Chapter 356: Myriad Axis Pill
After carefully examining these three spirit medicines and instructing his giant ape puppet to water them with the Heaven Controlling Vial's spirit liquid in a timely fashion, Han Li departed from the medicine garden and returned to his secret chamber before sitting down with his legs crossed.
At this point, it wouldn't be long before all of the ingredients required to refine the Myriad Axis Pill were ready.
Hence, his current priority was acquiring the two remaining ingredients required for dao pill refinement, namely the Heavenmade Ginseng Root and the Dewform Herb.
With that in mind, Han Li flipped a hand over to produce his Transient Guild mask before putting it on.
He then began to read through the missions in a well-rehearsed fashion, yet there were still no responses to the missions that he had released to acquire those two spirit ingredients.
After a brief moment of contemplation, he erased the previous missions before releasing them again, except the rewards were tripled this time.
With such substantial rewards on offer, he was confident that it was only a matter of time before he received some responses.
After doing all of that, he stowed his Transient Guild mask away, then pulled out a pair of storage tools, which he had obtained from the pair of Azure Feather Island cultivators.
After briefly inspecting their contents with his spiritual sense, he couldn't help but shake his head in dismay.
The cultivators of the Black Wind Sea were downright impoverished compared with their counterparts in the outside world, and their storage tools contained nothing of sufficient value to catch his eye.
All of a sudden, he raised an eyebrow as he flipped a hand over to produce an azure badge.
This was an item in the bald man's storage tool, and it had been crafted from some type of azure spirit jade. On one side was engraved the image of a phoenix-like azure spirit bird, while on the other side was inscribed the character for "Feather".
This must be some type of badge from Azure Feather Island.
The badge didn't appear to contain any information on the bald man, which set it apart from the average identification badge, and that left Han Li feeling a little perplexed.
He inspected the badge a moment longer before stowing it away. After all, he had no interest in native powers of the Black Wind Island like Azure Feather Island anyway, so he naturally didn't want to waste any time or effort studying the badge.
After closing his eyes for a moment to prime himself into optimal condition, he began to examine the third level of the Mantra Axis Scripture.
Even though he had already reached the late-True Immortal Stage, he still hadn't truly begun cultivating the third level of the Mantra Axis Scripture as it was far more difficult to understand than the previous two levels, and he was still yet to completely grasp it.
He was waiting for the three primary ingredients for the Myriad Axis Pill to mature anyway, so this was a good opportunity to study the cultivation art.
Over 30 years passed by in the blink of an eye.
Throughout this entire time, the gate of Han Li's cave abode hadn't been opened even once, and it was already covered in a thick layer of dust.
Of course, no one had come to visit him during this time, either.
At this moment, Han Li was standing in his medicine garden, and he was in the process of carefully picking three golden spirit fruits from a golden spirit tree that was around 10 feet tall. These were none other than Myriad Axis Fruits.
He gave a pleased nod at the sight of the fruits in his hands, and he stowed them away in his storage bracelet before leaving his medicine garden to make his way to the pill refinement chamber.
On the way, he stopped in his tracks and took a glance at another secret chamber.
This was where Daoist Xie was staying in seclusion. Around a decade ago, Daoist Xie had suddenly requested Han Li to arrange a secret chamber for it, and Han Li naturally wasn't going to refuse such a request.
However, up to this point, nothing seemed to have happened in the secret chamber, and Han Li had no idea what Daoist Xie was doing in there.
Daoist Xie was only becoming more and more mysterious in his eyes, and he couldn't help but feel as if it were harboring some type of obscure secret.
However, as long as Daoist Xie wasn't doing anything to his detriment, he naturally wasn't going to meddle in its business. After all, he had far too much on his plate already.
With that in mind, he made his way into his pill refinement chamber, then activated all of the surrounding restrictions before sitting down with his legs crossed.
During these past few decades, the vast majority of the spirit liquid that had been manifested by the Heaven Controlling Vial had been used to mature the Myriad Axis Fruit, the Herofall Flower, and the Blood Crystal Lotus Root.
At this point, he had finally matured sufficient ingredients to refine 30 batches of pills, and he could begin attempting to refine Myriad Axis Pills.
He meditated for half a day to prime himself into the best possible condition, then swept both sleeves through the air to summon that silver cauldron, as well as the fiery silver figure, which fell under the cauldron.
The fiery silver figure sat down with its legs crossed, then made a hand seal, and the silver flames on its body instantly reared up before splitting up into nine identical bursts of flames that enveloped the underside of the cauldron in an extremely even fashion.
Han Li swept a sleeve through the air once again, and 30 batches of Myriad Axis Pill refinement ingredients emerged, laid out beside him in an orderly fashion.
He had already thought about the refinement method for the Myriad Axis Pill countless times these past years, so he couldn't have been more familiar with it.
He opened his mouth to release a burst of azure light that flew into the cauldron, and its lid instantly flew off on its own.
