Zhao Fan cultivated for a few hours before going to sleep and as soon as he got up, he found that Hei Long was already in possession of the body. He sat on the edge of the bed with a formation plate on his lap which was colored completely black. The whole room was in disarray with sheets of paper scattered randomly.

“What, what is this formation?” Zhao Fan inspected the formation plate and found that it was not completely covered in black. It was covered in minuscule symbols and lines painted in black which were so densely packed that it made the whole plate look completely covered.

“A formation” Hei Long did not look away from the plate in his hands.

“...”

Hei Long inspected it from every angle carefully which didn’t make sense since he could just use his power to inspect it. Just as Zhao Fan was about to voice his question, Hei Long spoke again with a satisfied smile.

“This is a lot harder than I expected, no wonder it’s impossible for anyone without my power. Even with it, it took me over eight hours of planning and failure after failure.” Hei Long’s disheveled appearance combined with the messy room made him look like a mad scientist.

Suddenly, Zhao Fan realized that Hei Long might not have been inspecting it for flaws but just admiring his work.

“What’s so impressive about this formation, can you explain it to me?”

“What’s so impressive? This one formation is the key for us to topple the ancient hegemony of the Alchemist Guild!”

A few hours later at the warehouse, two figures stood. One was a white-haired handsome looking young man and the other one was the Zhao Fan.

“This formation plate is your grand idea?”

“Yes. Look, I attached a small plate of Moonlight Vines. When infused with qi, they start glowing like small lanterns, all you have to do is throw in the required ingredients precisely when the vines start to glow.”

A surprised look appeared on Yun Tian’s face but he didn’t retort. Even if the idea seemed hilarious, he already swore to follow Zhao Fan so he felt he needed to show at least some respect.

“How could it be that easy? Once he fails, I should try to get some money from him and leave.” Yun Tian didn’t feel confident in Zhao Fan at all. He lied about knowing the latter’s character from a cold read and what little he knew about the way he acted. What was true, however, was that the latter probably had a lot of money since he could afford to mess around like this. As for his promise? He didn’t care. How could someone like him afford to care about his promises?

Zhao Fan calmly took out a few plates with all of the ingredients measured out to be the same as before and put them close to the cauldron. He then attached the formation plate to the little spout of the cauldron where spiritual energy was inserted. Finally, he took out a mid-rank spirit stone and placed it on the side of the formation where a specific symbol was placed.

As the spirit stone was put into place, the symbol shone lightly and the fine line of ink leading from it to the next symbol slowly lit up. Around ten seconds later, the line shone brightly and the next symbol lit up, which caused the cauldron to start heating up.

Next, the line split into two. A few seconds later one of the lines completely lit up and another symbol glowed. Qi traveled through the symbol and out of the formation plate. The Moonlight Vines suddenly lit up as the energy traveled to them and Yun Tian threw the first set of ingredients in without hesitation.

The ingredients slowly let out their essences and started merging. At that moment, the second line lit up and another symbol caused the temperature of the flame to increase. Just as the symbol turned dim again, the two essences merged perfectly together and the stream of qi traveled over the dim symbol and into another two split lines.

“No way this succeeds right?” Yun Tian suddenly sweated at a thought. It would be acceptable if they failed, but if this process somehow succeeded, wouldn’t that mean that the two had made history?

“Throw it in now!” Yun Tian was suddenly awakened. He was so shocked that he had forgotten to follow the simple instructions.

He didn’t dare to slack off again and quickly threw in the bowl of ingredients.

The flame suddenly turned hotter again and the ingredients flawlessly mixed in.

Only this time, as an alchemist, Yun Tian could tell that the process was slightly mistimed and the ingredients still were slightly uncombined. If it was him controlling the flame, he could just increase it for a little again to properly combine the essences and it would only lead to a slight loss in the pill efficacy. However, when the whole process was automated, a slight mistake could not be fixed and might lead to something like a ten or twenty percent decrease in the overall quality. In the worst case, it might even lead to a failed pill or cauldron explosion.

Yun Tian looked over at Zhao Fan and found that the latter was not angry or concerned. He was completely focused on the formation.

Just like this, the process continued for a while, and eventually, the pill-making process was smoothly finished without any more careless mistakes.

Wooosh

Yun Tian lifted the lid as the smoke finished escaping the cauldron and inspected the pills.

“These are eighty percent quality pills!” The shocked expression he wore was completely real even if he predicted the outcome throughout the process. Still, now that he saw the product, another wave of surprise washed over him. If he did not mess up, the pills would surely reach ninety or even ninety-five percent! He looked over at Zhao Fan with a much more respectful attitude.

“Phew, so the plan works!” Zhao Fan was smiling with satisfaction and an ambitious look in his eyes surfaced. He finished inspecting the pills and turned them over to Yun Tian who was waiting on his scolding.

“Don’t worry, even if you messed up, it enlightened me”

Yun Tian sighed in relief but then looked confused.

“In what way?”

“This formation is meant to be used by mortals. Even if the process seems smooth with you, the mistake you made showed me that small errors can lead to huge drawbacks. You have refined this pill before so it’s easy for you to guess when to throw in materials, especially since this formation is based on your method. A mortal, however, will react much slower when asked to throw in materials and he might throw them in the wrong spot as well.”

“So you want to dumb down the whole process?” Yun Tian was dumbfounded. It was already impressive enough to make it so simple that all one has to do is throw the materials in.

“Of course, it’s not too difficult to do this. It might even be possible to do it completely labor free.”

“Labor free?”

“It might be a little more difficult but think about it. If it’s completely free from human error, won’t it be possible to make perfect pills every time?” Zhao Fan smiled.

Yun Tian went pale and almost fainted as he realized the potential of this method. Ninety-five percent quality was one thing, a perfect pill was usually made by tier 9 Alchemy Apprentices or above and was valued five or even sometimes ten times above ninety-five percent pills. Why? One simple reason. Pills were essentially hard materials containing a condensed essence. The higher the quality of the pill, the less actual material there would be. This meant that a cultivator could consume more pills and they would be absorbed faster.

Yun Tian looked at Zhao Fan and a thought suddenly arose in his mind.

“The fated opportunity does exist!”