Chapter 720: Mirror Flower Water Moon; Slaying the Wolf King (I)

After seizing the third-tier spirit vein, Luo Chen suddenly found his time much more plentiful. Before that, everything had felt overwhelming. It was like a tangled thread with no clear beginning. Once the most crucial problem—acquiring a spirit land for cultivation—was no longer hanging over him, everything seemed to ease at once. Even though there were still many trivial matters involved in constructing the sect's spirit land, Luo Chen had other competent people dealing with them. He only needed to handle the overall strategy.

Gradually, his life settled back into a regular rhythm. He cultivated, refined pills, studied the fundamentals of restrictions, and learned the basics of formations, while also increasing his proficiency in spellcasting. At the same time, he continued to send people out to look for Fire Spirit Diamonds.

Thanks to this steady routine, every aspect of his strength increased in an orderly manner. The most visible improvement was with the Starfield Pill. After consuming large amounts of materials and going through thousands of refinements, his proficiency was slowly approaching the Perfection level.

Half a year later, inside the cave residence personally remodeled by Fei Ming, Luo Chen carefully watched the Shangshu Cauldron glow deep red. The medicinal essence inside was slowly condensing. A rich and intoxicating pill fragrance spread through the cave for a moment, only to be sealed in place by the formation so it could not leak out.

Luo Chen formed spirit seals with both hands to control the pace of the reaction. In his mind, he calculated the increase in medicinal strength of the Starfield Pill. If he treated the potency of a low-grade Starfield Pill as a single unit, then a mid-grade pill would reach two units. A top-grade pill would again double that, and if he reached Perfection, then the supreme-grade Starfield Pills he refined should be around eight units.

But that was only the standard progression. Judging from how dense the fragrance was, Luo Chen felt it might exceed that by quite a bit. After all, when he refined Starfield Pills at the Beginner level, ten batches of ingredients produced one bottle of low-grade pills. At the Perfection level, ten batches also produced one bottle, yet these were supreme grade. The success rate was identical, but the degree to which the essence of the ingredients was used was clearly leagues apart.

"If I can truly fuse the entire medicinal essence of ten batches of ingredients into just ten pills, the potency will definitely be more than just seven or eight times stronger."

With that hopeful thought in mind, Luo Chen was at the final stage of pill formation. When the fragrance thickened to a certain point, he stopped the process with a single thought.

With a lift of his palm, the cauldron lid flew open. Ten pills like tiny stars floated up, each one shining with a brilliant glow. A single glance was enough to dazzle one's vision and make the heart sway.

Luo Chen beckoned, and the ten pills fell into his hand. He examined the lines on them with his Spirit Eyes.

One, two, three, four... nine... nine and a half!

The last half-pattern was actually golden in color! That single golden line made the Starfield Pill look almost like a Golden Core.

"Heh, an Adept should use a Golden Core to cultivate! Amazing, really amazing, absolutely amazing!"

With these three exclamations of praise, Luo Chen happily put away the ten supreme-grade Starfield Pills. With a sweep of his sleeve, he tidied the simple alchemy chamber a little and stepped into the separate cultivation chamber.

The moment he stepped inside, an extremely dense surge of heaven and earth's spirit energy rushed toward him. In such an energy-rich environment, the five-colored Golden Core inside Luo Chen's body stirred restlessly, as if trying to cultivate of its own accord.

This happened because Fei Ming had used the secret techniques of Ailao Mountain to draw the spirit vein's energy to this place. As expected, the environment in this cave had immediately improved from low-grade to mid-grade. Of all members of the Luo Tian Alliance, Luo Chen alone enjoyed such a perk right now; as for the other cave residences, they would also improve with time.

After closing the door, Luo Chen sat on the Ice Silkworm Meditation Mat. The Divine Ice Jade hanging at his neck helped him clear his thoughts right away.

"A mid-grade third-tier spirit environment, supreme grade third-tier Starfield Pills, and a Perfection-level Wood Ignition. Let's see how fast this goes."

With a trace of curiosity, his mind gradually became calm as still water. After swallowing a pill, Luo Chen began cultivation. The dense spirit energy around him seemed to suddenly be attracted by an unseen force and started gathering toward Luo Chen. A funnel-shaped vortex appeared in the cultivation chamber, with Luo Chen seated at its heart.

