Old Five is a Goose.

Chapter 83 Another Breakthrough: A First-Rank Human Pill Master

After resting in place for half an hour, Mo Wuji felt better and stood up, wanting to find a safer place to figure out the situation.

Mo Wuji dragged the pill furnace with difficulty for less than two miles when he saw a torn corpse. He recognized the person as one of the seven pill refiners.

Logically, the strength of a Rank 3 Human Pill Refiner should exceed the Meridian Opening Realm, but Mo Wuji still saw the pill refiner's corpse here. This showed how difficult it was for him to survive the faulty transmission space.

Mo Wuji collected the common items from the pill refiner's body. He saw spirit stones among the pill refiner's possessions. The crystal-clear stones, rich in spiritual energy, were something Mo Wuji had dreamed of before, but now he couldn't even muster the energy for them. Then, he found some healing pills and swallowed them himself, before digging a pit and burying the pill refiner on the spot.

A Rank 3 Human Pill Refiner, a prestigious existence even in mortal empires, now died silently in such a place, making Mo Wuji feel even more the fragility of life in this world.

After consuming the healing pills from the Rank 3 Human Pill Refiner, Mo Wuji felt his fractured bones healing quickly. He was also marveling at how, compared to the epoch-making drug penicillin, the pills refined by pill refiners could only be described as heaven-defying. No matter how powerful penicillin was, it still needed time to recover. But pills were basically effective immediately.

If anyone told him that Western medicine was faster than traditional medicine, Mo Wuji would definitely spit in their face. Pills were all refined from medicinal materials, and whether they originated in China or not, Mo Wuji considered them traditional medicine.

After that, Mo Wuji didn't encounter a single living person, not even an ant.

Two days passed, and Mo Wuji's injuries gradually recovered. Just when he thought his entry into Sword Mountain was just this and nothing more, he saw a patch of vibrant green.

Mo Wuji almost sprinted all the way there, even ignoring the weight of the heavy pill furnace.

More than ten minutes later, Mo Wuji stood in this green valley. Only then did he understand that Gu Ran hadn't lied; this place was full of spiritual herbs.

Mo Wuji had read many introductions to spiritual herbs in order to learn pill refinement, and knew something about various spiritual herbs. But there were still many spiritual herbs here that he couldn't name. Their vibrant vitality gave him a sense of satisfaction and joy.

Yes, vibrant vitality.

When Mo Wuji thought of the words "vibrant vitality," he suddenly thought of the place he had just come from. If this place was full of vibrant vitality, then the place he had just passed through was a scene of lifelessness.

The same Sword Mountain, why was there a place of vibrant spiritual herbs and a barren place where even weeds didn't grow?

Mo Wuji calmed down and then realized something was wrong.

There was something strange at the border between this vibrant area and the area where he had just come from. The spiritual herbs at the edge of this area, full of spiritual herbs, seemed to be withering.

In an instant, Mo Wuji understood what was happening. The reason why the place where he was now was full of vibrant vitality was because the spread of withering hadn't reached the place where he was yet. As time passed, this place full of spiritual herbs would eventually become barren.

Although Mo Wuji didn't want the Sword Mountain of the Traceless Sword Sect to become barren, he knew his own limitations. With his current identity as a handyman disciple, there was nothing he could do. What's more, he didn't know what was waiting for him here.

Now that there were so many spiritual herbs, the most important thing he needed to do was to collect all these spiritual herbs and then find a place to practice how to extract the essence of the spiritual herbs.

Large patches of spiritual herbs were collected by Mo Wuji. By evening, Mo Wuji really couldn't carry any more. Only then did he find a natural cave in a valley and lived in it.

After resting overnight, Mo Wuji took out the flame stone he had found on the pill refiner and placed it under the pill furnace, beginning to extract the essence of the spiritual herbs.

Even though there were spiritual herbs everywhere, Mo Wuji was still careful and cautious when extracting. He knew that spiritual herbs were very precious. If he hadn't entered Sword Mountain, he would never have been able to be so extravagant, using a spiritual herb mountain to learn how to extract the essence of spiritual herbs.

Time passed day by day, and Mo Wuji cherished this opportunity, extracting the essence of different spiritual herbs every day. It took him three days to go from extracting with failure to extracting 80% of the essence of the spiritual herbs. And it took him eight days to go from extracting 80% essence to extracting 90% essence.

Then he couldn't advance any further. It seemed very, very difficult to extract the essence of the spiritual herbs to more than 90%.

In the extraction of spiritual herbs, the percentage of essence extracted meant the purity of the spiritual herbs. Eighty percent essence meant that the purity of the extracted spiritual herbs was 80%, and 90% meant that it was 90%.

