Chapter 27: Refining the Body Tempering Liquid!
The amount of time required to boil the Body Tempering Liquid was approximately four hours. Would the induction cooker break halfway through? Shuhang was worried in his heart pondering over this.
Looking through the hot pot’s glass lid, he could see that the slices of ginseng were rolling about inside. There was a mysterious excitement in his heart. Is this pill concocting?
That’s right, this was pill concocting.
But why does it not feel much different from the way I usually cook noodles?
Perhaps it’s because the style I’m doing it is wrong?
Using his phone’s stopwatch function, while Song Shuhang stared at the sliced ginseng in the pot, while at the same time he also paid attention to the time indicated on his phone.
Five minutes later......
He immediately took off the lid, and inserted the second herb which was goji berries.
The two herbs rolled about in the nearly boiling water, and they quietly dyed the water a faint yellow color.
Fire control and timing; these required accumulated experience.
Whereas something like experience was what this man with the surname Song was utterly lacking.
Therefore, all he could do was to pay attention to the time. Once five minutes had passed, he would immediately open the lid and insert the next herb. As for controlling the heat, that was an effort saved for the induction cooker.
“It really feels like I am cooking noodles.”
If three hours later, what I’m cooking turns out to merely be a bowl of ordinary Chinese medicinal soup, what would I feel then...?
This “Simplified Body Tempering Liquid” Pill recipe, could it completely shatter the worldview he had taken over his eighteen years to build? Or would the dreams of cultivation that he had come into contact with over the past few days be extinguished once again?
As the heat from the pot rose, the temperature in the kitchen rose accordingly.
At that time, a chill burst forth from the ice pearl on Shuhang’s neck, causing him to feel cool and refreshed. Not only that, the ice pearl also helped him to keep a clear head. Not knowing of the outside world and the time that passed, he entered into a state of high concentration.
He lightly grasped the ice pearl that was laid against his chest.
This magical ice pearl gave him more confidence in concocting the Body Tempering Liquid.
“Please don’t disappoint me. If possible, even if my concoction fails, at least let me see that ‘cultivation’ truly exists.”
Song Shuhang grabbed the third herb, causing waves in his calm heart. This third herb was one of the items that Song Shuhang was unable to find on the internet, which was the Morning Dew Mysterious Grass!
Judging from this situation, this Morning Dew Mysterious Grass wasn’t too different from ordinary grass, both were long and thin green plants. However, upon closer examination, it could be observed that the condensation on the Morning Dew Mysterious Grass would not dissipate, shimmering like the leaves of grass in the early morning.
The numbers displayed by the stopwatch on his cellphone moved very fast, indicating that the five minutes were about to be up!
Song Shuhang lifted the lid, directly inserted the Morning Dew Mysterious Grass he held in his hand into the pot, and quickly placed the lid back on.
In his heart, there was some quiet anticipation. After all, this was a special medicinal herb. Perhaps it could cause some unique changes to happen to the medicinal herbs within the pot.
Similar to the previous two medicinal herbs, the Morning Dew Mysterious Grass swirled and rolled around in the boiling water.
Song Shuhang’s gaze remained affixed to the Morning Dew Mysterious Grass. Threads of cold chill emanated from the icy pearl resting against his chest, causing his concentration to raise to an unprecedented level!
Gradually, the three herbs in the pot started to become magnified before his very eyes.
At this moment, there were only herbs in Song Shuhang’s world, and nothing else.
It was unknown whether it was because of his extreme concentration, or it was because of the special characteristics of the ice pearl that was pressed against his chest, because Song Shuhang soon began to sense every change within the three types of herbs in the nearly boiling water.
Every time they rolled, a light yellow medicinal property would be boiled out, blending into the herbal soup. As the slices scattered the medicinal property, their bodies swelled.
This is definitely a weird feeling!
“The heat doesn’t seem strong enough?” Song Shuhang suddenly had this feeling in his heart.
He felt that the medicinal herbs in the pot required a stronger heat. The Morning Dew Mysterious Grass in particular required a higher temperature to stimulate its effects.
Hence, he pressed a finger against the temperature control of the induction cooker and unhesitatingly increased the temperature.
