Blood Alchemy

Hui was stunned. Truly, this scene was like no other. How could one person eat so much food in a single hour?

Ten pounds of dried meat was shocking enough, that alone left her speechless…

But to then go on to consume three entire roast chickens, followed by half of a roasted wild boar?If it wasn't for the demonic beast steak finally satisfying him, Hui didn't doubt that Khan would have eaten the entire boar!

"Ah, that's so much better…" Khan smiled as he lay back lazily and took a gulp of wine straight from the bottle.

"Hey spirit, what the hell was up with that, why was I so hungry that I ate enough food to sustain a mortal village through winter? Also, thinking about it, shouldn't eating that much be impossible?"

Hui stared at her master speechlessly. He only realised that now?

"This was somewhat unexpected…" The spirit pondered aloud. "Most likely, because of your race's unfamiliar constitution which isn't suited to Body Tempering at all, the formation caused more damage to your body than the energy you absorbed was able to restore. By the end of it, even though your injuries were mostly healed, your entire body was left in a completely depleted state, thus the extreme hunger."

"Makes sense I guess." Khan nodded. "But eating this much every time I use the formation could get expensive…the normal meats aren't too bad, but they hardly satisfied my hunger. It was the Rank 3 demonic beast steak that finally fixed it. Rank 3 demonic beast meat isn't exactly cheap…it'll drive me broke if I need to keep eating tens of those steaks every day."

"What's this, you're actually planning on continuing with this training method?" The spirit asked with shock evident her voice. After what just happened, she assumed that Khan would disregard the idea of training with this formation, and she wouldn't blame him. That would be an extremely reasonable decision.

However, Khan was not a reasonable person

"Hui put ten spirit units worth of spirit stones into the formation. How much of that energy was absorbed into my body?" Khan asked with a smile.

"Half of the energy is used to form the external pressure, whilst one quarter damages the body internally and the final quarter is absorbed by the damaged cells to regenerate. This is the function of the formation, so it should always be one quarter of the energy put in. Since you were somewhat injured and drained by the end, it should be a bit less, but still no less than one fifth."

Khan laughed happily.

"So at least two spirit units worth of energy then? Using the 2nd stage Body Tempering Formation at maximum output, I would need to spend hours of training to properly absorb that much energy! The Body Tempering Formation really is shitty compared to this one, not only does it waste your time, but it also completely wastes spirit stones."

"That's true, but are you really willing to endure that ordeal time and time again each and every day?" The spirit asked doubtfully.

"Of course! Using this method, I could train for just an hour or two every day and still achieve ten times the rate of improvement compared to before!" Khan laughed happily. "Of course, that's ignoring the hour I spent eating just now…I usually enjoy eating, but that was just painful. Is there something cheap that I can eat to replenish my energy?"

"There are millions of pills designed to do exactly that, I assume you at least know this much."

"Right!" Khan's eyes lit up.

There were many different pills designed to recover Profound Qi for Qi Refiners, whilst pills to recover Blood Energy also existed, but were far more rare and expensive.

Naturally, injury recovery pills were also in high demand. Every cultivator would carry a supply of these within their spatial ring at all times.

Would these really work to quickly satisfy that intense hunger though? After asking the spirit for her opinion and showing her examples of the pills, she frowned deeply. Or at least, Khan somehow got the feeling that she was frowning, despite not being able to see her. Perhaps the fact that he had bound her with his soul was responsible for this.

"I've never even seen this type of energy before today, but it's clearly similar to the 'Profound Qi' that these Qi Refiners use. It would indeed assist your recovery, but it would be wasteful. The injury recovery pills are a better choice, but they're still not optimal and would probably cost you even more than the beast meat. And as for these Blood Energy pills…"

She paused and her frown deepened.

"What is this trash? How can this be considered a pill of the Primordial Body Tempering Path when it was clearly made using Profound Qi?!"

"It's a pseudo-blood pill." Khan explained. "True blood pills are all high level, expensive and rare, since very few individuals are able to produce them."

He learned this from Fu Bian after discovering Yusef's treasure, which turned out to be both a blessing and a massive annoyance.

"Then it would seem that blood alchemy in this world is extremely primitive." The spirit sighed. "Fine, I'll just teach you how to create proper blood pills myself."

"Really? That's possible at my level?" Khan asked excitedly.

Even normal pills refined by Qi Refining alchemists which assisted Body Tempering cultivation were extremely expensive, but blood pills were an entire class ahead!

"Hey, weren't all the blood pills you mentioned before stupidly expensive and tedious to refine?" Khan frowned as he thought of this.

"Those were all body tempering blood pills, designed to increase your cultivation to a higher level. Those ingredients all seem to be beyond your means, but I doubt you'll have any problems with basic vital recovery pills."

"Vital recovery pills, you mean like this one?" Khan held up one of the pills typically used to recover from injuries.