Mo Wuji was following the extraction methods in that pill book. He knew that after extracting 90%, he couldn't improve any further. It wasn't because there was a problem with his extraction methods, but because his cultivation realm was too low. As long as his cultivation realm went up, his extraction of spiritual herbs could go up another level.

Even though he could only extract 90% essence, Mo Wuji still thought that the spiritual herbs he extracted were much purer than those of that Stone Pill Refiner. In Mo Wuji's opinion, Shi Jun's extraction of spiritual herbs was at most 60% to 70%.

Even with his initial lack of knowledge about pill refinement, he could see that the medicinal residue that Shi Jun discarded contained too much spiritual medicine residue. This was simply a waste.

And it wasn't just a waste. The higher the purity of the extracted medicine, the easier it was to refine pills. Not only was it easier to refine pills, but the quality of the refined pills was also higher.

No matter how much Shi Jun's pill refinement level improved, as long as his methods of extracting spiritual medicine didn't improve, it would be difficult for his pill refinement level to improve any further.

Mo Wuji knew that it would be a long process for him to improve his spiritual medicine extraction methods. He simply stopped practicing medicine extraction and began to cultivate while studying pill refinement. The spiritual energy here was abundant, and he didn't have to worry about being discovered for absorbing spiritual energy too violently. For Mo Wuji, he could open all his meridians and cultivate without any scruples.

The pill refinement methods in his pill book were completely different from Shi Jun's pill refinement process. The pill refinement in this pill book emphasized pill incantations and hand seals.

From lighting the flame to cleaning the pill furnace, to finishing refining the pill and collecting the pill, there were various hand seals to match.

Moreover, the pill incantations and hand seals in the pill book theory weren't fixed, but changed according to the characteristics of the pills and the characteristics of the spiritual herbs. This placed high demands on the pill refiner. Some pill refiners who couldn't comprehend this would probably only be able to mechanically imitate.

Mo Wuji deeply understood this point when he studied medicine. Anything that was fixed and unchanging didn't mean maintaining the status quo, but was always regressing.

It was just like ancient Chinese civilization. How much was lost in the dust of history? The reason was that it was fixed and unchanging. When a master taught his disciple, even if he didn't hide anything, it was difficult for the disciple to surpass the master, and he would definitely regress a bit. When the disciple taught another disciple, he would regress even more. To surpass the master, that was only for a very few people. What's more, most masters would hide something when teaching their disciples.

No matter how good something was, it would eventually disappear into history if it regressed like this.

Mo Wuji knew that this opportunity was extremely rare. Although he didn't know how to get out after a month, he didn't have time to consider that now. Since the sect leader said a month, then he definitely wouldn't be wrong.

There wouldn't be such a rich cultivation environment after going out, and there wouldn't be such a unique pill refinement environment. So Mo Wuji almost gave up his sleeping time, and besides frantically refining pills every day, he was also frantically cultivating. When he felt a little sleepy from refining pills, he would immediately start cultivating.

Cultivating and absorbing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth allowed him to maintain his energy with very little sleep.

Although there weren't many pill formulas in the pill book, every one of them was very concise in Mo Wuji's opinion. Not only were they suitable for learning pill refinement, but they also had a great effect on cultivators with low cultivation levels.

On the twentieth day after entering, Mo Wuji successfully refined the first batch of Rank 1 Human Spirit Pill, the Spirit Gathering Pill (Ju Ling Dan). This kind of pill was provided for cultivators in the Meridian Opening Realm for cultivation, and the effect was much better than the Qi Gathering Pill. On the twenty-first day after entering, Mo Wuji successfully refined the Rank 1 Human Spirit Pill, the Restoration Pill (Fu Yuan Dan). This was for cultivators to replenish their Yuan Qi, and it was also very useful to Mo Wuji.

Mo Wuji was in this state of frenzied cultivation and pill refinement, almost forgetting the passage of time. Until this day, the meridians throughout his body vibrated simultaneously, and a thick and powerful aura poured down from the top of his head, directly permeating his entire body. The feeling of being clear and transparent awakened Mo Wuji from that frenzied state.

He knew that he had unknowingly stepped into the third layer of the Meridian Opening Realm. Since he started cultivating, he had used less than two months to step into the third layer of the Meridian Opening Realm with a mortal root.

This wasn't what he was most satisfied with. What he was satisfied with was that in these less than two months, he had spent very little time cultivating, and he was also refining pills at the same time. Now, he was already a true Rank 1 Human Pill Refiner.

He used the Traceless Pill Book and the resources of Traceless Sword Mountain, spending nearly a month, crossing a height that many people couldn't cross in a lifetime.

Unfortunately, no matter what, he couldn't refine Rank 2 Human Spirit Pills.

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