You Are a Strong Basilisk

Perhaps it was the motivating words Qin Ran had casually spoken, or perhaps it was the nourishing effect of the Guardian Mountain Formation, or maybe it was just because Long Qiqi had gained new enlightenment herself, but in any case, on this day there was cause for celebration - Long Qiqi had finally successfully sensed her qi!

Although it had taken over three months...

That morning, Qin Ran was sitting in a chair in the dining room reading a book and eating sugared beans, when Long Qiqi came bouncing in, beaming from ear to ear, seemingly unable to stop smiling.

As she was rummaging around in the fridge, Qin Ran noticed her barely concealed delight and, having guessed what might have happened, asked:

"You've sensed your qi?"

Long Qiqi could hardly contain her smile and nodded.

"Congratulations!" Qin Ran was also happy for the rather dim-witted young snake demon, watching her a little longer and saying, "Go ahead and laugh if you want! Holding it in could be bad for you..."

Long Qiqi shot him a white-eyed glance over her shoulder, but still did not laugh out loud. Instead, she just hummed a disjointed little tune to herself as she went to fry some eggs.

There were currently five people living on Dan Peak. Long Qiqi was the last to set out on the path of cultivation, so the major news of her successful qi perception...

did not cause much of a stir, with even Qin Ran being the only one aware of it - everyone else was far too busy.

Li Shiyin was focused on honing her skills and tempering her Qi Vortex, aiming to advance to the intermediate Foundation Establishment stage.

Meanwhile, Chasing the Wind had been serving as Li Shiyin's sparring partner these past few days. In order to help Li Shiyin cultivate the one sword technique she was trying to master, poor Chasing the Wind had sustained quite a few injuries over the past couple of days.

Tutan Youyou was still in the fox hole reading books. Except for when the Guardian Mountain Formation was activated last time, causing enough disturbance for her to pop her head out and take a look, she had not been seen on Dan Peak at any other time. It was unclear whether or not she had finished reading Principles of Formations, or if she had started laying formations yet.

However, Long Qiqi's delight only lasted a single day before evaporating - Qin Ran had decided it was time for her to start learning alchemy. Now that she could sense qi and control magic power within her body, she should be able to control earthly fire and begin studying pill refinement.

From this perspective, it would seem Qin Ran still retained some humanity.

"Given your circumstances, I've decided to start by teaching you how to refine Body Tempering Pills," said Qin Ran within the Earth Flame Chamber, placing down piles of medicinal ingredients before Long Qiqi and saying:

"You've sensed your qi for a day now, so you must understand to some degree how qi flows within your body. Don't you feel at times there are blockages when circulating your qi? Don't you feel your meridians getting obstructed at times, preventing the passage of qi? This is due to your terrible aptitude - there are impurities inside your meridians blocking the way for qi, preventing smooth circulation. This will seriously impact your cultivation..."

"Body Tempering Pill helps temper the physique and has very good effects in improving these types of situations."

Long Qiqi looked back at Qin Ran in disbelief and asked:

"I refine it myself?"

Come on Qin Ran, you know my situation fully well, yet you still want me to refine it myself? Aren't you in too much of a hurry? It's already started affecting my cultivation!

"You know your own body best," Qin Ran explained. "Based on the specifics of your personal condition, you can adjust the medicinal proportions of the pill formula - only then will the resulting pill medicine be best suited for you. I've taught you all the medicinal theory, whether or not you can accomplish it depends on your own efforts.

"For now, let me teach you the pill formula for Body Tempering Pill."

Long Qiqi looked at Qin Ran for a bit, opened and closed her little mouth, swallowing back some choice words she wanted to say.

She knew fully well Qin Ran was playing favorites! Did Li Shiyin prepare her own medicinal baths? Were the pills Li Shiyin took for Foundation Establishment and Qi Condensation refined by herself? Were all the injury healing pills Li Shiyin used self-refined?!

Humph! If I want to use pills, I'll have to refine them myself!

