The Old Cauldron

"If it were any other cultivator, they wouldn't be able to refine the pills easily, but for me, it's a piece of cake," Ye Chen muttered with a smile as he sat in front of the old cauldron.

His confidence was because he has spiritual consciousness, which is not something any cultivator below the core formation stage can have.

Of course, there are alchemy techniques that allowed low-level cultivators, like Qi-gathering stage, to have a weak spiritual consciousness, which was enough for them to refine some low-grade pills.

However, this came at a cost because to cultivate spiritual consciousness early, one needed to cultivate ten times of what they are doing now.

Which means they also needed to spend ten times more resources, which was quite costly.

But for Ye Chen, this was not a problem because he was born with spiritual consciousness.

So, he could just skip this step and start to refine pills directly.

However, he didn't hurry and inspected the old cauldron first for any abnormality that would prevent him from refining.

He had learned about many things from the myriad book, and one of them was to examine the cauldron.

It didn't take too long, and he found everything was good except the bottom of the cauldron, which was carved with some inscriptions.

"This is the flame control inscription!" Ye Chen muttered with surprise, as he didn't expect to find it on this old cauldron.

Although the inscriptions were normal things in the cultivation world, some of them were still rare, such as this flame control inscription, which can help alchemists control the temperature and flame size without spending too much spiritual consciousness.

"A pity that this cauldron can only support the refinement for more than two hundred times," Ye Chen shook his head slightly, feeling a little disappointed.

This cauldron has a rich herb presence, which could save him a lot of time, but there was nothing he could do as he could sense the old cauldron had reached its limit.

After this, he didn't ponder anymore and started to prepare the herbs needed for the body-strengthening pill.

There was not too much, and he only needed eight herbs and some supplementary herbs.

So, it didn't take too long, and within five minutes he was done preparing.

After this, he made a small hand seal and shot a ball of spiritual Qi underneath the cauldron.

Poof!

In that instant, a yellow flame appeared, and the inscription at the bottom lit up with a red light.

Noticing that everything was fine, Ye Chen didn't hesitate and increased the flame to heat the cauldron.

Just as he was doing this, the inscription underneath glowed with a faint blue color and started to absorb the heat from the flame.

Ye Chen failed to notice this because he was focusing on the inside of the cauldron, checking the temperature every second.

"It's taking longer," he frowned slightly, wondering if it was because the cauldron was made from unknown metal.

Even with the knowledge of myriad book, he couldn't identify it; however, this didn't matter since this cauldron has a rich herb presence, which meant someone refined a lot of pills with its help.

So, he didn't care too much and increased the intensity of the flames further.

As soon as he did this, the faint blue inscriptions in the bottom glowed a little more brightly; however, with the light of flame, they remained hidden and continued to absorb all the heat greedily.

"Why is the cauldron cooling down?" Ye Chen muttered, feeling a little dumbfounded as he saw the change in temperature.

He couldn't help but use his divine eyes on the cauldron to see if there was something wrong with it.

For him, the cauldron was old and tier one, so he didn't care about inspecting it with divine eyes before, but now he couldn't help but check it.

The moment he activated the divine eyes, the view in front of him changed, and he was able to see there was something wrong with the inscriptions below, as they glowed a faint icy blue color rather than red.

'Is there some problem, or is it some kind of lost inscription?' He thought with curiosity and continued to observe while increasing the intensity of the flames.

The larger the flames were, the more the inscription shined with blue light, and like some hungry beast, it continued to suck all the heat from the flames without anything else happening.

However, it didn't take too long, and a change happened, which made Ye Chen's eyebrows twitch a little.

"The cauldron is breaking!" He muttered, feeling dissatisfied as he saw a few cracks appear at the bottom.

Then suddenly the cracks started to expand and covered the whole cauldron.

After this, the faint blue light started to glow from the cracks and started to suck the spiritual Qi inside the room.

Watching this, Ye Chen was stunned, but he didn't delay and made the spiritual Qi in his room denser.

Swoosh!

The faint blue light in the cracks became brighter, and the absorption rate of spiritual Qi increased, forming a small whirlpool around the cauldron.

After this, the blue light gathered in the center of the cauldron, revealing a mysterious cracked golden seal at the bottom, which was on the verge of breaking.

The golden seal was something beyond tier-5; because of this, Ye Chen's divine failed to see through as his cultivation was too low.

However, he felt a terrifying heat coming from the seal, and his eyes narrowed a little.

"If it's really that... then I am in trouble," he chuckled faintly as he glanced at the blue light, which was trying to break the golden seal.