Chapter 289

In the office, just as Jie Ming was shaking his head secretly for his student Anita, a voice with a hint of teasing appeared quietly at the door.

"Yo~ my dear Junior, I smelled the fresh 'pain' aura exuding from you from far away! How is it, the taste of being poisoned by reality for the first time as an instructor?"

Senior Sister Wei Aola slipped in uninvited like a shark smelling blood, with an undisguised, schadenfreude smile on her face.

Jie Ming rolled his eyes at her and said unhappily: "Senior Sister, is your happiness always built on my 'pain'?"

"Of course not entirely; my happiness is built on everyone's pain!" Wei Aola waved her hands exaggeratedly, then shared excitedly.

"But speaking of this, I remember my two precious students! When they discovered that Potionology was not as romantic as imagined, but endless material processing, boring ratio calculations, and the risk of exploding the furnace at every turn, the desperate and forced-to-bite-the-bullet expressions on their faces—pfft, it really provided me with a long source of happiness!"

She changed the subject and looked at Jie Ming with anticipation: "So, Junior, next time you give a class to that little one named Anita, you must! You must notify me! I want to find a good seat and savor the pain and confusion exuding from her as she struggles in the ocean of boring knowledge! Just thinking about it makes one happy!"

After speaking, she didn't wait for Jie Ming's agreement, let out a string of "hehehehe" laughter, and turned to leave the office contentedly, as if she had come specifically to harvest a wave of happiness.

Jie Ming looked at Wei Aola's departing back, the bit of helplessness on his face gradually melted, and instead revealed a gentle smile.

"This pervert—" he cursed in a low voice, but his heart was warm.

How could he not know that Wei Aola was using her own slightly twisted way to express her concern for him and, by the way, liven up the atmosphere.

After being interrupted by her, the bit of depression in Jie Ming's heart also dissipated a lot.

He sat back in his chair, and his thoughts became clear.

"Forget it, everyone has their own choices and paths." His thinking became clear, "What I can do is fulfill my duties as an instructor and place knowledge clearly in front of her. As for how much she can absorb and which path she takes, it is ultimately her own fortune."

With his current knowledge reserve and realm, guiding an apprentice who isn't even an official wizard is simply easy.

As for how the other party performs, it can only depend on her own ability.

Thinking of this, Jie Ming's mentality became completely peaceful, and in the next few years, his life didn't change much because of having an extra student.

Except for needing to go to the academy fixedly every week to give Anita an alchemy foundation class, he still devoted most of his energy to his own research.

And Anita's performance, as expected, did not exceed Jie Ming's initial expectations.

The large amount of basic theory memory, tedious material property identification, and fine operations that required extreme patience in the early stage of alchemy soon made her feel boring and dull.

Her learning enthusiasm visibly faded, and she invested more attention and hard-earned points into learning those aggressive or functional wizardries that had immediate effects and looked cool.

Jie Ming saw her happily practicing newly learned wizardry with companions in the academy several times, or exchanging points for some ready-made wizardry models, and then burying her head in practicing spellcasting techniques.

In class, he had also directly reminded her more than once: "Relying on ready-made wizardry models without knowing the root of optimization is like walking with a crutch made by others; it might be easy in the early stage, but you will never truly understand the essence of power, and it is difficult to move forward to a more distant realm."

Unfortunately, his warning was like a stone sinking into the sea.

Anita might have listened, but clearly didn't take it to heart.

Or rather, with her current "wisdom" level and interest orientation, independently researching, understanding, and constructing wizardry models suitable for herself was indeed a too difficult and uninteresting thing.

"After all, not everyone is a genius like Amy and Victor—" Jie Ming couldn't help but shake his head again when observing from the dark, a trace of nostalgia for his old friends flashing in his heart.

Even with the talent of Amy and Victor, they were geniuses in the eyes of everyone in the academy back then.

In contrast, Jie Ming's own various research projects progressed exceptionally smoothly.

After completing the energy transformation of the third phase of the Purgatory Sulfur Plane, the abundant energy finally allowed him to let go.

The incubation speed of black giants increased significantly, and the population began to grow steadily.

He estimated that by the next time he needed to participate in a plane war, the number of black giants under his command was expected to break the one-thousand mark!

This meant he would possess a heavy-duty ground cannon fodder legion with considerable scale and powerful combat power.

At the same time, research on various peculiar biological samples brought back from the airspace plane was also progressing according to plan.

Through in-depth analysis of their flight structures, energy usage methods, and spatial adaptability, Jie Ming already had a clear draft of the design blueprint for the new generation of cannon fodder units in his heart.

However, right now he had a more urgent upgrade plan: the second refining of his natal magic treasure "Five-Essence Transformation Rainbow Mirror"!

After years of accumulation, most of the rare materials needed for refining had been prepared, only the last, and most critical one—Red Gold—was missing.

