Immortal Mortal

“I’ve consumed the pills that you refined, and I can safely assure you that out of all the Tier 1 Pill Refiners in the Formless Blade Sect, there isn’t a single person that can create Tier 1 Mortal Pills at the same level as you. I believe that you will soon break through the barrier separating Tier 1 and Tier 2 Mortal Pill Refiners, and with a little nudge forward, you’ll be able to become a fully fledged Tier 2 Pill Refiner.” Yan Qianyin said with a serious tone, staring at Mo Wuji.

In response, Mo Wuji had to admit, “Actually I’ve tried to refine Tier 2 Mortal Pills before, but never once did I succeed.” Surrounded by such bountiful fields of spiritual ingredients, how could Mo Wuji have stopped at refining Tier 1 Mortal Pills? Not only did he attempt to refine Tier 2 Mortal Pills a couple of times, but he tried to do so for nearly 60 to 70 batches, and without fail, every attempt did not succeed.

Luckily spiritual ingredients were present by the truckload here, otherwise, even the sects with the deepest pockets could not accommodate such wasteful actions.

Eventually, Mo Wuji realised that he was still not at the level where he could refine Tier 2 Mortal Pills mainly because he had accumulated insufficient experience. Hence he stopped his futile attempts to refine Tier 2 Mortal Pills, and refined a whole lot of Energy Condensing Pills, Vitality Replenishing Pills, and Smooth Blood Pills.

Yan Qianyin lightly laughed, “Why you have not broken through to become a Tier 2 Mortal Pier Refiner boils down to two simple reasons. First, you’ve always thought that being a pill refiner was insanely difficult, thus you’re already satisfied with becoming a Tier 1 Mortal Pill Refiner in such a short period of time. As a result, your subconscious is holding you back, thinking that you cannot become a Tier 2 Mortal Pill Refiner so quickly. This essentially is a lack of confidence. Second, when you were refining Tier 2 Mortal Pills, your control over the ingredients in the pill furnace remained at the level required for Tier 1 Mortal Pills. For this point, you will automatically fix it with time. But for now with me around, I will correct your mistakes in the as soon as possible, so that you can properly refine Tier 2 Mortal Pills.”

Mo Wuji went into a daze. Yan Qianyin was completely right about the first point. He really thought that it would be impossible to reach the level of a Tier 2 Mortal Pill Refiner in such a short period of time. However, as for the second point, he could not really confirm it through his experiences.

“Don’t ask me how I know about all this, because I’ve been in your shoes before. Also, don’t assume that it is not possible to become a Tier 2 Mortal Pill Refiner so expeditiously. My master once told me, my grandmaster took only half a year to go from starting to learn pill refining to becoming an Earth Pill Refiner. To be able to become a Tier 1 Mortal Pill Refiner within half a month with years of only theoretical study in pill refining, you can already be considered a genius.”

Upon hearing that Yan Qianyin’s grandmaster became an Earth Pill Refiner in only half a year, even though he knew that she was intentionally trying to boost his confidence, Mo Wuji couldn’t help but feel that her words had some effect. To him, pill refining did not seem as difficult as others made it out to be. He definitely was affected by the rumors, causing him to neglect his own strengths.

His strength was in his extensive knowledge about various plants and their characteristics back on Earth, and building on this with the information within the wordless pill manual, his understanding towards spiritual ingredients greatly surpassed ordinary pill refiners. Adding on his hand and pill techniques, he might actually have a chance at advancing a tier.

Yan Qianyin carried on, “On top of that, another way of evaluating a pill refiner is to look at how pure he can refine spiritual ingredients to be. In terms of refining normal spiritual herbs, what level of purity can you reach currently?”

Mo Wuji honestly answered, “About 80% I guess.”

Although he felt that he could reach 90% purity, but Mo Wuji did not reveal this, as he was unsure if his assessment was correct or not, or if there were any other benchmarks for measuring purity. Hence he rounded down the figures.

When Yan Qianyin heard Mo Wuji’s reply, she secretly shook her head in disappointment, and at the same time her impression of Mo Wuji became worse. Even at her current level, she could barely reach 80% purity when refining spiritual ingredients. For ordinary pill refiners, to be able to reach 60% or 70% would be considered quite good. The higher the purity, the harder it was to progress. Someone who reached 89% purity when refining spiritual ingredients might even take decades to improve it to 90% purity, and this would not be a guaranteed thing.

Precisely because of this fact, Yan Qianyin thought that Mo Wuji was simply bragging about his abilities because he assumed that she would now know the truth. However, what Mo Wuji didn’t know was that at her level of skills, as long as he started refining in front of her, she would be able to discern how pure his ingredients became.

