May I seek good fortune and avoid misfortune, and live a long and prosperous life.

In the past six months, in addition to cultivating, Li Heng also used his contribution points to exchange for a basic alchemy technique for the Qi Refining stage.

When Zhao Bingwen was refining pills, Li Heng would watch his alchemy techniques with great concentration. Sometimes, when Zhao Bingwen succeeded in refining pills and was in a good mood, Li Heng would take the opportunity to use his basic alchemy skills to point out the parts he didn't understand and humbly ask for his guidance.

Zhao Bingwen wasn't actually the kind of arrogant cultivator. As long as you gave him enough emotional value, he was happy to give you some pointers. It's just that many servants couldn't grasp Zhao Bingwen's personality traits and thought he was short-tempered and difficult to get along with.

As expected, Zhao Bingwen instructed Li Heng on many important aspects of alchemy and answered many of the difficult questions Li Heng encountered.

Li Heng learned a lot and respected Zhao Bingwen even more, serving Zhao Bingwen more comfortably. This made Zhao Bingwen think that it wasn't a bad thing to guide this kid. This kid is truly grateful!

When Li Heng is out, he usually uses the Concealing Breath Technique to hide his cultivation level. Apart from cultivators above the Foundation Establishment stage, other cultivators cannot discover his true cultivation level. Moreover, in order to avoid encountering Foundation Establishment True Persons, he rarely goes out and lives a very simple life, going back and forth between two points every day.

Moreover, Foundation Establishment cultivators almost never come here. They look down on the alchemy room for Qi Refining cultivators. At least since Li Heng came to the alchemy room as a handyman, he has never seen a Foundation Establishment cultivator come here.

Therefore, life was relatively stable.

……

Time flies, and a year has passed in the blink of an eye.

During this year, Li Heng successfully honed his spiritual power to its peak at the second level of Qi Refining, and the spiritual power in his dantian had all solidified.

Moreover, by continuously consuming the waste pills of the top-grade Marrow Cleansing Pill, he honed his physique to the extreme of the second level of Qi Refining.

So he decided to break through.

On another dark and windy night, Li Heng will successfully break through at his residence.

When he broke through, the spiritual energy of heaven and earth quickly gathered in this direction, making quite a commotion. Fortunately, Li Heng later bought two different Qi-refining and concealing formations. With the three concealing formations layered on top of each other, even the biggest commotion was covered up.

The reason for the great commotion was that Li Heng's foundation had been honed to its limit during the second stage of Qi Refining.

Therefore, the barrier to breaking through the third level of Qi Refining is extremely strong. Even a once-in-a-millennium peerless Qi Refining prodigy would have his Dao heart shattered if he encountered such a monstrous barrier, and would be unable to break through it at all, remaining stuck at the second level of Qi Refining for life, utterly hopeless.

Although the breakthrough was extremely difficult, the gains were also substantial.

After Li Heng broke through to the third level of Qi Refining, he felt his dantian expand again, and the spiritual power it could hold was twice that of the second level of Qi Refining!

Now, Li Heng can casually unleash some basic spells with extremely powerful force, comparable to the power of spells cast by those at the seventh or eighth level of Qi Refining.

To avoid attracting attention, Li Heng always disguised himself as sickly in public, as if he had developed some health problems from dealing with waste pills for a long time, but he was young and could still manage to keep up.

Since Li Heng arrived at the Qi Refining and Pill Refining Room, all the menial tasks of disposing of waste pills have been assigned to him. In order not to arouse their suspicion, he initially reluctantly agreed, but not for free. He would have to pay one low-grade Qi Gathering Pill for every five times he disposed of the waste pills.

These alchemy workshop servants were all older than Li Heng, the youngest being fifty years old.

So, in order to live a few more years, they gave the Qi Gathering Pills to Li Heng without hesitation. After all, they were all four or five spiritual roots, and they would be lucky if they could reach the third level of Qi Refining in this lifetime. They didn't care about those Qi Gathering Pills at all.

As for those alchemists in the Qi Refining stage, although they had heard that Li Heng had taken on all the work of disposing of waste pills, they just thought that this person was willing to risk his life for pills. For a little bit of low-grade Qi Gathering pills, he would at least lose more than ten years of his life. Was it worth it?

However, they won't interfere in this matter; as long as someone disposes of the waste pills, it doesn't matter who does it.

The servants in the alchemy room felt a pang of pity when they saw Li Heng gradually become sickly from dealing with the waste pills.

Therefore, almost no servant dared to cause trouble for Li Heng, as they would be attacked by all the servants.

In the past two years, due to the low success rate of refining top-grade Qi Refining Pills, basically only one out of six batches is successful, which means that Li Heng has no shortage of top-grade Qi Refining Pills.

Even though his five spiritual roots were of poor quality, and he cultivated the Five Elements Returning to Origin Technique which was as slow as a tortoise, his realm still steadily improved.

This made him feel that life was becoming more and more hopeful.

Two months later.

A major event has occurred in the Tianyan Sect, affecting the entire sect.

The Tianyan Sect and its old rival, the Ziyang Sect, have escalated their minor skirmishes into a full-blown sect war over a newly discovered medium-sized spirit stone vein.

This means that the Tianyan Sect and the Ziyang Sect will be locked in a life-or-death struggle from now on, and the fight will only end when one of the sects is completely destroyed.

After the war began, both sides had their victories and defeats.

Elixirs instantly became one of the most important strategic resources.

The Tianyan Sect would come to the alchemy room almost every two or three days to urge the Qi Refining stage alchemists to hurry up and refine pills.

Previously, alchemists would need to rest for two or three days after refining one batch of pills, but now they have to refine two batches of pills every day.

The alchemists dared not speak out against their anger and had no choice but to obediently follow the sect's instructions.

Li Heng was much more tired than before, as he went back and forth between the various alchemy rooms cleaning up the waste pills.

However, the harvest was also enormous; the amount of waste pills harvested in one day was far more than the amount harvested in the previous ten days.

Both sides dispatched a large number of Qi Refining cultivators and Foundation Establishment cultivators to fight on the front lines. Among them, the Qi Refining cultivators were used as cannon fodder, while the Foundation Establishment cultivators were the main force on the battlefield, and the Golden Core True Monarchs, as top combat forces, personally held the line.

The two factions were already enemies, and now their struggle for a medium-sized spirit stone mine is like a fuse that has ignited a powder keg.

Every day, cultivators in the Tianyan Sect are injured or killed, especially those in the Qi Refining stage.

Qi-cultivation pills are in extremely short supply.

This resulted in a situation where even if alchemists refined three batches a day, the supply still couldn't meet the demand. Moreover, with each batch, at least one batch was wasted, leaving many injured Qi Refining cultivators without any assistance.

This phenomenon continued for six months, and the situation became even more serious, with Qi Refining cultivators suffering heavy losses and in urgent need of replenishment.

The sect issued an urgent order that all cultivators at the third level of Qi Refining (excluding alchemists, alchemy apprentices, talisman makers, weapon refiners, and other support personnel) must go to the battlefield to participate in the battle!

This meant that even menial laborers had to go to the battlefield as long as their cultivation reached the third level of Qi Refining.

Therefore, most of the servants in the alchemy room sighed upon hearing this order, because they were all at the third level of Qi Refining. They had worked hard to cultivate in order to escape their status as servants.

They never imagined that one day, their hard work in cultivation would also harm them.

Li Heng's displayed cultivation level was only at the first level of Qi Refining, so he was fortunate enough not to need to go.