Tempered Immortal

Chapter 17 - Pill Upgrade Attempt

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Although Lin Xuan has begun to grasp the uses of the blue lights, he was not sure if that was the entirety of it or simply just the tip of the iceberg. So Lin Xuan decided to continue his exploration of the blue lights.

He poured out a pill out from the jade bottle, not a trash pill, but a Purifying Essence Pill, one of the ones he obtained from Zhou Yan.

Trash pills can be purified, so then can a low-grade Purifying Essence Pill be further purified and upgraded?

Lin Xuan decided to give it a try.

All pills, including Purifying Essence Pill, were ranked. Pills are divided into four grades, being low-grade, mid-grade, high-grade, and top-grade.

Pill grades were mainly used to quantify the number of impurities contained within a pill. There were no differences in the materials used, and thus the more impurities it possesses, the more of its essence gets dispersed when it is consumed, thus giving worse results.

The high-grade immortal pills are of course the opposite of low grade, having fewer impurities and thus having more concentrated essence and making the effects it gives even more obvious.

Of course, the higher the grade of the pill, the more difficult it was in refining it.

In general, if the impurity content was more than seventy percent, it would be considered a trash pill. Impurity content of fifty percent was low-grade, thirty percent was mid-grade, ten percent for high grade, and only two or three percent for top-grade.

Over tens of thousands of years, the cultivation world has been trying to find ways to reduce the impurity percentage of pills. Many master alchemists, intelligent scholars, and various others, not worrying about labor, have made many attempts, and as a result, there were a variety of different pills. Purifying Essence Pill, Foundation Establishment Pill, Core Forming Pill, Nine Turns Pill, etc… But the most abundant type were low-grade ones.

Lin Xuan now wanted to try further. Since the blue lights can turn trash pills into low-grade pills, could it also purify them more?

Theoretically, it should be possible, so Lin Xuan sat down cross-legged, held a white pill in his hand, and the blue lights began to gather in his Dantian.

After a month of practice, especially after breaking through into the second layer, the blue lights no longer had any jerky movements when being circulated.

But Lin Xuan did not relax, as this would be a new attempt. He released his whole Spiritual Sense with the blue lights flowing through his meridians and all concentrated on the Purifying Essence Pill in his hand.

After entering the second layer of the Spirit Condensation stage, Lin Xuan’s calculating ability was doubled. In addition to the growth of spiritual power, his soul was also greatly enhanced. He was now able to look through into the interior of the pill, where he was only able to look at the surface previously.

With the Purifying Essence Pill magnified many times in his mind, he could see the traces of black in the pill that originally seemed to be pure white.

What he needed to do now was to remove those useless things.

As the blue lights passed through his skin and into the pill, Lin Xuan, who was previously unable to observe any further and could only continue to push the blue lights into the pill, was now able to control the movements of the blue lights inside the pill with his Spiritual Sense.

Lin Xuan started to control the flow rate of the blue lights while carefully observing.

The blue light entered the pill. Inside the flow, he saw that white represented the essence and black represented the impurities. When it comes to the pure parts, the blue lights would directly pass through, as if there was nothing there. But when the blue lights encountered impurities, they would begin to push against it slowly. It was during this process that the blue lights expend energy.

Lin Xuan saw that the black impurities were moved forward a short distance every time they come into contact with the blue lights until they were finally pushed out of the pill, thus reducing the impurity level.

As the purification process continued, Lin Xuan began to nod to himself, as his understanding of the blue lights deepened.

Since my Spiritual Sense can enter inside the pill, then am I able to control it inside the pill as well? Lin Xuan came up with this idea. The flow of the lights inside the pill was chaotic, and thus the purification efficiency was not that high. If he could control the lights and bring them together, then the purification would also become easier.

So Lin Xuan began the attempt.

To control the flow of the blue lights, he must first attach his Spiritual Sense to the lights, and although it is not a difficult technique, the nature of the blue lights made it difficult.

Different from actual objects, the lights have no visible form. Although with a high enough cultivation, anything can be controlled, Lin Xuan’s cultivation was only on the second layer of the Spirit Condensation stage.

Although he tried hard, he was still only able to slightly jolt the blue lights.

Lin Xun very wisely decided to give up then and decided to try again another time once he has higher cultivation.

Lin Xuan then re-focused the control on his Spiritual Sense and the flow rate of the blue lights from his body to continue the purification.

This process was not easy, and he soon encountered a new problem: even though the low-grade pill had a low amount of impurities, when compared to the trash pill, it still required more of the blue lights to purify.

An hour quickly passed, and the blue lights in his Dantian have been reduced to one-third of the original size, close to the limit of how many blue lights he can put out.

After the blue lights finally stagnated, the impurities that were left inside the pill returned to their original positions and were left even more tightly bound to the essence.

The pure white pill also became a pale black color.

Lin Xuan opened his hands and looked at the ruined pill in his hand, a thoughtful expression on his face. Although this time the test was not successful, the gains were not at all small.

First of all, he learned that he could use his Spiritual Sense to enter inside the pill, which allowed him to better understand the purification process, which in turn allows him to better understand the blue lights. This was a great benefit to him.

Secondly, after entering inside the pill, the blue lights can still be controlled. The only issue was that his skill was not enough, and so after his soul was strong enough to control the flow inside the pill, the purification efficiency would also be higher.

His experience in this was also beginning to accumulate, since, in addition to the practice, the results eventually add up. Every time Lin Xuan did a test, regardless of success or failure, there was always something he could gain from it.

It was this attitude, coupled with his bold but cautious nature, that allowed Lin Xuan to go from being ignorant of the uses of the blue lights to where he was now.

Translated by: James1kd2

Edited by: UnderTheMoon