“Senior apprentice sister Yan, why don’t I refine a batch of Tier 2 Mortal Pills now, and you can point out any mistakes that I make in the process.” Mo Wuji observed Yan Qianyin’s silence, and took the initiative to ask in a humble manner. With a nod, she agreed, “Sure, you can start refining now.”

She did not expose his ruse immediately, and even if Mo Wuji’s spiritual ingredient purity did not hit anywhere close to 80%, she wouldn’t either.

Mo Wuji’s pill of choice was the Poison Cleansing Pill, a legitimate Tier 2 Mortal Pill which could be used as an antidote for a variety of poisons. Out of his tens of attempts at refining Tier 2 Mortal Pills, about half of them were with the Poison Cleansing Pill.

Seeing that Mo Wuji chose to make the Poison Cleansing Pill, Yan Qianyin seemed to understand why he did not agree to join her to face the Life Sucking Beast. Obviously he valued his life greatly. Deep inside, Yan Qianyin sighed, luckily Mo Wuji’s spirit root quality was poor, otherwise, he might have really squandered his talent in cultivation and pill refining. From her perspective, for one who valued his life too highly and feared death like a coward, it would be difficult to achieve much on their journey in cultivation. Ha, a cultivator having a smooth sailing life? There would always be life and death situations. Despite all that, it was good that Mo Wuji picked the Poison Cleansing Pill. As long as he could refine a batch of it, he should be able to refine the Ephemeral Life Pill.

Naturally, Mo Wuji was unaware of Yan Qianyin’s thoughts, and even if he knew, he wouldn’t care. While he valued his life, he wasn’t a coward who feared death. Pointlessly risking his life wasn’t his style.

If he saw that what he faced was more important than his own life, even if it meant dying immediately, he would not back off by a single step. Refining the Poison Cleansing Pill was only a backup measure.

Back when he was in Rao Zhou, he nearly got hit by a poisoned arrow. And although he had already begun cultivating, all the people that he had interacted with were immortal masters, hence once he gets poisoned by one of them, whether he would be able to detect the poison would be another thing altogether.

Since he had become a pill refiner, why not refine some antidotes to keep as a safety net?

Mo Wuji started by using the firestone to light up the pill furnace, then he began to clean it. Following that, he placed the spiritual ingredients into the furnace one by one, and began the refining process.

Yan Qianyin got the shock of her life while observing how Mo Wuji cleaned the pill furnace. Once again when she observed him integrating spiritual energy into his hand techniques to refine the spiritual ingredients, she was so surprised that she stood up on the spot. Based on her preliminary observations, she could confirm that the pill refining techniques that Mo Wuji inherited were not of simple background. As far as she knew, there was no one else other than her that could use spiritual energy in their hand technique to refine ingredients. The reason she could do so was because she had inherited an impressive set of techniques, but it still took her till the Tier 3 Mortal Pill Refiner stage before she could execute such a technique.

Unbelievably before her eyes, Mo Wuji was doing the same only at the Tier 1 Mortal Pill Refiner level. She could not accept what she was seeing, but the truth was right in front of her. In fact, Mo Wuji had already restrained himself after seeing Shi Jun use a tool like a scoop to refine ingredients, as he knew that his hand and pill techniques were rather good. And precisely because they were rather good, he intentionally hid his pill techniques, purely relying on the hand techniques when doing pill refining.

Based on his premonition, something like pill techniques should not be freely used in the presence of others. Moreover, at his current level of cultivation, it would be a stretch to control the pill refining process with pill techniques. The crux of the pill techniques was to use your spiritual will to control the process, but as he did not know what spiritual will was, he could only use his willpower to forcibly take control. Pills refined through this method would have variable results, sometimes good and sometimes bad. When it was good, the pills made had higher quality than those made using hand techniques. But when it was bad, there was immediate failure.

Using willpower to take control was a skill that Mo Wuji learnt initially when he was guiding the lightning to strike his meridians. Now that he had a cultivation technique, he no longer had to do so, but instead he utilised this method when refining pills.

One by one the stalks of spiritual herbs were cleaned of impurities, and the residue that was left behind Mo Wuji threw out of the pill furnace. Yan Qianyin’s level of shock became greater as time went by, she discovered that Mo Wuji was not simply bragging just now, but instead he was being too modest. The purity of his refined ingredients definitely was 80%...

No, this was not only 80%. Yan Qianyin gasped uncontrollably when Mo Wuji removed the residue from the furnace a second time...