CHAPTER 69: PILL REFINEMENT SUCCESSFUL

"What business is it to you?" asked Chong Wei, still affected by Li Shen’s qi pressure.

Li Shen fell silent, raised his head and focused his eyes ahead, clearly seeing Chong Wei’s younger brother running away from this place. Li Shen could no longer catch up with him.

He sighed and released his grip on Chong Wei. This freed Chong Wei from Li Shen’s qi pressure.

Once completely free, Chong Wei flew backwards to avoid Li Shen. He didn’t expect Li Shen to be able to put such strong qi pressure on him, considering that he was a Soul Formation cultivator.

"How strong is he really? He even made me kneel without activating any cultivation techniques," Chong Wei said.

"You’d better go find your younger brother. I won’t chase after him anymore," Li Shen explained.

Without responding to Li Shen’s words, Chong Wei flew backward, leaving the man alone above the Azure Dragon’s head.

Realizing that he was the center of attention, Li Shen couldn’t stay any longer. He flew back to Bai Zhang while deactivating his sect’s technique, causing the Azure Dragon to disappear from that spot, turning into small magical particles that flew through the sky.

"What are we going to do?" asked Bai Zhang.

"We’ll go to a safer place to create this pill," replied Li Shen, arriving near Bai Zhang.

Bai Zhang cleared his throat. He watched Li Shen fly down through the clouds, with no intention of creating the pill in that place.

Li Shen needed the best and quietest place to refine the pill. He couldn’t focus if there were cultivators fighting relentlessly; he needed peace and quiet.

Arriving below, he saw many Core Formation cultivators still flying around trying to find the materials they needed. Li Shen ignored them, preferring to focus on finding a place that wasn’t occupied by other cultivators.

Among the thousands of floating hills in the Ming Yuan Treasure Dimension, his focus shifted to one hill that showed no signs of having been occupied before. He and Bai Zhang landed there.

Sure enough, no one was there. Li Shen took a deep breath, feeling the fresh air blowing on the hill, something that was enough to calm him down.

"Is this the place?" asked Bai Zhang. Li Shen cleared his throat in response.

"Yes."

"You go to the other side of this floating hill. I’ll stay here," ordered Li Shen, and Bai Zhang obeyed.

The stocky young man flew from that spot toward the other side of the floating hill, the back of the hill. There, he found a suitable location to begin refining his pill.

Li Shen did the same. He flew to the center of the hill and sat inside a cliff cave, which was much better than refining the pill outside, where he was prone to being disturbed and failing.

If he failed, the pill would not materialize and the materials would be wasted. He would have to find other materials to refine another pill.

The man pressed his magic pouch, causing a celestial spirit stone to float above his head. Due to his limited supply of spiritual energy, he had to rely on the spiritual energy stored in the spirit stone.

Not only did he take out the celestial-level spirit stone, but also a large golden pill cauldron with a lid engraved with two dragons. It was the Heaven-Shaking Dragon Pill Cauldron, one of the three legendary pill cauldrons in the Heaven Realm.

Li Shen obtained the pill cauldron after refining many artifacts throughout his life.

Through that pill cauldron, he had successfully refined many pills that were useful to him, his sect, and those closest to him.

After abundant spiritual energy was available, Li Shen brought out the three materials and sent them into the pill cauldron. His hands formed a formation to bring forth flames in his palms, then Li Shen blew the flames forward with steady force.

For someone who was accustomed to refining high-level pills, a third-level elemental pill was not a difficult task.

There were three important stages in the refinement of all levels of pills. The first stage was melting, the second stage was fusion, and the final stage was completion.

The first stage went well because the materials used were not high-grade materials that could cause turbulence. All the materials melted, leaving only one core of each material.

After that, Li Shen fused the three cores into a single core in the fusion process. This process was important because it required precision and patience. The more materials there were and the higher their level, the more precision and patience were needed.

No wonder fourth-level alchemists who tried to refine fifth-level pills and above would need months to complete the process.

However, due to Li Shen’s experience and formidable spiritual strength, he only needed about 10-15 minutes to complete the fusion process.

This was far faster than second or third level alchemists, who would require around 2-3 hours to complete the fusion process.

Li Shen smiled as the fusion of the three materials proceeded smoothly without any problems. He raised his hand to open the cauldron. A brown pill core could be seen, matching the elemental pill Li Shen had created, an earth element pill.

The pill core floated with qi energy enveloping it, creating energy distortions around it. Now, Li Shen only needed to perform the final stage, which was to complete the refinement of the pill by condensing the outer energy of the pill so that it was solid and ready for use.

Li Shen focused his hands upward, concentrating the flames from his hands onto the energy core. Slowly, Li Shen could see that the pill was beginning to take shape, and the energy distortion faded away.

About five minutes passed, The third level Earth Element Pill was successfully created. Li Shen stopped the burst of flames from his hands and reached forward, grasping the pill in his hand.

"This was too easy," Li Shen explained, clearly seeing the perfect shape of the pill he had purified.

BLAST!

An explosion sounded nearby. Li Shen narrowed his eyes; it wasn’t the explosion of a cultivation technique, but the explosion of a burnt pill cauldron. His guess was that it came from Bai Zhang.

He stored the earth element pill in a white ceramic bottle, put away his pill cauldron, and flew away from the cliff cave. Li Shen also put away the celestial spirit stone he had used earlier.

The location of the explosion did not come from behind him. He saw Bai Zhang focusing on refining the pill with his pill cauldron, with no signs of failure.

’Then where did the explosion come from?’ Li Shen asked curiously.

Li Shen raised two fingers and activated his spiritual energy aura detection. He tried to locate the source of the explosion.

Surprising! It turned out there was another cultivator here besides the two of them. The location of the explosion came from one of the cultivators; Li Shen could tell from the fluctuations in the cultivator’s qi energy.

Not wanting to disturb Bai Zhang, he flew away from the area and headed toward the location where the cauldron had exploded. There, he saw a female cultivator at the Core Formation stage who seemed to be having difficulty refining a pill.

She was having trouble because the materials she was using were incompatible, preventing the fusion from taking place. The woman’s face was filled with panic.

"What should I do? What should I do?" she asked anxiously.

Li Shen remained silent, then flew low toward her until she was shocked. She stepped back to guard herself from Li Shen.

"You’re using the wrong materials, of course the fusion of your pill’s core won’t work."

"Who are you?" the woman asked firmly.

"You must go and find those materials again, no matter what. That’s because you can’t use those materials anymore."