Chapter 4559 — A Bath in Star Ink Essence
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 3
The entire refinement took a full day and night. Whether because the Divine Farmer's Cauldron could not quite bear the impact, or because he had put in two portions of spirit herbs at once, the cauldron gave out frequent humming vibrations throughout. Several times it shook with such violent frenzy that Wei Zhao thought the pill furnace was about to explode—after all, no such thing had happened during his previous attempt at the Embryo Condensing Golden Pill.
But there was nothing for it. Beyond gritting his teeth and pressing on, Wei Zhao had no choice.
Fortunately, the Divine Farmer's Cauldron held out to the very end, perilous but unscathed. When Han Jingyi's voice rang out from the tablet announcing the end of the refinement, Wei Zhao was drenched in sweat from head to toe. A whole day of fearing the worst had weighed on him harder than facing the tempering of the Five Elements Killing Qi. This was truly no work for a human being.
Letting out a long breath of turbid air, Wei Zhao eagerly opened the Divine Farmer's Cauldron. The spirit ginseng's distinctive fragrance wafted out to greet him, though compared with its original scent it now carried an added note of crisp freshness that gladdened the heart. And there, resting quietly within the cauldron, lay the freshly refined Embryo Condensing Golden Pills.
Seeing the completed Embryo Condensing Golden Pills in the cauldron, Wei Zhao breathed a sigh of relief—and at the same time his eyelids twitched in sheer astonishment. More precisely, he was both shocked and delighted: "How could there be three?"
The Embryo Condensing Golden Pills before him lacked the halo one would have imagined; their quality could only be called superior, not top-grade. Yet in quantity they gave Wei Zhao an enormous surprise—not the two he had expected, but three!
He had clearly put in only two slices of spirit ginseng, and the other supplementary herbs had likewise been only two portions, yet three Embryo Condensing Golden Pills had come out. No wonder there had been so many anomalies during the process; no wonder the quality had fallen short of the top grade he had hoped for. Producing three Embryo Condensing Golden Pills at once was already a stroke of tremendous luck. Had they all been top-grade as well, that truly would have defied all reason.
However it had come about, an extra Embryo Condensing Golden Pill was no bad thing. Wei Zhao's original bottom line had been a single pill; to end up with three was cause for elation beyond his hopes.
With only one Embryo Condensing Golden Pill, Wei Zhao would have felt somewhat uncertain about condensing his Nascent Soul, but now his worries were gone.
Next, Wei Zhao did not rush to begin condensing his Nascent Soul. Instead, he calmed his mind and settled his spirit, sitting cross-legged in meditation within the underground space beneath the Five-Venom Marsh. He kept at it for three full days and nights, and only once he was certain his essence, qi, and spirit had all reached their absolute peak did he slowly open his eyes.
When everything was ready, the first thing Wei Zhao did was not to take the Embryo Condensing Golden Pill directly, but to dig a pit right where he was—for no other purpose than to take a bath...
Not an ordinary bath, of course. For cultivators at the Golden Core stage, every pore of the body could be controlled at will; a brief pass of true qi left one spotless, and going a year or half a year without bathing was no matter at all. Wei Zhao ordinarily had little leisure for such indulgences, but today this bath he could not skip—because what he meant to bathe in was not water, but Star Ink Essence.