Chapter 17

Pill Practice

I wanted to try refining my first pill, but it was not a good idea to skip right to that level. It takes a higher Grade of herbs, that we don't even have yet. More importantly, there are skills to practice and nuances to learn. It's like giving someone a motorcycle when they haven't even tried riding a bike with its training wheels on. Crashing before they get up to speed is the best result you could expect.

My daily lessons at this time consist of 1 hour of translating, and one hour of lessons each morning. Then again in the mid to late afternoon. Noontime, evening and nights are free. But this came with a bit of culture shock. What everyone else here calls one hour, I would have called 2. Thus in a 24 hour cycle I have 2 blocks of 4 hours of studies.

As good as lessons are, they are no match for on-paws actual experience. So I spend much of my free time either searching for the herbs necessary to practice with, or growing them from seed, accelerated by Barrier use. It worked about as well as I expected. For enhancing the Qi of the herbs, it worked flawlessly. However the plants still need time to mature. One fortuitous benefit is that after Qi enhancing, they mature at a faster rate. Though it will still be a month or two before any of the seedlings are useful even as a 10-year herb.

So as I gather the necessary herbs from the wilds, with Qi enhancing as needed, I can try the medicinal paste recipes. The first one I am able to try, after a full week of gathering, is 'blood clotting paste'. This is a medicine with a long shelf life which is used to close wounds and stop bleeding.

The first step is to ready the pill cauldron by heating it with Qi flames. This is important as normal flames would simply burn away the whole herb, but Qi flames or fire type treasures only burn away the impurities from the herbs. Allowing the Qi and the medicinal qualities to remain. The hotter the flames, the more impurities they burn away. And the better Grade the herbs, the more they must be heated to burn the impurities away. But there is a limit, as too much heat for a given herb will destroy its benefits. Doing so often results in an explosion, but otherwise will certainly cause that attempt to fail.

So first, I lay out the herbs in the order they will be used. Second I heat the pill cauldron a bit with my dancing Qi flames. Each of the herbs needs a different amount of heat applied. Not just because of the type of herb, but also the quality and quantity of their Qi. Adjusting the Qi flames to accomodate this is only mildly taxing. The real problem is correctly guessing the right amount.

Unsurprisingly I make a mistake. Surprisingly it only fizzles out instead of exploding. This was why pill cauldrons are build so sturdy, and with an easily removeable lid on top. But more surprisingly, I made it halfway through the recipe before that happened.

Hung Lo) "It's rare for a first-timer to make it past 3 herbs, but you got to the sixth."

Fox) 'If I could make sure all the herbs have the same amount of Qi, then I would only have to adjust the flames to match the type of herb.'

H) "If anyone could do that, they would be a rare prodigy among the herbalist and pill communities."

Khan) 'If anyone could do that, it's this little cub right here.'

F) 'You've been watching me train again.' Hung Lo's eyes shimmer with excitement.

. . .

The next week, on my third attempt I finally succeeded. This time with a different recipe as finding herbs out in the forest is kinda random.

F) 'Teacher, at what point is someone considered a prodigy in pills?'

H) "A prodigy . . is someone who succeeds with a paste within 3 months of when they start learning. Or with a pill within 15 months."

F) 'So 2 weeks for a paste is probably a bit fast. What is the record?'

H) " . . Five."

F) 'And how useful is this "nourishing paste"?'

H) "It can improve with the grade, but generally, one teaspoon of this paste is worth 100 kilograms of normal food."

F) 'Does that mean if I eat it, I would fill up until I burst?'

H) "No, it will merely replace your need for food until it runs out. For you that would be a few months, while for your 'uncle', about 9 days."

F) 'But he eats more than that.'

H) "I said it improves with grade. This batch is worth 200kg per spoon."

F) 'So how does Grade improve for pills and such?'

H) "It mostly has to do with Qi and medicinal energy. If you use herbs of better quality, for example 20-year instead of 10-year, then there is more medicine and Qi to make your pastes with. However, using 100-year or better herbs for a paste recipe would be a waste, as they could be used for pills instead. Greater skill in refining also helps as you lose less of them from burning away or simply disperse in the wind. This is also important in reducing the amount of impurities, also known as pill poison."

. . .

Over the third week I refined "nourishing paste" successfully twice more, and finally "blood clotting paste" once. At the end of the week, I had found enough Grade 1 herbs to try one of the actual pill recipes, "Azure Lotus Pill". Mostly by finding the necessary herbs and Qi enhancing them through Barrier cultivation until each one was a 200-year herb. It was no surprise to anyone that I failed, but of the 17 herbs, only 3 were left at that time. Unfortunately this time there was an explosion. Almost burned my whiskers off, but a defensive Barrier prevented that.

It's not that difficult to compare the Qi in various herbs using my [Dragon's Eye], but knowing how much it is quantitatively is currently beyond me. This is kinda like measuring the temperature of things using mercury thermometers without any markings. '#3 is exactly the same as #7.' "But how hot is it?" 'Not a clue.'

There is one important distinction between myself and other pill refiners. They need to use Qi flames to burn away the impurities. I can just separate them out with a Barrier, leaving behind only the pure, PURE medicine. This will make refining pills too much easier that it's ludicrous. I should still burn away as much as I can first, because it stinks enough to wake the snorl∗x. Also because it improves the quality and amount of medicinal Qi.

But with this Hung Lo is convinced I learned everything I need from him.