Chapter 1417 - Pill Seal

The nearby Heavenly Dragon Sect disciples cast furious glares at Bai Ran the moment his words fell. If that accusation took root, it would deal a massive blow to the Heavenly Dragon Sect's reputation.

The representatives from the various forces seated at the summit all wore odd expressions. Liu Wuxie was famous for his composure, and open mockery of the Divine Alchemy Sect did not fit his usual style.

By all logic, he did not need to ridicule the Divine Alchemy Sect and could have brushed their jab aside with a laugh.

No one understood why he chose such a sharp response instead.

"You people could've refined a better pill with such herbs, and the Divine Alchemy Sect can only refine something like the Intestine Cleansing Pill. Please enlighten me, if it's not garbage, then what is it?" Liu Wuxie asked, his smile never shifting.

He did not draw a single drop of blood, yet every word slid in like a soft knife that cut deeper with each stroke, a veiled insult branding them as garbage alchemists.

"Young Master Liu, you're saying that you can refine a better pill with those materials?" Feng He asked.

If Liu Wuxie could use the same ingredients to refine a superior pill, then the result could no longer be called a garbage pill.

If he succeeded where the Divine Alchemy Sect failed, he would perfectly prove his point that they were trash alchemists who only produced trash pills.

"Of course. These ingredients can refine a seventh-grade spiritual pill with a strong medicinal effect," Liu Wuxie said. He knew he could not unleash his murderous intent in this setting, so he forced himself to maintain a gentle, almost courteous demeanor.

Alchemists filled the surrounding crowd, and every one of them froze when they heard his claim. Those ingredients were precious but still relatively common on the market.

If Liu Wuxie could truly turn them into a seventh-grade spiritual pill, the result would be outrageous, and that pill would sweep across the Indigo Bamboo Astral Domain like a storm.

By comparison, the Intestine Cleansing Pill was only a second-grade spiritual pill, beneficial merely for detoxification.

"Anyone can spout nonsense. I can even claim that those ingredients are enough to refine an eighth-grade spiritual pill," Bai Ran sneered, waving Liu Wuxie's words away as idle boasting. Empty talk costs nothing.

"We'll know in a single test to see whether I'm rambling nonsense," Liu Wuxie said.

At first, he had harbored no particular malice toward the Divine Alchemy Sect, but their behavior today had utterly disgusted him. From this point on, he no longer intended to spare them even the tiniest slice of the alchemy market.

From this day forth, the Heavenly Dao Society would shift its primary focus onto alchemy and carve away the Divine Alchemy Sect's market share until they could no longer sell a single pill.

"And what if we proved that you're simply rambling nonsense?" Feng He asked, a trace of malice flickering beneath his smile. If Liu Wuxie failed to refine a seventh-grade spiritual pill, how would he justify his earlier words?

𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

"If I'm rambling nonsense and fail to refine a seventh-grade spiritual pill, I'll apologize in public for what I said earlier," Liu Wuxie replied, his tone upright and firm. He would shoulder responsibility for his own claims.

"Everyone. This isn't our Divine Alchemy Sect trying to make things difficult for Young Master Liu on purpose," Bai Ran announced, his expression shifting smoothly as he and Feng He played off each other without missing a beat.

By now, it was already too late for the Heavenly Dragon Sect's upper echelons to step in. Since Liu Wuxie had already agreed, they could no longer withdraw him from this challenge. If he failed to refine a seventh-grade spiritual pill, he would have to bow and apologize to the two Divine Alchemy Sect elders.

By then, they would undoubtedly seize that chance to mock him.

"It's inconvenient for me to refine pills now, and I plan to entrust it to my senior brother instead. I wonder if that's acceptable to the two of you?" Liu Wuxie asked. He naturally could not leave the Auspicious Cloud Stairs.

Refining pills atop the Auspicious Cloud Stairs was impractical, and stepping off midway would disrupt the apprenticeship ceremony. His request made perfect sense, and it just so happened to suit the Divine Alchemy Sect elders.

Even if Sun Xiao knew alchemy, his skill could not possibly compare to Liu Wuxie's.

"No problem," the two elders replied in unison.

Sun Xiao froze for a moment. His alchemy skills were half-baked at best, and his junior brother wanted him to refine the pill instead. It felt like pushing himself into a corner, yet the events had already progressed this far, so he knew there was no path of retreat left.

An open area lay at the edge of the Auspicious Cloud Stairs, and it could serve perfectly as Sun Xiao's pill-refining site.

At the summit, the experts who had come for the ceremony moved to the edge to get a better view. After all, Liu Wuxie now stood less than a hundred meters from the top.

"Junior Brother, are you sure about this?" Sun Xiao whispered as he summoned his alchemy cauldron. This would be his first attempt at refining a seventh-grade spiritual pill, and he had just made a breakthrough into the Earth Immortal Realm.

His alchemy skills could still only be considered half-baked, so anyone could already imagine the pressure on him, mainly since the Heavenly Dragon Sect's reputation now hung in the balance.

It would be strange if he felt no anxiety at all.

"Don't worry about it, Senior Brother," Liu Wuxie said. "Just follow my instructions exactly, and there will be no problem. Look at my hands."

He began transmitting his voice into Sun Xiao's mind through divine sense while demonstrating a set of intricate alchemy hand techniques. He performed them for a full minute, repeating key motions until he had confirmed that Sun Xiao had grasped them.

They had already prepared the ingredients, matching the list Bai Ran had recited earlier. Though the Intestine Cleansing Pill was considered a trash pill, it was not entirely useless and still had a tiny niche market.

However, it sold so cheaply that it barely covered the cost of the herbs, which was why even the Divine Alchemy Sect rarely bothered to refine it.

