The Sixth Attempt

The sixth refinement began as the evening light outside gradually turned red, with the last rays of sunlight slipping through the doorway and stretching across the stone floor of the medicine room.

Tieu Lan closed the door, checked both ventilation openings, then returned to the table. Four bottles of medicinal extract had already been prepared and arranged neatly in a row. Each bottle carried small markings Hao Nhien had carved onto the surface to indicate the amount to be used. Beside them sat the hourglass, the four materials serving as heat markers, and the open notebook.

After the previous attempts, the two of them no longer relied entirely on intuition.

Tieu Lan measured out the extracts of Sand Spirit Root, Fire Sand Grass, Spirit Cloud Leaf, and Ice Spirit Fruit according to the proportions they had settled on. Each amount was taken according to the markings on the bottles, then poured into separate jade bowls to avoid any confusion during refinement.

Hao Nhien sat before the cauldron without immediately lighting the flame.

He checked the hourglass and the four heat markers once more before closing his eyes and regulating his breathing. Fire spiritual power began circulating slowly through his meridians, while he also mobilized his Wind affinity to sense the movement of air inside and around the cauldron.

Tieu Lan stood beside him.

“Ready?”

Hao Nhien opened his eyes.

“Yes.”

A layer of pale golden flame appeared beneath the cauldron.

He did not raise the temperature quickly, only kept it at a level that allowed the metal to warm gradually. When the spirit-bee wax began to soften, Tieu Lan added the Sand Spirit Root extract first.

The earthy-yellow essence spread into a thin layer across the bottom of the cauldron. Because most of the impurities had already been removed beforehand, the medicinal force within it was far more stable than when they had used the raw root directly.

Hao Nhien followed every small fluctuation with Divine Sense.

When the medicinal oil outside began to change color, he knew the heat had reached the second reference level.

“Now.”

Tieu Lan said.

The Fire Sand Grass extract was added.

Its Fire-aligned medicinal force spread quickly through the Sand Spirit Root essence, but there was none of the violent surge they had seen when using raw herbs. The two medicinal forces began to merge more slowly and were much easier to control.

Hao Nhien kept the heat steady.

After a short interval, the Spirit Cloud Leaf extract was added. Its Wood-aligned medicinal force spread outward, forming a gentle regulating layer around the medicinal mass beginning to take shape.

The Ice Spirit Fruit came last.

Tieu Lan did not pour it all in at once. She divided it into several smaller portions, waiting for Hao Nhien to adjust the airflow inside the cauldron before adding each one.

The moment the Cold energy appeared, Hao Nhien guided it along the outer edge of the medicinal mass with his Wind affinity, preventing it from striking the hottest region directly. In this way, the Fire-aligned medicinal force gradually settled without producing the violent conflict that had ruined their previous attempt.

The sand in the hourglass began to fall.

Hao Nhien did not allow the four medicinal forces to remain in the same position. At each predetermined interval, he altered the airflow, causing the medicinal mass to slowly rotate through different hot and cool regions inside the cauldron.

The idea was simple.

He could not make every part of the cauldron exactly the same temperature, but he could reduce the effect of uneven heat by moving the medicinal force through multiple positions.

The left side had been slightly hotter moments earlier.

Hao Nhien adjusted the Fire spiritual power at the base and changed the direction of the airflow. The accumulated heat was gradually spread toward the opposite side.

Tieu Lan watched the hourglass.

“Another half interval.”

Hao Nhien nodded slightly.

The medicinal force continued to rotate.

This time, he did not rely on Divine Sense alone. Through his Wind affinity, he also sensed the hot currents moving through the cauldron. He still could not assign exact temperatures to each position, but the differences in airflow speed and direction gave him a much clearer picture than he had possessed during the first attempts.

By the time the hourglass passed the fifth interval, the four medicinal forces were almost completely blended.

Tieu Lan said,

“You can begin condensation.”

Hao Nhien lowered the external flame slightly.

Under his Divine Sense, the large medicinal mass slowly separated into five smaller points. This was not random. He deliberately guided the medicinal force into five relatively balanced portions to see how consistently a single batch could form five pills.

The airflow within the cauldron was divided into five paths as well.

Each medicinal point moved through different positions in turn, exchanging places according to the same rhythm set by the hourglass. After each cycle, Hao Nhien made tiny adjustments so that the points condensing too quickly slowed down, while those lagging behind received slightly more heat.

His Divine Sense split into five threads, each following one medicinal mass closely. Fire spiritual power maintained the heat, while his Wind affinity continuously adjusted the airflow to keep the five points from colliding.

The pressure on him increased noticeably.