*Huuuuuu~*
The water in the pot boiled more furiously, and the cover of the pot began to shake under the pressure accumulated from the rising steam.
Song Shuhang’s eyes widened — After increasing the temperature, there was actually a change to the Morning Dew Mysterious Grass!
The Morning Dew Mysterious Grass which had initially been floating on the water had dissolved in it after a short while!
Song Shuhang did not know how much time and what kind of temperature would be needed to completely breakdown a normal blade of grass from boiling it. But not even five minutes had passed, with the amount of heat his small induction cooker produced, it would still have been impossible to cook grass until it dissolved.
This was the special characteristic of the Morning Dew Mysterious Grass.
As the mysterious grass dissolved, the herbal soup was dyed with a layer of jade green medicinal liquid. This jade green liquid seemed as though it contained some spiritual attributes as it swirled around the ginseng slices and the goji berries in the pot, wrapping them completely.
After the two kinds of herbs were wrapped up, they also started to dissolve themselves into the green liquid.
Song Shuhang’s heart began to beat slightly faster than before.
A magical transformation!
At the same time, he made a vague conjecture that to create the Body Tempering Fluid, perhaps there was no need to add water at all, but rather, a special method should have been used to heat the ginseng and the goji berries. Upon further adding the Morning Dew Mysterious Grass, all of the ingredients would dissolve into the jade green medicinal liquid.
He didn’t know whether this concoction had already turned out to be a failure or not.
Luckily, he had long prepared for the possibility of failure, the main goal of concocting these herbs in this attempt was getting used to the process. All the problems encountered during the practice of refining herbs were jotted down.
Five minutes had passed yet again.
This time, Song Shuhang calmly took out the fourth medicinal herb and tossed it into the pot.
The fourth ingredient was similarly wrapped up by the jade green liquid and bit by bit, it dissolved into the liquid.
“If I heat it by using heat of this intensity, it’ll take approximately five minutes for the fourth medicinal herb to dissolve completely. This must be why Medicine Master said approximately five minutes. Because of the differences in size, shape and age of the ingredients, the differences in heat intensity, and differences in quality of furnaces, they all cause instability in the stated time of five minutes,” This revelation dawned on Song Shuhang as his eyes remained glued to the medicinal ingredients in the pot.
He gained a deeper understanding towards the pill recipe of Medicine Master.
The main contributing factor towards this improvement was the ice pearl sitting around his neck. This ice pearl caused Song Shuhang’s soul to be as calm as still water, his consciousness to become more focused and his thought process to become more clear.
On the other hand, Song Shuhang possessed a kind of natural instinct towards concocting pills. This was a talent that was unique to him. If he wanted to switch occupations to become a pill master in the future, then this talent would allow to achieve twice the result with half the effort.
As Song Shuhang gained more and more insight towards the pill recipe, he began to break free of the restriction of the “five minute rule”.
He started to judge when he should add the next ingredient according to the level of dissolution in the pot. Sometimes, he would toss in a medicinal herb after just four and a half minutes and other times, he would wait for more than five minutes.
Unknowingly, forty-six minutes had passed.
By the time Shuhang added the tenth kind of medicinal herb, he had already tried tampering with the intensity of the heat. According to how much the medicinal herbs had dissolved, his finger hovered the buttons of the induction cooker to either add or reduce the intensity of the heat.
He was no longer rigidly adhering to the timings; his whole person was now working hectically.
After dissolving the sixteenth medicinal herb, the Morning Dew Grass in the pot reached the limits of the dissolving ability. And at this time, following to the pill recipe, Song Shuhang tossed in another special ingredient — the “Three Lives Fruit Core”.
As expected, the Three Lives Fruit Core which played a similar role to the Morning Dew Mysterious Grass took over as the new herb solvent.
After the first ladle of water, Song Shuhang had no longer added any more water. The liquid that had been boiling in the pot for half an hour had not dried up at all; in fact, the volume had increased.
Add ingredient, observe the state of dissolution and wait; then, continue by adding the next ingredient. It was a tedious and monotonous process, yet a single careless mistake could not be afforded.
This was the path of a medicine master, a pill master! Even among cultivators, not even one in a thousand could take on this line of work that required such harsh perfection. It was truly a path that only someone who was most tolerant of loneliness could walk!