In a few minutes, Alex reached the sect crater. It was past 10 am in the morning, so there were many people here already. However, no one was in the fighting stages and was here for either getting a new technique from the library, training in the Training Hall, or creating something in the Production hall.
Alex wanted to take pills so he beelined his way to the Production hall. There weren't as many people in the Production Hall as he had expected.
'Maybe I'm just too used to seeing every disciple from the sect come down to make pills back in Hong Wu sect,' he thought.
He walked up and got into a queue. Very soon, it was his turn. He took out his badge and handed it to the elder.
"What are you here for?" the elder asked.
"Alchemy," said Alex as he gave a short and to-the-point answer.
The elder walked to the wall behind him and placed Alex's badge on one of the square outlines in a giant wooden board. A small wooden-token-like object fell from the square where the elder had placed the badge.
He came back and handed the wooden token to Alex and said, "Room 26." He then started tending to the other person in the queue. Alex walked into the hall and looked at the doors around the hallway. They all had numbers in them.
He quickly found his way to the 26th door and saw a small hole in the place where a keyhole should be. Alex slid in the wooden token and with a CLANK, the door opened.
"Oh wow," Alex said as he saw the inside of the room. The room looked exactly the same as the rooms in Alchemy Hall back in the Hong Wu sect.
"Did they copy from Hong Wu Sect?" he wondered. "Or did Hong Wu sect copy from them?" but he didn't need to know that. He went and sat near the middle and put aside the black cauldron that was already there.
He took out his own cauldron and put it down on the fire. It still smelled a little like the Blood Improving Pill he made last time, so he gave it a simple swipe with his Qi to get rid of any remaining odors and powders.
Soon, he started making his different pills. He hadn't made one in about a week, so he started off with something easy. And once he got back his habit, he churned out pills after pills.
Unfortunately, none of the pills he made ever crossed the Heaven-grade threshold. However, they did come very close to it. Two of the pills ended up with 47% and one got 49%.
But that only happened when the pill did not split into 2 different pills. When the powders in the cauldron did split to form two pills, the harmony level would generally stay under 40% for each of the pills.
Only on rare occasions when his ingredients were the right age, or when they had the right amount of energy would he get pills with very high harmony even when it split.
After a few hours, he stopped making the pills as he was mentally fatigued and decided to take a few minutes of break. He looked at all the pills he had made by now.
"Oh wow, 26 pills in just a few hours? I have clearly exceeded my record from last time and I could still go for a few more pills if I wanted to," he thought.
"Is it because I broke through so many times that I have so much more stamina? " He wondered. "I should level up more," he thought. But as he thought that, he shuddered a little as he remembered the fight in his mind this morning.
'Just what was that? Now that I think about it, the aura from the monster was definitely the same as the aura from the monster's core I ate," he thought. "Does that mean that the monster only arrived after I ate it?"
"Could it be the monster was already inside the core and it only came out because I ate the pill? If so then how did I not get them from the other cores I ate until now?" he had unintentionally started thinking of it again.
"Wait for a second, the only difference between the core I ate today and the core I ate before then was that none of the monster's cores before were of the Organ tempering realm."
He waited for a few seconds and thought, "Should I try it again?"
He took out a random monster core from his bag and looked at it. It was a monster core from a Bone Tempering 8th realm monster. Without thinking he put it into his mouth and swallowed it.
Within seconds he got a notification.
"So little. Having too many similar strength cores does reduce its efficiency," he thought. Then he reached into his bag and took out another core. This time, it was a core from a monster in the Bone Tempering 9th Realm.
He took the core and put it in his mouth. Similar to every other time, he swallowed the core as if it were a pill and within a
"Urghh… it dropped by so much."
He then reached back into his storage bag and took out another core. This time, it was a core from an Organ Tempering 1st realm monster. As he did, a small fear started spurting from deep within him.
"God! Should I do this? What if there really is something inside here and I can't kill it this time." He started worrying. But, in the end, he still needed to know if what happened last time was a coincidence or the norm.
So, he mentally prepared himself, put the core into his mouth, and swallowed.