"The Body Tempering Pill mainly uses the tempering flower as its core ingredient along with heart water to extract its essence, then other supplementary ingredients are added to stimulate the effects of the heart water..." said Qin Ran, handing over a hand-copied pill formula to Long Qiqi and explaining in detail the key points about the Body Tempering Pill:

"Because heart water is an integral ingredient, water-based refining is optimal. But you cultivate a fire-based cultivation technique, so the most important thing for you is stimulating the heart water - figuring out how to fuse it with the fire-tempered tempering flower..."

When it came to Long Qiqi, Qin Ran did not need to liven things up like he did with Li Shiyin to keep her attention. Long Qiqi had enough basics to understand things, he just needed to lay out the hard facts and key points in a dry, matter-of-fact way... spitting out everything all at once.

From Qin Ran's perspective, Long Qiqi was not his disciple to begin with, so what he was doing for her already went above and beyond.

From Long Qiqi's viewpoint... she had no choice but to understand, because given her inferior aptitude and mere snake demon identity, alchemist was likely her best shot at advancing upwards.

She must understand this, it was the opportunity fate had delivered to her.

...Hello challenger from the primeval forest.

After covering all the key points, Qin Ran left the medicinal ingredients behind and promptly took his leave, not even showing Long Qiqi an example refinement.

Long Qiqi stood inside the Earth Flame Chamber, watching as Qin Ran departed. It took her quite a while to return to her senses.

She took a deep breath, picked up the formula and notes, and began meticulously studying while also carefully examining each and every medicinal ingredient.

Only when she could fully recite the Body Tempering Pill formula from memory did she fetch the pill refinement records and prepare to start refining.

Yet it was at this time she noticed one issue - she was just a seven or eight year old little girl, while the pill furnace in the center of the Earth Flame Chamber was over two heads taller than she was.

Clutching tempering flowers in one hand and heart water in the other, she gazed up at the top of the furnace, momentarily at a loss over how to start pill refinement... Just how exactly could she ignite this furnace being so tiny?

After standing froze in place for quite some time, she finally sighed. She put down the medicinal ingredients, turned around into giant serpent form, and used her body to bind and open up the furnace opening.

After getting the furnace open, she changed back into human form, grabbed a chair to stand on and enable her tiny self to throw ingredients into the furnace one by one. Then she pressed the pill refinement record up against the furnace edge to keep notes, changed back into snake form to get the lid back on, then turned human again to direct her magic power and manipulate the earthly flames and officially commence pill production.

After all the fussing back and forth, she finally began refining pills, but... she had only just successfully sensed her qi yesterday, the qi within her was still extremely weak. It was in no way sufficient to control earthly flames.

That earthly fire was extremely unruly, refusing to obey her control.

She consecutively botched several batches of pills...

Fortunately she had the foresight not to use the core tempering flowers and heart water, instead just practicing with some common medicinal ingredients.

When yet another batch of pills ended up scorched to a crisp, she peered out the window to discover the sky outside had darkened at some point without her noticing.

She emerged from the Earth Flame Chamber and came to the research building exterior. Out in the pitch black sky, she vaguely made out a very slender waning crescent moon.

She slowly squatted down there in front of the research building, hugging her tiny self while gazing up at the sky.

The vast sky represented her future - a vast black expanse; while that slender waning crescent represented her hope, barely visible.

She felt the darkness bearing down on her in its entirety, leaving her feeling helpless and wanting to cry.

So she wept.

Cultivation was so bitter, so difficult.

After a nice cathartic cry, she tilted her head and happened to notice there were still lights on over in the direction of the wooden houses. Beams of starlight also trickled down around the building where Li Shiyin cultivated, while bright lamplight shone out from Qin Ran's study.

...Turns out she was not the only one struggling so hard. Those so-called top talents and geniuses were still persevering as well.

"I am Long Qiqi, I will become a dragon!" She wiped the tear trails off her face and headed back once more to the Earth Flame Chamber.