Chapter 28: You've Already Failed Twice — What More Do You Want in Terms of Quality?

Elder Qiao had no time to explain. He shot forward and darted back into the main pavilion.

Elder Mu and Old Geng saw this and hurried after him.

When the three of them reached the alchemy chamber, they were stopped dead in their tracks by the scene before them.

The temperature inside the alchemy chamber was scorching. Flames and steam surged continuously from the small vents of the pill furnace.

Lin Xiao stood before the furnace, straining to maintain control, great beads of sweat evaporating off him almost as fast as they formed.

Inside the furnace came a clanging and rattling, and every so often it shook violently, sending tremors through the entire room.

"Old Qiao, is he… refining pills???" Elder Mu's eyes went wide.

He had witnessed plenty of master Alchemists at work, but a commotion like the one Lin Xiao was causing — that he had never seen before.

Old Geng's eyes flickered with equal bewilderment.

Could something actually come out of this???

"Stop playing dumb — surely you know what your own disciple is capable of. But wait — where's my pile of Night Spirit Leaves? And the Coldheart Fruits I left here? Holy shit, Lin Xiao, don't tell me you threw all of them in!!"

Elder Qiao let out a wail, looking as though he had been struck by lightning.

"Just a moment — the pill is almost ready!" Lin Xiao kept his full concentration on the furnace.

His expression was one of absolute focus.

He hadn't even noticed that Elder Mu and Old Geng had arrived.

Hearing Lin Xiao's words, Elder Qiao felt a pang of grief for his materials, yet was powerless to do anything. He fixed his gaze on the furnace, torn between anguish and anticipation.

The conflicting emotions were almost unbearable.

It wasn't that he hadn't wanted to put his materials away.

It was that even with his Storage Ring full to bursting, there had still been far too much to fit.

"Almost ready?! Old Qiao, tell me — what pill is the kid trying to refine? Why is there such a racket?" Elder Mu asked, thoroughly puzzled.

Elder Qiao shot Old Mu a sideways glance and squeezed out three words: "Seventh-grade pill formula!"

At that, both Old Geng and Elder Mu froze.

A seventh-grade pill formula?

Lin Xiao was refining a seventh-grade Pill??

That was absolutely absurd!

"Old Qiao, who are you trying to fool? Even if you attempted a seventh-grade pill formula yourself, the success rate would be — my disciple has never even touched Alchemy before. How could he possibly manage it!" Elder Mu looked utterly unconvinced.

Elder Qiao gave Old Mu a strange look.

Seeing that the man genuinely had no idea just how remarkable Lin Xiao was, his own astonishment deepened.

Where on earth had this kid come from?

He had kept his abilities hidden remarkably well.

"Twice — the kid has already failed twice. This is his third attempt at a seventh-grade pill formula. And let me tell you something else: he has nearly burned through every herb, spirit grass, and heavenly treasure on Azure Brush Peak." Elder Qiao said, seething.

Elder Mu and Old Geng were completely dumbstruck.

They could hardly believe their own ears.

"Old Mu, keep quiet — this is the critical moment!" Elder Qiao snapped, then fixed his eyes unblinkingly on the furnace.

Bang! Bang! — Hiss!

After one final violent shudder, the furnace gradually steadied and fell silent.

Then the flames within were fully withdrawn.

Lin Xiao let out a long breath, feeling as though his entire body was falling apart.

A seventh-grade pill formula — the difficulty was on a completely different level.

It was brutal.

With his current cultivation, it had truly been pushing things to the limit.

If he could reach the Wheel Sea Realm, it would certainly be far easier — he would never have failed twice in a row.

Cultivation…

After this, he absolutely had to focus on raising his cultivation.

"Hm?! Elder Mu? Old Geng? What are you two doing here?"

Only then did Lin Xiao notice with surprise that the two elders were standing right beside him.

"Could we not come? If we waited any longer, the deadline Old Geng and I agreed on would have passed!" Elder Mu said, looking displeased.

