 10 - Chapter 10: Golden Sprout Pills

The pills used by immortal cultivators are divided into Spiritual Pills, Dao Pills, and Immortal Pills. Immortal Pills can only be taken by immortals who have ascended; refining a batch of Immortal Pills may take thousands or even tens of thousands of years. Dao Pills contain innate spiritual light—taking them allows one to comprehend the laws of heaven and earth, making them more precious than Immortal Pills. The pills taken by mortal immortal cultivators are all Spiritual Pills.Spiritual Pills are divided into nine ranks. Spiritual Pills above Rank 5 have not been seen for a hundred years—every bottle that appears triggers competition among Golden Core cultivators. Rank 6 Spiritual Pills may even trigger wars among super sects, causing chaos that engulfs cultivators from dozens of countries.The higher the rank of a Spiritual Pill, the harder it is to refine—requiring more materials and harsher conditions. Legend has it that when immortals refine a batch of pills, it can take thousands or tens of thousands of years.The Zhang Clan's founding ancestor inherited the legacy of a loose cultivator and had pill-refining skills. When he was alive, he could refine Rank 4 Spiritual Pills. Regrettably, after his death, the clan never trained another high-rank alchemist. Though Ancestor Chuyun had a higher cultivation base, he was not skilled in pill-refining or artifact-refining—his greatest talent was making spiritual talismans. Though the clan did not inherit his artifact legacy, he left three Rank 4 spiritual talismans for the clan. Unfortunately, over the past hundred years, the clan's fortunes had declined, and they had faced numerous powerful enemies—using two of the talismans. The remaining one was kept in the Ancestor Pavilion, reserved for potential future wars.Today, the clan's highest-rank alchemist is Ninth Uncle Zhang Mengquan—only a High-Grade Second-Rank alchemist. He can skillfully refine over a dozen types of Spiritual Pills, and his best work is the Middle-Grade Second-Rank Golden Sprout Pill.Golden Sprout Pills are refined using Yellow Sprout Grass as the main ingredient, with two Rank 1 spiritual herbs—Golden Jade Mushrooms and Green Spiritual Ginseng—as auxiliary ingredients. They are suitable for mid-to-late Qi Refining cultivators to take, enhancing their mana and helping them break through bottlenecks when used with Barrier-Breaking Pills.Refining Golden Sprout Pills is far more difficult than refining ordinary Rank 1 Spiritual Pills. Though the ingredients of ordinary Rank 1 Spiritual Pills are rich in spiritual energy, they can be refined using mortal fire. However, Golden Sprout Pills are Rank 2 Spiritual Pills—mortal fire can no longer refine the spiritual herbs; only spiritual fire can be used.With Zhang Mengquan and seven or eight others joining in, the speed of picking the Yellow Sprout Grass increased several times. In less than a morning, they had picked all the herbs. Alchemist Zhang Mengquan wasted no time in resting—he immediately took out a jade box from his bosom, infused it with a trace of mana, and a brass pill-refining furnace over a chi tall appeared on the ground.This jade box was also a High-Grade Second-Rank storage artifact. This type of storage artifact is made from Void Crystal Stone; a High-Grade Second-Rank storage jade box has a three-chi-cubed space inside, enough to store quite a few items.Storage artifacts are more precious than ordinary artifacts and cost more in the market. A High-Grade Second-Rank storage jade box like Zhang Mengquan's is worth at least four to five hundred Spirit Stones. The Zhang Clan has over a hundred cultivators, but only six elders own storage artifacts. Even a relatively wealthy cultivator like Zhang Zhixuan cannot afford a Low-Grade Second-Rank storage jade box with a mere one-chi-cubed space.Zhang Mengquan adjusted his internal breath, first using a paper talisman to ignite the Xuanyang Wood, then fetching a bucket of well water from the spiritual well. He slowly added the spiritual herbs into the pill-refining furnace in sequence, pinching pill-refining incantations with his hands to strictly control the temperature of the spiritual fire. After the spiritual herbs were completely dissolved and the fragrance of medicine could be smelled, he took a Yellow Sprout Grass from the sandalwood box—his expression gradually turning serious, losing the relaxed look he had earlier.Once the spiritual herbs were completely melted into a liquid, he added a trace of spiritual water and cast wave after wave of incantations. Soon, five pills successfully condensed in the cauldron. The remaining liquid medicine evaporated, emitting wisps of white