Having acquired the formula and refining method for the Dew-Reducing Pill from Nan Tianba, Ye Qin immediately set about preparing the alchemy to accelerate his cultivation speed.

Out of caution, he decided against refining the pills in the Herb Gathering Hall, as it was too easy for fellow disciples to notice something amiss. If word spread that he was secretly making medicine, it would invite a great deal of trouble.

Naturally, he also discarded the idea of finding a secluded spot in the wilderness; that too carried the risk of being accidentally stumbled upon and was equally unsafe. In the past, he resorted to wild alchemy because he was penniless, forced to concoct Clarity Pills outdoors. Now, armed with the tens of Gold Leaves he exchanged for Clarity Pills from Elder Huang of the Treasure Guild, he could certainly afford to select a location within the county town and purchase it as his sanctuary.

Dressed in black robes and a bamboo hat, Ye Qin located a secluded spot in an alley in the southeastern district of the county town. There, he spent over ten Gold Leaves to acquire a small courtyard from a fallen minor squire, establishing it as his temporary residence and refining site.

The courtyard was not large, enclosed on all four sides by mud walls about ten feet high. At the deepest part of the yard sat a solitary structure with blue bricks and gray tiles. Because the squire rarely resided in the city, the yard had been neglected, resulting in overgrown weeds and a general disarray.

The adjacent properties belonged to ordinary commoners. These folk lacked much worldly knowledge and were unlikely to disturb his alchemy work.

Ye Qin was quite pleased with the small courtyard. Such independent small residences were common in the southeast of the county. Martial world figures, conscious of their status, would seldom frequent such a humble location. The more ordinary and unremarkable it appeared, the less attention it would draw. Given that he would need to refine pills frequently, a small mud courtyard in the commoner district was, in fact, the best place to hide and avoid detection.

With his temporary base secured, Ye Qin began preparing the necessary components for the alchemy: the primary herb, auxiliary herbs, the furnace, and fire.

Refining the Dew-Reducing Pill required one primary herb and more than a dozen auxiliary herbs. Although he already possessed the main ingredient, the Dew-Reducing Grass, he still needed time to gather the auxiliary components. While these secondary ingredients were not spirit herbs, they were still valuable medicinal plants.

However, Ye Qin was not worried about these auxiliary components. The large apothecary run by the Herb Gathering Hall in Zhuqi County Town stocked a vast array of valuable medicinal herbs. With a considerable sum of Silver Leaves, he could purchase exactly what he needed directly from the shop. Even bypassing the Herb Gathering Hall’s apothecary, he could visit the trade bazaar, where many scattered medicinal materials, typically collected by martial artists, were also sold.

In the past, Ye Qin would have been at a complete loss over how to afford the Silver Leaves required to purchase these auxiliary herbs in bulk. Now, after acquiring the small courtyard, he still had a surplus of twenty Gold Leaves, enough to last him a substantial period.

The primary and auxiliary ingredients were not an issue. The most troublesome element was finding an alchemy furnace.

The method of immortal cultivation alchemy is entirely different from the pharmaceutical preparation methods used in the martial world. Martial world preparation involves slicing, pot boiling, decocting, and pill pressing to create powders and pills.

Refining a spirit elixir, however, necessitates the use of a sealed alchemy furnace for internal simmering.

This item was not typically needed by ordinary households, making it almost impossible to find in commercial shops—hence, it was naturally difficult to locate.

Ye Qin searched the entire city, nearly exhausting every shop in Zhuqi County Town, before finally locating an iron alchemy furnace in a general store.

This iron furnace rested on a tripod base; the body was stout and bulbous, the belly only about the size of a gourd, topped with an iron lid capable of sealing the interior. The exterior of the cauldron was heavily encrusted with black rust and was impressively heavy, weighing thirty to forty catties.

Seeing the furnace’s clumsy, ugly appearance, Ye Qin seriously doubted whether it could actually be used for alchemy.

The shopkeeper pounded his chest, guaranteeing its utility. He claimed the iron furnace had come from a dilapidated Daoist temple outside the county, specifically used for alchemy. When the old Daoist passed away, the young Daoist acolyte had sold it to the general store.

Ye Qin remained skeptical but willing to trust.

He lifted the lid and sniffed; sure enough, a potent, foul odor of medicinal compounds emanated from within. He had no idea what kind of pill had been refined in it previously. Since he couldn't find another furnace, he resolved to make do with this one for now.