Yet because the medicinal materials had already been refined and much of the impurity removal had been completed beforehand, he no longer needed to handle as many processes at once as in the earlier attempts. His full attention could now remain on temperature, position, movement rhythm, and the balance among the five medicinal masses.

Sweat began to gather on his forehead.

Tieu Lan noticed, but did not speak.

She knew that at this moment, even a small distraction could break the rhythm Hao Nhien had maintained for so long.

Only when the hourglass reached the sixth interval did she say softly,

“Begin collection.”

Hao Nhien lowered the external flame.

Five small zones of heat remained beneath the five medicinal masses. They did not touch the surfaces directly, only kept them at a temperature where condensation could continue.

The medicinal vapor released as the masses contracted did not immediately disperse. The airflow guided it through a cooler region before circling it back, allowing part of the essence to be recovered rather than lost entirely.

After some time, the shapes of five pills began to emerge.

Their surfaces were still soft, but their forms were already clear.

The first pill condensed slightly faster, while the third lagged behind. The other three were nearly even. Hao Nhien immediately adjusted the order in which they changed positions.

By the second cycle, the difference between them had become much smaller.

Tieu Lan unconsciously tightened her grip on the notebook. She had stopped writing entirely, her eyes fixed only on the cauldron.

Through Hao Nhien’s Divine Sense, the five pills continued to contract slowly, their surfaces becoming rounder and more even.

Then the cauldron suddenly trembled.

The sound from inside was completely different from the fluctuations they had experienced before.

Hao Nhien immediately expanded his Divine Sense.

He sensed the surrounding spiritual qi beginning to gather toward the cauldron.

Tieu Lan noticed it as well, and her expression changed at once.

“Young Master, don’t open the cauldron.”

Hao Nhien looked at her.

Tieu Lan stared at the cauldron body, her voice lower than usual.

“The spiritual qi is gathering into it on its own.”

Hao Nhien did not understand what the phenomenon meant, but he could hear the significance in her tone.

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“What should I do?”

“Keep everything steady.”

Tieu Lan replied.

“Stop moving the pills.”

Hao Nhien immediately obeyed.

He stopped rotating the five pills and maintained only stable heat and airflow.

Spiritual qi from outside slowly entered through the tiny gaps near the upper part of the cauldron.

All five pills began absorbing it.

The four outer pills developed only a very thin sheen of light across their surfaces.

The pill nearest the center was different.

It absorbed spiritual qi at a clearly faster rate. A faint golden pattern began to appear on its surface. At first it was no more than a thin thread, but it gradually lengthened around the pill.

Hao Nhien could see it clearly through Divine Sense.

He knew the pill had taken shape.

A long period passed.

The faint golden pattern on the central pill slowly extended until it almost formed a complete ring. The other four pills also stabilized. The cauldron trembled one final time, and a clear sound came from within, followed by several softer sounds as the five pills dropped to the bottom.

Hao Nhien let out a long breath.

He slowly withdrew his Fire spiritual power, then allowed the airflow inside to settle naturally for a while longer.

Tieu Lan did not urge him to open the cauldron. Only after the temperature had fallen sufficiently did she nod.

“You can open it.”

Hao Nhien formed a hand seal.

The lid slowly rose, and a clean medicinal fragrance spread throughout the stone room.

Five Qi-Recovery Pills rested at the bottom of the cauldron.

Four were a much brighter orange-red than the previous batch, with round, even surfaces and stable medicinal aura.

One lay near the center.

Its color was clearer, and beneath the orange-red surface was a very faint golden radiance. The pale golden pill pattern remained visible around it, almost forming a complete ring.

Hao Nhien looked at the pill.

“A pill pattern?”

Tieu Lan had seen it as well.

She did not answer.

Instead, she stepped forward quickly, used jade tongs to remove that pill first, and placed it on the tray.

The medicinal aura circulating around it made her expression change visibly.

She immediately scraped off a tiny amount of powder, dissolved it in spirit-spring water, and tested it with a medicinal stone.

A red-gold glow slowly appeared across the stone’s surface.

Tieu Lan froze.

She replaced it with another testing stone.

The result did not change.

By the third test, her fingertips had begun to tremble.

Hao Nhien looked at her.

“Tieu Lan?”

She still did not answer immediately. She used Wood spiritual power to examine the pill once more, then stared at it for a long time.

Finally, Tieu Lan looked up.

“Young Master…”

Her voice was trembling.

“Supreme grade.”

Hao Nhien paused.

“Supreme grade?”

Tieu Lan nodded, her gaze still fixed on the pill.

“A supreme-grade Qi-Recovery Pill.”

Hao Nhien looked at it.

To him, it was simply the pill with the golden pattern and a medicinal aura different from the other four. He knew this batch had turned out exceptionally well, but the words supreme grade clearly carried a significance he did not yet understand.