"No, not like that fake useless thing. An actual vital recovery pill, refined by a Body Temperer using their Blood Energy."

Khan listened carefully as the spirit described the process. When she finished speaking after a few seconds, Khan blinked and stared forwards blankly.

"That's it?"

"Yes, that's the full refinement process."

"And this pill will recover my energy after using the formation?"

"It will for now. As you improve you cultivation, you will need to either consume more pills or use more powerful pills to recover."

"Huh…" Khan was pleasantly surprised. He was expecting this recipe to be yet another impossible undertaking that the spirit considered 'simple enough', but it really was quite basic.

No it was more than basic…even if it was true that Body Tempering wasn't common in this world, how was it that nobody had ever thought to try this, or even accidentally created such a simple pill?

The vital recovery pill, a pill to recover a Body Temperer's Blood Energy, was the perfect solution to Khan's energy depleted state following the formation usage.

"Hui, I need some spirit stones, just dump a pile on the floor here."

She obediently nodded and carried out the task without question. She then waited quietly, curious to see what her master was going to do.

Khan picked up an average spirit stone containing slightly less than a single spirit unit of energy.

"A pill made with this will be extremely weak." The spirit reminded him.

"I know, it's just for practice."

Khan held the pill in his left palm, then placed his right palm on top, creating a completely enclosed space between his hands.

A few seconds passed by, then gradually, a faint red light began to radiate outwards from Khan's hands. The light was actually originating from the sealed space between his palms, but it was so bright that it travelled right through his flesh.

A minute went by, then the light slowly diminished until it could no longer be seen. Khan opened his hands a few seconds later, then stared dumbfoundedly at what he was holding. Hui's jaw also dropped.

"Master, is that a pill?" She guessed, but felt uncertain. It wasn't like any pill she knew of and wasn't emitting the same type of energy which was found in most alchemical pills. However, it was glowing with a faint red light, and she felt that somehow, this sort of light was familiar.

"Mm, it's a blood pill." Khan grinned broadly. When he said this, Hui realised that the energy did indeed feel a bit similar to the formation's blood-red aura!

"3% conversion on your first attempt!" The spirit gasped within his soul. She couldn't help it, this sort of initial success was something that she had never seen before! Especially given that Khan was at such a low level that he could only barely inject his Blood Energy outside of his body!

Failing to produce this pill could happen, but only if the individual was dumb enough to leave a gap between their hands during the refinement.

The refinement really was that simple; the Body Temperer filled the space between their palms with their Blood Energy. The energy would interact with any natural energy resource, such as a spirit stone containing natural spiritual energy. Once the concentration of Blood Energy in the space reached a certain point, it would begin to convert the spiritual energy in the spirit stone into Blood Energy.

A large amount of the spiritual energy would be burned up during this transformation, resulting in a pill with far less energy compared to the original spirit stone. The same was true for Qi Refiner alchemists, the conversion rate could only be improved with practice.

Khan continued to use another dozen average spirit stones to produce this same, unbelievably simple pill. He could hardly believe it…not only was it extremely cheap and required just one ingredient, but it was so simple that it didn't even require a cauldron!

"All of the best blood alchemists produce their pills without a cauldron. Even with higher level pills, Body Temperer's can use spells to produce blood flames, whilst their bodies can withstand the high temperatures with ease." The spirit explained.

Khan went on to make another hundred of these pills, each with an increasingly valuable spirit stone. Eventually, he produced ten pills that should allow him to completely recover his energy, and another ten with even more energy than this.

"Alright, I'll stop there." Khan decided.

"What, stop? No, keep going, your progress is still improving! Given another week or so of hard work, you will definitely improve your conversion rate by another 2-3%!" The spirit urged Khan. After watching him begin with a conversion of 3%, then increasing this quickly to 5%, she realised that this annoying guy was surprisingly talented as a blood alchemist!

"Another week? Like hell I'll work hard for a full week, it's only been two hours and I'm already bored now that my progress has slowed down." Khan rolled his eyes as he stood up to stretch. It was exciting at first, but the repetitive process quickly became dull. After his improvement in the conversion efficiency slowed down to a hundredth of his initial progress, he lost interest and immediately stopped.

"For a lazy being like this to possess such talent in blood alchemy, what a waste…" The spirit muttered sadly.

"What waste? Those people who only cultivate alone all day everyday are the ones wasting away. What's the point of gaining a longer life if you just spend all those extra years forcing yourself to endure the boredom of training?"

The spirit was left speechless. She wasn't sure how to reply to this…she had never met someone who possessed such extreme willpower, yet also completely lacked any sort of work ethic.

"Anyway, with the inner sect entrance competition coming up, there's something important that I need to do." Khan grinned evilly.

Hui shivered…she had a bad premonition about this.