Pill popping into the 3rd layer.

The moment the pill his stomach Collin felt a warm pressure within him. Using the Heavenly Alchemic Cultivation Technique, he began to move the energy the pill was releasing through his meridians throughout his body. After a few cycles all the energy from the pill had been used up.

After the pill was used up Collin burped several times, with each one leaving the taste of grass in his mouth. This led him to wonder if this was a normal side effect of using the pill or if it was just the way his body reacted to the pill. Taking a moment to sense the state of his cultivation, Collin discovered that he was several days closer to the 3rd layer.

From now on he would be making qi gathering pills and the use them to cultivate. This low-grade pill would help him to get to the 5th layer and maybe to the 6th layer before they became useless to him. To continue to progress he would need to use a stronger version of the Qi gathering pill.

Most cultivators would avoid taking too many pills, fearing that it would make their cultivation unstable, or they would develop a resistance to the medicinal properties of all pills. Collin didn't have this worry because this one of the ways that Alchemic Cultivators build up the necessary medicinal essence to advance their cultivation. The Heavenly Alchemic Cultivation Technique also removes any medicinal properties that are not useful and expels them as waste. Which made Collin wonder if his burps were the waste being expelled, he was thinking it would come out when he went to the toilet.

Letting go of the stray thoughts in his head, Collin made three more Qi gathering pills before his dinner arrived. The first two pills had a light brown sheen to them and smelled like roasted nuts, meaning that he overheated the pills and making them useless. After adjusting the way he heated the medicinal essences he once again made a teal-colored pill that smells like plants. He was also trying to remember the feeling of making it the right way to improve his success rate.

Grilled fish with a sour glazed with sides made his mouth water the moment the delivery chute was opened. It amazed him how much he liked the fish dishes, coming from a wealthy family in a port city it was looked down upon as food of the commoners. And anything common was unworthy of the noble families and clans, including his. He was beginning to wonder if he liked the fish dishes because they were delicious, or because eating them was like a simple rebellion against his old life. After sucking the flavor out of the fish bones, he decided that it was most likely a little bit of both and that it didn't matter.

After three days two things happened that made Collin happy. The first, was that he had successfully made a mid-grade scab pill. It just barely qualified to be called a mid-grade, but it was a success. Now he had to get all the scab pills he made from now on to be mid-grade pills before he could move on to trying to make high-grade scab pills.

The second thing that made Collin happy was that he broke through to the 3rd layer of Qi Condensation. He had been making Qi gathering pills and using them to regain his Qi during alchemy practice. Every time he used a Qi gathering pill he would burp and leave a grass flavored taste in his mouth, except when he broke through to the 3rd layer. When he broke through, he spit up a mouthful of green sludge. Luckily, he was able to spit up into the bucket he uses for the spirit herbs he burns during his alchemy practice.

The thick green sludgy goo made the room smell like rotten vegetables. The smell was making Collin feel sick, so he left the room, but he had to come back and take the bucket outside. The worst part was the greasy foul-tasting film that was now coating his mouth. It took ten minutes of rinsing his mouth with water to get rid of the taste. He took the bucket of sludge and flushed its contents down the toilet of the servants' quarters, he was gagging the entire time till he rinsed out the bucket in the shower.

After setting the bucket outside to dry, Collin headed to the cultivation room to fill the hollow feeling he was experiencing. The normal routine for the rest of the day would be changed to allow Collin to get used to the increase in physical strength and the stronger and more abundant Qi within his dantian. Feeling the Qi flowing within his body according to the Heavenly Alchemic Cultivation Technique he noticed that it felt thicker than before. Instead of feeling like air being pushed around his body, it now felt like a thin stream of water. This did feel odd to Collin for about an hour or so before it began to feel as natural as breathing.

After filling his dantian, it was time to exercise his body with his body refining art. The night before Collin began to read body refining books that he got from the Tyler's villa. He was wondering if he should upgrade his Divine Celestial Body Refining Art with something stronger. Out of the several dozen body refining books he narrowed it down to three, the number one contender was an art that was made to be used with the Blood Purification Method.

While the Blood Purification Method could be used as an alternative cultivation method and allow body cultivators to use the blood in their body as a limited dantian. The Blood Purification Method wasn't the only art to allow cultivators to form a limited secondary dantian, it was just that it was the only one Collin owned. The only reason he was still considering if he should use it or not was because he was worried that he was going to overextend himself in his training routine.

He knew as an Alchemic Cultivator that he should focus on alchemy above all else, but he also knew he was young and wanted to learn everything. This is the reason why he was practicing inscription instead of buying the one inscription that he wanted to use. It was also the reason he knew when he had enough Qi to properly try treasure refining, he would most likely buy a treasure refining furnace and try to make some weapons and a new alchemy cauldron.

Other than a new body refining art he also wanted to learn a bunch of spells, techniques, and arts and he still wanted to shop for more that he thought would be helpful for his future growth. Thinking along these lines also made Collin wonder if he should train one of the soul arts he now owned. While he was sure that his alchemy and inscription practice and possible future treasure refining practice would strengthen his soul enough to break through to the 8th layer of Qi Condensation, he wondered when it would.

Would he break through to the 8th layer the moment he hit the wall between the 7th and 8th layers, or would it take days, weeks, months, or even a year or more? The question of if he should or shouldn't do this or that plagued his mind till his dinner came. The herbed chicken leg quarter and the bowl of chicken and mushroom soup did a good job at calming his troubled mind, for now anyway. But he knew he would have to sit down and make some serious decisions about the future path of his cultivation.