"The refining of this Red Gold stuff is really a time-consuming task." Jie Ming's consciousness body sat cross-legged in front of the Great Dao Book Pavilion deep in the sea of consciousness, holding a classic exuding ancient Dao rhyme, carefully reading the records about Red Gold refining.

According to the classic, Red Gold is similar to Refined Gold, both are conceptual materials refined using gold as the basic raw material.

But the core "concepts" refined by the two are completely different.

Refined Gold refines the "eternal" concept of gold, focusing on "unchanging" and "everlasting," thereby endowing objects with properties that are difficult to destroy.

But overemphasizing "eternally unchanging" sometimes limits the future growth and change potential of magic treasures.

And Red Gold refines the "immortal" concept of gold.

Immortality is not simply eternal unchanging; it focuses more on "essence not extinguished" and "true nature long-lasting."

Even if changes occur in form and properties, its most core "existence" and "essence" can still be maintained, and it can even gain new life in change.

For a magic treasure like the "Five-Essence Transformation Rainbow Mirror" whose material is to refine various illusory things of "light," the "immortal" concept is far more fitting than "eternal," leaving broad space for its future evolution and promotion.

The difficulty lies in the "purity" of refining.

The preliminary refining method of Red Gold is unexpectedly simple, just like Refined Gold, and even a Qi Refining stage cultivator can master it.

With Jie Ming's Jin Dan stage cultivation, supplemented by the wizard alchemy's precise control over energy and matter, completing rough refining was no difficulty.

The real trouble lies in the subsequent purification.

Because only the pure "immortal" concept is needed, other concepts mixed in the initially refined Red Gold, and even the vast majority of the material properties of the gold itself, must be removed bit by bit through repeated high-intensity quenching.

This is a process that requires great patience and energy input.

The classic records that at least ten or more repeated refinements are needed to obtain Red Gold material that is barely close to pure conceptualization.

"The technical difficulty is not high, it's purely time-consuming and labor-intensive." Jie Ming withdrew from internal vision and returned to the core laboratory of the Purgatory Sulfur Plane.

Looking at the standard gold ingots piled up like a mountain in front of him, exuding dazzling golden light, he made a judgment: "Fortunately, I don't lack time now."

According to the classic records, the mass of Red Gold will also continue to shrink during the refining process; to ensure sufficient raw materials for the second refining of the magic treasure, Jie Ming directly prepared one thousand cubic meters of gold!

Activating the large-scale composite alchemy array that had been arranged long ago, Jie Ming began the first step of rough refining.

The surging Dan fire and the energy of the alchemy array intertwined, and the massive amount of gold melted and boiled in the center of the array.

The "immortal" concept was forcibly extracted, condensing into pieces of dark red, peculiarly textured primary Red Gold.

Then, he combined all the primary Red Gold, put it into another more complex array of the cultivation system focused on "purification," and began the secondary refining.

The array operated, light circulated, and the primary Red Gold began to "evaporate" slowly under the scouring of energy, and the "impurities" including other concepts and material residues that were not needed were separated and discharged.

The remaining part became deeper in color, and the texture seemed to be a bit purer.

He knew that this process needed to be repeated at least ten times; the later it got, the more difficult the purification, and the spiritual power and time consumed also increased geometrically.

"Fortunately, most of the time this thing can run automatically, only needing to replenish spiritual power and adjust array parameters regularly—it won't waste too much of my time."

Jie Ming set the monitoring alarm and put his main consciousness back into other research.

Time passed like sand between fingers, flying away quietly.

In the blink of an eye, it was the graduation period for this batch of apprentices at Nuolun Academy No. 147.

On the square, the atmosphere was solemn and slightly tense.

Jie Ming hovered on the high platform of the instructor's viewing area, his gaze scanning the crowd below calmly, easily finding that familiar yet unfamiliar figure—Anita Chuck.

Ten years of academy life did not leave too many traces of transformation on her.

Instead, because she dispersed too much energy into those wizardries that looked cool but had unstable foundations, she progressed slowly in the alchemy field that required solid foundations and rigorous thinking, and even regressed in some aspects.

The result was without suspense.

When Dean Avery Knight read out the list of graduates who passed the graduation trial and obtained the qualification to participate in the elite screening in a calm and dignified tone, Anita's name did not appear.

She stood in the crowd that failed to pass, lowering her head, her hands tightly clutching the corners of her clothes, her shoulders slightly heaving, seemingly unable to accept this reality.

And the wizards standing with her also had the same reaction; the surrounding air seemed to be frozen with loss and unwillingness. According to the regulations of the Nuolun Workshop, apprentices who failed to pass the graduation trial were not cut off from the wizard's path.

They still had a chance—to go to the front lines of the plane war, in the form of military service, to find that glimmer of breakthrough in the life-and-death test of blood and fire, or to sink or perish there.