Second Time

Chapter 49 - Breakthroughs

"Your job will be alchemy," Shao Yue stated, standing in the barren second floor of the twins' pavilion.

Chen Qiuhua pointed to herself. "Um, I have water qi. I can't do alchemy."

"Not on your own," Shao Yue replied, taking an alchemy furnace out of her storage ring and setting it in the middle of the room. "Do you know the main steps of alchemy?"

Chen Chunhua answered, "You have to extract the essence from the herbs. Then, you heat and combine them. Finally, you solidify the pill, and you're done. Right?"

"More or less," Shao Yue confirmed. "What can go wrong in the first step?"

"If you use too much heat, you'll burn the essence and reduce its effectiveness," Chen Chunhua recited. "If you use too little, you won't extract it all."

"Then, here's a question." Shao Yue pulled out a stalk of a grade three herb. "How am I a grade five high-rank alchemist, when I also use water qi?"

Chen Chunhua furrowed her brows. "Do you have a contracted monster beast that helps you?"

"No, but good guess. Take a look."

A flash of blue light ran through the plant. It began to wither at a speed visible to the naked eye as small glistening drops were dragged out and gathered in Shao Yue's hand.

Chen Qiuhua understood. "You're using your water qi to extract the essence directly without having to worry about burning it."

"Correct." Shao Yue waved her hand and the dried herb, along with the extracted essence, were burned away to nothing in a blast of golden fire. "Now, the second step. Why is it difficult to heat and combine the essence?"

"You have to focus on both," Chen Chunhua replied. "If you focus too much on combining, then the heat will go out of control. If you focus too much on the heat, then it won't combine well."

"How can you get around this?"

Both sisters brought a hand to their chin in unison and thought about it.

Chen Qiuhua reached a decision first. "Chun'er heats it, while I combine it?"

"That's what I was thinking," Shao Yue replied. "Of course, you'd have to be perfectly in sync. The process will be as follows. Qiuhua extracts the essence, then you both work together to heat and combine the ingredients, and then Chunhua finishes the pill. Do you think you can do it?"

They both nodded without any hesitation.

"Good." Shao Yue gave them a storage ring. "This contains enough herbs to make twenty of every grade one pill along with the instructions and some bottles to store the pills. Foundation is extremely important, so pick one pill each day and make five of them. Once you've made all of them, start over from the top until you use all of the herbs. For the first week, I'll watch over and instruct you, and after that, you can come find me if you have questions."

They then jumped right into an alchemy lesson.

A month later, Shao Yue summoned her disciples (and Zhu Jiao) for the first time. Everyone gathered in the central pavilion where Cai Fei had prepared an elaborate meal. Slices of seared monster beast meat were piled in the center and drizzled with sauce. Several side dishes circled the table. Lin Xifeng brought some tea from the herb garden and poured everyone a cup.

Everyone spun the turntable and collected the dishes that interested them, digging in.

Xu Mingzhi's eyes widened. "This is delicious! Even the chefs at my family's manor couldn't make something so good."