Chapter 30：One Step Forward (1/2)

Alex ran his qi through the inside of the cauldron to wipe away any little impurities that had remained there. He had seen the other inner sect disciples do this trick to prepare for their next batch of ingredients.

He once again took a deep breath and put in the first ingredient. He used his Qi to move it around, slowly turning it into powder. He lowered the heat to 800 Celsius but made sure to not do it very fast.

While he did end up not getting the timing right, it was still much better than the first time. He took out the second ingredient and put it in, while constantly monitoring the first ingredient.

After a while, he turned the heat up to 1500 Celsius. He followed the recipe and did as it asked. However, keeping his attention on 3 different things, while at the same time constantly remembering what he had to do next was too hard for him.

He started to lose focus from time to time. Still, this turn went better than the last one. Finally, once all ingredients were inside the cauldron, and fully turned into powder, he started condensing them.

Slowly but surely, he turned them into a pill. He pulled the successfully formed pill out and held it in his hand.

[Qi Improvement Pill: 12%

Improves cultivation speed by 12% for 12 hours]

Alex took a small rest. While alchemy wasn't physically taxing, it was mentally very draining. Doing 3 different things, all with smalled different things from time to time was too much for Alex.

Suddenly, Alex thought of something.

”Wait, what if I slow downtime? Wouldn't that reduce the load off my mind?” he thought that was a brilliant idea. He decided to try it.

He slowed downtime and started putting in the ingredients. As soon as he put in the first ingredient, he realized he made a mistake. Since he was now in focus mode, time was now slow. But, he could not tell how slow he had to move the ingredients since he didn't know how slow time was. He didn't have a clock to look at.

He now wished the clock at his vision's top right corner showing the seconds.

He had already put in the ingredients so, he decided to follow it through. Since he couldn't follow the timing as the recipe dictated, he decided to go off of his instincts.

He instinctively slowed down every process by what he assumed was the rate of time dilation. He followed the recipe and did what the recipe told him to, only at a slower rate.

The slowed down time helped with every other aspect of the pill-making process, however.

Finally, after a while, he managed to condense the ingredients into a pill. He took the pill out with nervousness, as he didn't know how it would turn out.

[Qi Improvement Pill: 10%]

He had succeeded. It was barely at the cusp of being accepted as a mortal-grade pill. He had managed to successfully create a pill, even though focus mode.

After a short rest, he started once more.

This time he managed to create a 12% harmony pill. He was getting better at creating pills with Focus mode activated.