** Chapter 16: Refining **

The so-called laboratory was a small room, barely a dozen square meters. Its walls were rough stone, not metal, and the floor was laid with simple runic tiles.

At the center stood a basic workbench, illuminated by a mana lamp overhead. In a corner were common basic tools—a small crucible, bellows, a water tank.

Most crucially, the room’s four corners and doorframe were inscribed with basic runes.

“Is this the simple anti-detection array?”

After locking the door, Jie Ming felt the faint energy fluctuations as the array activated.

It might not stop a high-tier wizard’s probing, but any attempt to breach it would cause a disturbance, serving as an adequate warning system.

Everything in the lab was rudimentary, offering little beyond the protective and isolation arrays.

But upon closer inspection, Jie Ming found a surprise: “There’s an independent magic network terminal in here?”

In a corner sat a machine identical to the one in the task hall, linked to the magic network.

Activating it with his badge, Jie Ming found its content even richer than the task hall’s. Beyond standard tasks, labs could buy or sell materials and products among themselves.

“There’s even free delivery for basic material trades—way better than the task hall.”

The task hall offered similar material trading but required buyers to pick up their goods.

For high-end resources, that was fine, but for common materials, points had incredible purchasing power.

Jie Ming also noticed that the tasks and purchase requests between labs hinted at the beginnings of a “forum” from his past life.

Sadly, knowledge’s immense value in this world kept discussions shallow, leaving the “forum” in its infancy despite long development.

Even so, the scattered information in these discussions proved invaluable to Jie Ming.

“The paid knowledge system is terrifyingly robust—Earth’s academic networks can’t compare…”

Lost in the magic network for a while, Jie Ming snapped back: “Damn, it’s been so long since I’ve been online, I got a bit carried away. So, aside from ensuring privacy, the main perk of a low-tier lab is constant internet access…”

Realizing this, he stared at the magic network terminal in silence: “What is this, a private internet café? The ‘connection fee’ is way too steep!”

After some internal grumbling, Jie Ming wasted no time and got to his main task.

From his toolbox, he took out the gold block, reshaped countless times through alchemy. Instead of using the lab’s crucible, he pulled a stone from his toolbox.

Per the Great Dao Book Pavilion, refining Essence Gold at the first layer of Qi Refinement required specialized tools.

The simplest was a custom cauldron, its unique structure concentrating heat to aid refining.

Jie Ming placed the stone on his alchemy disk. Soon, it transformed into a cauldron the size of a rice cooker.

“This shaping feels so smooth. Indeed, unlocking Internal Circulation makes it work better,” he marveled.

He placed the gold block in the stone cauldron, focusing his mental energy and channeling his hard-earned true essence.

*The Aging Gold Refinement Method… a basic metal purification technique from the Great Dao Book Pavilion. It uses the high purity of true essence and precise divine sense to strip impurities, extracting the core essence. Sadly, with my cultivation, I can only refine a small amount, and the material’s properties must be stable. Thankfully, gold’s stability makes it barely viable.*

Activating the lab’s heating array, a flame materialized on the workbench.

Placing the cauldron atop it, Jie Ming channeled true essence into the gold bit by bit.

The true essence seeped into the gold like a supreme solvent, permeating every particle.

His divine sense, like a scalpel, sensed the core “gold essence” and the impure “mundane essence” within.

The process consumed true essence rapidly. Jie Ming felt his meager reserves draining like a breached dam, bringing waves of weakness.

His face paled, and sweat beaded on his forehead.

Fortunately, his meditation practice allowed him to draw elemental energy from the surroundings to replenish true essence.

Gritting his teeth, Jie Ming maintained the output of true essence and the precise guidance of his divine sense, using the lab’s simple tools to assist per the Aging Gold Refinement Method.

Each step demanded absolute focus. He could feel the “mundane essence” being repelled and stripped under the guidance of true essence and external forces, turning into invisible dust, expelled from the gold’s surface and incinerated in the cauldron’s heat.

Time ticked by, and Jie Ming’s true essence neared depletion, his body’s weakness peaking.

The faint hum of the isolation array grew distant, and he felt dizzy.

Finally!

Just before his true essence ran dry, all impurities were stripped from the gold.

The fist-sized gold block in the cauldron had become a fingertip-sized piece, glowing with a subdued radiance.

Success!

Exhausted, Jie Ming slumped against the workbench, panting heavily.

Too drained to inspect his work, he sat cross-legged on the floor, fully activating the truth runes in his mental sea to draw elemental energy and replenish his true essence.

Half an hour later, somewhat recovered, Jie Ming stood and used tweezers to carefully extract the gold piece from the cauldron.

It was cold to the touch yet impossibly heavy.

No longer mundane gold, it embodied an ineffable sense of eternity and stability.

After appraising it per the Great Dao Book Pavilion’s knowledge, Jie Ming confirmed it was Essence Gold—a metal essence only extractable in the cultivation world through special methods!

Ecstatic, Jie Ming gazed at the fingertip-sized Essence Gold, his first encounter with a transcendent material in this world.