**Chapter 77: Planning**
Yet, in the cultivation system, after the seventh layer of Qi Refinement came the eighth and ninth layers before Foundation Establishment.
Wizards, however, jumped directly from Third-Level Apprentice to First-Level Wizard!
This meant the gap between a wizard apprentice and a First-Level Wizard was immense.
The so-called “advancement potion” was likely essential to bridge this vast gap, its potency undoubtedly formidable, forcibly elevating one’s life essence, which explained its side effects.
“If the gap is this significant, the damage from the advancement potion is probably far greater than I anticipated…” Jie Ming mused.
Most critically, advancing to a First-Level Wizard had a success rate.
If luck was poor and the advancement failed, the damage from the potion wouldn’t reverse.
Jie Ming had no desire to harm his foundation for the sake of advancement, especially if it affected his Qi Refinement cultivation—that would be a poor trade.
“For now, the best approach is to reach Foundation Establishment before advancing to a First-Level Wizard.”
With the life essence and physical strength of the Foundation Establishment stage, the damage from the advancement potion would be negligible.
Moreover, a similar life essence would significantly reduce the risks of advancing to a First-Level Wizard, increasing the success rate.
“So… I need to find a way to get a Foundation Establishment Pill?”
Jie Ming was confident in his cultivation talent.
Though reaching the first layer of Qi Refinement had taken time, once he discovered how to harness elemental forces to supplement himself, his progress had been meteoric.
In just five years, he’d gone from the first to the seventh layer of Qi Refinement, with no noticeable bottlenecks.
He was confident he could successfully reach Foundation Establishment without a pill, but the pill’s primary role was to stabilize a cultivator’s state during advancement. Having one as a safeguard would be ideal.
“This means I’ll need to start learning elixir crafting and potion-making now.”
To craft a Foundation Establishment Pill in the wizard world, the original materials wouldn’t be available, so substitutes would be necessary.
To achieve this, he’d need to study both elixir crafting and potion-making.
If he gained a deep understanding of both, Jie Ming hoped to find a way to reduce the advancement potion’s damage using cultivation methods.
Of course, learning potion-making wasn’t just for this—it had another, more significant purpose.
“It’s also a foundation for my future advancement to a First-Level Wizard.”
The third key to becoming a First-Level Wizard was constructing the Ring of Truth in the mental sea.
This was the hallmark of a First-Level Wizard, condensing the nine truth runes in the mental sea into a ring with a special structure, granting greater power and binding it to the wizard’s core soul.
The Magic Network mentioned a trick: if the truth runes chosen for the Ring of Truth could form a complete spell model, it would significantly reduce the difficulty of constructing the ring.
This was because a spell model was a complete conceptual system, making the ring’s structure more stable and harmonious, thus lowering the risks and difficulty of advancement.
Of the truth runes Jie Ming had chosen, Alchemy Technique and Analysis Technique had already been successfully constructed, but the foundational spell of potion-making—Extraction Technique—had made no progress.
After all, he’d focused on runic artifacts and magical treasures, somewhat neglecting potion-making.
Seizing this opportunity, Jie Ming decided it was time to expand his studies into potion-making and elixir crafting.
With the plan set, he wasted no time and took action.
He began by accessing the academy’s Magic Network, gathering extensive knowledge on potion-making.
From basic material identification and property classification to potion ratios and crafting techniques.
With his wealth of resources, Jie Ming never hesitated to practice.
Each time he studied potion-making, he attempted crafting basic potions to reinforce his learning and accelerate progress.
This hands-on approach made his learning highly efficient.
Though it resulted in a staggering failure rate—enough to bankrupt an ordinary apprentice—Jie Ming’s point reserves made these costs insignificant.
While studying potion-making, he also spent time daily at the Great Dao Book Pavilion learning elixir crafting.
Unlike potion-making, which emphasized external tools and precise ratios, cultivation’s elixir crafting focused on the alchemist’s control of true fire, guidance with divine sense, and deep understanding of medicinal principles.
This art didn’t provide fixed recipes or methods but detailed the growth environments, energy compositions, yin-yang and five-element properties of spiritual herbs, medicines, and minerals, and their interactions.
It resembled traditional Chinese medicine from his past life, but with additional tests only cultivators could perform.
Each elixir crafting technique even recommended books on herbology and mineral properties.
Compared to potion-making, elixir crafting was more like a philosophy—an art of life, nature, and universal laws.
Though this increased its difficulty, for Jie Ming, this was a boon.
He studied these to understand the deeper principles of material interactions, the essence of energy transformation, and how to harmonize conflicting properties at a microscopic level.
Elixir crafting perfectly filled this knowledge gap.
In potion-making, such knowledge was accessible only to high-tier wizards.
The study of potion-making and elixir crafting flowed like two rivers, converging in Jie Ming’s knowledge system.
Through them, he gained a deeper, transformative understanding of elements, energy, vitality, and material essence.
This insight, in turn, improved his runic artifacts.
He discovered that by better grasping a material’s “medicinal nature”—its internal energy flow and activity—he could better integrate runic arrays, enhancing artifact stability, energy conduction, and even slightly reducing consumption.
These practical results further deepened his understanding, immersing Jie Ming in an ocean of knowledge.