Family Rise: Beginning with Grandfather.

Chapter 777 Refining Jade Marrow Pill

"As for the fire veins..."

Yang Zhengshan sensed it carefully, then his figure flashed and he arrived in the mountains and forests to the east of the Spirit Source Land.

This place is almost on the edge of the spiritual source land. The mountain has not even grown vegetation yet, but Yang Zhengshan can clearly feel that the fire spiritual energy here is several times more concentrated than in other places.

He stood on the hillside, looking at the half-hidden mountaintop, lost in thought.

"Is this a volcano? Not necessarily. It might just be an underground volcanic vein."

"How do we draw out the subterranean fire?"

He thought for a moment, then took a seed of the Azure Dragon Vine and threw it on the ground.

The next moment, the Azure Dragon Vine began to grow rapidly. Under his control, the Azure Dragon Vine did not grow on the ground, but instead burrowed into the ground.

As the vines grew, the underground rocks groaned under their pressure.

Yang Zhengshan sat on the vines, channeling his magical power into them, urging them to grow faster and stronger.

The thick vines, like drills, kept penetrating deeper into the ground.

One zhang, two zhang, three zhang, ten zhang, one hundred zhang...

It only stopped when Yang Zhengshan's magical power was exhausted.

Controlling the vines to grow a hundred feet tall is easy for Yang Zhengshan, but controlling the vines to grow a hundred feet tall underground is not easy for him, as it requires a lot of his magical power.

It didn't matter that his magic power was exhausted. Yang Zhengshan returned to the slope of Lingquan Mountain, took a jar of Hundred Fruit Wine and gulped it down. Then he meditated above Lingquan Mountain, and his magic power was restored to about 70-80%.

Then Yang Zhengshan returned to the fire vein and controlled the growth of the vines.

After repeating this process several times, and with the thick Azure Dragon Vine pendant extending more than 300 feet into the ground, Yang Zhengshan immediately felt a scorching heat emanating from it.

Then the Azure Dragon Vine he had nurtured was burned to ashes as if ice and snow were melting away.

Yang Zhengshan was startled and leaped into the air.

The next moment, a cluster of flames burst forth from along the Azure Dragon Vine, shooting out more than ten feet and burning the surrounding vegetation to charcoal and turning the rocks into lava.

"Damn, it's so hot!"

"I hope there won't be a volcanic eruption!"

Yang Zhengshan looked at the spewing flames with some worry, but his worries were unnecessary. The ground fire did not cause a volcanic eruption; it only formed a tongue of fire that kept spewing out, and the tongue of fire shrank from more than ten zhang to three zhang before stabilizing.

"That's perfect, but I still need to practice this fire control technique!"

The essential skill for immortal alchemists is the Fire Control Technique. While martial alchemists can rely on fire arrays to their advantage, immortal alchemists must possess powerful fire control abilities.

Yang Zhengshan already possessed a fire control technique from the alchemical inheritance he obtained from the ancient ruins, so he didn't need to search for another method to control fire.

Although he cultivated the "Green Wood Longevity Scripture", it did not prevent him from cultivating the Fire Control Technique.

Wood generates fire, so practicing wood-attribute techniques would actually help him cultivate the Fire Control Technique.

Of course, compared to other methods, cultivating fire-attribute techniques is more suitable for fire control.

But for Yang Zhengshan, as long as he could cultivate the Fire Control Technique, that was enough.

With the formula, the medicinal herbs, the earth fire, and the fire control technique all he needed, Yang Zhengshan now only needed a pill furnace.

This isn't difficult; you can just remove the existing flame array from the alchemy furnace and make do with it.

Of course, this kind of alchemy furnace can only be used as a makeshift solution, and it will probably break down before long.

The power of this earth fire is far greater than that of the flames generated by the fire magic array.

Fortunately, Yang Zhengshan was only refining a first-order Jade Marrow Pill, which did not require such strict requirements in all aspects. As long as all conditions were met, he could try to refine it.

He bought the Lingyuan Land, which had no medicinal herbs, from the Ji family through the Lingxiu Sea. He also dismantled the flame array of a pill furnace and then took Wang Mingzhe to refine the Jade Marrow Pill on the mountain.

Although the Jade Marrow Pill is a first-tier pill, its refining difficulty far exceeds that of all the pills Yang Zhengshan has refined before.

Moreover, this was Yang Zhengshan's first real attempt at refining immortal pills, and there was still much he needed to practice.

This includes the processing of medicinal materials, the use of fire control techniques, the control of earth fire, the mastery of the medicine furnace, and the perception of changes in the medicinal properties within the furnace.

Alchemy is an extremely tedious and difficult task, and refining immortal elixirs is even more difficult.

Yang Zhengshan and his apprentice Wang Mingzhe decided to live on this desolate mountain and spend their days researching the refining of Jade Marrow Pills.