“How much better is it than high grade?”

Tieu Lan looked at him as though she did not know where to begin.

After a while, she took a slow breath.

“You can’t describe it simply as being a little better.”

She placed the pill on the jade tray, her eyes never leaving the golden pattern.

“High-grade pills are already extremely pure. They contain little residual impurity or pill toxicity, and their medicinal force is very stable. Supreme grade is different.”

“In the records I’ve read, supreme grade is considered close to the most complete state a pill formula can reach.”

Hao Nhien frowned slightly.

“Complete?”

“Almost.”

Tieu Lan nodded.

“The medicinal force within it is not only purer. It can also maintain a stable internal circulation, which greatly slows the loss of medicinal properties and makes absorption much more efficient. The amount of residual impurity is also so low that it is nearly negligible.”

She pointed toward the faint golden pill pattern.

“The pill pattern is one of the most important signs.”

“But what makes supreme-grade pills truly frightening isn’t only their purity.”

Hao Nhien looked at her.

Tieu Lan slowed her speech.

“The Medicine Peak alchemy texts record that some supreme-grade pills can develop properties that were never part of the original formula.”

“New properties?”

“Yes.”

“The medicinal effect might last longer than normal. Absorption might improve. The pill might regulate itself according to the meridians, reduce backlash, or produce some other beneficial effect entirely. No two are necessarily the same.”

Tieu Lan looked at the Qi-Recovery Pill before her.

“This pill has a nearly complete pill pattern, and it drew spiritual qi into itself while forming. I don’t know whether it developed a new property.”

“We would have to test it.”

She looked up.

“Even Master only said that such pills are extraordinarily rare.”

“We cannot say that no one in the world can still refine them. The great sects and powerful alchemy factions may hide far more than outsiders know. But at least in the public records I have seen, supreme-grade pills have not appeared openly for a very long time.”

Tieu Lan paused.

Her eyes had begun to redden.

“Some alchemists may live their entire lives without ever seeing a freshly refined supreme-grade pill.”

“Young Master…”

Her voice trembled again.

“You only stepped onto the path of alchemy not long ago.”

“And yet you already refined a supreme-grade pill.”

Tears finally gathered at the corners of her eyes.

But she was smiling.

It was not her usual reserved smile, but an almost uncontrollable joy mixed with shock and genuine pride.

Hao Nhien looked at her, then back at the pill.

He was not sure how to respond to that level of emotion.

After a while, he asked,

“Then why is there only one?”

Tieu Lan froze.

Her tears had not even dried.

“Young Master?”

Hao Nhien picked up the supreme-grade pill and turned it gently between two fingers.

“Same cauldron, same ingredients, same proportions, same time. But four are high grade, and only this one became supreme grade.”

He looked toward the center of the cauldron.

“This one was closer to the center. It received more even heat and absorbed more spiritual qi when the gathering phenomenon appeared.”

“But was that enough to cause the difference?”

Tieu Lan stared at him silently.

She had just explained how rare and extraordinary a supreme-grade pill was.

Yet Hao Nhien’s first thought was not how much it might be worth.

He was thinking about how to make a second one.

And then a third.

Hao Nhien continued,

“If position is the cause, we need a way for all five pills to experience conditions as similar as possible.”

“If the temperature at the center is more stable, we need to understand why.”

“If this pill absorbed more spiritual qi, then we need to find out whether the spiritual qi can be distributed more evenly among all five.”

He placed the pill down.

“I don’t want to wait for luck next time.”

Tieu Lan looked at him for a long time.

Finally, she said softly,

“Young Master really isn’t like the alchemists I’ve heard about.”

Hao Nhien turned toward her.

“Why?”

“If someone else saw a supreme-grade pill, the first thing they might think about would be how much it was worth, how to preserve it, or what they could trade it for.”

Tieu Lan looked at the pill.

“Young Master is thinking about why the other four weren’t supreme grade.”

Hao Nhien laughed.

“Because one supreme-grade pill isn’t enough to build Hoa Van Town.”

The smile on Tieu Lan’s face slowly faded.

Hao Nhien looked toward the doorway.

In the distance, the sound of hammers, carts carrying materials, and people calling to one another continued around the construction site.

“This pill may be extremely valuable.”

“But if we only have one, then it is still just a treasure.”

“It can be exchanged for spirit stones. It can astonish people. But it cannot become the foundation of Hoa Van.”

He looked again at the four high-grade pills and the single supreme-grade pill.

“If we want this place to truly survive for the long term, we need a method that can be recorded, verified, and reproduced.”

Tieu Lan looked at him.

Hao Nhien continued,

“Not only so that I can repeat it.”

“Eventually, other people need to be able to learn it.”

Tieu Lan’s eyes widened slightly.

