The Path of Immortality: Starts With Creating Water Bear Gu

Chapter 18: Spirit Fire

"Hundred Flower Pill, no wonder Old Long's medicinal garden is full of flowers. So that's the reason."

Long Xuan's eyes sparkled with excitement.

An alchemist! He realized that he might be able to become an alchemist.

Using his clairvoyance and slight X-ray vision, Long Xuan observed Elder Long's entire alchemy process. He could secretly learn alchemy and occasionally steal a few pill recipes.

The more he thought about it, the more excited he became.

In this world, alchemists are even rarer and more esteemed than Gu practitioners.

They are extremely secretive about their skills and rarely pass on their knowledge. Alchemy techniques and pill recipes are practically impossible to buy anywhere.

As a result, every alchemist possesses several unique pill recipes, each forming their own distinct sect, with strong sectarianism.

Given the opportunity to secretly learn alchemy, how could he not be thrilled? He had been excited many times today.

This rarity made alchemists extremely valuable, with highly esteemed statuses.

Spirit pills can enhance a Gu practitioner's breakthrough rate, create life-saving elixirs to heal injuries, and even transform Gu insects, allowing them to undergo a metamorphosis.

Thus, the spirit pills alchemists create have a fatal attraction for every Gu practitioner, leading them to flatter and even serve alchemists wholeheartedly.

Every alchemist in this world has terrifying connections and broad social networks, capable of associating with all sorts of prominent figures.

Offending an alchemist could result in incurring countless powerful enemies.

Because of their rarity, spirit pills are equally rare, unlike in other worlds where they are commonplace.

Long Xuan had never seen spirit pills in market stalls, possibly due to the poverty of this area. Spirit pills could probably only be found at auctions.

If he could become an alchemist and produce Hundred Flower Pill, his cultivation speed could increase tenfold through consistent pill consumption.

The thought made Long Xuan ecstatic. He was fed up with the excruciatingly slow cultivation speed.

Since his aptitude was lacking, he would make up for it with resources.

If he couldn't buy spirit pills, he would create them himself. After Hundred Flower Pill becomes useless, he would create Thousand Flower Pill and then Ten Thousand Flower Pill. quickly planning his future cultivation path.

Determined, Long Xuan focused entirely on observing Elder Long's alchemy process, enlarging and closely examining every detail to quickly master the technique.

A day passed quickly. Exhausted, Elder Long finally ended his work and fell into a deep sleep, snoring loudly enough for Long Xuan to hear from afar.

Long Xuan, also tired, put away his Eye of Heavenly secret, Despite his exhaustion, his face was full of excitement.

The day's spying had yielded significant rewards.

He quickly sat at the table, taking out pen and paper to got to work.

Soon, the paper was filled with writing. At the top, he wrote "Purple Demon Flame," then put down his pen, feeling satisfied.

Flame is an alchemist's closely guarded secret, more important than the pill recipes themselves.

Alchemy cannot use ordinary firewood flames.

During the Spirit Gathering stage, one can use fire spiritual energy to refine first-grade spirit pills.

However, to refine second-grade or higher spirit pills, special flames are necessary. Without special flames, one can only ever refine the lowest-grade first-grade spirit pills.

Legendary natural Heavenly Flames aside, most alchemist flames come from three sources.

One can find a magma location and use Earth Fire for alchemy. Alternatively, one can kill fire-attribute spirit beasts and use Beast Fire.

The last option is artificial spirit fire.

Spirit fire is a unique flame created by alchemists using various rare materials and mystical methods. The recipes for spirit fire are extremely precious.

Some spirit fire recipes can rival the legendary Heavenly Flames in power.

At this moment, Long Xuan had recorded a spirit fire recipe called "Purple Demon Flame," a secret of Elder Long, which he must've gotten from Long clan.

Yet, Long Xuan had easily obtained it due to Elder Long's carelessness in taking such an important recipe out of his storage bag.

Holding the memorized spirit fire recipe, Long Xuan was ecstatic.

With this recipe, he could create the Purple Demon Flame. Using special flames for alchemy could enhance the potency of spirit pills, boosting his cultivation speed further, making him wildly joyful.

However, his smile soon faded, replaced by hesitation and growing calmness.

In this world, secretly learning others' guarded secrets is a grave taboo, punishable by death if discovered.

Though he could secretly use it without detection, every caught thief thought the same.

Why are unique Gu recipes so hard to steal? Can't they kill and torture to extract them? No, they can't.

The same kind of Gu insects can sense each other from a distance. If you dare to refine a large clan's unique Gu recipe, be prepared for relentless pursuit by the entire clan.

If Gu insects can sense each other, could spirit fire have a similar trait?

If he created the Purple Demon Flame, would Elder Long immediately sense it and come angrily to kill him?

Long Xuan shivered, feeling a chill down his spine.

It was possible. He didn't dare to gamble, even with a one percent chance of being detected.

No matter how low the odds, gambling with his life was foolish.

Long Xuan took a deep breath. Since he couldn't use it, he would have to create his own spirit fire. Why not invent one himself?

His eyes brightened with excitement.

Before obtaining the Purple Demon Flame recipe, he couldn't have created a spirit fire recipe because he knew nothing about the process.

But now, with a template, he knew the materials and methods to use.

Following the recipe's rules, creating a new spirit fire might not be so hard.

It was just a matter of effort.

Long Xuan became excited again, taking out a blank sheet of paper with renewed vigor.

The first step in creating a spirit fire was deciding what kind of flame to make, its characteristics, and abilities.

Long Xuan immediately thought of the cold flames often described in novels from his previous life.

But this world wasn't a novel; it was a real world where such illogical flames didn't exist.

No cold flames had ever appeared in this world.

Burning releases heat; without heat, burning is impossible. Burning without releasing heat is contradictory and scientifically impossible, a pseudoscience.

However, Long Xuan still wanted to give it a try.

Since creating something costs him nothing but time, why not try? What if he succeeded?

He first created a name for this spirit fire, writing "Divine Ice Flame" on the paper.

With the name set, if the resulting flame had nothing to do with cold, the progress would stall due to inconsistency with the title.

Title-based creation increased the difficulty and time cost.

After writing the title, Long Xuan first thought of the ice-making principle of saltpeter from his previous life.

Saltpeter existed in this world too, rich in spiritual energy and likely more effective for ice-making.

So without hesitation, he wrote "saltpeter" below the title, specifying "in large quantities."

As his pen touched the paper, a progress indicator of [0.1%] appeared, making Long Xuan overjoyed.

He realized he had succeeded. The fictional flame from novels might just be possible in this real world...