Eventually, his time was up, and the most recent batch was a failure.
If any journeyman apothecary could observe what was happening, he would find it hard to believe. Almost any other person would have attempted at least dozens of batches of medicine within a month’s time, and would have succeeded in at least some of them.
Even if they only came up with one pill in the end, it would still count as a success.
After all, most people viewed medicine concocting as something extremely difficult. If that weren’t the case, then there would be more than a mere two master apothecaries in all of the Eastwood Continent.
Even journeyman apothecaries were not very common, and most of them didn’t have any hope of ever becoming master apothecaries.
Of course, the real reason for that was… most people didn’t have access to the resources which were needed to truly develop as a journeyman apothecary.
In the end, though, if anyone worked long enough at it, their chances of eventually becoming a master apothecary would be much greater. Therefore, most people believed that the best way to increase one’s success rate in medicine concocting was simply to practice a lot!
And that was why most people simply pursued practice.
After you got familiar enough with the process, your confidence in success would increase. Of course, simultaneously, journeyman apothecaries came to view failure as an ordinary thing. After a failure, one could just begin again, and thus slowly improve. That was especially true of the more ordinary medicinal pills. Ingredients for pills like that were not very expensive, and could be used as fuel for that hard work and practice.
However, Bai Xiaochun walked a different path than others. He went much slower, and after every failure, he would spend more time analyzing why he had failed than he had in the actual concocting process.
This had a lot to do with his caution. It would even be appropriate to call him scrupulous. Only a bit of that scrupulousness had come out during his time studying plants and vegetation. Now that he was making his first forray into medicine concocting, his scrupulous nature increased dramatically, becoming the most outstanding aspect.
Because of that scrupulousness, he was able to identify even more problem areas than the average person would. In fact, the number of problems that other people might identify couldn’t even compare. He thought and pondered the matter in ways that others wouldn’t even consider, and thus identified various fishy areas.
Because of his caution, even the slightest problem was something he would wish to control before he continued with any concocting. It was because of these reasons that he spent so much time thinking.
The month had passed; Bai Xiaochun’s hair was disheveled and his face was streaked with ash. Exhausted, he left the Medicine Concocting Pavilion and returned to his courtyard, where he sat there thinking and reviewing.
“There are still nine problem areas. Once I solve those problems, I should be able to continue with the medicine concocting.” Gritting his teeth, he sat there in his courtyard, eyes closed, analyzing the matter, occasionally taking a medicinal plant out to observe and study.
Half a month passed before he suddenly rushed out, spent the merit points, and entered the Medicine Concocting Pavilion again.
The fifth batch… was a failure!
After analyzing the matter for seven more days, he found more problems, solved them, and then tried again.
The sixth batch… was a failure!
His eyes were bright red. He spent twenty days contemplating the matter before trying a seventh batch.
Two hours into the process, no rumbling sounds could be heard. Instead, a medicinal aroma spread out, and Bai Xiaochun’s face lit up. There inside the pill furnace were two green medicinal pills. The seventh batch was a success!
He tried again, and the eighth batch… succeeded, producing three pills!
The ninth batch… succeed, producing five pills!
The tenth batch… also succeeded, However, in the end, only one pill appeared. It was not green, but rather, black. Furthermore, it emanated no medicinal aroma, but rather, different odd scent.
Even as Bai Xiaochun pondered the matter curiously, the entire Medicine Concocting Pavilion was thrown into an uproar.
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Chapter
41: The Effectiveness of Spirit Enhancemen
Chapter 41: The Effectiveness of Spirit Enhancement
There were no rats or mice on Fragrant Cloud Peak. Such things could not exist in a cultivation location such as this, not unless they were actually spirit creatures. However, ants were a common thing on the mountain.
Ants were an ordinary part of nature, and usually lived in the cracks and crevices of the boulders which could be all over the mountain. They didn’t cause problems for the cultivators, and were essentially just an ordinary part of mountain life. As such, few people paid them much attention.
Today, however, the disciples on duty around the Medicine Synthesizing Pavilion were shocked to find that innumerable ants were filing across the ground toward the pavilion itself.
The disciples on duty gasped; there were so many ants it was impossible to determine how many they were. The sight itself was enough to make their scalps go numb. “What’s… what’s going on!?”
At the same time, many of the disciples in the various pill-concocting workshops cried out in alarm, and the sound of exploding pill furnaces could be heard. Although the pill-concocting workshops were protected by spell formations, they were also built into the mountainside, which meant that the ants could easily get into them through the various tiny crevices that riddled the mountain.
All of them were heading toward one particular workshop.
That was of course the workshop occupied by Bai Xiaochun, who wore an expression of curiosity as he looked at a black medicinal pill. It was at about this time that he noticed the clamor outside, and suddenly realized that the workshop he was in happened to be filled with ants.
The ants almost seemed to have gone insane, and all of them were heading directly toward him.
“An ant apocalypse has struck Fragrant Cloud Peak!” Bai Xiaochun shrieked, leaping to his feet. Unexpectedly, even as Bai Xiaochun leaped to his feet, so did the ants, heading directly toward the black medicinal pill he held.
Bai Xiaochun’s scalp was completely numb, and the first thing he could think of to do was throw the medicinal pill away. Almost as soon as it left his hand, the ants changed directions, pouncing onto it.
The pill was instantly engulfed, transforming into a ball of ants, the sight of which caused the blood to drain from Bai Xiaochun’s face.
A moment later, the ant ball suddenly collapsed, and the ants scurried back into the cracks and crevices. No trace remained of the medicinal pill.
In fact, not an ant remained in the entire Medicine Synthesizing Pavilion. The ants had come quickly, and vanished just as quickly. Of course, many of the disciples who had lost the spirit medicines they were working on felt a bit depressed at what had happened, but there was nothing they could do about it. Furthermore, the disciples on duty, having determined that no major losses had occurred, decided not to report the strange incident.
Bai Xiaochun knew exactly why the ants had gone crazy, but as for everyone else, the only thing they saw was a mass of ants passing through.