Immature Thoughts from Back Then

Jiang Youfu had also provided plenty of spirit food from the Spirit Food Hall. However, because of Liu Qin’s condition, she could not consume much of it for the time being. Moreover, with her dantian shattered, the spirit food could not do much to help her at present.

Liao Pantu and Sun Yigao discussed the precise proportions for the pill formula. Based on Liu Qin’s physical condition, they also researched several other medicinal pills for recuperation.

As he looked over the finalized formulas in his hands, Liao Pantu suddenly seemed to think of something. He said to Sun Yigao, “Yigao, back when I was studying alchemy, I actually had an idea that was still rather immature.”

Sun Yigao, who had been taking notes, stopped writing and looked up. “Please, Master.”

Liao Pantu gently stroked the books before him twice and let out a soft sigh as he recalled the past.

“Back then, I ran into a bottleneck while studying alchemy. No matter how I refined the pills, I couldn’t get them to work, and I became rather discouraged. So I turned to studying other skills instead. While researching those other disciplines, I discovered that some of their principles might actually be interconnected.”

“It was then that I had a sudden thought. Could I combine other disciplines with alchemy and create entirely new medicinal pills?”

At this point, he could not help sighing.

“Unfortunately, I had plenty of theoretical knowledge in alchemy, but no practical skill whatsoever. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t successfully refine anything, so I was never able to prove whether my idea was feasible. Later, I became busy with cultivation and couldn’t spare the time or energy to continue the research. As the years passed, I gradually forgot about it.”

Hearing this, Sun Yigao thoughtfully said, “If your idea really produced results, Master, you would become the foremost alchemist in history.”

Over the years, as the Archive Master, Sun Yigao had read countless books in the Archive Pavilion. His understanding of the cultivation world as a whole was therefore quite comprehensive.

Naturally, he knew that, up to now, the other three arts of talisman crafting, formations, and artifact refinement had all developed through mutual interaction and integration. Alchemy, however, had always followed its own path. There had never been any example of it merging or interconnecting with another discipline.

Just as Sun Yigao had said, if Liao Pantu’s idea were successfully proven feasible and the resulting pills had excellent effects, then regardless of his actual skill at refining pills, Liao Pantu would undoubtedly secure the position of founding patriarch of a new school of alchemy.

Yet Liao Pantu merely gave a derisive laugh. He raised a hand and patted Sun Yigao on the shoulder.

“What are you thinking? It’s only an idea, and one that I thought I would never be able to verify. I’m telling you about it because I hope you’ll give it a try.”

“You’re my disciple. If you achieve something great in the future, wouldn’t that give me some status too?”

Sun Yigao smiled and nodded. “All right.”

The moment he agreed, Liao Pantu pulled a pile of jade slips from his soul-body and stacked them between the two of them.

“These contain some of the theories from my research over the years. I haven’t been able to put any of them into practice yet. For now, master and disciple can discuss and refine the ideas together. Once we’re more or less ready, we’ll give them a try!”

Judging by his appearance, this did not look like something he had suddenly remembered without any preparation.

Sun Yigao looked at the small mountain of jade slips piled before him, reaching all the way up to the tip of his nose, and could not help feeling amused.

This certainly didn’t look like the ‘immature idea’ his master had mentioned.

Liao Pantu eagerly picked up one of the jade slips and began explaining it to Sun Yigao.

In truth, this matter was not as distant or forgotten as he had claimed. Before being split into separate souls, he had continued conducting research on it from time to time.

There had only been a lengthy interruption when he was cultivating to break through to the Nascent Soul stage.

The reason he had never dragged Sun Yigao into trying it earlier was that all the precious research materials he had recorded in the past were stored in the portion of his soul-body that had remained at the Golden Core stage.

Liao Pantu had only recovered that portion of his soul-body a year ago. During the past year, he had been busy with everyone in the sect, dealing with all sorts of matters, while also tending to his small medicine-garden world.

That left him with little time to organize the items stored within his soul-body.

On top of that, his disciple Sun Yigao was busy as well.

And so, the matter had been delayed until now.

At long last, he could conduct experiments with his disciple!

All the ideas and theories he had accumulated over the years finally had a chance to be tested!

Thus, after master and disciple finalized the pill formulas for Liu Qin’s current recuperation, they carried their pile of jade slips to the archives room in the alchemy chamber and began immersing themselves in research. From time to time, they even ran next door to the talisman-crafting room to rummage through its materials.

Aside from going to Azure Cloud Peak to take turns teaching classes and completing the sect’s regular pill-production quota, they did nothing else.

They even began missing dinner, which they almost never skipped under normal circumstances. Every few days, they would hurry over for a meal, then immediately rush back to the alchemy chamber.

Although their behavior aroused some curiosity, no one thought there was anything wrong with it.

After all, they were not the only ones who had suddenly become busy during this period. Lin Xiao was busy too.

The people from the Artifact Refinement Hall and Formation Hall had also begun studying how to make the locking rings.

At this moment, in the Formation Hall, Mo Yuanjiao was holding the fifth formation diagram Lin Xiao had given them, his brows tightly furrowed as he studied it intently.

Although the locking ring was merely a small ring, the nested formations inside it—layered together like a set of nesting dolls—had thoroughly tormented everyone in the Formation Hall, with Mo Yuanjiao at the forefront.

The locking ring contained a total of forty-nine formations, large and small. Lin Xiao had already numbered each formation diagram according to the sequence in which they would later be stacked and assembled.

Before this, Mo Yuanjiao had already failed five times while attempting to inscribe the fifth formation diagram.

He stared fixedly at the diagram in his hands, pondering where exactly the problem lay…

Although they had separate diagrams for each formation, Mo Yuanjiao’s enthusiasm for studying formations was clearly extraordinary. He did not merely want to learn how to inscribe them; he also wanted to thoroughly understand the reason behind every formation pattern.

He could simply ask Lin Xiao, of course, but Mo Yuanjiao wanted to think it through on his own first. If there were still parts he could not understand, he could ask Lin Xiao afterward.

The others in the Formation Hall had divided themselves into three groups. In their respective places, they were all practicing the inscription of the first three formation diagrams, sweating profusely.

Mo Yuanjiao had spent the previous two days thoroughly studying those first three formation diagrams and had personally taught them to everyone in the Formation Hall.

The others only needed to follow along and practice.

Compared to studying the purpose behind every formation pattern, repeatedly practicing the inscriptions until they could produce stable, non-collapsing formations was a much simpler task.

Aside from the Four Arts Halls being busy, Jiang Youfu also had a great deal on his plate because of the sudden influx of disciples. His daily teaching duties alone were already quite demanding.

During this period, Jiang Youfu often left dinner at the Spirit Food Hall to his eldest disciple, Liu Shengsheng.

As for the spirit-field group, they had suddenly gained many helpers recently, and all the older members were brimming with enthusiasm as they shouldered their spirit hoes and went to clear new land.

Judging by their appearance, they seemed determined to cultivate every vacant patch of land within the Lingxian Sect into spirit fields and plant crops in all of them.

Fortunately, Lin Xiao hurriedly adjusted the sect’s grand formation and designated a large area behind the mountain for them. Otherwise, the several peaks beyond Azure Cloud Peak would probably all have been transformed into terraced fields.