Chapter 3218 — The Artificer and the Cauldron

Of course, the most important thing was that after all these back-and-forth commercial battles, the market demand for the first-rank automatic pill cauldron had already reached a state of extreme saturation. The gusher-style sales of before no longer existed.

Unless a sect took on new alchemist apprentices, or someone accidentally broke their cauldron, basically no one would be buying a pill cauldron anymore, so Han Jingyi simply stopped fighting for that market.

The company's crisis had been weathered for the time being, and her main energy was now devoted to research and development on the second-rank automatic pill cauldron.

But a second-rank automatic pill cauldron could not be completed overnight. At present there were only some theoretical inklings of it, and a vast amount of experimentation was still required. Moreover, this time the encryption technology had to be even more advanced, so there was still a rather long road ahead before it could be brought to market.

What Wei Zhao was thinking about now was how to raise Han Jingyi to the Heaven rank as quickly as possible. So long as Han Jingyi was a Heaven-rank expert, she would satisfy the conditions for refining third-rank pills, and should be able to refine Qi Condensation Pills. Of course, the most important problem of all was that Wei Zhao still had no third-rank pill cauldron. Han Jingyi could only simulate pill refinement; she could not carry out actual operations.

Although he had obtained a Divine Farmer Cauldron from You Panhu, it was broken and incomplete. He had originally thought he could obtain the imitation divine-artifact pill cauldron from the ancient tomb, but it had strangely vanished, so even if Han Jingyi could refine the pills, for the time being she had no cauldron to use.

At this point, Wei Zhao felt that he needed to go and research a third-rank pill cauldron himself. The first plan was to repair the Divine Farmer Cauldron. At Han Xiaohu's home, Wei Zhao had obtained a copy of the Fragmentary Manual of the Artificer's Art, and he had not yet studied this book carefully. According to its introduction, however, becoming an artificer was somewhat easier than becoming a caster: a caster required three attributes within the body, while an artificer needed only two. The current Wei Zhao was a cultivator of the five elements and seven attributes, among which were two void attributes and five solid attributes—more than enough to become an artificer.

The second plan was to find a way to get a third-rank pill cauldron from the Mystic Pill Sect. Wei Zhao could basically forget about the You family. Presumably the entire You family had only one or two third-rank pill cauldrons. Such things could only be forged by a caster, and the You family had no caster, so naturally they could not give their only cauldron to Wei Zhao. Unless Wei Zhao could offer them a benefit they could not refuse—but obviously, a benefit they could not refuse was not something Wei Zhao could give them either.

As for the third plan, it was to gather the materials for refining a third-rank pill cauldron and refine one himself. Wei Zhao was now a caster, so refining a third-rank pill cauldron should not be too great a problem.

As things stood, however, the first and second plans were more feasible. Wei Zhao had the Fragmentary Manual of the Artificer's Art in hand, so he could learn the art of the artificer and repair the Divine Farmer Cauldron. But he did not know what level of artificer would be required to repair the Divine Farmer Cauldron, nor whether he could find the corresponding repair materials.

As for the third plan, it was rather unrealistic. First, Wei Zhao did not know the forging method for a third-rank pill cauldron, had no corresponding reference material, and did not know what materials were needed. Moreover, the casting art Wei Zhao had learned so far was only for condensing the jade pendant space. What rank of caster that corresponded to, and whether he could refine a third-rank pill cauldron, were all unknowns.

After turning it over and over in his mind, Wei Zhao still took out the Fragmentary Manual of the Artificer's Art and began leafing through it. If this first method would not work, then he would have to look into the second.

The profession of artificer, like the ranks of a caster, was divided into four grades: Heaven, Earth, Mystic, and Yellow. The highest was the Heaven grade, the lowest the Yellow grade. Likewise, unlike the ranks of cultivators and alchemists, artificers and casters had only these four grades.

From this it appeared that artificers and casters came from the same lineage, and the two professions shared many similarities.

Opening the Fragmentary Manual of the Artificer's Art, Wei Zhao found explanations of the implements that could be repaired: a Yellow-grade artificer could repair first-rank divine weapons and sharp implements; a Mystic-grade artificer could repair second-rank divine weapons; an Earth-grade artificer could repair third-rank divine weapons; and a Heaven-grade artificer could repair fourth-rank divine weapons.

After that, however, the pages were blank, with only the words "fifth-rank divine weapons" and no indication of what kind of artificer could repair them. Now that he thought about it, the "fragmentary" in the Fragmentary Manual of the Artificer's Art meant that it was not a complete text—this was likely a fragment copied out from a complete compendium of the artificer's art.

Above the Heaven grade there were still the ranks of cultivators, which Wei Zhao already knew about and which everyone commonly called the "Heavenly Way." Perhaps only a Heavenly Way expert could repair fifth-rank divine weapons.

The introduction to first-rank divine weapons described them as weapons that Yellow-grade experts could use. Seeing this, Wei Zhao could not help but pause slightly—did Yellow-grade experts also have divine weapons they could use?

The explanations in this book quite overturned Wei Zhao's previous understanding. But then he thought: Han Xiaohu must have read this book—had he never had any doubts about it back then? At that thought, Wei Zhao dialed Han Xiaohu's number directly, intending to ask him point-blank.

"Boss." Han Xiaohu was somewhat puzzled by Wei Zhao's sudden call. "Has something happened?"

Things in East Sea City had been peaceful lately, and those hostile ancient forces had all temporarily lowered their flags and silenced their drums, so Han Xiaohu truly could not imagine what business Wei Zhao might have.

"Xiaopo, I want to ask you something," Wei Zhao said. "That Fragmentary Manual of the Artificer's Art I took from your Han family—you must have read it, right? There are some things in it I'd like to consult you about."

"Oh? What is it? I haven't read it myself, though I've learned a little about it from Grandfather," Han Xiaohu said, surprised that Wei Zhao would suddenly ask about this. "Boss, what did you want to ask?"