Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Alex had a recipe for the Nail Elongating pill. It was a recipe he had made himself and he was quite proud of it.

However, he was never able to improve it past making 52% harmony pills and that bugged him a lot. There were too many permutations and combinations he could do with the speed of the ingredients in the cauldron, the rate at which they were heated, and the direction in which they were moved in.

All of these things were very important to making the pill, but they were too many for him to properly know which to change to improve the pill.

Now that he had his new skill unlocked, he was hoping that would automatically tell him what to do.

The cauldron was hot enough, so Alex put in the first ingredient. He followed the recipe and did what was needed, but on the back of his head, he waited for something to happen.

He vigilantly checked for anything that was happening on its own. However, nothing of that sort happened. Everything was going normally as it would.

"Hmm, that's weird," he thought and continued. The True Qi was making it extremely easy to control the ingredient and the energy in the cauldron.

Somehow he felt like if he used Elemental guidance now, he could easily guide the energy without missing the tiniest amount.

He put in the second ingredient and moved it around. He waited for something to happen, but nothing did once again.

"Do I have bad luck or is this not how it's supposed to go?" Alex wondered.

He tried with the next two ingredients once more, but unfortunately, nothing happened. "Maybe I'm doing something wrong," he thought.

He continued normally with the remaining ingredients and soon was close to being done with it. Right before he was finished, the pill-splitting Qi, which he hadn't seen for a very long time came out from within him and separated the powder to form two different pills.

The vortex appeared once again above it that pulled in the energy from the cauldron and the two pills were ready.

Alex pulled out the pills and saw that the harmony in them was 25% and 26% respectively. '1% less than ideal. Something must've been wrong with the ingredients,' he thought.

He stored the pills in a ceramic bottle and into his plastic bag. Then he started thinking. "What's going on? What was there no improvement?" he wondered. "Am I missing something?"

Alex was confused, so he opened up the description about Alchemy God's Knowledge and read up on it again.

"Unlocked: You have a chance to improve common rank recipes," he read the main part he was concerned about. Suddenly, his eyes squinted as he read it again.

"Wait… chance? Is that… for every single ingredient I put in? Or for every single pill I make?" he wondered. "If it's for the ingredients, then the chance must be egregiously low, but if it's for each pill then… oh god, how many pills will I have to make before I see any improvements?"

Either way, he would have to make pills for hours on end to see any improvements at all. Now, all he could hope for was that the improvements were so good that he didn't need to make it that many times.

Alex brought another set of ingredients and made the pills once more. While he waited for something to happen, he was realizing an interesting fact about himself at the moment.

Thanks to the common grade pills required not as much Qi during its making, Alex could easily replenish the True Qi he lost while making the pills.

Meaning, if Alex chose to make only common grade pills, then he could likely go for as long as he could mentally handle.

Given that he had gone through the mind tempering realm and had eaten all 3 of the mind improving pill, it was probably going to be multiple days.

Alex put in the 2nd ingredient and continued making the pill. During the whole time once more nothing happened. No extra Qi from in him, no feeling, nothing.

Alex was starting to doubt if something was even going to happen. If it was meant to, it would have happened already.

He was dejected and disappointed at the 52% harmony pill that formed in the end. Still, he didn't let that beat him down and tried once again.

His expectations were at an all-time low, but he kept his hopes up. He brought out another set of ingredients and tried again.

He put in the first ingredient. Nothing Happened.

He put in the second ingredient. Nothing Happened.

He put in the third ingredient. Nothing Happened.

Alex was damn near sure that this one was a failure as well. Then, he put in the fourth ingredient. That was when something happened.

When he put the fourth ingredient in, he was supposed to move the ingredient clockwise about 5 times with each rotation taking about 3 seconds.

The heat at the moment was supposed to be really low to compensate for the rather slow-moving speed of the ingredient.

But, for some reason, when Alex put in the ingredient this time. He didn't want to do that. He could tell that while that would bring out a result, there was another way to bring out a better result.

It was a piece of knowledge rather than a feeling that came from deep in his mind. It felt like a thought that he hadn't thought of himself, so it was a weird experience for Alex.

He let the knowledge move him and instead of going clockwise, he went counterclockwise. The only difference between being clockwise and counter-clockwise was the shape of the ingredient when it was powdered would turn out to be different.

He moved the ingredient at the same speed, with the same temperature, and followed the rest of the recipe.

Not a single piece of information came to his mind after that, but that one information alone left a mark in his mind.

Alex waited for the pill to be made and in the end, the pill-splitting Qi came out to make it into two.

"Dammit, not now," Alex said with a sigh. He wanted to see what results would happen after what he just went through, but the stupid pill-splitting Qi messed it all up.

"Sigh, I hope it's good still," he thought and pulled out the pills. He looked at the first pill and suddenly his eyes went wide.

"31%?" he exclaimed. He couldn't believe how high that one pill was. "Then what about…?" he pulled out the other pill and read its harmony too.

"33%?" he shrieked.

"Huh? Wait, huh? 64% in total? Just by reversing the direction of one ingredient? Is that what I was missing?" Alex was seriously taken aback. He questioned how he could've missed something so simple, however, there was no way for him to know that something like this would've happened.

"I need to try it once again," he thought and took out another set of ingredients. He followed the recipe once more, but this time, he changed what he did for the fourth ingredient to what he did in the last batch.

When he was done with the ingredients, it was time to form the pill. He prayed that the pill-splitting Qi didn't come out, and somehow his prayer was answered.

He managed to make the pill without splitting it into two. "Nice," he said to himself. He pulled out the pill from the cauldron and looked at it.

"58%?" he cocked his head to the side in confusion. 58% was obviously better than the 52% he was making previously, but it was nowhere as good as the 64% he was getting from the two pills.

"What's going on?" he wondered. He decided to try once more.

He went through the whole ordeal of making the pill once more to end up with the pill splitting Qi forming two separate pills.

"No, that's fine. No need to be mad. Let's check this again," he thought and pulled out the two pills.

31% and 32%. He had managed to make two pills with 63% total harmony. That went in line with the other two pills that made 64%.

"I did nothing different though. Why do these end up with 63% and 64% total harmony, while the single one ends up with 58%? Am I doing something differently?" Alex wondered.

He quickly came to the conclusion that something was indeed being done differently, and it was quite obvious at a simple glance.

The pill-splitting Qi formed the pills on their own, while Alex had to make the pills by himself.

"There must be something unique about the formation technique with which the two pills are formed. Maybe there is a secret behind it that allows for the highest amount of energy to be stored in the pills?" Alex thought.

That would make sense since it was something that belonged to the Alchemy God's Knowledge skill. Anything named 'Alchemy God' must be a very high-tier skill after all.

"Maybe I should learn how it works even. It would be great if I learned something from it that improved my pill-making process," he thought.

He put the pill back into a ceramic bottle and started making the same pill once more.

Over and Over, he continued making the pill for an entire night. He didn't waste a single moment and made over 100 pills.

By the time he was done in the morning, he had managed to improve the recipe to a point that he could now consistently make a 70% harmony pill if the pill didn't split into two.

For the first time, Alex was getting close to making an Immortal grade pill whose final energy wasn't Metal.