Chapter 164
Once the idea had taken root, it showed no sign of fading.
The more Baek Cheong thought about a pill to prepare for heavenly tribulation using Cloud Spirit Fruit, the more plausible it seemed.
Baek Cheong unfolded from the cross-legged position and headed straight for the alchemy room.
The alchemy room set aside in one wing of the Eastern Quarters was a workshop reserved for personal use.
At the center sat a sturdy first-tier top-grade alchemy furnace, tinged with a reddish aura.
Let's see.
Baek Cheong took the jade box out of the storage pouch and opened the lid.
If it were ordinary medicinal herbs, they would have been stuffed carelessly into the storage pouch.
But Cloud Spirit Fruit was a precious spirit fruit, so it had been kept carefully in a separate jade box.
Inside, three fruits lay neatly arranged, each wrapped in a layer of pale mist.
When one was picked up, cloudlike mist puffed up in little bundles over the palm.
Normally, Cloud Spirit Fruit should be used to refine a Purification Pill.
Because the pill that washed away pill poison accumulated in the dantian and meridians was none other than the Purification Pill.
But I don't even know the formula for the Purification Pill.
According to Do-woo on the Nameless Forum, it was a pill formula that had flowed down from the upper realm, namely the spirit realm.
Even if the Medicine Sage knew it, it was at least a 3rd-tier pill from the spirit realm, and since it was refined in the spirit-realm way, the difficulty was bound to be high.
There was no reason to wrestle with a formula that wasn't even known.
In the first place, there was no need to refine a Purification Pill.
Even though it was only a low-grade Purification Pill, the pill poison itself hadn't built up much, so it had all been expelled.
What was being aimed for was a pill that would use the Cloud Spirit Fruit as a base and help withstand heavenly tribulation.
If another layer were added to the Five-Elements Tribulation Formation already planned, it would feel reassuring.
Cloud Spirit Fruit is precious, but, well...
Baek Cheong toyed with the Cloud Spirit Fruit in the palm.
If it's hoarded, it'll just go to waste.
Besides, there was no need to worry about pill poison.
Since Baek Cheong could personally refine pills free of pill poison, the situation wasn't poor either.
So there was no need to cling to the Cloud Spirit Fruit and pin all hope on the Purification Pill.
The Purification Pill was a treasure only for those suffering from pill poison.
For someone who had nothing to do with pill poison, there was nothing much to regret.
First, it was necessary to find out what kind of spirit fruit it was.
Once the decision was made, Baek Cheong decided to examine the Cloud Spirit Fruit thoroughly first.
When handling unfamiliar medicinal ingredients, the basic order was to inspect them in detail.
It was a lesson drilled in by Medicine Sage Grandpa until it could be recited in sleep.
Let's check its properties first.
Baek Cheong used qi sense and divine sense to examine the Cloud Spirit Fruit carefully.
The energy within the Cloud Spirit Fruit clearly carried a water attribute.
Yet it was somehow subtly off from the usual water attribute.
It was a cloud attribute mutated from the water attribute.
Even though it seemed natural, most clouds were water-aspected.
Because the sea of clouds itself was a special place.
Having identified its nature, the next step was poison.
Baek Cheong pulled an Extreme Silver Needle out of the storage pouch.
A needle forged from extreme silver could tell whether a medicinal ingredient carried poison.
When poison qi touched it, the silver needle would darken to a dull black.
Baek Cheong carefully pricked the Cloud Spirit Fruit with the needle and waited a long while.
But when the Extreme Silver Needle was withdrawn, it remained silver as ever.
That meant not even a trace of poison had seeped in.
Let's see...
Baek Cheong examined the droplet of fruit juice gathered at the needle tip.
Since there was no poison, there was no reason not to taste it.
The needle tip was gently brought to the tongue.
It felt as though unsweetened cotton candy had been put in the mouth.
The instant it touched the tongue, something cloudlike dissolved softly and vanished.
It was closer to scattering faintly inside the mouth than to melting.
Oh, this feels kind of strange.
Baek Cheong focused the mind and examined how the juice affected the body.
The amount on the needle tip was only a speck, so its medicinal potency was hardly worth mentioning.
Still, when it was looked at with compressed divine sense, two properties were found.
One was a tendency to drift anywhere like a cloud.
The other was a tendency to stain whatever it touched with a similar hue.
It drifted along the meridians, then subtly changed color by imitating the lingering qi.
On reflection, those were qualities that fit a pill meant to withstand heavenly tribulation quite well.
Of course, that was only what came to mind; actually refining it into a pill was another matter entirely.
Indeed, it really was a peculiar spirit fruit.
It was definitely a unique spirit fruit.
And yet its medicinal force wasn't so fierce that it was difficult to handle.
That was enough to make it worth digging into.
There was just one snag.
