Clan Rise: Starting as a Grandfather

Chapter 1159: Chapter 778: Refining the Jade Marrow Pill

“As for the fire vein~~”

Yang Zhenshan carefully sensed it, then his figure flickered, arriving in the mountains and forests to the east of the Spirit Source Land.

This place was almost at the edge of the Spirit Source Land, and there weren’t even any plants growing on the mountain, yet Yang Zhenshan could clearly feel that the fire spiritual energy here was several times denser than elsewhere.

He stood on the hillside, looking at the half of the mountain peak, lost in thought.

“Is this a volcano? Perhaps not, it might just be an underground fire vein.”

“Then how should one extract the earth fire?”

He thought for a moment, took out a seed of the Azure Dragon Vine, and then tossed it onto the ground.

In the next instant, the Azure Dragon Vine began to grow rapidly, under his control it didn’t grow on the surface, but burrowed underground.

The growing vine made the rocks underground emit a dull sound under its pressure.

Yang Zhenshan sat on the vine, channeling his mana into it, stimulating the vine to grow faster and stronger.

The thick vine was like a drill, continuously delving underground.

One zhang, two zhang, three zhang, ten zhang, a hundred zhang…

Until Yang Zhenshan’s mana was exhausted did it stop.

Controlling a vine to grow a hundred zhang was easy for Yang Zhenshan, but controlling it to grow underground for a hundred zhang was not easy, requiring him to expend a large amount of mana.

The depletion of mana was not a problem. Yang Zhenshan returned to the Spirit Spring hillside, took a jar of Hundred Fruit Brew, and gulped it down, then meditated above the Spirit Spring, recovering about seventy to eighty percent of his mana.

Then Yang Zhenshan returned to the fire vein and controlled the vine to grow again.

Repeating this several times, after the thick Azure Dragon Vine had delved more than three hundred zhang underground, Yang Zhenshan immediately felt a wave of scorching breath emanate out.

Then the Azure Dragon Vine he had stimulated to grow was turned to ash, as though it had melted like snow.

Yang Zhenshan was startled, his body leaping into the air.

In the next moment, a plume of flame burst out along the Azure Dragon Vine, soaring more than ten zhang, turning the surrounding vegetation to charcoal and the mountain rocks into lava.

“Damn, it’s this hot!”

“Will the volcano erupt?”

Yang Zhenshan looked worryingly at the spouting flame, but his worry was unnecessary; the earth fire did not trigger a volcanic eruption. Rather, it formed a constant tongue of flame, which then shrank from over ten zhang to three zhang, stabilizing.

“This works out well, though I still need to practice the Fire Control Skill!”

The Immortal Dao Alchemist’s essential skill is the Fire Control Skill. Martial Artist Alchemists can rely on flame arrays, but Immortal Dao Alchemists must possess strong fire control abilities.

In the alchemical heritage Yang Zhenshan obtained from the Ancient Relic Array, there was indeed a set of Fire Control Skills, so he didn’t need to search for fire control methods elsewhere.

Though he was cultivating the Qingmu Longevity Scripture, this did not hinder him from practicing the Fire Control Skill.

Wood generates fire, and cultivating a wood attribute technique actually aids in practicing the Fire Control Skill.

Of course, comparatively, cultivating a fire attribute technique would be more suited to fire control techniques.

But for Yang Zhenshan, as long as he could practice the Fire Control Skill, that was sufficient.

He had the elixir recipe, the medicinal herbs could be obtained, earth fire was available, and he could practice the Fire Control Skill. Now, Yang Zhenshan was just short of a pill furnace.

This wasn’t a difficult matter, dismantling the flame array from the existing alchemy furnace would make it usable.

Of course, such a pill furnace would be barely usable, possibly becoming obsolete after a short time.

The power of the earth fire was incomparable to the flame produced by the flame array.

Fortunately, Yang Zhenshan was only refining a first-order Jade Marrow Pill, so the requirements weren’t too stringent. As long as all the conditions were met, he could attempt the refining.

Through the Ji family, he bought the medicinal herbs unavailable in the Spirit Source Land from the Sea of Spirit and dismantled the flame array from a pill furnace, then began refining the Jade Marrow Pill on the mountain alongside Wang Mingzhe.

Although the Jade Marrow Pill was a first-order elixir, its refining difficulty far exceeded all the elixirs Yang Zhenshan had previously refined.

Moreover, this was Yang Zhenshan’s first time genuinely refining an Immortal Dao Elixir; there was much he truly needed to practice.

This included the handling of medicinal herbs, the use of the Fire Control Skill, the control of the earth fire, the handling of the pill furnace, sensing the changes in medicament properties within the furnace, and more.

Alchemy was a very tedious and difficult task, and refining Immortal Dao Elixirs was supremely challenging.

Yang Zhenshan and Wang Mingzhe, as master and apprentice, simply lived directly in this barren mountain, tirelessly researching the Jade Marrow Pill’s refinement every day.

Failure, failure, and more failure.

In the blink of an eye, two months passed. They refined over a hundred furnaces, consuming more than twenty thousand spirit stones worth of medicinal herbs, yet not a single elixir was produced.

Refining elixirs does not commence with burning the pill furnace, but begins with herb processing.

Prior to refining, different herbs require different processing methods.

For instance, the Jade Marrow Mushroom needed to be ground into powder beforehand, and it couldn’t be ground with stone tools; it had to be crushed into powder with pure force.

Likewise, the Green Jade Stone Powder could not be ground in advance; it must be ground within two hours before refining, otherwise the spiritual energy within would dissipate.

And the Mystical Peach had to be sun-dried before use.

The handling of various herbs cannot be done casually.

The alchemical arts of the Immortal Dao are vast, and the Immortal Dao’s elixirs are diverse, categorized into medicinal pills, made using various medicinal herbs, demon pills, using demon beast inner cores, and mineral pills, where the main ingredient is minerals, often with various minerals as ingredients.