Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

The first combinations of ingredients Alex came up with didn't work as well as he had hoped. He had chosen the correct ingredients, but the way he had gone about it seemed incorrect.

For example, during his initial idea, he had two Wood energy ingredients pile up to make the incoming Fire energy strong, which would then be followed by Water energy to control its power.

However, when considering it all on the basis of someone consuming this energy, he realized at the end that the energy was too muddled up, and all the useful bits of the ingredients were being destroyed by the other ingredients.

This did not mean that he had to completely redo everything, but rather he would have to reorganize which ingredient would come when.

After thinking for a while, Alex found the correct order.

He would start with one of the Wood ingredients and use it to empower the Fire that came afterward. At this point, Alex would use the Water energy to control the Fire energy. The result of this would have a Water energy imbalance, which he would weaken using the second Wood energy that came afterward.

While the ingredients used were the same, and the energy within them was the same, the order in which they were introduced helped change how the rest of the attributes within the ingredients were used.

Unlike the first way, with the second way Alex had come up with, the minor healing attribute of the Frostbloom Petals wasn't destroyed by the strong destructive energy of the Coalfire Leaves.

After going through the order multiple times in the span of an hour or two, Alex finally decided upon a final order using which he could make a healing pill.

The major ingredient of this pill would be the Eight Twilight Silk Seeds.

Once Alex successfully simulated the order of the ingredients in his mind and how the energy would mix together, the next task was to figure out how much of each ingredient gave the required amount of energy.

Thankfully, he knew too much about most of the ingredients to need as much time during this phase. One by one, he decided on the measurements of the required amount of each ingredient.

12 of the Eight Twilight Silk Threads, 5 Frostbloom Petals, 3 Coalfire Leaves, 2 Jewel Cherry Pits, and so on.

After that step, the next thing to do was to figure out what sort of temperature and refinement method was required to bring out the energy from within those ingredients at the rate he had conceived.

Normally, this would take a good few hours of time for even the best alchemists. Alex, with his method given to him by the Alchemy God, could do it in an hour or two.

However, at this current point, he chose to skip this step.

The reason this step was even required in the first place was to make sure that the final recipe came out as good as possible. The task of refining the recipe was just as important as coming up with the recipe itself, after all.

However, the Alchemy God himself had told them that the first three pills did not have to be good. They simply had to come up with a recipe that worked.

And he had.

Of course, he would still have to make a pill to show that the recipe worked, but that was easy. Alex had worked with all of these ingredients before, so he could simply start making the pill without worrying about making it perfect.

The process of making the pill itself was quite simple. He had the amount of ingredients required ready in his mind, so he simply placed them in the cauldron in order and refined them per the other recipes he had used the ingredients with.

He manipulated the temperature and the speed of refinement within the cauldron to get the rate of energy release as the recipe needed. At this point, he could do most of that on instinct alone. Any of the 102 alchemists in the competition could do that.

After going through the entire set of ingredients he had prepared for this recipe—12 in total—what remained inside of Memory now was a pile of powder at the bottom and an amalgamation of energy floating on top.

Memory was very curious about this energy, clearly relaying back a single question to Alex.

Can I eat this?

The question surprisingly felt as if it was filled with a strong intent behind it. The spirit within Memory had grown stronger, it seemed. Sadly, it still wasn't a proper cauldron spirit.

Alex considered the question carefully and quickly realized that he could let Memory eat the energy within it.

That was, however, only after the pill had formed.

"Let me form the pill first. It won't use up all the energy, and you can eat what remains," Alex told the cauldron.

Memory relayed a feeling of strong gratitude.

Alex was surprised, to say the least. He quickly refocused his attention on the powder and quickly formed it into a pill. Even before the pill fully formed, he could tell just how bad it was.

The structures of the powder did not cohesively link together, and as a result, the final combination completely sucked. When the energy was poured into the pill, it retained no more than a third of the total energy in the cauldron.

Alex knew this was going to happen, so he wasn't surprised or disappointed.

Memory consumed the remaining energy inside of it once the pill was made, and Alex pulled the pill out once all the energy inside Memory was gone.

Alex looked at the pill for a moment, recognizing the 32% Harmony within it. A failed pill by all considerations, but a success for Alex at the moment, as a high grade was not what he needed here.

Now that he had succeeded, Alex wrote down the recipe.

It was a pill that used 11 different ingredients to elevate the healing power inside all the ingredients, but majorly in the Eight Twilight Silk Seeds. It also suppressed all unnecessary properties of the rest of the ingredients, making just the healing energy within it shine.

The healing energy targeted the person's physical body, which Alex wrote down as well. After a few more descriptions of what the pill did, he wrote down the rest of the recipe and was finally done.
Enjoy new adventures from My Virtual Library Empire

He didn't choose a name for the new pill. Since the Alchemy God had most likely come up with the recipe beforehand, it didn't sit right with him to give the pill a name.

Similarly, with a hundred alchemists on the stage, the chance that another one would stumble upon this recipe was possible as well.

Instead of wasting his time naming stuff, he decided to make the next recipe.

The easiest recipe to make would be another healing pill using the Silk Seeds again, but with the rest of the ingredients changed. However, the rule was very strict about that. He could now no longer make another healing pill that involved the Silk Seeds.

As a result, Alex had to make a different recipe entirely.

So, he closed his eyes and began going through the same steps to come up with another pill.