2nd layer of Qi Condensation

On the fifth day Collin checked the delivery chute for food and found his breakfast waiting for him. Making his food for the past four days had led him to understand that he did not buy enough of a variety of food. With the ingredients he had he could make two different meals, and it was fine for a few days but not for longer periods of time.

As he devoured his meal, he savored every bite. Unlike his food it was cooked perfectly, and it was seasoned perfectly. If he had more practice, it might be a different story, but taking the time to cook, took time away from his routine. With his meals being taken care of again he could finally go back to his full routine, he still felt a need to make up for his wasted day.

Soon he would reach his goal of refining two spirit herbs perfectly, and then he would try to make his first pill. The scab pill, it was a popular with non-cultivators for its ability to stop bleeding and was one of the first pill alchemists could make. Of the two spirit herbs needed to make the scab pill, one is the attel plant from his garden beds.

He had harvested the first batch of attell he planted, then planted more and harvested the second batch yesterday, and he already planted the third batch. Only one other plant from his garden has been harvested and was store in his bag of holding, while the other types of plants still need a long time till they can be harvested.

After the fifth cycle of refining and recovery of his alchemy practice, Collin began to feel a bloated feeling. He knew what this feeling was, he had hit the wall between 1st layer Qi Condensation and 2nd layer Qi Condensation. This was something exciting to Collin and somewhat worrying.

Alchemic cultivators use the Heavenly Alchemic Cultivation Technique, which stresses that the 1st layer of Qi Condensation should be cultivated very slow and very steady to acclimate the body to its new alchemic pill dantian and meridians. While there have been those who have said that it was unnecessary to slow down your cultivation, but Collin wasn't going to take even the slightest risk after going through all the effort and risking his life to become a cultivator.

Collin wasn't expecting to hit this wall for another couple months if everything went according to his plans. It didn't take long for Collin to figure out where his plan went awry, it was the second round of cultivation after refining fire pills every day. In his carefully created plan, he made after reading the notes of cultivators that have used the Heavenly Alchemic Cultivation Technique, he believed that it would take months to get an alchemist to make him fire pills, instead of just having them all but handed to him by Valeria.

It wasn't like Collin was going to complain, instead of having to buy the spirit herbs, then put in a request for an alchemist to refine the pills, then wait for however long it would take for his order to get done, and paying a large amount of spirit stones, he got them just for the price of the spirit herbs. He knew this was one of many things that had luckily gone his way, and he didn't want to be stupid enough to say or do something that might change his luck for the worse.

After figuring out the why of it, Collin headed to the cultivation room in the basement to break through to the 2nd layer. Sitting in the small cultivation room, he took a deep breath and began to relax to enter the right state of mind for cultivation. After a few minutes he began his cultivation, a steady stream of energy began to flow into his body. As it flowed through out his body in a cycle it began to make his dantian to feel fuller and fuller, until it felt like it might burst.

Within ten minutes Collin felt a distinctive popping feeling and knew he had advanced to the 2nd layer of Qi Condensation. Many feelings welled up in Collin, happiness, pride, and an empty hollow feeling in his dantian.

The 2nd layer of Qi Condensation is where many alchemic cultivators believed they became true cultivators. Their inner energy would increase by five times allowing them to use spells and techniques just like normal cultivators. It would also allow them to live up to the fearsome reputation of alchemists.

Throughout this world alchemists enjoy a grand reputation for their ability create pills and elixirs to aide in cultivation and heal poisons and sickness. But alchemists are also feared for their abilities in making and using poisons during their fights. Over the millennia many have thought wealthy alchemists would be easy prey to rob or kill, and most have died choking on their own blood.

The Heavenly Alchemic Cultivation Technique has many chapters on making poisons, powdered poison, liquid poison, poisonous gases. There are also chapters on hidden and non-hidden weapons meant to be coated in poison and the ways to use them in the most effective ways. Adding to the other spells and techniques that Collin was planning on learning, it gave him the potential to be a very dangerous cultivator, or he hoped.

All these new skills and techniques would have to be learned and practiced later, but for right now Collin would have to cultivate to fill his now bigger pill dantian. Instead of slowly cultivating to acclimate his body to its new power and strength, he would be cultivating for real now. That meant that he would be ingesting specific spirit herbs several times a week till his pill dantian was saturated with the essence of these herbs before he could refine his Qi Condensation stage alchemic pill dantian into a Foundation Establishment stage alchemic pill dantian.

Eating some kalwa leaves he began to cultivate while trying to ignore the very nasty taste left in his mouth by the kalwa leaves. This round of cultivating lasted for three and a half hours, and if Collin used his divine sense to look at his pill dantian he would notice it was a shade greener than it was yesterday.

Stepping out of the cultivation room he felt his body was feeling off. This was due to the increase of power and strength the happens when someone improves their cultivation. He wasn't going to crush things to dust when he picked things up or burn out the arrays around him by pouring in too much energy, but it was an annoying feeling. Doing a round of body refining and some alchemy practice would help his body adapt.

Collin performed his body refining art till the sound of birds chirping interrupted him. Dinner was devoured at a record setting pace, if there were not fish bones and a salty brown sauce left on the plate, he might not have known what he ate.

His alchemy practice was far easier with the increase of inner energy, he could refine two herbs four times before he had to recharge his inner energy. He even felt refining two herbs at a time was getting closer to perfection and that has very close to refining his first pill.