Ma Yuehao thought he found a sucker. So, he didn’t quite expect it when the sucker turned out to be a bigger sucker than he realised.

“32 pills.” Mingwei said. “Just slightly over 1,800 Qi per day.”

Ma Yuehao looked at it, and had to pretend to be nonchalant about it for a moment. Thankfully, he was really good at pulling off the resting bitch face. “Ah. Only 32, eh?”

Mingwei nodded. “Yes, Elder Brother Yuehao. Unfortunately, I only could make 32 pills.”

Yuehao inspected the pills, and noted they were all Gator Core Refined Pills. Did this mean Mingwei didn’t know how to refine the bunch of Greenduck Liver, or he has yet to start? He had initially expected him to produce 30 pills in total, from all the materials he had given him.

In fact, he had even expected him to fail to hit the 30 pill target and make only 20 or so pills. After all, he was just a 3-star disciple, it was a stretch to expect Mingwei to actually be able to make 4-star 1st refinement pills. It could only mean that Elder Qing had thought him about it, and Mingwei may well be a refining genius.

Still, a sucker. Yuehao pulled off the best annoyed look as he could and took the 32 pills. “Ah. I suppose this will have to do for now.”

“Thank you for your understanding, Brother Yuehao.”

Ma Yuehao didn’t reply, and just turned. “Alright.” So he left, and went back to continue his cultivation. He had 32 4-star pills now! And they were decent too. He had best keep Mingwei’s alchemy services a secret, and use this to get a headstart on all the other 3-star disciples!

-

Mingwei was rather glad that the young master didn’t kick up a fuss. Was it really that bad, 32 pills was above what he initially promised. Still, he had more materials to work with. He still had the Greenduck liver, and he could still add runes to it.

He had secretly added runes to 2 of Yuehao’s 32 pills, which gave those pills a 2x multiplier, enabling the pill to increase Qi gathering by almost 4,000Qi per day. Still, one can only take a single pill a day, and eating two Qi-gathering pills of the same type doesn’t add effects. Unlike stats or healing pills which can be taken multiple times in the same day.

He paused. He had a decision to make at this point. Should he add runes to the 20 pills, and start cultivating, or should he start working on the Greenduck Liver first?

He paused and looked at it. 20 pills would be enough for 140 days of cultivation. As it is, he could gather 775 QI a day, 500 from his repaired cauldron, 45 from his cultivation method, 30 Qi brush, and 200 from his Qi Formation. The pill would add 3,960 to that number. That’s a total of 662,900 Qi for 140 days of cultivation. Not sufficient even to hit mid 3-star.

It would not be good if he was interrupted, since the gathered Qi would slowly decay if he couldn’t hit mid 3-star. Each of these ‘sub-stages’ are like save points for the Qi gathering. Once they reached that point, the Qi gathered would not decline lower than that point.

So, he decided to return to the urns. It’s time to make Greenduck Liver pills!