Alex made the pills once again and ended up on two pills that were at 89% and 94% harmony.
The pill-splitting Qi was an absolutely amazing technique to use for making the two pills at once. Not only did Alex didn't have to waste any time with moving energy and forming combinations on his own, but he also didn't have to focus on it at all as the technique worked on its own.
To this day, Alex was still amazed at how the technique worked. He didn't have to do anything and somehow it worked on its own.
He wondered if he would ever learn how that worked.
Alex continued making more and more pills, and at some point even reached as much as 95% with the process.
Alex started getting more and more interested and started using the weight measuring formation to make sure he wasn't leaving anything up to chance and tried again.
For the remainder of the day, he made about 30 different sets of twin pills, and the highest he reached was 96%.
Alex soon came to realize the advantage of using double ingredients instead of a single one. Because there were more than normal ingredients in the cauldron, the individual combinations that were capable of accepting the energy were also more than enough to make a perfect pill.
This meant that under the right circumstances, if luck was on his side, Alex might end up making a pill that took all the correct combinations, and as such end up with a pill that had 100% harmony.
100% Harmony. How long had it been since he had started making pills again? More than a decade long, and he was now approaching something that felt impossible at the time.
If only his master was here to see him.
Alex shook his head and returned back to work. He made a few more pills before going back to cultivate.
He decided he would also try out making pills using multiple cauldrons in the coming days, but for now, he needed to cultivate.
Starting the next day, Alex used the new method to make multiple pills at once. While it did surprise the guard outside, as soon as she learned the idea behind it, she didn't have much to say at all.
At least not to Alex. She did pass on the information to the Saint rank Alchemists that belonged to the sect.
However, those saints had been making pills for a long time and had already had those thoughts. However, without the Dao of heat, which they were so desperately hoping to learn soon, they didn't dare change the recipes to fit the pills.
As such, Alex became the only person to make two pills at once.
Because he was now making 2 pills at once, Alex could easily make about 10 pills an hour. As such, in just 5 hours, Alex was starting to finish his daily quota.
After that, everything he made was for the contribution point that would be granted to him at the end of the week.
Aside from that, Alex focused on cultivating his eyes and physique and spent the other time on the garden and Whisker.
Pearl did nothing but cultivate on his own in his free time. He wanted to practice the new techniques he had received recently, but there was nowhere to test them.
The training ground of the sect was accessible to him, but they were quite far away, and he didn't want to go there.
As such, both Alex and Pearl were stuck in the small room, cultivating by themselves.
Still, it wasn't so bad. They had reached a point in their cultivation journey where they didn't need to train to be able to continue with cultivation.
Instead just diligently cultivating was enough to keep their body and mind in top condition.
As such, Alex could simply cultivate and improve himself without having to do much.
Time passed before Alex knew it and it was already 3 months since he had been in the Frozen Heart sect.
Every day, he made somewhere close to 120 pills, of which all of the extra 70 pills would go towards his contribution points.
Alex had thought of using the contribution points to request some things for himself, but what he received from the sect for his daily quota alone was enough to make him realize that he didn't need it.
He received different types of fruits and pills, all of which could be used to further his cultivation base and speed it up by a lot.
Alex distributed his earnings between the three of them, and even then it was quite a bit for him.
For someone who wasn't used to using cultivation resources to improve himself, this almost felt like cheating.
In the 3 months, he was here, Alex had broken through again, reaching True Emperor 6th realm this time around.
Aside from that, Pearl was also close to breaking through as well.
Whisker was the one that perhaps showed the best improvement. In just 3 months, he had gone from the Bone Tempering realm to the Organ tempering realm.
In a year or two, he would certainly enter the true realm.
Considering Alex and Pearl's speed of cultivation, Whisker was very, very slow. However, going by normal individuals of this world, he was very fast.
After all, most people would take at least 5 months to go from the Bone Tempering realm to the Organ tempering realm.
Whisker was finally starting to be able to manipulate objects with his Qi, and could even manipulate multiple of them, so Alex decided to start his journey in cultivation.
He took out one of the random cauldrons he had received and made Whisker bond to it in the meantime.
Alex spent his own time making more pills, either by making them all in a single cauldron or using multiple cauldrons at once.
He was starting to be able to use up to 3 cauldrons if he gave his absolute everything, but he usually stuck to just 2 for the sake of not making many mistakes.
He was getting good at that, so he was also starting to mix and match the techniques so that he could make multiple pills on multiple cauldrons.
Making pills from different recipes was hard, but doing so with pills of the same type helped Alex make up to 4 pills at once.
'If only there was a way to make 3 pills in a single cauldron,' he thought. But then, the pill-splitting Qi would become useless for the most part.
Alex had to reluctantly stick to 2 pills only, but since he could use multiple cauldrons he was still doing quite good.
There was still some problem in making the best use of the two cauldrons, but that would take patience and practice.
For now, the best pill he had made while making 4 at once was 92%. That was quite great considering that he could still improve.
As for making 2 pills in a single cauldron, the highest he had reached in the last 3 months was still just 96%. However, he wasn't saddened by this knowledge as he was sure he would soon do better than this.
Of course, he was only thinking this all when he was making pills for himself. During the other times when he was making the pill for the sect, Alex was starting to go up to 4 pills in a single cauldron.
Since he didn't use any technique in the end, the pills rarely got better than 65%, but that was still quite amazing for the sect as Heaven-ranked pills were nearly impossible to get in a state where Alchemy was forbidden to be taught to anyone else.
Self-teaching would never help them improve to the same level as he had.
Over time, Alex started making more and more pills in the 15 hours he was allocated to work on, and the elders were starting to learn about it.
He had intended to hide for the most part, but he was becoming somewhat of a celebrity inside the upper echelon of the sect, who were starting to look at him as someone worthy of entering the sect.
As such, in the coming days, Alex's resources that he was to receive were also improved to reflect upon what he was doing.
Alex enjoyed the newly found resources and spent his entire time using them with his two beasts.
Their cultivation base improved, but not by enough to be noticeable. Whisker, however, was making proper improvements.
Around 2 months later, Whisker was finally able to completely refine the cauldron he had received.
Whisker was the least talented of the three, and as such Alex could finally understand what normal cultivators would have to go through to improve themselves.
In the 10 months of time Whisker had cultivated diligently to reach halfway through the Organ Tempering realm, Alex was already in the True realms, and so was Pearl.
Pearl was in fact still an infant when he had reached True realms, so it was fascinating for him to see a 'normal' cultivator's journey through his own pet.
"Are you ready?" Alex asked the mouse.
Whisker nodded and stood in front of the giant cauldron that was sitting on the fire.
It was his free day, so Alex was going to teach Whisker how to make pills on the days when he wasn't under surveillance.
If the little beast could really make pills, that would surely cause commotion in the sect and he didn't want that.
Alex prepared himself and looked at Whisker who was ready as well.
"Let's begin."