steam from the furnace lid and filling the air with a rich medicinal fragrance.In less than a quarter of an hour, the liquid medicine had completely evaporated. Five Spiritual Pills flew out of the furnace's medicine spout, heading toward the crowd. When Spiritual Pills are taken out of the furnace, they cannot come into contact with acquired qi—special pill-receiving incantations are needed to isolate the air. It is best to use gold or jade utensils to catch the pills, to prevent them from being contaminated by mundane qi.Zhang Mengquan quickly took out a jade bottle and cast the pill-receiving incantation. Of the five Spiritual Pills, two did not even fly out of the furnace—turning into strands of pure spiritual energy that scattered on the ground. The remaining three flew toward the jade bottle: the first two were golden all over, while the third had a trace of gray qi.Zhang Mengquan put the first two into the jade bottle, then pinched the third one with his hand. This golden pill had tiny gray spots—it had been contaminated by mundane qi, becoming a useless pill with toxicity, no longer fit for consumption.Zhang Mengquan poured a pill out of the jade bottle. It was golden all over, the size of a baby's thumb, emitting a faint golden glow and a captivating fragrance.When refining pills, alchemists usually produce ten pills per batch. Some exceptional master alchemists can use special pill incantations to refine twelve pills from materials that would normally make ten—without reducing their efficacy. However, low-rank alchemists like Zhang Mengquan are far from capable of this."This is the first batch of pills today—the furnace still has a lot of residual fire energy, so the number of pills produced is smaller. Let's consider this batch as conditioning the furnace," Zhang Mengquan muttered to himself. After resting for a quarter of an hour, he continued refining pills.Refining a batch of Golden Sprout Pills takes about a quarter of an hour, followed by cleaning the pill-refining furnace to completely remove impurities. Approximately one hour allows four batches of Golden Sprout Pills to be refined. Starting from noon, Zhang Mengquan continuously refined twenty-four batches of Spiritual Pills, stopping only when his mana was exhausted.While refining pills, he also explained from time to time, not hiding his knowledge of pill-refining from others. When he saw that everyone did not understand, he even demonstrated personally.Learning to be an alchemist requires enormous resources—even a clan like the Zhang Clan can only support three or four cultivators in learning pill-refining. Of these three or four apprentices, usually only one or two can become qualified alchemists. Thus, most elderly alchemists have a sense of urgency, hoping that the younger generation of clan cultivators will learn pill-refining to inherit their legacy.For a clan, without its own alchemist, its supply of pills is completely controlled by others. If other alchemists tamper with the pills, the clan may face even greater troubles.Three thousand years ago, there was a loose cultivator alchemist with extraordinary talent—able to refine High-Grade Rank 6 Spiritual Pills. This cultivator was a Nascent Soul loose cultivator, renowned in the immortal world for his superb pill-refining skills. Even many Nascent Soul cultivators relied on him to refine pills. Yet this revered great cultivator secretly mixed demon essence into the Spiritual Pills. Any cultivator who took his pills would be infected by his demonic thoughts, becoming his controlled puppets. Overnight, thirteen Nascent Soul cultivators and over a hundred high-rank Golden Core cultivators fell under his control—triggering the famous "Pill Demon Chaos" in the immortal world.During this century-long chaos, nineteen Nascent Soul cultivators and hundreds of Golden Core cultivators fell. For over a thousand years afterward, most cultivators dared not take pills refined by others. After over a thousand years of joint efforts by dozens of major sects—especially the five leading pill-refining sects (Evergreen Sect, Medicine King Mountain, Green Pill Pavilion, Profound Pill Sect, and Pill Method Sect)—which formed the Pill Alliance, the immortal world gradually regained trust in alchemists and began buying pills from outside.Even with the guarantee of the five sects, most cultivators today still refuse to take pills of unknown origin. The Zhang Clan's customers in the market are all local loose cultivators who have been cultivating for years—they know each other well. Relying on the trust built over hundreds of years of rooting in Lushan, the clan can exchange the pills it refines for various immortal cultivation resources.