Chapter 57: What's with all this nonsense?

  Hard work pays off for those who are diligent, and two days later, Lin Feng finally advanced to the fifth layer of the Qi Refining stage. Although the difference between the fourth and fifth layers is only one level, the spiritual energy within a cultivator's body differs by almost double. In other words, a fifth-layer cultivator's spiritual power is roughly twice as strong as that of a fourth-layer cultivator. Furthermore, their divine sense also undergoes significant growth, although there are no specific numbers to quantify it, Lin Feng can feel the enhancement of his divine sense through the jade pendant.

  After Lin Feng's breakthrough, the first thing he wanted to do was not to refine pills, but to search for books all over the world. One was about spiritual medicine books, and the other was about books on walking fire during the Qi Refining stage. Unfortunately, after searching through all possible places in Yaoguang City, he couldn't find what he needed. There were indeed books on walking fire, but except for popularized versions, there were very few detailed descriptions. He finally found one or two books that specifically introduced the situation of walking fire into madness, but they were all about the situations that might occur to cultivators above the Golden Dan stage. The price was also very expensive, and it would cost thousands of spirit stones to copy a single book with a jade slip, which made Lin Feng hesitant.

  There are many books introducing spiritual medicine, and they're not expensive. However, the content is similar to that of the Spiritual Plant Compendium. Lin Feng bought a few copied versions but didn't find any introduction about the spiritual medicine in the Panlong Ring. Having no other choice, he temporarily put this issue aside, waiting for another opportunity to investigate further.

  The next thing to do is to refine the elixir, of course not using his own furnace, which would be slow and waste spiritual stones. The Treasure Hall became the first choice. After more than half a month, he saw Zhu Yan again, who still had a calm and leisurely appearance, but when he saw Lin Feng appear, a rare smile appeared on his face.

  "Lin Dao, it's been a few days and your cultivation has advanced even further, congratulations are in order!" Zhu Yan was indeed a foundation-building cultivator, with just one glance, he could see that Lin Feng had made a breakthrough.

  "Thank you, senior. I came to your esteemed hall today because I wanted to find a dan room for alchemy, the kind that can be used freely at any time, as you mentioned last time." After finishing speaking, Lin Feng very readily took out two bottles of medium-grade Qi-tonifying Dan. Since he had already made up his mind, he didn't hesitate anymore. He got straight to the point because he really didn't want to talk more with this senior who looked dignified but was actually cunning like a fox. He was afraid that if he said too much, he would be cheated again and reveal more than he should, just like last time when he almost revealed his true abilities. However, in order to deal with Baibao Hall regarding dan medicine, he couldn't avoid this cunning senior because all matters related to spiritual medicine and alchemy in Baibao Hall were under his management.

  "Ah, not bad, good Dan, this Dan's color is just the level of a primary alchemy master, Lin Daoyou's future in alchemy is boundless!" Zhu Yan seemed to have seen Lin Feng and suddenly became talkative, completely different from his usual taciturn self.

  Lin Feng didn't want to say much, but since his senior spoke, he couldn't ignore him. "Thank you, Senior, for your praise. My humble skills are not worthy of your attention."

  "Haha! Alright, I'll take these two bottles. At 20 spirit stones per pill, that's a total of 400 spirit stones. Lin fellow daoist, do you want spirit stones or medicinal materials?"

  Seeing Zhu Yan didn't ask any more questions, Lin Feng let out a big sigh of relief and said: "I'll be refining a lot of pills recently, so just exchange everything for the materials needed for Qi Gathering Pills. I need 50 portions in total." After finishing speaking, Lin Feng took out his last few bottles of low-grade pills. The 50 portions of materials required over 1,000 spirit stones, and he didn't have enough on him, so he could only use spirit pills as compensation.

  These trivial matters naturally didn't require Zhu Yan to personally take action. With a single order, someone would bring the materials and take away the elixir, completing the transaction quickly. At this time, Zhu Yan smiled and handed him a jade token, saying: "This jade token is your proof of entry and exit for the alchemy room from now on. With it, you can come to refine the elixir at any time."

  Lin Feng took a look and saw that it was an ordinary jade pendant with the words "Baibao Hall Dan 523" written in dragon and phoenix script. It seemed that such jade pendants were not rare after all. After thanking Zhu Yan, Lin Feng said he wanted to start refining the dan now, and Zhu Yan called over a low-level cultivator to lead the way.

  As soon as he came out, Lin Feng let out a big sigh of relief. Just now, he had been very nervous, afraid that Zhu Yan would ask him something irrelevant again. He couldn't help it, the secrets on his body were just too many. But Zhu Yan's questions today seemed to be less aggressive than last time, perhaps because she had already obtained the Zhongpin Dan.

  Forget it, thinking too much is useless. Lin Feng followed the cultivator from Baibao Hall to the entrance of the Dan room. The cultivator handed over two sentences and left. There were two cultivators guarding the entrance, who looked at Lin Feng's jade card and said: "Your jade card can refine alchemy in all Dan rooms above the fifth floor of the underground. All open Dan rooms can be entered. The jade card is the key to opening the earth fire, just put it into the slot on the ground."

  After Lin Feng thanked him, he directly entered the alchemy room. The dan room here is similar to that of the Yang family, a spiral passage leading down is the way to the dan room, the difference is that every time you walk around one circle, it's another floor, and each floor has three alchemy rooms. From the number on the first floor, it can be seen that there are thirty-six floors in total, the lower the floor, the greater the firepower.

