Chapter 210: Incomplete Five Elements

According to alchemy theory, for any Spirit Pill to be successfully refined, it must possess the complete Five Elements. Even for a single-attribute Spirit Pill, such as a fire-type Spirit Pill for dispelling cold toxins, it must be paired with at least one type of water-type Spirit Medicine as an auxiliary ingredient to achieve basic Five Elements balance.

However, there are only seven or eight types of medicinal ingredients currently laid out before him, and only the three most precious ones—Wangchuan Flower, Other Shore Flower, and Divine Blood Paste—have not yet been added.

In terms of attributes, the two flowers should still be wood-type, and judging by its characteristics, the Divine Blood Paste should be either water-type or fire-type.

Therefore, even if these three types of medicine are added, there will ultimately still be a lack of an earth-type medicine to make the Five Elements complete.

Could it be that the Underworld is a world with incomplete Five Elements?

Xu Chen felt somewhat distressed, but having experimented to this point, he could not give up halfway, so he decided to take a portion of each of the remaining three ingredients to refine and see.

The first to be put into the Pill Furnace was the Wangchuan Flower.

Because this Wangchuan Flower had been used to save the first batch of dormant people, most of its petals had already been taken; there were only a dozen or so slender, ice-crystal-like petals left, and he took only one to throw into the Pill Furnace.

However, he was clearly wrong; refining it with a wood-type Array failed quickly.

Watching the petal turn completely into ash within the Spirit Fire in no time, Xu Chen could not help but twitch his facial muscles a few times.

Although the Wangchuan Flower was something he had picked on the road, it was incomparably precious to the Feng tribe. There were none within at least a day's travel of the Feng tribe, and to pick more would require going to even further places, but those further places inevitably hid a large number of extremely dangerous Nether Beasts; even he did not dare to run out and take risks blindly again right now.

What's more, this kind of thing is something one can only encounter by chance and not seek out; it is not something you can find just because you want to, as it relies entirely on luck.

He was now even completely unable to figure out the direction of the canyon he had originally come from.

Therefore, for the current experiment, if luck is good, it might succeed in two or three tries; if luck is bad, all five tries might fail.

However, no matter how precious this thing is, it is not as precious as his own life. The Wangchuan Flower is a peerless Spirit Medicine to the Feng tribe, but to him, it has no use at all.

Therefore, Xu Chen adjusted his mindset and once again threw a petal of Wangchuan Flower into the Pill Furnace.

This time, after careful consideration, he activated the water-type Array.

Because the Wangchuan Flower grows in Black Water and can also emit terrifying cold energy, most cold-type Spirit Medicines might have water-type attributes, so he was not completely experimenting blindly without thought.

Sure enough, he chose correctly this time. The Wangchuan Flower did not burn up quickly in the water-type Array; instead, stimulated by the Array, it emitted rolling cold energy, causing a layer of ice crystals to begin to condense inside the Pill Furnace. It suppressed the Spirit Fire until it was much smaller, and even Xu Chen's Divine Sense had the illusion of falling into an ice cave, as if the entire Pill Furnace had turned into a lump of ice.

The grade of the Wangchuan Flower must be very, very high, definitely no lower than the Blood God Grass.

Xu Chen once again made a new assessment of the Wangchuan Flower in his heart.

The time taken to refine the Wangchuan petal was very long.

Firstly, the grade of Xu Chen's Pill Furnace was too low, and it was not originally suitable for refining Three-Grade Spirit Pills.

Secondly, the grade of the Wangchuan Flower was too high, and the Array strength was insufficient; it could not even fully restrain the cold energy released, so he had to increase the temperature of the Spirit Fire to resist this cold energy.

However, even though Xu Chen stimulated the Spirit Fire with all his might, and white, raging flames filled the entire Pill Furnace, the Wangchuan petal remained for a long time like a ten-thousand-year-old piece of ice, standing unmoved under the roasting of the Spirit Fire, releasing terrifying cold energy that suppressed the Spirit Fire severely, forcing Xu Chen to exert all his strength to drive the Spirit Fire.

