Chapter 24 (Part 1)

After Meng Ke finished drafting the pill formula, he immediately began refining the medicine without stopping for even a moment.

He moved over an entire wall’s worth of medicine cabinets. Every kind of medicinal ingredient was available. With his practiced pill-refining techniques and the simplicity of the formula, he did not even need to use Medical Valley’s small array for gathering spiritual energy. In only two quarters of an hour, he had refined a batch.

There were twelve pills in one batch. Every pill was round and smooth, and the medicinal power and spiritual energy were locked inside them. Every single one was top grade.

Lu Yan picked up one pill between his fingers, sniffed it, and, while Meng Ke was not paying attention, tossed it straight into his mouth.

Meng Ke strode over and pressed down on Lu Yan’s wrist to take his pulse. “How old are you? Why are you still putting everything in your mouth…”

Lu Yan smacked his lips, tasting it. The pill’s flavor could not be called good. It was rather bitter and sour. After swallowing it, he had to wait a while before the pill could take effect. Lu Yan carefully sensed the route the pill’s power took and the stability of his divine soul, then said, “It should work, but we still need to try it on someone without cultivation.”

Meng Ke did not find anything wrong with his pulse. Hearing Lu Yan say this, he nodded. “There are ordinary people in the room next door who have been asleep for almost three days. I’ll go ask their families whether they can try it first.”

Under the current circumstances, the people of Baiqiu City already trusted Meng Ke without limit. Especially after Lu Yan saved a little girl on the street, within just a few hours, all of Baiqiu City knew that a new immortal had arrived, one who could treat the strange illness.

The freshly refined pills were fed one by one into the mouths of those who had already been asleep for more than two days.

Lu Yan’s eyes were covered with a layer of spiritual energy. In his sight, the pill dissolved through the internal organs and meridians, warming and nourishing the organs that had already begun to fail. The transparent soul had been on the verge of leaving but not yet gone. It was forcibly called back by the soul-returning grass in the pill and slowly pressed back into the body.

It really worked!

Lu Yan gently lowered his eyes in Meng Ke’s direction. “It works, Brother Kongqing. You can gather the disciples of Medical Valley and have them refine the medicine according to the pill formula.”

No sooner had he spoken than one of the sturdier men moved his mouth twice. No one knew what he mumbled in his sleep, but he went on sleeping.

The man’s family, who had been keeping watch beside him, were so excited that they wept for joy. They kept calling his childhood name. Seeing that the man did not answer and instead fell asleep again, they hurried to Meng Ke and asked in tearful voices, “Immortal, why… why did he fall asleep again?”

Meng Ke quickly walked over, took hold of the pulse point, and used spiritual energy to inspect the man’s body once over. Then he relaxed and smiled. “He’s fine. After all, his body has suffered some damage. Sleeping will let the pill he took repair his body. The rest of you don’t need to worry either. Some people’s constitutions are a little weaker, so they’ll need to wait a while.”

After receiving the immortal’s confirmation, the room instantly filled with both crying and laughter, and the sounds of gratitude continued without end.

At present, there were thirty-two Medical Valley disciples in Baiqiu City. The disciples who had gone out sent back messages one after another, saying that this strange illness had not been found elsewhere for now.

According to Lu Yan’s thinking, even if it had not appeared for now, they still had to distribute the pills to every city, town, and village as much as possible, serving a preventive function. In any case, the pills were harmless to the body. If someone was ill, it would treat the illness; if someone was not ill, it could still stabilize the soul and strengthen the body.

The Divine Creation Sect’s Repair Department set up pill furnaces of all sizes. Baiqiu City had around twenty thousand ordinary people, including the elderly and children. A few of the Medical Valley disciples had uneven skill levels, and even if the pill furnaces ran day and night without rest, they still would not be able to keep up.

Medical Valley did not have enough people, but the Divine Creation Sect did.

Lu Yan huddled in a corner with the Repair Department disciples, took out the small blackboard he had not used in a long time, reversed the Buwang Brush, pointed the heavenly bamboo end downward, and drew a sectional diagram of a pill furnace.

“Look. The principle behind pill refining is to use spiritual energy to wrap around medicinal ingredients and purify them into medicinal liquid. Each type of medicinal ingredient requires a different amount of time and has different medicinal effects, so human control is required to prevent situations like mutual incompatibility. Otherwise, what gets refined will be poison, not spirit medicine. But now, we can use arrays to control it. Each array will be responsible for one kind of medicinal ingredient. As long as we set the timing for every array properly, the pill furnace will be able to operate automatically until the spiritual energy in the spirit stone is completely used up.”

As he spoke, Lu Yan took a pill furnace out of his storage pouch. It was an especially ordinary model, so ordinary that at first glance, it looked like a ding used for boiling things.

“This is an automatic pill furnace I made. It stores nine basic pill formulas inside. In order to accommodate the pill formulas and arrays to the greatest extent while keeping the arrays from falling into disorder, I spent quite a bit of effort. Now I’ll take it apart for you to see.”

The Repair Department disciples skilled in artifact refining were the same as when they listened to lectures before. They held jade slips and took notes nonstop, asking questions as they waited for Lu Yan’s answers. The disciples who were not skilled in artifact refining were responsible for comforting the city’s common people and assisting the Medical Valley disciples.