When the refinement began, Sun Xiao summoned his flame and wrapped the alchemy cauldron in fire.

The upper echelons of the Nine Dragon Palace all turned to watch Sun Xiao, intrigued. It was rare to see an Earth Immortal refine pills in public; pill refinement usually took place behind closed doors, far from prying eyes. For Sun Xiao to refine here was the same as laying his alchemy skill bare for everyone to see.

Everyone watched as Sun Xiao tossed spiritual herbs into his alchemy cauldron one after another, following the exact sequence and method Liu Wuxie had taught him.

Meanwhile, Liu Wuxie himself stood calmly upon the Auspicious Cloud Stairs.

Bai Ran and Feng He stared at Sun Xiao with wide eyes, unwilling to miss even a single detail. Many spectators even produced Memory Talismans, recording every step of Sun Xiao's refinement.

Time trickled by, and the pile of spiritual herbs beside Sun Xiao dwindled until almost nothing remained.

"What a strange alchemy technique. Moreover, the order in which he's adding the herbs is completely different from the Intestine Cleansing Pill. I remember the first herb for the Intestine Cleansing Pill should be Ephedra, and the second should be the Mountain-Spirit Ginseng.

"Now, the entire sequence is all scrambled up," commented the watching cultivators, none of whom had ever seen such a method before.

Earlier, when Bai Ran recited the ingredients, Liu Wuxie had already fed them into the Heavenly Dao Book and had it analyze them, deriving a new pill formula, resulting in the scene unfolding before everyone right now.

"The pill market is already at its peak with countless ancient formulas restored. The Divine Alchemy Sect is a giant when it comes to alchemy. If these herbs could form another pill, how could they not know about it?"

Not many in the crowd believed Liu Wuxie could refine a seventh-grade spiritual pill from these ingredients.

The Divine Alchemy Sect even maintained a Pill Analysis Hall dedicated to researching incomplete pill formulas. Alchemists there painstakingly restored many long-lost pills and fragmented recipes by hand.

"With all that, where did Liu Wuxie get his confidence from? Does he not realize that the apprenticeship ceremony would become a joke if he lost today?" Many people shook their heads, thinking Liu Wuxie too young and hot-blooded.

Facing the Divine Alchemy Sect's mockery, Liu Wuxie could have swallowed his anger and let the matter pass.

"The Divine Alchemy Sect pressed him step by step, and I would hit back just as hard if I were him. I don't think he had done anything wrong at all," said Liu Wuxie's supporters.

On the path of cultivation, one had to remain true to one's heart. If they compromised every time they faced a difficulty, there would be no point in cultivating in the first place.

All of the spiritual herbs had now entered the alchemy cauldron, and the refinement moved into the pill condensing phase. If the condensation failed, the mixture would never form a pill and would crumble into ash inside the cauldron.

Sun Xiao devoted himself wholly to the process and entered a state of total concentration. A faint mist soon rose above the alchemy cauldron—that was the pill flower.

"What a profound alchemy technique. Could those herbs really refine a seventh-grade spiritual pill?" Those who had doubted Liu Wuxie felt their certainty begin to waver.

The method Sun Xiao had used for the refinement was personally taught to him by Liu Wuxie moments earlier. As his refinement speed increased, he began to perform an odd footwork pattern and circled the alchemy cauldron, his steps seemingly matching some indescribable rhythm.

It felt as though he had fused with heaven and earth themselves, and this was what genuine alchemy skill looked like.

Using earthly flame as the foundation and hand signs as support, this technique relied on the fusion of heaven, earth, and man to give birth to the pill.

Though Sun Xiao had not yet reached the pinnacle of this technique, with it, his alchemy skill no longer fell short of Bai Ran's.

A faint pill fragrance drifted out of the cauldron, like the scent of a flower blooming and wafting into everyone's noses.

"It smells great! It's the fragrance of the Riverland White-Hope Herb!" the nearby cultivators exclaimed. They had never breathed in such a pill fragrance before.

Even so, the condensing phase had yet to be completed, and since this was Sun Xiao's first attempt at refining a seventh-grade spiritual pill, he naturally lacked experience.

"Senior Brother! Engrave the pill seal now!" Liu Wuxie called out.

"What?! Liu Wuxie know how to engrave pill seals?" The surrounding spectators all stumbled in shock, including experts at the Heaven Gaze Realm.

The pill seals had only existed in legends, and they had never actually appeared in the Indigo Bamboo Astral Domain. Not even the Divine Alchemy Sect could engrave pill seals, and no one knew where Liu Wuxie had learned of them.

If Sun Xiao had already reached the high levels of the Earth Immortal Realm, he naturally would not need to rely on a pill seal to assist the condensing phase.

However, his current cultivation was lacking, so he could only use pill seals to make up the difference. Pill seals operated on the same principles as soul runes, but they were even more ancient than the latter.

Sun Xiao immediately understood and began inscribing a mysterious pill seal that hovered in midair.

No one dared to blink, not even those at the Heaven Gaze Realm. They extended their divine senses to analyze Sun Xiao's movements, but even after watching for a long time, they found the pill seal he had inscribed to be quite strange, as if it needed something else to complete it.

It was like seeing the moon reflected in a lake.

They could clearly see it in the water, but they could not touch it.

When Sun Xiao injected the pill seal into the cauldron, a bizarre scene unfolded as the ingredients began to merge. The medicinal essences spun rapidly, whirling at the center of the alchemy cauldron as the refinement stepped into the purification phase.

The pill had already formed by this point, but the purification phase could further improve its quality. If pill runes emerged upon its surface, the result would be nothing short of extraordinary.