Fortunately, his vital energy was currently abundant and his Soul was powerful, otherwise he would have been completely unable to persist for so long.

Time passed silently and continuously.

Outside the stone chamber, the Elder, the Clan Leader, and a large group of people were sitting in the corridor outside waiting quietly, listening to the sounds of booming Spirit Fire and the cold energy clashing, churning, and exploding from inside the stone chamber, each of them showing emotions of both anxiety and excitement on their faces.

Perhaps it was a day, or perhaps it was three or five days.

Just when Xu Chen felt that his vital energy was more than half consumed and his Soul was beginning to feel somewhat fatigued, the Wangchuan petal finally began to melt, and under the continuous burning of the Spirit Fire, it began to disintegrate and melt in wisps.

Xu Chen finally breathed a sigh of relief, focusing all his attention on continuing to input vital energy to stimulate the Spirit Stone to burn, while controlling the Array to rotate and refine continuously.

After about the same amount of time passed again, this petal of Wangchuan Flower was finally completely refined into a mass of crystal-clear essence resembling jade marrow.

However, it was not a solid, but a mass of extremely cold energy, which condensed into a ball under the suppression of the Array. In reality, within his powerful Divine Sense, he could see billions of tiny ice-crystal mists still constantly changing and churning.

Although the refining was successful, Xu Chen did not have much joy on his face; instead, he was very depressed. This was yet another water-type medicinal ingredient.

There are currently gold, wood, and water-type medicines in the Pill Furnace, and earth and fire types are still missing.

But there are only the Other Shore Flower and Divine Blood Paste left, and neither is likely to be earth-type.

If the Five Elements are incomplete, I wonder if the Pill Refining will succeed?

Xu Chen thought for a long time, and finally threw a mass of Divine Blood Paste in, then directly activated the fire-type Array.

Although he was very certain that the Divine Blood Paste was water or fire-type, the things from Minghuang were too strange, and he actually did not have much confidence.

Sure enough, the Divine Blood Paste was not successfully refined using either the water or fire-type Arrays. He had to activate the earth-type Array to experiment, but unexpectedly, it went beyond his expectations again. This time, it did not take too long before a finger-sized mass of liquid, crimson like chicken blood, was refined.

"Damn it!"

After succeeding, Xu Chen was both surprised and happy, and could not help but blurt out a loud curse, causing the Elder, Clan Leader, and others sitting outside to look at each other in dismay.

Although they could not understand these words, the emotion expressed was clear; it was not anything good.

The Divine Blood Paste was actually an earth-type medicinal ingredient, which made Xu Chen feel incomparably depressed.

However, when he thought about it carefully, he felt it should be so. The Divine Blood Paste was a strange thing that the Feng tribe gathered from the bottom of the rock ground through an ancient Array similar to a Creation Pool, so having an earth-type attribute could actually be considered normal.

It was just that he hadn't thought in that direction at the beginning.

Now, only a fire-type medicinal ingredient is missing.

Xu Chen rested for a moment, and he began to refine the Other Shore Flower.

However, his luck was bad this time, or rather, he had thought about it completely wrong; the Other Shore Flower was not successfully refined after using five types of Arrays in succession.

This made him feel both discouraged and astonished.

There are only two possibilities for this situation: one is that the grade of the Pill Furnace is too low to refine the Other Shore Flower at all; the second is that the Other Shore Flower does not enter the Five Elements, is not a thing that belongs to the rules of the Five Elements, and has already transcended the concept of the Mortal World.

Legend has it that cultivators who reach Lian Shen Huan Xu can jump out of the Three Realms and not enter the Five Elements.

And all the heaven and earth spirit items that reach the Void Realm grade begin to transcend the Five Elements and can no longer be distinguished and measured by the knowledge and theoretical systems of Mortal World cultivators.

According to the legends in the mortal world about the Underworld and the Other Shore Flower, the possibility that this thing does not enter the Five Elements is extremely high.