Failure, failure, and more failure.

Two months passed in the blink of an eye. The two of them refined more than a hundred batches of medicine, consuming more than 20,000 spirit stones, but they did not manage to refine a single pill.

The process of refining elixirs does not begin with lighting the furnace, but rather with processing the medicinal materials.

Before elixirs can be made, different medicinal materials need to be processed using different methods.

For example, chalcedony mushrooms need to be ground into powder in advance, and they cannot be ground with stone tools; they need to be crushed into powder with pure force.

For example, jade powder cannot be ground in advance; it must be ground within 25 minutes before alchemy, otherwise the spiritual energy in the jade powder will dissipate.

There's also the Jade Spirit Peach, which needs to be air-dried before it can be used.

The processing of various medicinal materials is not something that can be done casually.

The alchemy of the immortal path is profound and extensive, and the pills of the immortal path are also diverse. They can be divided into medicinal pills, which are pills made from various medicinal materials, demon pills, which are pills made from the inner core of demon beasts, and mineral pills, which are mainly made from minerals.

In addition, alchemy techniques are also divided into fire alchemy, water alchemy, array alchemy, and so on.

The alchemy technique that Yang Zhengshan obtained from the ancient ruins should be a relatively basic alchemy technique in the immortal path. Except for the Foundation Establishment Pill, which is a second-tier pill, the rest are all first-tier pills.

Moreover, it is only fire-based alchemy, which contains a lot of common knowledge about alchemy, but the main content is still the basic fire-based alchemy technique.

Yang Zhengshan and Wang Mingzhe had studied those alchemy techniques countless times and were thoroughly familiar with their contents. Moreover, after several years of practice, both of them had made great progress in alchemy.

Even so, the two still failed more than a hundred times in refining the Jade Marrow Pill.

However, the two were not discouraged and continued to refine the product with great determination.

Until the third day of the third month.

Early in the morning, the master and apprentice began to process the medicinal herbs in tacit agreement. They did not say much, but simply processed the herbs quietly.

After processing the medicinal herbs, Yang Zhengshan drew out the sealed earth fire and began to warm the alchemy furnace. Then, Wang Mingzhe placed the prepared medicinal herbs around Yang Zhengshan in order. Yang Zhengshan sat beside the furnace, controlling the earth fire while using his magic to open the furnace lid and throw the various medicinal herbs into it. At the same time, he also used his spiritual sense to sense the changes inside the furnace.

The so-called "object manipulation technique" is a minor method of using magical power, which is to take objects from a distance.

Martial artists can also do this, but their ability to retrieve objects from a distance is usually straightforward, while the magical power of immortal cultivators is more manipulative and allows for more precise actions.

Yang Zhengshan's manipulation of objects was as if he possessed several invisible arms, allowing him to do anything at will.

One by one, the medicinal herbs were placed into the alchemy furnace. The fire beneath the furnace was sometimes fierce, sometimes gentle, and sometimes burning slowly.

After finishing his work, Wang Mingzhe didn't move around. He just stood quietly to the side, watching Yang Zhengshan control the ground fire with shining eyes.

He cannot cultivate this kind of fire control technique because it is a method of immortal cultivation, not a method of martial arts.

Besides fire control, there are many other techniques that immortal cultivators cannot use, which is why he can only refine pills for martial artists and not for immortal cultivators.

Yang Zhengshan was helpless in this regard. Wang Mingzhe had no spiritual aperture, so Yang Zhengshan couldn't pass on his cultivation techniques to him.

About an hour later, Yang Zhengshan felt that the medicinal power in the alchemy furnace had been completely integrated. He then stood up abruptly, made a hand seal with one hand, and used the other hand to draw runes in the air and inject them into the alchemy furnace.

He infused the furnace with hundreds of runes until it began to hum.

"It's done!"

"Really!" Wang Mingzhe finally said.

Yang Zhengshan nodded happily, then used his object manipulation technique to open the furnace lid and take out the pills from inside.

Twelve crystal-clear blue pills fell into the jade plate.

Yang Zhengshan reached out and picked one up to examine it. Hmm, there was a faint cloud pattern on it. This was a low-grade Jade Marrow Pill.

Aside from the cloud pattern, this pill is actually not much different from martial arts pills.

"These are the pills used by immortal cultivators? They don't seem to be much different!" Wang Mingzhe said.

Yang Zhengshan threw the pill directly into his mouth and swallowed it. Instantly, he felt a pure spiritual energy appear in his lower abdomen. He sat down cross-legged, circulated his internal magic power, and carefully felt the pure medicinal power.

"The medicinal potency is very high, hundreds of times that of the Wood Spirit Pill!"

"The medicine is mild and causes less erysipelas, less than the pills I took before!"

"It turns out that immortal pills contain far less toxicity than martial pills, but this is still only a low-grade jade marrow pill!"

