"Uh..." Qin Yi looked at the raging fire in the room, completely puzzled. "How do I use this fire?"
"Everyone can practice different types of magic, summoning flames, lightning, and so on, just like the lightning technique you've used before," Liu Su explained. "But this kind of fire is just ordinary fire. No matter how high your cultivation or how good your spells are, it just makes the flames stronger without any special effects, and it's easy to break."
Qin Yi understood in an instant. "So I need to find a special fire seed, and then the spells I cast with it will have different effects than others?"
"Exactly. For example, there's the fire from heavenly tribulations, which burns the soul and cannot be stopped. If you have the chance to refine such fire seeds, you could use tribulation fire too. But the chances are slim, and with your current cultivation, you wouldn't be able to refine it anyway."
Qin Yi's first reaction was worry. "Then the fire from Ye Ling must be very special. It won't attract attention, right?"
Liu Su replied casually, "That's the bloodline of the Teng Snake, which has its own innate abilities. It can't be refined into a fire seed, so it's useless to others. Unless other snake types target its bloodline, it's not about the fire; it's a matter of bloodline conflict in the demon realm, which you will eventually face as a high-level bloodline inheritor."
"Um..." Qin Yi still felt a bit anxious. Would that idiot Ye Ling be able to handle the bloodline conflict?
Liu Su said, "Are you worried about whether your future son will inherit the Teng Snake bloodline?"
Qin Yi exclaimed, "!!!" The wolf tooth club fell silent, and Qin Yi felt that if it had eyes, it would probably be giving him a disdainful look.
"I don't mean it that way with Ye Ling!"
"Who knows?" Liu Su replied with a sneer.
"Perverted club... You just don’t understand me." Qin Yi awkwardly changed the subject. "So what kind of fire is this witch's fire?"
"Hmph." Liu Su accepted the change of topic but sounded uninterested. "This fire has about the same power against enemies as ordinary fire, but it has some special uses for refining items, especially significant for your alchemy. Plus, it’s a fire seed that you can actually try to digest with your current cultivation."
"Auxiliary fire..." Qin Yi didn’t look down on auxiliary items; he knew that sometimes these things were more valuable than sheer power. "But how does this witch have such a precious thing?"
"This type of fire seed is of a lower grade and can be cultivated. It's not extremely precious, but it is still somewhat rare," Liu Su said casually. "When you can find innate fires that cannot be cultivated, like chaotic fire, purgatory fire, or samadhi fire, then those would be truly valuable, hard to find anywhere."
Qin Yi shook his head. He never fantasized about such distant things. Instead, he was very interested in collecting this special fire seed, which reminded him of the fun of collecting rare items in games.
"How do I refine this?"
"I'll teach you a reverse fire technique... and you can follow this method for other fire seeds in the future."
Qin Yi was amazed at how much Liu Su knew. Besides not being able to use certain types of magic, she seemed to know almost everything else, making her seem more capable than some predecessors who traveled with computers and the internet.
The raging fire in the room slowly shrank under the technique until it became a small flame the size of a matchstick. Qin Yi waved his hand, and the flame jumped into his palm, swaying like it was dancing.
"I taught you the lightning technique before because it was most useful against the vulture. Now that you have this fire seed, you should focus on fire magic from now on," Liu Su said. "You've been busy and learning all sorts of things just to cope. Now that this matter is settled, it’s time to cultivate steadily."
Qin Yi sat cross-legged on the ground, watching the flame slowly enter his body. He whispered, "I just hope the trip to the demon city goes smoothly..."
Liu Su didn’t say anything, which implied she didn’t have much hope.
Qin Yi sighed, focused his mind, and guided the flame upward into his brow.
Outside was silent, but Qin Yi felt a loud "boom" as a cluster of flames rose in his mind, floating gently.
"Did it work?" Qin Yi asked, sounding strange.
"It worked," Liu Su replied, her tone even stranger.
"Your technique is amazing."
"..." The wolf tooth club shook, as if it wanted to hit someone.
