Return of the demon 65 Towards Alchemist Pavillion

Once he was done, Bai Yun immediately set out. He had many things to do, and not enough time to do it.

An hour later, Bai Yun was standing in front of the Alchemist Union.

He had told his parents of his desire to be an alchemist. Both of his parents were confused when Bai Yun raised his request. Bai Yun explained that this was a way for him to relax, a side path to follow. He was not planning to make the Alchemy path his main path of cultivation. But even then they could not understand why he wanted to do so. They thought that following two paths at the same time was a waste of energy as well as a disservice to the two paths by splitting the attention between them.

But they agreed to let him follow both paths in the end. They knew of Bai Yun's talent, and they knew that he would have no problem following both paths. Not only that, they also offered him a lot of money to practice alchemy. But they were adamant that he was not to use even the smallest amount of this money for anything other than alchemy. They reiterated the importance of using one's own strength to pave their way. They only relented to give him money for alchemy as alchemy took a lot of money to learn, particularly in the beginning. But the cost of learning alchemy in the qi step was inconsequential to the two of them.

The alchemy union was the biggest conglomeration of alchemists in the Howling Wolf continent. They dealt with everything related to alchemy. Not only did it act as a way to centralize the power of alchemists, it also conducts competitions, buys and sells pills from alchemists, and even sold things necessary to alchemy to alchemists. It was also the only place in the continent that could give ratings to alchemists.

Once he reached the alchemy union he quickly went to their beginner section. The alchemy union took up a huge amount of space and was divided into three buildings. The main building straight ahead was the store which sold pills or to handle requests for pills. It was the largest of the three buildings, as most of the people who came to the union came to buy pills. There were more people who needed pills than alchemists after all.

To the left was the administrative building. Its most important function was to handle the registration and tier requests of the alchemists, and also to handle any special needs of the alchemists. To the right was the building which sold items that the alchemists needed, including pill recipes, alchemy medicines, and cauldrons. It was to this place that Bai Yun had come to.

When Bai Yun decided to pick up alchemy as a side path, he had decided to get the God of Alchemies legacy. But to this he would have to pass a test. Granted, Bai Yun had a trump card that could help him easily pass the test, he thought that it would be best if he had a solid foundation to start on. With his talent and comprehension, Bai Yun figured that it would not be that difficult for him to reach a suitable level in case his plan did not work.

Bai Yun entered the alchemy union and bought the starter kit sold there. Since Yellow City was a major city, there were many people who desired to become alchemists. So every day many people would knock on the doors of the alchemy union hoping to start their journey on the alchemy path. Thus they had put together a small kit that could be purchased, which contained some books on the foundations of alchemy, some common pill formulas as well as enough materials to make them. Depending on the amount, the costlier kits have more pill formulas as well as more portions of materials for pills.

Since Bai Yun was only starting out, he did not think of buying more than the basic material, though he did buy the costliest one. He had planned to used a disguise to buy this so as to make sure that nothing could be traced back to him. But his parents forced him to pick it up using his original identity. They said that it did not matter if people knew he was practicing alchemy along with the martial path. In the end, Bai Yun had to relent.

Bai Yun took the item and went back to his house. He saw neither of his parents in the mansion, but the rest of the house was operating normally. It seems that his parents have already started to move due to the information he had dumped on them earlier. Bai Yun believed that it would not be long before he found out about the person who attacked him.

Bai Yun stopped in front of his room and turned around, "You know old Hai, I don't think I am going to be attacked in my own room. You can go now."

There was no reply even after a while. "Suit yourself." Bai Yun declared, before he went into the room and closed the door.

The very first item he had brought out was the foundation manual for alchemy. It introduced one to the path of alchemy as well as the basic ideas behind pill forming.

Bai Yun read through the book, reading each and every word as he tried to analyze them one at a time. Once he was done, he put the book down and started to meditate on what he had read.

The alchemy pills were differentiated according to both strength and difficulty of making them. The strength and efficiency of a pill was represented by the class of the pill while the difficulty of making them was categorized in the rank of the pill. The pills could also have circles, which typically meant that the ingredients in pill were of a high grade.

There were many forms the pill could take, like pills, liquids or even powder, but the essence of the procedure was the same. First, you had to extract the essence found in the materials, purify them as much as possible, and then combine them to create the product. In this process there were two things that were absolutely necessary, they were the raw materials and an alchemy flame. An alchemy cauldron was not absolutely necessary, but without one it would be hundreds of times harder to make a pill compared to without one. So almost everyone used one.

