The light green building looked big, at least from the front. Alex walked into the building's registration hall and asked for a room for one of the many people waiting to help the customers.
"Do you have an Alchemist rank?" the man at the registration asked.
"Umm… I can make Common Rank Earth grade pills, so Common Earth Rank I guess," Alex said. He was really confused. Neither the Hong Wu sect nor the Tiger sect ever asked for what grade pills he could make before letting him take a room.
'Is the capital different somehow?' he wondered.
"Please take out your badge then," the man said.
"My… Badge?" Alex asked in confusion.
"You do not have a badge?" the man asked.
"No, sorry. I have no idea what this badge is," Alex said.
"Ah, you must be new to the city. Gaining a badge based on your achievement from the Alchemy guild can gain you certain discounts in the Alchemy Hall. If you haven't ranked yourself yet, we will have to charge you for the full price," the man said.
"Can I know what the cost will be for 5 hours?" Alex asked.
"5 hours… at 12… will be 60 spirit stones. Are you ok with that?" the man asked.
"Ah, yes. Of course," Alex said and handed 60 spirit stones to the man.
The man led Alex to one of the rooms and let him go inside before locking the door from outside. "The door is now impossible to open from the outside, and can only open from the inside."
"You can leave before the 5 hours are up or we will come to escort you out once the 5 hours are over," the man said.
"Thank you," Alex said and turned around to look at the room. The room seemed way better than the muddy-looking rooms back in the Alchemy hall of the Hong Wu sect.
He sat in front of the brilliantly glowing fire and took out his Golden jade cauldron and placed it on top of the fire. He smoothly cleared away any dirt and debris that were remaining behind them since the last time he made pills nearly a week ago.
He let the cauldron heat up while he started thinking of what pills to make.
'I only want to sell these pills for the money, so I should make something that is on-demand or hard to acquire,' he thought.
He went through the list of pill recipes in his head, but only the ones that he learned in the sect. He didn't want to introduce the ones he learned from the corpse to the market just yet.
He needed to be stronger before he could freely do that.
He thought for a bit and ended up thinking of exactly 3 different pills he could make.
The first was a pill called the Fat Converting pill. It rapidly burned the fat of the person who ate the pill and gave them extra power for the duration of the fat conversion.
The second pill was called the Element Negating Pill. This was a pill that increased the natural resistance of your body and Qi to the different elements and protected you from taking too much damage.
The third and last pill was called the Rubber Body pill. This was a pill that made your entire body as flexible as rubber. It didn't make it elastic, but the flexibility alone was something many would want. It was especially good because you could control which parts you wanted to make flexible.
Given the circumstances, people would find a lot of usage for it.
So, Alex prepared the ingredients and started making the pills. This was the first time he was making these pills. The Fat Converting pill was a Fire elemental pill, the Element Negating Pill was a neutral elemental pill, and the Rubber Body pill was a wood elemental pill.
None of the three pills were of Metal elemental variety, so Alex was a little sad that he couldn't guarantee a Heaven grade pill amongst these all. That would've sold for a lot.
Still, he had some chance at making them, so he didn't give up hope.
He started with the Fat Converting pill and put the first ingredients into the cauldron. Alex started doing what the recipe told him to do.
2nd ingredient, move it around, release energy, wait for the two ingredients to react to each other, put in the next ingredient repeat.
That was the formula to making all of the pills. In the middle of making the pill, Alex''s mind started thinking of something else.
'What if I put in two ingredients at once? If I put the first and the third ingredients at the start, and somehow be able to keep them from interacting with each other, or better yet, they don't react at all, I can easily put in the second ingredient and make them react at once,' Alex thought.
However, now was not the time to test this theory out. He quickly threw this thought to the back of his mind for when he had the time and brought his attention back to the pill at hand.
He put in another ingredient and continued. By the end of 15 minutes, he was nearly done making the pill. Alex quickly started forming the pill and thankfully, the pill-splitting Qi did not appear at this moment.
The pill was successfully made and he looked at it.
Fat Converting Pill - 47%
He was so close, and yet so far. 'I should be able to make a Heaven-grade pill soon,' he thought. He stored the pill into a pill bottle and moved on to the next pill.
For the next hour and a half, he performed alchemy exactly, 6 more times and managed to make 9 different pills. The double pill rate truly was 50% for those 6 times.
As for the harmony of the pills, the worst one was a 42% pill he made in pair with another pill, and the best one was a 53% Heaven grade pill.