In addition, according to the Feng tribe's claim that the Other Shore Flower has the magical ability to allow people to purify Underworld Qi and Blood Poison, almost like a rebirth, it also shows that this flower has near-heaven-defying effects and has completely transcended Mortal World items, reaching another height that is completely untouchable.

Xu Chen sat blankly in front of the Pill Furnace, his mind in turmoil.

Currently, all the medicines in the Underworld have been refined once, but only a fire-type medicinal ingredient is missing.

According to the Mortal World alchemy knowledge he has accumulated, the theory that Pill Refining cannot succeed if the Five Elements are incomplete means that this furnace of pills has a high probability of not being able to succeed.

Moreover, these strange medicines have no alchemy theory support at all; it all relies on his blind guessing and chaotic creation, so the probability of success is even lower.

"I wonder if incorporating a fire-type Spirit Medicine from the Mortal World would succeed?"

After a long silence, Xu Chen muttered a sentence, then lightly brushed his hand over his profound gold bracelet, and instantly, a golden-red Spirit Fruit emitting scorching spiritual light appeared.

Jinyang Fruit, a second-grade Spirit Medicine, the main ingredient for refining second-grade Chiyun Pill; Eldest Senior Brother had gifted him one before, and later he had obtained more than ten more at Yuqing Hall.

This type of Spirit Medicine is considered precious in the Mortal World, but it is not a commonly used medicinal ingredient for alchemy, so Yuqing Hall did not value it very highly, allowing him to eat and take some while he was visiting the Medicine Garden, though he had never used them until now.

The Jinyang Fruit was tossed into the Alchemist Furnace, and what followed was the alchemy method Xu Chen was most familiar with: after confining it with a Fire-Type Array, he used Spirit Fire to slowly bake and refine it; after about two quarters of an hour, the Jinyang Fruit was refined into a mass of golden-red essence.

Alright, prepare for Pill Refining!

Xu Chen rubbed his hands together, feeling his heart beating a bit fast.

Very quickly, the Combining Pill Array was activated.

Although he lacked a pill recipe, Xu Chen still relied on his alchemy experience and abundant theoretical knowledge, following the principles of the Five Elements' mutual generation and restriction, to introduce these eight medicinal ingredients one by one into the vortex of primordial energy to begin fusion.

The process of Pill Refining greatly astonished Xu Chen; there was unexpectedly no violent reaction at all, and these refined medicinal ingredients fused together very naturally, eventually slowly turning into a mass of multi-colored, mixed medicinal paste, and then, under the constant rotation of the Array, the color of the medicinal paste began to mix evenly together, finally turning into a mass of cyan-purple paste.

After waiting for the medicinal paste to slowly take shape, Xu Chen directly introduced a large mass of white Qi into it.

According to Xu Chen's idea, the pill he wanted to refine had to be able to stimulate the dormant person to repair and awaken, so it had to be infused with white Qi.

When it came down to it, all the other medicinal ingredients were not important; what remained important was still the white Qi.

However, his goal was simply to rid himself of the process of manually helping the dormant person repair their physical body entirely.

Just like previous alchemy, after the white Qi entered, the Spirit Fire suddenly became violently restless, burning fiercely while constantly trying to incinerate the white Qi, causing the Alchemist Furnace to shake and vibrate violently as well, emitting sounds like the furnace was exploding—bang, bang, bang, bang—and the jumping of the Alchemist Furnace caused the ground to shake incessantly, making the Elder, Clan Leader, and others sitting outside all feel nervous and anxious.

However, the door to the stone chamber was closed, so no one could see inside, and they dared not release their Soul power to go in and investigate the situation, fearing it would affect Xu Chen's work.

Facing the loss of control and restlessness of the Spirit Fire, Xu Chen was already accustomed to it, so he continuously input primordial energy to forcibly suppress the Spirit Fire, carefully controlling the white Qi and the medicinal paste to fully fuse.

(End of this chapter)