"Taking one pill is equivalent to half a month of my previous cultivation. However, according to the alchemy manual, a low-grade jade marrow pill can only be taken once every half month. Taking it too frequently will cause a pill blockage, which will not be beneficial to future cultivation!"

"Erysipelas, erysipelas... it seems I need to be more careful about taking elixirs in the future!"

"But this is already very good. As long as I have enough Jade Marrow Pills, my cultivation speed can double."

"If we can refine a mid-grade Jade Marrow Pill, we can continue to improve!"

About an hour later, Yang Zhengshan had completely absorbed the medicinal power of the Jade Marrow Pill.

"Master, how is it?" Wang Mingzhe asked impatiently when he saw Yang Zhengshan open his eyes.

“It’s very good, you should try it too!” Yang Zhengshan said.

"I can use it too?" Wang Mingzhe asked in surprise.

"It can be used, but with your cultivation level, it will probably waste a lot of the medicinal power!" Yang Zhengshan said with a smile.

"Ah, then forget it, I won't waste this pill!" Wang Mingzhe said with some reluctance.

These were crafted by the master and apprentice over two months, and only twelve were made; he was truly reluctant to use them.

"It's alright. Once you've done it the first time, it will be much easier for us to refine pills from now on. Although learning alchemy is important, you can't neglect your cultivation!" Yang Zhengshan tossed him a Jade Marrow Pill and said.

Over the years, Wang Mingzhe has been focusing on the research and refinement of pills. Although he cannot refine immortal pills, he has considerable talent in refining martial arts pills.

If Yang Zhengshan hadn't been a cultivator, Wang Mingzhe's alchemy skills would probably have surpassed his long ago.

"Then let me try it!"

Wang Mingzhe hesitated for a moment, but decided to give it a try anyway, wanting to see the difference between immortal pills and martial arts pills.

After swallowing the pill, Wang Mingzhe's whole body trembled slightly, large beads of sweat appeared on his forehead, and his breathing became rapid.

"Calm down and don't panic. The Jade Marrow Pill is very mild and won't damage your meridians. You just need to circulate your cultivation technique and absorb as much as you can!" Yang Zhengshan quickly reminded him when he saw him like this.

The medicinal power of the Jade Marrow Pill was too great for Wang Mingzhe to absorb in his current state, and the leakage of its medicinal properties was inevitable.

Reminded by him, Wang Mingzhe immediately calmed down. He stopped paying attention to the overflowing medicinal power and focused on circulating his internal energy.

The cultivation technique he practiced was also the "Azure Wood Longevity Technique," which is a wood-attribute technique. The Jade Marrow Pill has no attribute; it is simply a spiritual energy pill. Its essence is to fuse the spiritual energy from various medicinal herbs to form a pure and gentle spiritual energy. The various medicinal properties are neutralized, without bias, making it more conducive to the cultivator's absorption.

It took Wang Mingzhe more than two hours to wake up from his cultivation.

"Master, this Jade Marrow Pill is incredibly potent! It has actually boosted my cultivation level by a significant amount!" Wang Mingzhe exclaimed in delight.

“Well, it’s too wasteful for you to eat this, and it’s not good for your cultivation to improve too quickly,” Yang Zhengshan said.

It wasn't that he was reluctant to part with the elixir, but rather that using too many of these elixirs that forced growth too much posed many hidden dangers.

The main reason is that Wang Mingzhe's cultivation level is still at the Earthly Fiend stage. If his cultivation level reaches the Heavenly Gang stage, he should be able to take the Jade Marrow Pill like Yang Zhengshan.

"It's a pity I can't refine this Jade Marrow Pill!" Wang Mingzhe said with some regret.

Yang Zhengshan smiled and said, "You can try simplifying the pill formula and see if you can refine the Jade Marrow Pill for martial artists!"

Martial arts elixirs are actually a simplified version of immortality elixirs.

This must have evolved over tens of thousands of years.

The immortal path in the Sea of ​​Spiritual Beauty declined, while the martial path flourished. Martial artists were unable to refine immortal pills, so they began to simplify the refining process, thus turning immortal pills into martial pills.

In fact, there is no essential difference between martial arts pills and immortal pills. It's just that because martial artists' methods are not as refined as those of immortal cultivators, the quality of pills refined by martial artists is much lower.

Of course, this is for innate martial artists. Yang Zhengshan estimated that when a martial artist's cultivation reaches the Martial God Realm, they should also be able to refine immortal pills.

Because those in the Martial God Realm begin to cultivate their divine soul and possess spiritual consciousness, thus bridging the gap between them and immortal cultivators.

However, this is comparing a Martial God Realm cultivator with a Qi Refining stage immortal cultivator. If compared with a Foundation Establishment stage immortal cultivator, there would probably be other differences.

(End of this chapter)