97:

  Xiao Feng took a sharp breath in an attempt to calm the fervor he felt at what he suspected was a flawless refinement of the first four ingredients required for the Beast Bonding Pill. Even then, he needed a few moments to dull the electric tingle of excitement that had zapped all the fatigue out of him, if only temporarily.

  I need to imbue, He thought. Once again, Xiao Feng began imbuing the refined mixture of the four ingredients with his unattuned Qi at a third of the intensity of his first refinement attempt, to make up for the break in the imbuing process that the weaving technique had cost him.

  A few minutes later, when Xiao Feng reached for the fifth ingredient, Star Anemone, he realized that he was more nervous than ever. There was no guarantee that he’d be able to attain a flawless level of purity with four ingredients again and failing would mean that he would have to wait another whole day before he got a chance to refine the Beast Bonding Pill again— a delay that would certainly not do his confidence any favours.

  Gritting his teeth, Xiao Feng deposited the Star Anemone onto the pill furnace’s metal plate and turned the handle before he could second guess himself any further. He caught the ingredient in a layer of Wind Qi with practiced ease, keeping it suspended mid-air for a moment as he recalled everything he knew about it.

  Star Anemone is expensive because it heals internal wounds and forces the body to expel impurities, He recalled. Given the state of the Beast Egg, it’s one of the most important ingredients to refine properly even if it is an auxiliary one. Its Qi Density approaches the Blood Extract of the Lesser Shadow Wyrm, though it’s still a step below it. Its Water Qi base means that it took Lianhua the longest amount of time to refine. If I want to get this right, I need to be slow and methodological.

  Having decided upon his gameplan, Xiao Feng slowly lowered the Star Anemone into the mixture, lowering its shielding upon the surface area needed to make contact with the heated mixture.

  This was the step that Lianhua would have failed at if it wasn’t for her Alchemist Flame, the Qi Density of Star Anemone coupled with the heat needed to refine it making it easy to make critical mistakes if one was continuously imbuing their own unattuned Qi into the refining mixture the entire time.

  Xiao Feng had no doubt that Lianhua’s method of imbuing Qi throughout the refinement process was the superior one and it would most likely lead to a more consistent result, but unlike her, he did not have an alchemist’s flame to fall back on. To Xiao Feng, it made more sense to focus on making sure that he refined the Star Anemone into the mixture first and then, once it had stabilized, he could imbue his unattuned Qi into the mixture at an accelerated rate with his essence cultivation art serving as an early warning signal.

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  If the mixture began to swell due to his efforts, he was confident in his ability to react much faster than Lianhua due to his ability to observe the process in real-time.

  It took Xiao Feng half an hour for the Star Anemone to melt into the heated mixture and the end result was a mixture riddled with inconsistencies, patches of too dense and too diffused Qi visible as a messy patchwork before his sight.

  If he used the weaving technique at regular speed, it would take him far too long to refine the mixture, longer even than the thirty-four cycles he had needed earlier. His concentration would not hold for that long given how exhausted he was already feeling, so there was no choice but to speed things up or give up on the refinement.

  Xiao Feng’s one hope was that the inconsistencies he was seeing was because of the Star Anemone’s Water Qi base still resisting the encroachment of the heated mixture, which he hoped made the mixture less likely to blow up in his face upon being subjected to violent motion.

  It took him a total of twenty cycles before the mixture was refined and this was after he had upped the speed by fifty percent of his baseline for the weaving method. But even then, nearing the end, Xiao Feng could have swore that he blacked out for a good ten to fifteen seconds, with instinct alone keeping the Wind Qi Weave from dissipating.

  “Yes!” He exclaimed out loud, causing Lianhua to flinch but being so in the moment that he didn’t even notice. When he had let the weave dissipate, he couldn’t see any inconsistencies, but it was hard to truly tell until the mixture settled at the bottom of the pill furnace.

  Xiao Feng immediately brought the heat down to a simmer, taking his time to imbue Qi into the refined mixture knowing that he had crossed a hurdle that had tripped even a Senior Alchemist up.

  There would be no more use of the weaving technique required, for Xiao Feng had well and truly reached the final stretch.

  The next ingredient, the Sylvan Heartroot’s main purpose was to bring the refining ingredients together and stabilize the melange and it’s Earth Qi base made it resistant to change, at least via the vector of heat or fire, which made it highly unlikely for Xiao Feng to fail at this step.

  Once he added the Sylvan Heartroot to the mixture, its unique property of attracting organic matter to conceal itself would be used to Xiao Feng’s advantage, as the refining mixture would form an organic layer ensconcing its dimensions and making it easier to compress into a pill.

  Which meant that on his second attempt, Xiao Feng would get a shot at the final step of the Beast Bonding Pill’s refinement process.

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