The technique was indeed superior to similar ones... but Liu Su recalled that when she absorbed and refined various fire seeds and lightning techniques back in the day, it never took less than half an hour, and that was already considered talented. Absorbing fire so easily was unheard of; fire could burn you alive. It wasn’t like raising a maid, after all.
If this person wasn’t Qin Yi, Liu Su would have really wanted to knock him out.
"Go refine some pills," Liu Su said weakly, sounding like she had lost all hope.
...
Refining pills was a bit troublesome since the materials stored by the witch weren’t suitable. The items needed for witchcraft were quite different from those for Daoist practices. When Qin Yi entered the medicine room and saw the array of toads, swamp mud, human skin, and bone tiles, he felt utterly helpless.
In the end, he picked out some items to refine a type of pill called "Nourishing Yuan Pill," a seventh-grade pill that could quickly enhance Qin Yi's Qi cultivation. He also found a "Blood Cleansing Pill" that could help Ye Ling remove some impurities in her bloodline, aiding her in merging her bloodline.
Both pills were not high-grade and wasted some of the blood lotus's quality, but they were the most suitable for now.
As for the soul-nourishing medicine he originally wanted to refine for Liu Su, that was out of the question.
"It’s okay," Liu Su said easily. "You only need half a petal of this blood lotus for those two pills, which is enough to refine two batches. That will help you prepare for the trip to the demon city. We can find more good stuff there."
Qin Yi took the witch's alchemy furnace and started mixing the materials, asking, "So, besides continuing to nourish your soul, how will you restore your body?"
"It's too early to talk about that. I need to be able to separate my soul for a short time before I can consider rebuilding my body."
Separating the soul, in terms of regular cultivation, was like the Yang God leaving the body. If one could achieve a state where the Yang God could leave for long periods, they would be considered immortal, as the physical body would no longer matter. The Yang God could inhabit any vessel and cycle forever, which would be true immortality.
This was the dream of over ninety-nine percent of cultivators in the world, but for Liu Su, it was merely a restoration.
Qin Yi knew that reaching this level would take him an incredibly long time. The most troublesome part was that the medicines needed for refining the soul and spirit were all considered heavenly materials, much rarer and more precious than what he needed for Qi cultivation.
The soul-nourishing grass he found with Dong Hua was very low-grade, and Dong Hua didn’t recognize its value and didn’t take care of it well.
This witch had none at all.
With his current strength, getting even one was difficult.
Qin Yi hadn’t originally pursued Daoist practices for immortality. He was interested because it was intriguing; no one is curious about cultivation and doesn’t want to try it. It wasn’t about being powerful or wanting to dominate the world...
Now, he felt that even if it was just for Liu Su, he needed to make significant progress in his cultivation to help her get everything she needed.
Though Liu Su didn’t say it out loud, Qin Yi understood very well that no one would want to stay in the dark, lifeless wolf tooth club, silently watching the outside world.
Just thinking about that kind of life would drive him insane, and Liu Su had endured it for countless years.
As this thought crossed his mind, he quickly mixed the herbs. Qin Yi focused his mind and pointed his hand, causing the alchemical fire to rise.
"Wow..." Looking at the furnace fire, Qin Yi finally understood why Liu Su said this witch's fire was so special.
It was very stable.
The temperature of ordinary fire varies depending on where it is. Even fire produced by one's own magic is unstable and hard to control. For alchemists, adjusting the flames is a skill that takes a long time to master; a slight mistake could ruin the pills.
However, this fire maintained the same temperature no matter where it was. When you needed to adjust the temperature or concentrate the flame in a specific area, you only had to control your magic, making it infinitely easier.
Aside from its lack of power, this was indeed the dream fire for alchemists.
Qin Yi already had over a ninety percent success rate in refining ordinary pills, and even with a seventh-grade detox pill, he had a seventy to eighty percent success rate. But since he had never refined a seventh-grade pill before, he thought the success rate wouldn’t be very high; even fifty percent would be good.
But with this fire, Qin Yi was confident he could raise the success rate of refining a seventh-grade pill to eighty percent!
(End of Chapter)