“Young Master wants to teach others to refine pills this way?”

“Not now.”

Hao Nhien shook his head.

“We still don’t understand enough.”

“But if everything only exists inside my head and yours, then Hoa Van still has only two people who can do it.”

“If we want a real medicine hall, if we want alchemists, and if we want a stable supply of pills, then sooner or later we need to turn what we are doing into a process that others can learn.”

Tieu Lan lowered her gaze to the pages of notes spread across the table.

Every step had been recorded, from preparing medicinal ingredients and setting proportions, to establishing heat markers, dividing time into intervals, changing positions within the cauldron, separating essence with Fire, and guiding medicinal vapor with Wind.

But she also knew those records were still not enough.

An ordinary person might not be able to simply read them and reproduce the process.

“Then we need to separate the work into stages.”

Tieu Lan said.

“The person processing the medicinal ingredients does not necessarily have to be the one controlling the fire. The person recording and checking medicinal properties could also be different from the one refining the pills.”

Hao Nhien nodded.

“Exactly.”

“Individual talent has limits, but a process can reduce how much we depend on talent.”

He looked at the cauldron.

“Later, formations might also stabilize heat or airflow, instead of making everything depend on me.”

The idea left both of them silent for a while.

Because if they truly managed it, Hoa Van’s alchemy would no longer belong to a single person.

It could become a system.

Tieu Lan suddenly looked at the supreme-grade pill.

“But what happened today cannot be allowed to spread.”

Hao Nhien nodded immediately.

“Agreed.”

Four high-grade pills were already enough to attract attention.

A supreme-grade pill was something entirely different. Before they even understood whether they could reproduce the result, revealing it would only invite trouble.

“Outside, people only need to know that we are still experimenting.”

Hao Nhien said.

“The three mid-grade pills from before are enough to show that the medicine room can refine pills.”

“This batch stays secret for now.”

Tieu Lan looked at the supreme-grade pill.

“We don’t sell it or trade it?”

“No.”

“At least not until we understand it.”

Tieu Lan nodded.

“What about the records?”

Hao Nhien thought for a moment.

“The supreme-grade result must be recorded in full.”

Tieu Lan paused.

Hao Nhien pointed toward the notebook.

“But only in our research copy. Any version used for teaching later should leave out the supreme-grade result for now. Otherwise, learners may focus on the wrong goal.”

Tieu Lan immediately understood.

“They need to learn how to refine ordinary pills reliably first.”

“Exactly. Supreme grade is something we need to study. It shouldn’t become a standard we force beginners to chase from the start.”

Hao Nhien said.

Then he picked up the supreme-grade pill again.

“We also need to test its medicinal properties.”

Tieu Lan immediately looked at him.

“You are not swallowing the whole pill.”

Hao Nhien raised an eyebrow slightly.

“I haven’t said anything yet.”

“But Young Master is thinking it.”

Hao Nhien fell silent.

His expression only made Tieu Lan more certain.

“You have already consumed a great deal of spiritual power. Testing a supreme-grade pill now, when we don’t even know whether it developed some new property, is too dangerous.”

“Alright.”

Hao Nhien replied.

“I’ll recover first. After that, we’ll test a very small amount.”

“I need to be there.”

“Mm.”

“If anything unusual happens, we stop immediately.”

Hao Nhien laughed.

“I’ll listen to you.”

Only then did Tieu Lan relax slightly.

She took out two jade bottles. The four high-grade Qi-Recovery Pills were placed together in one, while the supreme-grade pill was sealed separately inside a smaller bottle lined with material designed to preserve spiritual qi.

Once the seal closed, the medicinal aura from the supreme-grade pill was immediately contained.

Tieu Lan stored the smaller bottle deep inside her storage bag.

Hao Nhien looked at the old cauldron before him.

Inside such an ordinary vessel, they had just refined a supreme-grade pill.

Yet he still did not know whether the result had come from the new method, the condition of the ingredients, the gathering of spiritual qi, or a coincidence produced by all those factors aligning at once.

If it was only chance, it might never happen again.

If it was not chance, then there had to be something behind it that could be understood.

Outside, the evening light gradually faded.

The sounds of hammers, wheels, and people working continued across the land of Hoa Van.

No one outside knew that something extraordinarily rare had just appeared inside the small stone medicine room.

Even fewer would have understood that what held Hao Nhien’s attention most was not the value of the pill, but the question of how to turn a rare result into a method that could be repeated.

To him, a single supreme-grade pill was only a treasure.

But if he could understand why it had appeared, and eventually allow others to follow the same path, then its meaning would be entirely different.

At that point, what they were building would no longer be only a small medicine room in the Western Wastes.

It could become a path belonging to Hoa Van Town itself.