Even though Bai Yun read the introduction to alchemy book, he was not very impressed. He already knew everything recorded here. Even though he had never participated himself, he had seen the God of Alchemy create pills before. He had even heard many lectures by him before though he did not understand a word of it. But he did have an introductory understanding of Alchemy. The book was more of a propaganda tool boasting the power of the Alchemy Union rather than a proper introduction to alchemy.

After throwing away the book, Bai Yun decided to start creating pills straight away. He thought that the best way to get started would be to just dive into it.

Bai Yun started with the simplest as well as the most common pill, the qi recovery pill. The qi recovery pill was a pill that allowed a person who was out of qi to quickly get more. Since everyone would run out of qi when they fought, it was very popular. This also meant there were many formulas with varying effectiveness for varyings stages. Bai Yun started with the simplest one.

Bai Yun took out the basic alchemy cauldron from his storage ring. It was the simplest cauldron with no extra abilities, which also means that it was the hardest to make a pill in. But if you could make a pill in this cauldron, then it ould be possible to make a pill in any other cauldron.

After this Bai Yun quietly placed the raw materials into the cauldron. As this was an extremely simple pill there were only four raw materials, and they were also rather easy to process.

After he closed the lid of the cauldron, Bai Yun took out fire stones and placed them under the cauldron. People in the qi step were generally unable to produce alchemy flames by themselves, so they used fire stones to do so. Fire stones were small stones that were found in nature with the power of flames inside them. If one was to inject some qi into the fire stones, they would give out a very stong flame. But it was very difficult to control the output of a fire stone, so the fire stone from the alchemist union had a small formation inscribed inside them to help the alchemist control the temperature.
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Bai Yun placed a fire stone inside the and slowly heated up the cauldron. After this he started to follow the steps given in the pill formula to refine the raw materials. He first made the fire stone start at a low temperature, just in case it was too much.

If there was an alchemist nearby, he would have most likely beaten up Bai Yun. Almost all the alchemist started out by apprenticing themselves to a master, and learning by watching and listening to them talk about the pills and inform them of the pitfall s and other things to watch out for. Even though Bai Yun knew of some high level concepts in alchemy from the God of Alchemy, he was severely lacking in the low level knowledge. As a result, he was in for a tough time.

And what was to be expected happened. The first batch of materials were all burned to ashes in an instant. Even though Bai Yun thought that he had started off at a proper temperature, it was still too hot.

But Bai Yun was prepared for this eventuality. He knew that he would fail many times before he could succeed. Once all four raw materials were burnt, he put away the cauldron and picked up the fire stones.

Bai Yun knew that one of the most important parts of alchemy was fire control, but he had thought that with his control of qi he would be fine. It was only after actually doing it that he realized just how wrong he was. Thankfully he found the mistake after just one test. Bai Yun slowly sank his consciuosness into the fire stone and started to tamper with it, trying to increase and decrease the temperature as well as the strength of the flame. He only stopped after four hours, when he decided that the degree of control he had was satisfactory.

Then he once again took out the cauldron and put in another portion of raw materials, and started on his second trial. This time the fire he generated was much weaker and did not burn the ingrediants. Baut he realized that the raw materials was being refined much more slowly, and some of the impurities were not being removed. He increased the temperature slowly only to have one of them suddenly burst into flames, and turn into ash.

Bai Yun started the third round without stopping, this time he learned from his previous mistakes and separated the four ingredients, and started to heat them up separately. This time Bai Yun was able to hold on for quite a while before he failed once again.

Bai Yun worked through the night, not taking a rest. Now and then a scream of frustration or an explosion could be heard from the room. At first, Bai Yun was thinking that he had bought far too many portions, but now he was thinking that maybe they weren't enough.

Anoter day and night passed, and as the dawn of the next day neared, old Hai knocked on his room. "Young master, it is nearly time for the auction. You need to get ready."

For a while, there was no answer from the room. Just as old Hai was starting to get worried, raucous laughter could be heard from the room. Old Hai was stunned and immediately entered the room. But the moment he did so, he stopped and just looked around the room with his jaw nearly hitting the floor.

The entire room had mostly turned into black. Ash of various colored decorated the walls, floor and even parts of the ceiling. The bed and parts of the curtians seemed to be burned. The cauldron was overturned and smoke was coming out of it.

And in the middle of it all, Bai Yun was doubled over laughing while clutching a round black ything.

Chapter end