Black Phoenix Heir

Chapter 37: Chapter 37 — First Attempt

Chapter 37 — First Attempt

Victor spent the next several hours buried in the books.

After finishing the foundational texts, he moved on to the shelves dedicated to the actual alchemical process. These books focused less on what alchemy was and more on what an alchemist actually had to do to create a pill. The deeper he read, the more he realized that alchemy wasn’t a single action, but a chain of precise steps where every mistake could ruin everything that came after it.

The first step was preparing the ingredients. Every material had to be gathered and properly prepared before refinement could begin. From there, each ingredient was refined individually using the Bloodline Flame, carefully removing the useless portions while preserving the medicinal properties hidden within. Once an ingredient had been properly refined, the medicinal essence could be extracted and separated from the remaining material.

After the individual essences had been obtained, they could finally be brought together for fusion. The alchemist had to combine them according to the formula while carefully controlling the flame, spiritual energy, and Soul Power. If the essences became unstable or were combined incorrectly, the entire refinement could fail.

Once the essences successfully fused, the next step was condensation. The combined medicinal energy had to be compressed and shaped until it began forming the physical structure of a pill. Finally, the newly formed pill had to be stabilized, ensuring that the medicinal energy remained contained within its structure instead of dispersing.

Victor slowly closed the book and leaned back in his chair.

That was the process.

At least, that was how simple the books made it sound.

There was one thing, however, that appeared throughout nearly every section he had read.

Soul Power.

The books mentioned it constantly. Control. Precision. Manipulation. Stability. Nearly every stage of the process required it in some way. The Bloodline Flame provided the heat and allowed the alchemist to refine the materials, but Soul Power was what allowed them to actually control what happened inside the cauldron.

Victor frowned slightly as he stared at the closed book.

He understood what Soul Power was. He had used it before, especially when interacting with his Black Phoenix Flame, but he had never really considered it something he needed to train separately. To him, it had always been another part of his cultivation.

Still, there was only one way to find out how much he actually understood.

He had to try.

Victor stood and made his way toward the formula archive.

The enormous shelves stretched far into the distance, but only a tiny portion was illuminated for him. Three books rested within the section he had access to, each one representing a different formula.

The first was a basic healing formula.

The second was a stamina formula.

The third was the Spirit Accumulation Pill.

Victor reached for the third book.

The Spirit Accumulation Pill was designed to help a cultivator gather and refine spiritual energy more efficiently, making it useful for someone attempting to accelerate their cultivation. It wasn’t some miraculous pill capable of forcing a breakthrough, but it could make the process of accumulating energy considerably easier.

Victor continued reading through the ingredients.

Spirit Shroom.

Monster Core.

Black Toad Grass.

Ice Willow.

His eyes moved over the list once more.

He had them.

After checking the materials he had collected during the past few weeks, Victor realized he possessed enough ingredients to attempt the formula three times.

Three chances.

That was more than enough to start.

Victor gathered the first set of ingredients and carried them toward the massive cauldron at the center of the room. The cauldron stood silently upon its raised platform, its dark surface reflecting the faint golden light of the chamber.

He placed the ingredients beside it and examined them one by one.

The Spirit Shroom was small and strange, its surface carrying a faint trace of spiritual energy. The Black Toad Grass was darker and rougher, while the Ice Willow possessed pale, almost translucent strands that looked as though they had been touched by frost. The monster core carried the strongest presence of the four, its surface containing a concentrated amount of spiritual energy.

Victor took a slow breath.

He had no teacher.

No one standing beside him to correct his mistakes.

Only the books.

That would have to be enough.

He placed the Spirit Shroom into the cauldron and raised his hand. A small black flame appeared above his palm, its dark surface flickering silently.

Victor guided the flame toward the herb.

The moment the flame touched the Spirit Shroom, the entire herb vanished.

Victor froze.

He stared into the empty cauldron.

His expression slowly changed.

He hadn’t refined it.

He had completely destroyed it.

He had used too much power.

The books had warned him that excessive heat and spiritual pressure could destroy medicinal materials, but reading the warning and actually watching a Tier One ingredient disappear in an instant were two very different things.

Victor rubbed his forehead and looked toward the shelves.

He had already failed before even completing the first step.

After returning to the books, Victor searched through the sections concerning flame control during ingredient refinement. It didn’t take long before he found what he was looking for. The amount of Soul Power used to control the Bloodline Flame was just as important as the flame itself. Too much pressure could destroy the ingredient, while too little could leave the material improperly refined.

Victor stared at the information for several seconds.

He had treated the Spirit Shroom like an enemy.

That wasn’t how this worked.

He returned to the cauldron and prepared the second set of ingredients.

This time, Victor deliberately reduced the amount of power he used.

The Black Phoenix Flame appeared again, but it was considerably smaller than before. He carefully guided it toward the Spirit Shroom and watched as the outer layer slowly began to burn away.

The herb remained intact.

Victor’s eyes narrowed.

It was working.

He continued refining, carefully maintaining the flame while using his Soul Power to control its intensity. The process was slow, but little by little, the useless material began disappearing.

Eventually, Victor reached the point where he needed to extract the medicinal essence.

He focused his Soul Power.

Nothing happened.

He tried again.

Still nothing.

Victor increased the pressure slightly, attempting to separate the useful properties from the remaining material.

Nothing.

The medicinal essence simply refused to separate.

Victor stared at the Spirit Shroom in confusion.

He had refined it.

At least, he thought he had.

After several more attempts, he finally stopped and returned to the books.

It took him some time to find the answer.

His Soul Power control was still inadequate, but that wasn’t the only problem.

The refinement itself had been incomplete.

Victor had removed the obvious useless material, but he hadn’t refined the Spirit Shroom deeply enough to properly expose and isolate the medicinal properties within it. Because of that, there was nothing for his Soul Power to properly extract.

Victor leaned back in his chair.

So even if my Soul Power was better, I still couldn’t have extracted it.

He looked toward the remaining materials.

One attempt left.

Victor let out a slow breath.

He had already wasted two sets of ingredients, and the last one was his only remaining chance.

But he had to start somewhere.

If failure was going to be the beginning of learning, then so be it.

Victor gathered the final set of ingredients and returned to the cauldron.

This time, he approached the refinement differently. He kept the Black Phoenix Flame small and carefully controlled the amount of power flowing through it. He watched every change in the Spirit Shroom and adjusted the flame whenever he noticed it becoming too intense.

The refinement went better.

Much better.

Victor could feel it.

He was beginning to understand the relationship between his flame and Soul Power. The Black Phoenix Flame itself wasn’t difficult to summon, but controlling its intensity with enough precision to preserve the material was an entirely different matter.

He continued refining.

For several moments, everything seemed to be going perfectly.

Then Victor attempted to increase the power slightly.

The black flame surged.

The Spirit Shroom disappeared.

Victor stared at the empty cauldron.

Silence settled over the enormous room.

Three attempts.

Three failures.

He hadn’t even made it far enough to attempt the fusion stage.

Victor slowly lowered his hand and stared at the ruined ingredients.

For the first time, he truly understood what the books had been trying to tell him.

Knowing the process wasn’t the same as knowing how to perform it.

His Black Phoenix Flame wasn’t the problem. The flame was powerful enough. His understanding of the theory wasn’t the problem either.

His control was.

Victor looked toward the endless shelves surrounding him.

Three sets of materials were gone.

Not a single pill had been produced.

He had expected alchemy to be difficult.

He hadn’t expected it to be this difficult.

Victor slowly exhaled and turned back toward the books.

If he couldn’t make the pill, then he needed to understand why.

And that meant more studying