The Cloud Spirit Fruit wasn't included in any formula Baek Cheong had learned.
The alchemy knowledge learned from the Medicine Sage only went up to 2nd tier.
Trying to create a new pill from medicinal ingredients never even seen before meant trial and error was unavoidable.
Unlike following a formula someone else had taught.
It was a situation where the formula had to be created entirely by personal effort.
Even being generous, the odds of success were only around 5 percent.
Five percent... this might not be easy.
Baek Cheong pursed the lips and took a seat in front of the furnace.
Then the gaze slipped to the outer surface of the furnace.
The furnace was densely engraved with a formation.
It was the Primordial Formation that supported the Taiji orbit when the Five-Elements Taiji Alchemy Method was performed.
It was merely an auxiliary means to assist alchemy.
It was so simple and basic it was almost embarrassing to call it a formation.
It was a formation so low-grade it might as well have been called a rankless formation.
To anyone who didn't know the Five-Elements Taiji Alchemy Method, it was a useless formation.
If things went well...
But Baek Cheong had noticed something else entirely.
The one who engraved the Primordial Formation was a 3rd-tier formation master from the clan.
As a formation master, he had only copied a standardized formation and carved it in.
He had etched it without being able to grasp even the character forms that were the formation's bones.
So the Primordial Formation engraved on the furnace wasn't complete.
The strokes were misaligned, and the flow of the character forms was blocked in places.
What if I set this up myself?
If it were a Primordial Formation deployed personally rather than a standardized one, the story would be different.
If Baek Cheong personally set up a Primordial Formation to support alchemy, the result would be different.
At the very least, the success rate could probably be pushed up to 10 percent.
That would be a twofold jump from 5 percent.
Let's do it right now.
Once that thought was reached, Baek Cheong didn't hesitate.
A character-form talisman was taken from the storage pouch and slapped onto the furnace.
As the talisman emitted a faint light, the engraved character forms began to blur.
The standardized Primordial Formation collapsed with a flop, failing to do its job.
It was effectively meddling with a perfectly fine furnace, but there was nothing to regret.
If the formation was that clumsy, it was better off gone.
And then...
A Five-Elements Banner was taken out of the storage pouch.
While clearly picturing the Primordial Formation's character forms in the mind, qi was infused into the Five-Elements Banner.
The banner trembled faintly, and a Primordial Formation spread out with a rustle around the furnace.
It was a Primordial Formation whose structure was worlds apart from the one carved by the 3rd-tier formation master.
Since the formation had been prepared personally, all that remained was alchemy.
Baek Cheong began researching the Cloud Spirit Fruit in earnest.
***
A solid month passed by.
During that time, Baek Cheong practically lived in front of the furnace.
The Cloud Spirit Fruit's drifting nature made things difficult, since it kept trying to slip away on its own.
Taming its staining property and keeping the medicinal force together was no easy feat either.
Misjudging the heat, the furnace had belched black smoke more times than could be counted.
Each time, the flames were quietly corrected and the Taiji orbit redrawn.
Still, the Primordial Formation personally deployed did a superb job of supporting the Taiji orbit.
Thanks to that, a pill was successfully refined more easily than expected.
At that point, the earlier guesses of 5 percent or 10 percent felt laughably off.
What, this is easier than I thought.
Whether it had been overcomplicated in the mind, or whether it was simply luck.
Or both. There was no way to know.
In any case, since it was a newly refined pill, a name had to be given.
A thought to call it Tribulation Cloud Pill came and went, and then the head was shaken.
Tribulation cloud was the term for the dark clouds brought by heavenly tribulation.
Not Tribulation Cloud—let's call it Cloud Tribulation Pill.
A pill to prepare for heavenly tribulation using Cloud Spirit Fruit, so Cloud Tribulation Pill sounded fitting.
The name had been given a decent ring, but the pill was put into the jade bottle with indifference.
The Cloud Tribulation Pill in the jade bottle was a whitish, somewhat murky hue, as if clouds had been compressed and solidified.
Because it was the first pill refined, its quality had only reached low-grade.
It was a pill stuffed full of impurities and pill poison.
Now that the body had finally been cleansed of pill poison so thoroughly...
There was no desire to swallow back a low-grade pill that was basically a lump of pill poison.
At the very least, it had to be top-grade; if greed was to be indulged, it would need to be refined to pill-pattern grade.
Fortunately, there were still two Cloud Spirit Fruits left.
Since success had been achieved once, there was no reason success couldn't be achieved again.
It was something worth devoting oneself to wholeheartedly.
Baek Cheong sat in front of the furnace again and became absorbed in refining the Cloud Tribulation Pill.
.
.
.
And while Baek Cheong was so immersed in refining the Cloud Tribulation Pill...
dark clouds were also slowly gathering in the sky outside the Eastern Quarters.