  What kind of pill to refine, what kind of firepower is needed, and the size of the required firepower is determined by one's own control ability. Lin Feng first entered a pill room on the thirty-sixth floor, opened the fire-sealing gate with a jade card, felt the firepower, and then went down five floors again, after feeling the lower firepower, he directly went to the twentieth floor, where the pill room still belonged to the low-grade pill room, but for Lin Feng, the firepower was just right.

  Found a deserted Dan room, Lin Feng went in and used the method to close the stone gate. Then he took out ten sets of Tiqi Dan materials at once. Today's alchemy also had another purpose, which was to see how many furnaces of Dan he could refine at one time, so as to judge how much his divine consciousness had grown.

  Just as Lin Feng entered the Dan room, Zhu Yan received a report. He waved his hand to let the disciples of the Dan room leave, and Zhu Yan muttered to himself: "It's only one step away from the middle-level Dan room, it seems that this little boy's fire control ability has already reached the level of a primary Dan master, even more powerful than I was back then, hehe, someone who will at least be a mid-level Dan master in the future can't be let go so easily."

  Lin Feng naturally didn't know that in front of an expert, any tiny clue would be infinitely magnified. Just from his flame control ability alone, one could judge his general level, which was something he never thought of.

  Lin Feng was now working hard to refine the first pill after reaching the fifth layer of the Qi Refining stage. His divine sense was fully released, his spirit highly concentrated, and he was making every effort to feel the changes in the five elements' spiritual energy within the medicinal liquid. He was using the Five Elements Entering Microcosm method, but with Yang Ze's improved hand technique, especially after adding the Wind Sun Fruit, using his divine sense to pierce the medicinal liquid out of countless small holes. This was a technique he couldn't complete before, but now it was done in one go, although his divine sense was greatly consumed, it was still completed.

  Pregnant Dan, received Dan, called out, eight pieces of Dan flew into the jade bottle. After a closer look, Lin Feng smiled, three medium-grade Dans, four low-grade Dans, and one waste Dan. This result was already comparable to Yang Ze's. Excited for a while, Lin Feng did not forget that he still had to test how much his spiritual awareness had increased today, so he immediately started the refining of the next furnace of Dan without stopping.

  It wasn't until he felt a hint of fatigue that Lin Feng stopped refining the elixir, checking the materials to find that he had refined six furnaces. Just looking at the quantity, it was only one more furnace than his previous five-furnace refinement, but Lin Feng knew that his spiritual awareness had increased by far more than that, because today he had used Yang Ze's method of using his spiritual awareness to pierce through the elixir liquid, which was extremely exhausting. If he had continued with his previous method, it was likely that he would have been able to refine at least eight furnaces of elixir.

  But even so, Lin Feng was still extremely happy, not just because he could now refine two more furnaces of dan per day, but more importantly, every furnace of dan he refined now guaranteed three middle-grade dans. This was what excited him the most. To know that even Yang Ze, his former master, only occasionally refined a furnace with three middle-grade dans, and most of the time only got two, this showed just how much Lin Feng's dan-refining skills had improved. At least when it came to refining Qi Gathering Dans, his stable record of three middle-grade dans per furnace was already beyond Yang Ze's capabilities.

  It's unbelievable at first, but it makes sense when you think about it. For example, a high-level alchemist is definitely stronger than a low-level alchemist when refining third-tier or higher elixirs, but if they were to refine a first-tier elixir with the same method and materials, the high-level alchemist may not necessarily be much stronger. Yang Ze used to be more skilled at controlling his hand movements than Lin Feng, but now that Lin Feng's spiritual awareness has increased, he can already match Yang Ze's control over first-tier elixirs. Furthermore, Lin Feng's Five Elements Harmony technique allows him to fully merge the materials in the elixir from a microscopic level, absorbing all the spiritual energy, so it's no wonder that the quality of his refined elixirs is higher.

  For the next half month, Lin Feng started crazily refining pills again. With his speed, fifty portions of materials were used up in just a few days. Fortunately, he had asked Liu Kai to help him purchase some materials as a supplement beforehand. Otherwise, his pill-refining ability would have been exposed, comparable to that of a Foundation Establishment cultivator. However, the materials purchased by Liu Kai were clearly only for emergency use, not only were they insufficient, but also uneven in quality, far inferior to those uniformly produced by Baibao Hall. Therefore, Lin Feng still preferred to use the materials from Baibao Hall.

  After having enough lower-grade elixirs, Lin Feng took a deep breath and exchanged another hundred sets of materials. Anyway, after this refining session was over, he would focus on his cultivation again and wouldn't refine any more elixirs for a long time. Whether the hundred sets of materials were used up or not, only he knew; even if Zhu Yan was extremely clever, she wouldn't be able to discover his elixir-refining abilities.

  However, when it came to exchanging materials, Lin Feng became somewhat uncertain. Zhu Yan's gaze at Lin Feng's profound and mysterious expression when he took out the elixir made him feel uneasy. But now that things had come to this point, Lin Feng didn't care anymore. The matter of the medium-grade elixir had already been exposed, what else was there to fear? This was Lin Feng consoling himself.

  He is now worried that after exchanging a hundred sets of materials, he found that the remaining inferior elixirs are not many. If he gives Liu Kai thirty more bottles, he will have almost none left. What to do with the spiritual stones needed in the future? Sell mid-grade elixirs? Looking at the small mountain-like pile of mid-grade elixir jade bottles, Lin Feng confirmed that he would definitely not be able to use them up, and if he continued to refine like this without selling mid-grade elixirs, he would have neither materials nor spiritual stones.

  Shouldn't he think of ways to refine more low-grade elixirs? At a time when everyone yearned for mid-grade Qi Gathering Elixirs, Lin Feng was instead worried about having too many mid-grade elixirs.