Translator: AnubisTL
While cultivators had two more stages after the qi refining realm—the eighth and ninth layers—before reaching foundation establishment, wizards were expected to leap directly from third-tier wizard apprentice to first-tier official wizard!
This meant the gap between wizard apprentice and formal wizard was staggeringly vast.
The so-called "Ascension Potion" was likely essential for bridging this massive gap, its potency undoubtedly overwhelming, perhaps even forcibly elevating one's life essence to a higher plane. This extreme power likely explained its severe side effects.
"If the gap is this immense, the damage from the Ascension Potion must be far greater than I initially anticipated..." Jieming mused thoughtfully.
Crucially, even the ascension to formal wizard had a success rate.
If one failed to ascend on the first attempt, the damage from the potion would be irreversible.
Jieming had no intention of jeopardizing his foundation for advancement. Damaging his qi refining cultivation in the process would be a disastrous trade-off.
He began brainstorming ways to mitigate this damage or find alternative solutions.
"For now, the best approach is to reach the foundation establishment realm before attempting to ascend to formal wizard."
With the enhanced life essence and physical resilience of the foundation establishment realm, the damage from the Ascension Potion would be negligible.
Moreover, the similar life essence would significantly reduce the risks and increase the success rate of his advancement to formal wizard.
"So... I still need to find a way to get a Foundation Establishment Pill?"
Jieming was quite confident in his innate talent for immortal cultivation.
Although it had taken him a while to reach the first layer of qi refining initially, his progress had accelerated dramatically once he discovered a method to replenish his energy by channeling elemental power.
In just five years, he had advanced from the first layer of qi refining to the seventh, and his progress showed no signs of slowing, with hardly any bottlenecks hindering his progress.
Jieming was confident he could achieve foundation establishment even without the pill. However, the primary function of the Foundation Establishment Pill was to stabilize a cultivator's state during advancement, making it a valuable safeguard during the critical moment of ascension.
"In that case, I'll probably need to start studying potionology and pill refinement now."
To create a Foundation Establishment Pill in the Wizard World, he would inevitably need to find substitutes for the original ingredients.
Achieving this would require mastering both pill refinement and potionology.
With a deep understanding of both disciplines, Jieming hoped to devise a method to mitigate the physical damage caused by the Ascension Potion using immortal cultivation techniques.
Of course, studying potionology wasn't just for this reason; there was another, even more crucial motivation.
"Good. This will also lay the foundation for my future advancement to formal wizard status."
The third critical step in becoming a formal wizard is constructing the Ring of Truth within one's mental sea.
This is the hallmark of a formal wizard: condensing the nine truth runes within the mental sea into a ring-shaped structure, imbuing it with greater power, and binding it to the wizard's core soul.
Moreover, the magic network mentioned a crucial tip for constructing the Ring of Truth: if the truth runes selected within the ring form a complete Witchcraft Model, the difficulty of constructing the Ring of Truth can be significantly reduced.
This is because a Witchcraft Model is itself a complete conceptual system. Integrating it into the Ring of Truth makes the ring's structure more stable and harmonious, thereby lowering the risks and challenges of advancement.
Among the truth runes Jieming had chosen, the alchemy rune from alchemy and the analysis art rune from rune studies had already been successfully constructed. Only the foundational potionology spell, extraction art, remained undeveloped.
After all, Jieming had spent recent years primarily researching rune-imbued magical artifacts and magic artifacts, neglecting his potionology studies.
Seizing this opportunity, Jieming resolved to expand his studies into potionology and pill refinement.
Having made up his mind, Jieming wasted no time and immediately set to work.
He began by accessing the academy's magic network, gathering vast amounts of knowledge on potionology.
From the most basic material identification and medicinal property classification to potion formulation and refining techniques, he devoured it all.
Thanks to his "Money" ability, Jieming never hesitated to put his learning into practice.
Whenever he studied potionology, he would immediately attempt to refine basic potions to reinforce his understanding and accelerate his progress.
This learn-by-doing approach proved remarkably efficient.
The downside was Jieming's alarmingly high potion refinement failure rate. An ordinary apprentice who dared to experiment so recklessly would quickly go bankrupt.
But with Jieming's vast reserves of merit points, these expenses were a mere drop in the bucket, utterly insignificant.
While studying potionology, Jieming also dedicated daily hours to pill refinement at the Great Dao Library Pavilion.
Unlike potionology, which emphasized external tools and precise formulations, pill refinement in the cultivation system focused on the alchemist's control over their true flame, guidance through divine sense, and profound understanding of medicinal principles.
This art didn't provide fixed formulas and refining methods like magic potions. Instead, it detailed the growth environments, energy compositions, Yin-Yang Five Elements attributes, and interaction patterns of various spirit grasses, spirit medicines, and spirit minerals.
It sounded similar to traditional Chinese medicine from his previous life, but with additional elements that only cultivators could detect.
Each pill refinement technique even recommended specific books on herbal pharmacology and mineral medicinal properties.
Compared to potionology, pill refinement felt more like a philosophy—an art concerning life, nature, and the laws governing them.
While this made pill refinement significantly more challenging to master, it suited Jieming perfectly.
He had originally studied these arts to understand the deeper principles of material interactions, the fundamental laws of energy transformation, and how to harmonize conflicting substances at the microscopic level.
The current pill refinement techniques precisely filled this gap in his knowledge.
In potionology, such advanced knowledge would only be accessible to high-rank wizards.
The study of potionology and pill refinement flowed like two rivers, converging and merging within Jieming's knowledge system.
Through studying both disciplines, Jieming gained a completely new and profound understanding of elements, energy, vitality, and the fundamental nature of materials.
This enhanced knowledge, in turn, helped Jieming improve his rune-imbued magical artifacts.
He discovered that when refining these artifacts, precisely grasping the inherent "medicinal properties" of the materials—their internal energy flow patterns and vitality—allowed for better fusion with the rune arrays. This resulted in artifacts with greater stability, smoother energy conduction, and even slightly reduced energy consumption.
The practical results of these experiments further deepened his theoretical understanding, and for a time, Jieming was completely immersed in a sea of knowledge.
(End of the Chapter)