Chapter 141: Chapter 120 Research on the Elixir Method
Translator: 549690339
In fact, as early as six years ago, right after Lu Yuan, with the assistance of his disciples, had developed the Blood Jade Divine Medicine, he had a similar idea.
Could there be a way to develop an elixir that, just like the divine medicine, can enhance cultivation?
After all, in many martial arts novels, there are elixirs with similar effects— such as the Great and Minor Rejuvenating Elixirs. This world seems to be an Immortal Martial World, it is impossible for such things to not exist.
However, due to limitations in energy and resources, and considering that the recipe for elixirs with such effects are extremely rare, involving ingredients like the Blood Jade Centipede, a divine species variant, Lu Yuan eventually gave up the idea.
Divine blood variants like the Blood Jade Centipede are hard to come by, making them nearly impossible to duplicate.
But with Zhou Qing’s departure, this previously abandoned thought resurfaced in Lu Yuan’s mind.
“I don’t need to develop an elixir that has the exact same effect as the Blood Jade Divine Medicine right away. Even if the efficacy was one tenth, or even just one percent of the medicine, it would be acceptable to me.”
Lu Yuan was open-minded.
One Blood Jade Divine Medicine pill was equivalent to a year of his bitter cultivation. If an average person were to take it, it would be equivalent to four or five years of cultivation.
An elixir like this, even if it only has one percent of its medicinal effect, could equate to three to four days of his cultivation. For ordinary people, one pill could be worth half a month.
Lu Yuan knew that he was still at the martial stage and didn’t anticipate eating some Nine-Turn Golden Elixir and ascending directly to immortality.
Being able to increase his cultivation speed by three to four times was sufficient for him.
Food needs to be eaten one bite at a time, the journey has to be walked step by step.
Those elixirs with infinite mysteries could wait till he’s ready to cultivate immortality. It wouldn’t be too late by then.
For now, it was best to stay grounded and steadily build his strength.
Formulating elixirs wasn’t overly difficult for Lu Yuan.
After all, he was a man with an attribute panel, which was like a cheat code that removed any barriers in learning anything.
Over the years, he had been learning the medical skills from Zhou Qing, and Zhou Qing didn’t have anything to hold back. He had taught him everything about the Zhou family’s inherited medical skills.
Since he had a descendant of a medical aristocratic family as his tutor and there was no sky ceiling in a strict sense, Lu Yuan made speedy progress in learning medical skills.
Within a mere three to four years.
He exhausted all the knowledge Zhou Qing had. Later, when there was nothing more Zhou could teach, he took the initiative to study medical books.
Two years later, his medical skill surpassed that of Zhou Qing and reached a major success.
Lu Yuan felt that his current medical skills were not far from Dr. Zhou’s from the past.
Maybe even better.
With such medical skills, exploring the method of pill refining would, of course, not be too difficult.
However, while it was not difficult, it was not exceedingly easy either.
After all, there were several types of elixirs.
If we were talking about refining detoxifying elixirs or simple injury healing elixirs, Lu Yuan could easily do it. Not a problem!
Even some Qi replenishing elixirs were not a big deal.
But the kind of elixir that could increase the speed of cultivation, now that was a blind spot in his knowledge.
After all, cultivation involves the three treasures of essence, energy, and spirit. If you wish to increase the speed of cultivation, the elixir naturally has to involve these three and be able to produce a certain enhancing effect on them.
The reason why the Blood Jade Divine Medicine has this kind of medical effect is due to the divine blood lineage of the Blood Jade Centipede. That is a thing leaning towards immortal mythology, it’s not surprising that it has such an effect.
But for common medicinal herbs, to achieve this, how hard would that be?
In the beginning of pill refining.
Lu Yuan took the approach of improving and enhancing some of the auxiliary medicines he needed for cultivation, to see if it could increase the speed of cultivation.
But this plan was abandoned after being tested for a while.
Because those medicinal materials, after being adjusted and enhanced, either saw a decrease in the effects or developed defects that caused problems during cultivation, or the medicinal effects increased too strongly, resulting in toxicity and harming the body instead.
He later understood.
The formulations of his cultivation medicinal materials were a result of thousands of trials by the pioneers, leading to the current proportions.
The problems that he could think of would already have been considered by those of the past.
To rush for success and try to improve the formulations now to increase cultivation speed was purely underestimating the predecessors.
After extinguishing these thoughts, Lu Yuan began to think of other methods.
For example, using a variety of herbs that enhance the body’s essence and nourish the spirit to create elixirs for qi, essence, and spirit replenishment.
Refining this balanced tonic elixir naturally wouldn’t pose much problem.
And with his power, he didn’t have to worry about not being able to receive the tonics. No matter how much supplemental medicine he consumed, he could digest it.
But the practical effects of these tonics proved difficult to elaborate on.
The replenishment of Qi did work. After consuming dozens of tonic elixirs, Lu Yuan felt that his blood qi had indeed become more vigorous, even occasionally giving rise to the impulse to expend energy.
But these were just physical excitements, without significant stimulation of the soul.
The total amount of his spirit had reached its limit, and the efficiency of each day was fixed. The amount of spiritual consciousness he could separate to refine inner strength was just that fixed amount, it was impossible for it to suddenly explode.
It seemed that these ordinary elixirs could only work on the body and could not function on the mysterious spirit.
This result made Lu Yuan somewhat disheartened for a while.
After a period of time, the heavy blow to his confidence caused him to temporarily stop the medicine refinement experiments.
It was not until a few months later when he was reading a Taoist classic titled “True Monarch Bai Xiang’s Examination of Different Species” that he had a moment of inspiration.
“All things have spirits; the longer they persist, the more essence accumulates.
When essence is full, a spirit is born. Therefore, monsters and spirits in this world are mostly transformed from long-lasting objects.”
The meaning of these phrases is quite straightforward.
Everything in the world has spirit, thus the longer an organism lives, the more essence and energy it accumulates. Once this amount reached a certain level, a spirit would be born. Hence, monsters and spirits in the world are generally objects that have lived for a long time.
What Lu Yuan paid attention to was the part about – full of essence gives birth to spirit.
“My predicament lies in the fact that ordinary medicinal herbs can only enhance essence and qi but are unable to nurture spirit. As a result, pills made from ordinary medicinal herbs are unable to enhance cultivation.
If interpreted according to this Taoist scripture, objects with a longer lifespan have a fuller spirit.
In Taoist concepts, spirit is actually no different from the soul of humans.
Therefore, if I use medicinal materials that have been aged for at least a
hundred years or more to refine the elixir, it might indeed be possible.” Previously Lu Yuan hadn’t thought in this direction.
Firstly, because he lacked examples in this area and lacked guiding thoughts.
Secondly, medicinal materials that were centuries old were very expensive. Often, one ingredient would cost dozens or hundreds of silver tales. Even though his family was wealthy, they still couldn’t afford to waste money in such a manner.
But now, after reading the Taoist scripture and having the flash of insight, he felt as if a new door had opened, presenting a new direction.
That was… to spend money..