Yuan Chi and Ying Sanliang were the mobile team.

Ying Sanliang reacted quickly and had a strong jianghu air. He soon became familiar with Medical Valley, the Repair Department, and the common people. Yuan Chi was not so quick-witted, but he was strong. From time to time, he used spirit rice to make popcorn. The faint tribulation lightning and the spiritual energy in the spirit rice fused with each other, and ordinary people would not suffer any harm from eating it. They might even receive unexpected benefits.

There were some things the Medical Valley disciples could not do, and Lu Yan just happened to be able to do them.

His Repair Department was spread throughout the Central Continent and could respond to all kinds of emergencies at any time. The Medical Valley disciples did not have enough manpower, and their pill-refining speed could not keep up, so Lu Yan came up with an automatic pill furnace. Nothing was faster than an industrial assembly line.

The pill was named the Clear Spirit Pill. The pill formula was not very complicated, and Lu Yan planned to teach the Repair Department disciples how to make an automatic pill furnace specifically for refining Clear Spirit Pills.

So when ten rows of ten automatic pill furnaces were arranged neatly in place, the Medical Valley disciples were dumbfounded.

“Martial-Martial-Martial Uncle Lu, wh-wh-what is this?”

“How can a pill furnace refine pills by itself?”

“Then what are we for?”

Lu Yan patiently answered them one by one.

“An automatic pill furnace. It can only refine Clear Spirit Pills.”

“It has arrays and spirit stones providing spiritual energy. Every so often, it will automatically identify which medicinal ingredient should be added.”

“This kind of automatic pill furnace can only be used during special times, like now, when Medical Valley does not have enough people. Of course you still have to do what you should be doing.”

Meng Ke knew that there had been a period when Lu Yan had exchanged pill formulas and pill-refining techniques with his own Martial Uncle. Back then, his Martial Uncle had also sighed that Little Bupo’s thinking was agile and unlike ordinary people’s. He had actually wanted to use arrays to control pill furnaces. Meng Ke had not expected that this so-called “using arrays to control them” would be seen under these circumstances.

As expected of the Divine Creation Sect’s naturally gifted Lu Bupo.

He was far too good at giving people surprises. It seemed as though no difficulty in his hands could not be solved with ease.

The Repair Department disciples calculated the time and said, “Little Martial Uncle, the first batch is about to come out!”

Lu Yan and the Repair Department disciples had tested the automatic pill furnace before. The success rate for refining pills was one hundred percent, and the good-product rate was around eighty percent. In other words, for a batch of twelve pills, it could guarantee nine or ten top-grade pills, while the remaining two or three might be middle grade or low grade.

Even certain disciples of Medical Valley did not have such a high good-product rate.

When the set time arrived, the arrays gradually stopped operating. The distinctive smell of the pills drifted out through the vent hole in the lid above the pill furnace, spreading through the courtyard. A unique sour and bitter scent floated in the air.

The Medical Valley disciples and the Repair Department disciples did not mind it at all. Excited, they inspected the pill furnaces one by one and used porcelain bottles to separate the top-grade, middle-grade, and low-grade pills.

Even Meng Ke could not restrain himself. The more he looked, the more his amazement and joy hung openly on his face. He wanted to thicken his skin and ask Junior Brother Bupo for one to study.

It really was a good thing. With automatic pill furnaces, if such a situation ever happened again in the future, they could save far too much effort.

“Number One furnace, nine top-grade pills, two middle-grade pills, one low-grade pill.”

“Number Two furnace, ten top-grade pills, two middle-grade pills, no low-grade pills!”

“…Number Fifty-five furnace, eleven top-grade pills, one middle-grade pill!”

Lu Yan did not go join the excitement. A faint smile sat at the corner of his mouth, and no one knew what he was thinking.

Ying Sanliang quietly walked to Lu Yan’s side, lowered his voice, and frowned. “Golden Core Perfection. Lu Bupo, what exactly is going on with your cultivation speed?”

The cultivation world was divided into Qi Condensation, Foundation Establishment, Golden Core, Nascent Soul, Spirit Transformation, and Great Vehicle. Once someone in Great Vehicle passed their tribulation, they would ascend.

Each realm was further divided into four minor realms: early stage, middle stage, perfection, and great perfection. After great perfection, one could pass a tribulation and enter the next realm.

Lu Yan did not speak.

Over the past few days, he had been busy refining automatic pill furnaces and using the spirit plant space to cultivate the spirit herbs required for the pills. Twelve hours a day, all of his spiritual energy was in circulation.

Lu Yan’s cultivation speed had always been fast to begin with. Otherwise, he would not have broken through to Golden Core at sixteen. But when he was in the Divine Creation Sect, his spiritual energy could be suppressed, and he had deliberately accumulated spiritual energy to stabilize his realm, seeking the perfection of his Dao intent without leaving any hidden danger. Yet after leaving the sect, it was as if all the spiritual energy in the cultivation world was burrowing toward him. Whether he suppressed it or not, the spiritual energy in his dantian filled up and flowed into his golden core, impatiently wanting to make the round golden core grow limbs and transform into a Nascent Soul.

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