After paying ten Silver Leaves, Ye Qin hauled the iron alchemy furnace back to his private courtyard.

With all the auxiliary herbs purchased, everything was prepared, and Ye Qin finally commenced refining his first batch of elixirs.

One measure of medicinal material—one Dew-Reducing Grass combined with the requisite auxiliary herbs—could yield one Dew-Reducing Pill.

During the refining process, the furnace could simmer a single batch to produce one spirit elixir, or several batches could be processed simultaneously to yield multiple elixirs. The requirements for refining this lowest-grade spirit elixir were not overly strict; apart from the primary ingredient, which was an incomparably precious spirit grass, the auxiliary herbs, fire, and apparatus were all mundane.

One simply needed to grind all the medicinal materials into powder, mix them with pure water collected from the stream, mash them into a liquid slurry, pour this into the furnace belly, affix the lid, build a fire to simmer, and slowly heat the furnace.

The most crucial aspect during the initial stage of alchemy was monitoring the fire’s intensity.

Ye Qin sat motionlessly beside the furnace, slowly adding dry twigs and branches, meticulously observing the size of the flame for a long half-hour.

The required flame size was extremely precise: initially, a relatively strong, fierce flame was needed to maintain simmering for a full half-hour. The heat had to be uniform, neither flaring up nor dying down, otherwise, the medicinal potency within the cauldron would fail to integrate. This was followed by an hour of nurturing the elixir over a low flame for coagulation.

Only by personally undertaking the refining process could one truly grasp the difficulty of alchemy.

Maintaining a steady furnace temperature for one or two hours required adding fuel and removing ash, inevitably leading to fluctuations in the flame size. How to sustain an even intensity was a major headache for Ye Qin.

To ensure the firewood burned with sufficient regularity, he took to splitting the large pile of wood into small fragments, only a few inches long, tossing them into the fire bit by bit, striving for a balanced and sustained heat—only then was the fire problem resolved.

The final step, and the most critical, was judging the precise moment to open the furnace and extract the finished product, which proved exceedingly difficult.

During the refining process, the medicinal liquid inside the furnace would automatically begin to congeal into an elixir.

If the furnace was opened too early, the medicinal power of the liquid would not have been fully activated, and the spirit elixir would not have fully coagulated—resulting in a semi-finished product. At this stage, the pill would possess only forty to fifty percent, or even twenty to thirty percent, of its intended potency, leading to severe under-efficacy and waste.

If the furnace was opened too late, the spirit elixir was more likely to scorch inside the vessel, directly turning into dross. This waste contained copious amounts of impurities and toxins. Such dross could not be ingested; not only would it offer no benefit to one’s cultivation, but it would also inflict serious harm on the body, usually forcing one to discard it with regret.

Mastering the exact moment of opening the furnace for elixir extraction required long-term practice in alchemy.

Let alone a novice like Ye Qin, even Nan Tianba, the patriarch of the Nan family and a veteran who had refined hundreds of batches of various elixirs with "rich" experience, dared not guarantee an extraction success rate exceeding thirty to forty percent.

In the first few days, Ye Qin ruined more than ten successive batches of elixirs, either due to uncontrolled fire or misjudging the extraction time. The result was a large accumulation of semi-finished products and dross. When the furnace was opened for the waste batches, a thick, acrid, burnt odor billowed out, choking Ye Qin until tears streamed down his face, making it nearly impossible for him to remain seated in the room.

It wasn't until several days later that he unexpectedly succeeded in refining a batch of spirit elixirs purely by chance. When he opened the furnace, a warm, refreshing, lung-cleansing fragrance filled the entire room, intoxicating him to the point of near trance.

Ye Qin was so overjoyed he could barely contain himself from jumping up. He carefully tipped the single, perfectly round, plump yellow spirit elixir, shimmering with spiritual energy, out of the iron furnace and grasped it, disregarding the heat.

The toil of the past few days had not been in vain; he had finally managed to refine one Dew-Reducing Pill. Now, he needed to see what its effects would be.

The method for consuming low-grade spirit elixirs was simple: swallow it directly, then meditate for about half a day, slowly refining the elixir within the abdomen to absorb its full medicinal power and convert it into immortal vital energy.

Ye Qin sat cross-legged on the rush mat before the alchemy furnace. After the spirit elixir cooled slightly, he swallowed the entire pill whole and began absorbing its medicinal properties.