CH-26: Alchemy Lesson (2)

"It seems like everyone is done with checking the answers." Instructor Mintleaf spoke in a soft voice. With a flick of his hands, the parchment flew to him, and he checked the results. It was as easy as breathing to read these thousands of papers with his divine sense, and he was done in an iffy. 

Now it was time for us to explain to the commoners what they had got wrong. The boy, older than me by 5 to 6 years, had gotten only 3 questions right, so he had a big problem of not knowing anything. Compared to him the girl was, one to two years older than him, and had gotten 34 questions right. It seemed that she had studied on her own, but either her resources were lacking, or she had the wrong foundation. It would be on Instructor Mintleaf to direct her, not me, but I still pointed out what she could do to get better. For some reason, she was blushing the entire time I was explaining to her.

'It has to be someone younger than you righting your wrongs is embarrassing, right? RIGHT?'

Not contemplating any further on why the girl blushed, I returned to my seat and waited for Instructor Mintleaf to finally start preaching.

"Humans have always pursued strength. Before cultivation, power was money, power was your position."

'They still are, but now become a prerequisite rather than being it."

"When humans discovered how to cultivate, they were essentially eating the spiritual herbs and plants raw and drinking the blood of beasts. One day, a cultivator pondered as he thought, since we can make medicine out of these mortal herbs, why can't we make them from spiritual herbs? Thus he pioneered the craft of alchemy. Since then Alchemy has become an inseparable part of cultivation, thanks to the Alchemy Ancestor. He was the one to first discover how to refine any given material through your spiritual sense and use the essence of it to make a pill."

"Ahem. With millennials upon millennials of development; the rules of alchemy had become clearer than they were, but this made the competition more cutthroat for upcoming Alchemists. Now, to be considered a Rank 1 Alchemist, you have to consistently make Rank 1 Low-Grade pills, of any kind. Some pills are harder to make than others, some are easier, some are more time-consuming etc. The ranks for pills start from Low Grade. These Pills retain at least 20% efficacy of the essence they are made from, and distinguished through their exterior. A Low-Grade pill will have many dark spots and impurities in it, forming clumps on the pill."

'I don't know how people consume them… They look terrible.'

"The next grade for the pills is Middle Grade, they can reach up to 40% efficacy of the essence they are made from. A Middle Grade pill will have less amount of impurities, and dark spots will only cover around half of the pill. Then there are the High Grade Pills, reaching up to 60% efficacy. They will have even fewer dark spots, and they won't be lumped. The pill will be perfectly round compared to uneven pills of Low and Middle Grade."

"Once you have made your first High Grade Pill, you are eligible to try for a Rank 2 Alchemist assignment, which you will try to make Rank 2 Low Grade Pills. After High Grade Pills, comes the Superior Grade. These pills will have up to 80% of the efficacy of the essence and the impurities will be practically invisible. The pill; with its perfectly round shape, will shine in a lustre, showing the quality of the pill. Lastly, we have the Supreme Grade Pills, which retain up to 100% efficacy of the essence, and those with 100% efficacy are called Perfect Pills. They are practically devoid of any impurities and very potent. They will have patterns on them caused by their rich essence, on top of being perfectly round and having a lustre." One of the students raised her hand after the Insturctor's explanation.

"Instructor Mintleaf, is it possible to achieve more than 100% efficacy?"

"That is a good question. Theoretically, yes. It's possible. But to this day I have yet to hear any Pill Sages capable of achieving such a feat, so you can consider it impossible. Anyway, for today I will show you what to look out for when making a pill, so watch closely."

{SNAP!}

With a snap of his fingers, the auditorium began to change shape, and a platform rose from the middle of it. The seats circularly surrounded the platform, and the seats at the back were slightly raised. It reminded me of coliseums. 

{FWISH}

A cauldron appeared on the platform, and Instructor Mintleaf walked up to it. 

{SNAP!} 

{CRACKLE]

With another snap of his fingers, a flame sparked up below the cauldron and started to heat it up. 

"This is my Alchemy Flame, Alchemy flame is a special flame refined by the cultivator to bring out the essence of materials. Certain Flames have better results on matching types of materials. For example The Yin Flame; ranked 5th in the Special Flames Stele, is capable of bringing out 100% of the Yin essence in any material and gives a slight boost to other types of essences. The one I have is Purple Volcanic Flame. It gives me a boost for refining fire and earth essences. Unfortunately, it is not a very high-ranking flame on the stele, barely entering it at the 248th rank." Another student raised his hand this time.

"How do we refine if we do not have an Alchemy Flame?"

"Ah, I guess I explained wrongly. You don't have to have an Alchemy Flame for doing alchemy. It is a helper, not a requirement. You will be heating your cauldrons by lighting up spiritual woods and coal to reach high enough temperatures. You will control the heat and the materials through your spiritual sense, and refine the materials. The start is similar to Refining, as you will be heating your materials and bringing out their essence too. The difference lies in the pill-making process. You will gather the essence you refined and turn it into balls, which when refined once again will turn into pills. Some of them will be duds, charred and burnt collective of essence. There are techniques to help with forming the pills, but when taking the Alchemist rank you will be required to not use any."

He brought out some herbs and showed them to the students.

"These are ingredients for a Rank 1 Qi Consolidating Pill. It helps with minor realm breakthroughs. Essential for Qi Refining stage."

With that, he placed the herbs into the cauldron in order. The flames enveloped the herb, slowly refining it. As he was heating up the herb, he was also rotating on a perpendicular axis. His Qi covered the herb, and the herb turned into a liquid substance. Those who hadn't turned into liquid charred and burnt. Instructor Mintleaf then whooshed out the burnt impurities, but it didn't get rid of all of them. He moved the Essence to a part of the cauldron, made specially for it, and then added the other herb.

 This continued until he was done with all of the ingredients, and now it was time to form the pill. He brought out the essences from where they were stored into the main body of the cauldron and swirled them together into balls. As the swirling motion mixed the essences, he split them into 10 equal parts and made them swirl on their own. The essences, now mixed equally and divided into 10, rotated to form the pills. When the solid body of the pills formed, Instructor Mintleaf washed them with his Qi, cooling them in a sense. The pills formed perfectly round spheres and had a lustre on them. One of the pills even had slight patterns on it!

"This is how you make pills. For this recipe, I did not use my alchemy flame or any pill-forming techniques, and luckily one of them reached Supreme Grade. We won't know the exact percentage unless we test it, but to me, it looks like a solid 84% efficacy." Then he pointed to one of the students and asked him a question.

"You, what was the black soot that was clinging onto the essence?"

"I-It was the impurities, Instructor!"

"You, what determines the efficacy of a pill?"

"It is the absence of impurities, Instructor."

"Not right, but not totally wrong either. The impurities, the technique, the recipe, cauldron all play a role in the efficacy of a pill. There are also many underlying details, but I will leave it to you to experience them through practice. You, what is the department where I stored the essence is called?"

"I, I don't know."

"Alright, you sit down. Who can answer this?" A few students raised their hands.

"You answer." He picked the girl that I checked the answers of.

"It is called Essence Room, Instructor."

"Correct. Alright, that is it for today's lesson. For the next lesson, I will award those who bring a Rank 1 Low Grade Qi Consolidating Pill with the Superior Grade Pills I just made. Dispersed."