"Young friend Lin Xiao, you really do know how to waste things. Those materials of mine were incredibly hard to come by. I told you — a seventh-grade pill formula is still far too early for you. Why rush? Wait until you've cultivated to the late Wheel Sea Realm, then try — there's no hurry. Right now it's truly—"

Elder Qiao looked ready to weep.

Failed again.

The materials for a seventh-grade pill formula were all extraordinarily precious heavenly treasures, priceless and nearly impossible to find.

"Elder Qiao, this time it worked." Lin Xiao smiled.

"Sigh, how am I supposed to replace those materials next time — hm?? What did you say? It worked? What worked??" Elder Qiao had been mid-sentence when it suddenly hit him.

He felt his scalp explode and every hair on his body stand on end.

"The Profound Abyss Realm-Breaking Pill — it should have succeeded. At least one should have formed." Lin Xiao said with delight.

Though the furnace had not yet been opened, he had refined hundreds upon hundreds of batches over the past half-month. He could feel it.

Elder Qiao stood rooted to the spot.

The whiplash — from the depths of despair to the heights of elation — was almost too much to bear.

Beside him, Elder Mu and Old Geng, upon hearing the name of the pill, wore expressions of shock no less profound than Elder Qiao's.

A seventh-grade Pill — the Profound Abyss Realm-Breaking Pill??

Surely not. Surely not!!

That was what the kid had just been refining?

And he was saying it had succeeded?

Lin Xiao paid no attention to the three old men's stunned faces. He was already carefully opening the pill furnace.

His own heart was brimming with anticipation.

Having failed twice already, if he had simply followed the formula step by step a third time, the result would almost certainly have been another failure.

So on his third attempt, he had gone with his gut, haphazardly adding a heap of materials with similar medicinal properties and effects, resolved to go all in.

He hadn't expected that this gamble would pay off.

Fortune had finally smiled on him.

A pill had formed at last.

But as for its quality and efficacy — that he could not be certain of.

His cultivation was still lacking, after all.

The furnace opened.

A faint violet radiance spilled out.

Then a rich, enticing fragrance of Pill filled the entire room.

The three elders rushed to peer inside.

They could just make out two crystalline, translucent pills resting at the center of the furnace.

"Two pills!"

"They really formed — and there are two of them."

"These are Profound Abyss Realm-Breaking Pills!"

The three of them cried out in unison.

These were top-tier Pills capable of helping a cultivator break through to the Revolving Pill Realm — something countless people had dreamed of their entire lives.

Yet the difficulty of refining this Pill was the absolute ceiling among seventh-grade pill formulas.

Even an ordinary seventh-grade Alchemist would never dare claim they could guarantee a single pill from one furnace.

No one would dare.

On the path of cultivation, every step had its barrier.

Every Breakthrough to a new realm required shattering a layer of shackles.

And the step from the Perfected Wheel Sea Realm to the Revolving Pill Realm — that small step — was the nightmare of every cultivator.

It was a colossal bottleneck.

Throughout history, countless peerless geniuses of the highest order had been stuck at this very step, withering away without result, unable to shatter that bottleneck even unto death.

To break through this enormous bottleneck required luck, comprehension, Fortuitous Encounters, and more…

And the Profound Abyss Realm-Breaking Pill was precisely the supreme Pill that could increase the odds of shattering that bottleneck and advancing to the Revolving Pill Realm.

A low-grade Profound Abyss Realm-Breaking Pill could increase the odds by ten percent.

A mid-grade one, by twenty percent.

A high-grade one, by thirty percent.

As for a supreme-grade Profound Abyss Realm-Breaking Pill — no one knew.

Because almost no one had ever seen a supreme-grade Profound Abyss Realm-Breaking Pill.

A Pill of that caliber would never be put on display by anyone who possessed it.

"Old Qiao, hurry up and check — what quality did the kid manage to refine?" Elder Mu urged.

"He only succeeded on the third furnace. What quality do you expect?" Old Geng shot the other a sideways glance.

However, Elder Qiao did not answer.

Because his eyes had practically fallen out of his head.

That expression of utter disbelief was beyond description.

"A — a — a single-breath Pill Mist!!!"