***

Four hours later, Luo Chen stopped cultivating. This was one standard session. He could have continued, but there was no need for now. First, he needed to gauge his current cultivation speed. He opened his status panel.

Lifespan: 112/402

Realm: Golden Core Stage One (8/100)

Luo Chen looked at those two numbers and sank into thought. The two-year lifespan increase was not surprising. He had used the Withering Flourishing Fire to devour the life force of many low-tier demonic beasts, and while fighting the third-tier demonic wolves, he had also extracted some of their life force. Added to that was the progress of his Physique Refinement. An extra two years was only to be expected.

What he was really considering was his cultivation speed. He had taken a hundred years to form his core, and ten years to consolidate his cultivation. But he had absorbed a tremendous amount of heaven and earth's spirit energy during his breakthrough, and he had then used that to advance to the first stage, saving himself many years of effort. By contrast, Fu Jiusheng had formed his core earlier than Luo Chen, yet only in the past few days had he barely stepped into the first stage of the Golden Core Realm.

After turning one hundred and ten, he had spent most of his time in seclusion; he had then gone to Green Pill Valley to attempt the Nascent Soul Pill refinement, and then participated in the Frontier War. In other words, in the past two years, Luo Chen had actually spent little time on cultivation. His greatest gains had come from the past half year of cultivation supplemented by mid-grade and top-grade Starfield Pills. Only thanks to that had he barely pushed his progress bar to 8/100. From the session he had just completed, and relying on his keen divine consciousness, he now had a good grasp of how fast he was going.

"Overall, sixfold. Not great, not terrible."

A sixfold increase in cultivation speed meant that instead of the thirty years needed to advance to the second stage of the Golden Core Realm, he could get there in five or six years if nothing unexpected happened. Such advancement speed was indeed impressive; ordinary Adepts with no major force backing them would take decades or maybe even a full century to make that breakthrough. That was the "not terrible" part. The "not great" part was that the cost was just far too high.

One batch of ingredients for the Starfield Pill cost around 2,000 spirit stones. To refine a bottle of ten supreme-grade Starfield Pills, he needed ten batches of ingredients, which meant 20,000 spirit stones. On average, the cost was 2,000 for

one

pill

. Since Luo Chen used one pill a day, that meant over 700,000 a year for pills alone!

"And that's only the cost of the ingredients... Ordinary Adepts outside can barely get third-tier cultivation pills at all, let alone supreme-grade ones. I could sell a single bottle for fifty or sixty thousand, probably even more at an auction. And then there's the cost of renting a mid-grade third-tier cave residence... Thank heaven I'm not paying rent for this place. Normal people would have to pay millions upon millions to get this sixfold cultivation speed...."

After finishing his calculations, Luo Chen let out a sigh. It was no wonder that after cultivators advanced to the Golden Core Realm, their demand for spirit lands became so high while their demand for pills seemed to decrease. It was not that they did not need pills, but that pills of this level were simply unobtainable. It was not just a matter of cost; more importantly, the supply was nowhere near the demand. After all, even famed master alchemists spoken of in rumors could not produce supreme-grade pills with perfect consistency the way Luo Chen could. It was no wonder even low-grade cultivation pills were things Adepts chased after eagerly and longed for endlessly.

This was what made high-tier alchemists so sought-after. Back in the day, Luo Chen had been a rogue alchemist without a sect. The instant he advanced to the Golden Core Realm, people were already planning to get in his good graces. Those of the same realm took the initiative to befriend him, and when he decided to form an alliance, it posed no difficulty at all.

Luo Chen shook his head and pushed those stray thoughts aside. He carefully began to plan his next steps. Based on the latest reports from the Luo Tian Sect, the sect's operations could at most bring him 500,000 spirit stones a year, and that figure included the Jade Dew Pill trade with the Ice Fortress. Moreover, as things stood, even that 500,000 was wishful thinking. Improving the sect's spirit land required tremendous investment. The Luo Tian Sect had to pour at least 100,000 yearly into this venture, which meant only around 400,000 would actually reach Luo Chen's hands.

At the same time, his annual expenses surpassed 700,000 in pill ingredients alone; he also needed materials to refine his life-bound treasure, purchase some other potentially life-saving items, and so forth. But even considering just the pill ingredients he needed, he was 300,000 short.

"In the short term, I could patch the hole with my savings. But sustainable growth..."