Two days passed and Li Ling finally got started with the Earth Nurturing Technique after going through the theory over and over again, finally having upgraded the lump of Spirit Soil into Grade 2 quality. It cost him nearly half of his magic power over a long duration of time, and it had to be the most boring period of his life since awakening the Infinite Slaughter System where nothing happened.

However, Li Ling actually felt that this was not a bad thing. He had long been aware of the fact that he could not always blaze through the cultivation world at the speed he had been going at these past two weeks, because like Icarus, he would end up flying too close to the sun and burning out.

It was not even a fear of being discovered or hunted for being special. In a way, he even looked forward to that as he did not mind being on the run, because it gave him new enemies to kill and many opportunities for counter-killing which would boost his growth.

It was due to the fact that growth was actually limited within the scope of Firmament Heaven, or rather, within the scope of reality.

It may seem as if Li Ling could endlessly farm Slaughter Points, but the issue lay in the fact that—putting aside social, economic, and political reasons—not everyone was there for him to kill at his leisure. There were definitely some existences out of his power range at the moment, not to mention those he did not dare touch because it would cause a severe reaction.

The higher his cultivation got, the higher the costs for increasing cultivation base and the higher the cost for increasing unique and awesome daoist arts like the Tai Xu Mysterious Method.

When he started out, his first windfall of 19 Slaughter Points seemed like such a great blessing that could change his fate. When he dropped his first meteor and got his first 2000+ payout, he had laughed uproariously, even while being chased down by Wen Caiyi.

Even in this war, over the span of seven days and while dealing with just a small segment of the entire area, he had reached a high of 10,000+ Slaughter Points before his recent investments. When his realm rose and his power increased, he would be exposed to bigger opportunities that would yield higher numbers of Slaughter Points, even in the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even… in the millions!

But he would always have something to spend it on and soon, his rate of earning might not keep up with his spending. So it was precisely these downtimes where he would allow the world to 'move forward' that were going to become the norm, but he had to make sure while these periods occurred, he was doing something productive.

Like now, trying to master alchemy while waiting for the final dispatch.

Li Ling got started with the most basic pill in the cultivation world, the Qi Refinement core resource, the Qi Nourishing Pill. His pill was usable for the entirety of the realm and assisted the user in accumulating refined spiritual qi by temporarily increasing their ability to absorb and refine spiritual energy.

It was not like older and less circulated pills where they directly filled you with spiritual energy because it was discovered that such pill recipes were more prone to leaving pill poison no matter how good the alchemist refinement was, leading to many having unstable foundations that haunted them later.

This one was akin to a person overclocking their PC. It simply pushed your own abilities to a higher state temporarily with minimal backlash, though repeated use over a short period of time was ill-advised unless one's spirit root and meridians could bear the stress.

One might wonder why the old Li Ling didn't gorge this pill to raise his cultivation over all those years and beat the allegations on him, but as much as he would have liked to, the pill operated based off the quality of the natural hardware. As Li Ling was in possession of some of the worst qualifications seen in the lower levels of Tian Ming Continent, it was pretty much like giving a snail an energy drink.

Its recipe involved seven reagents: the Yellow-Earth Ginseng, the Spirit Millet Grain, the Stone-Vein Moss, the Clay Lotus Seed, the Ashroot Ginger, the Bronze-Leaf Mint, and the Ground Star Salt.

The Yellow-Earth Ginseng was nowhere near as fancy as it sounded, being a spiritual ginseng that had a minor earth element concentration, widely farmed by even cultivation families and only needing a maximum of three years to grow. It cost about three Spirit Crystals for a batch of ten stalks.

The Spirit Millet Grain was another common spiritual crop that was typically watered with diluted spirit dew—empty spirit stones that were crushed and mixed with water—and used to make a cereal which was a staple of the cultivation world. Its cost was basically at the level of buying bundles of what, in the cultivation world, was a Spirit Crystal per catty.

The Stone-Vein Moss was a type of moss that crept along spiritual ore deposits and absorbed the ambient energy from them directly. If you said it was easy to find, it was like rubbish in any spirit stone mine, an annoyance for miners who wanted to get to the ore. If you said it was hard to find, you needed to own a spirit stone mine or have access to one to even see a fragment of this moss. Its price was strictly controlled by the Divine Cauldron Sect at one tael for one Spirit Crystal.

The Clay Lotus Seed was taken from the Clay Lotus, a common spirit plant that rooted in mineral clay beds of slow rivers. Most fishing, farming, or normal villages could have their local herbalist keep a whole cupboard of them available at any time, so it was sold at a Spirit Crystal for ten seeds.

The Ashroot Ginger was a pale-colored spiritual plant that grew in cooled volcanic rock. Li Ling had countless of these from the void rings of the Fire Heart Sect, and his rupturing of the volcano was bound to create hundreds of thousands of catties of this plant over the next decade in this region. As it was a type found in a specific area that was usually dangerous and hazardous, it was priced at five Spirit Crystals per stalk.

The Bronze-Leaf Mint was another spiritual plant of the metal element, identified by the metallic sheen on its leaves and commonly found near mineral deposits. It had a wide range of uses in almost every pill recipe, so it was priced at three Spirit Crystals for five taels.

The Ground Star Salt was the only non-spiritual plant or herb among the group, being a crystalline mineral gathered from caves with access to moonlight. It was a special lunar-type mineral that was added to few recipes, especially those with healing effects, as it was very useful for healing. In the old days, cultivators used to slap it on wounds to heal directly. It was priced at two Spirit Crystals per catty.

For the Qi Nourishing Pill, the exact ratio of them was two stalks of Yellow-Earth Ginseng, three taels of Spirit Millet Grain, one tael of Stone-Vein Moss, two portions of the Clay Lotus Seed, one stalk of Ashroot Ginger, one stalk of Bronze-Leaf Mint, and half a tael of Ground Star Salt.

This meant that the cost price of making a batch of Qi Nourishing Pills came to 7.8 Spirit Crystals or 0.78 low-grade Spirit Stones. Yet, the average price of a bottle of Qi Nourishing Pills, which typically contains a minimum of three pills, cost one Spirit Stone.

One batch of alchemy, if successful, could divulge precisely three pills if one was average, usually producing more if the alchemist in question was slightly competent.

It might not seem profitable, but it only usually took a maximum of four hours to make a batch of pills at the first realm and was applicable with all the Five Elements of Alchemy, being the most basic common pill for which there was always a market.

It was clean, stable profit for an alchemist just starting out, and if you chose Wood Alchemy, you'd probably be able to spit out six batches within a single day when you became slightly skilled.

Li Ling glanced through the recipe and began the process without much hesitation, not really taking it too seriously. It wasn't life or death for him to master alchemy, just a way to pass the time and broaden his horizons, so his purchased second-grade cauldron was placed atop the workbench with an open lid.

Immediately, the seven reagents were gently placed inside and then sealed with the pot lid before Li Ling aimed his hand forward, throwing the glowing lump of second-grade Spirit Soil at the cauldron, which encased its body fully without touching the lid area.

Immediately, Li Ling felt his senses connect to the void within the cauldron as the alchemy process began!

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