Han Li picked up a Myriad Axis Fruit, then flicked a finger through the air, and several streaks of azure swordlight shot forth, shredding the fruit into a clump of golden puree in the blink of an eye.
The core of the fruit had been set aside, and he carefully guided the puree into the cauldron, which was quickly heating up thanks to the silver flames.
The Myriad Axis Fruit puree quickly melted into a ball of golden liquid, following which Han Li picked up a white gel ingredient that he also guided into the cauldron.
Han Li proceeded to remain in the pill refinement chamber for three whole years.
On this day, the door of the pill refinement chamber abruptly swung open, and Han Li emerged from inside with an excited gleam in his eyes, indicating that he was in quite a good mood.
He flipped a hand over to produce a longan-sized pill amid a flash of golden light, and the pill was golden in color, giving off a gentle golden glow.
Upon closer inspection, one would discover that this layer of golden light was formed by layers of thin golden patterns, presenting a profound sight to behold.n(.o.-V--e/(l.)b//1--n
This was none other than a Myriad Axis Pill.
Despite the tiny size of the pill, there were over 10,000 layers of these golden patterns on its surface, and that was most likely where it had gotten its name from.
As a pill that could enhance even a late-True Immortal cultivator's cultivation base, not only had it been very difficult to acquire all of the ingredients required to refine it, the refinement process itself was also the most complex out of any pill that Han Li had attempted to refine thus far.
Even though he was already a pill refinement master and had the assistance of the Mantra Treasured Axis, which could slow time down to a crawl, he was still only able to successfully refine half a batch of pills after going through 10 batches of ingredients in the first year.
However, he had learned a great deal from these failures, and as a result, his success rate had steadily risen. In the end, he managed to successfully refine five and a half batches of pills in the past three years using the 30 batches of ingredients, amounting to a total of 55 pills.
For the ordinary Earthly Pill Master, even 10 batches of Myriad Axis Pill ingredients would've been impossible to gather in a short time, let alone 30. Furthermore, a success rate of just under 20% didn't seem to have been particularly impressive, but if Ping Yaozi were to learn about this in the afterlife, he would be so shocked that his jaw would drop straight to the floor.
Even for the likes of Xiong Shan, Myriad Axis Pills were worth fighting over, even at the risk of his life, and even if he were to obtain a Myriad Axis Pill, he would most likely choose to save it for an important breakthrough in his cultivation, rather than consume it right away.
After all, even in the context of the entire Northern Glacial Immortal Region, there were only several types of pills that could advance the cultivation bases of late-True Immortal cultivators, and even a formidable sect like the Blaze Dragon Dao didn't have many of these pills at its disposal. Otherwise, Golden Immortal cultivators wouldn't have been so rare.
However, this wasn't a problem for Han Li. In fact, he could refine even more Myriad Axis Pills in the future so that he would never have to stop taking them during his cultivation.
At this moment, Han Li was in quite a good mood, but not because of the number of Myriad Axis Pills that he had managed to refine. More importantly, he discovered that his pill refinement mastery had improved rapidly over the course of the past three years, and it reached a certain bottleneck.
He had a feeling that if he could progress through this bottleneck, then his pill refinement skills would reach a whole new level.
With that in mind, he took a deep breath and stowed the Myriad Axis Pills away, then emerged from the pill refinement chamber.
Before long, he had arrived at his medicine garden once again, and he stopped at the spot where the primary bean had been planted.
Under his instructions, the giant ape puppet would water it with a drop of spirit liquid from the Heaven Controlling Vial every once in a while, yet the primary bean still showed no signs of sprouting.
However, given his past experience, Han Li knew what to expect, so he wasn't bothered or agitated in the slightest as he made his way over to a white spirit pond.
The pond was roughly 70 to 80 feet in size with a layer of faint white mist over its surface.
Several crimson lotus flowers were floating on its surface, and wisps of crimson mist could be seen drifting out of its stamen, releasing an extremely rich aroma of sweetness.
One of the lotus flowers was particularly large, comparable to the size of a washbasin, while the other ones were all far smaller.
Han Li looked beneath that lotus flower to find a huge lotus root that was as thick as a bucket extending into the soil at the bottom of the spirit pond from the underside of the flower. The root was around 10 feet in length, and it was very translucent, giving off a layer of dense crimson light.
There were several smaller roots branching off from the main lotus root, but they were far lacking in both thickness and coloration compared with the main root.
On the main root was a fist-sized gray mark that was very dark in coloration, resembling a smudge of ink.
This lotus root was the very same one that Han Li had purchased from the auction, and he was using it to breed more Blood Crystal Lotus Roots in order to support his Myriad Axis Pill refinement.
At this point, the lotus root had already been matured to at least 200,000 to 300,000 years old.
The older the main ingredient, the higher the success rate of Myriad Axis Pill refinement, and the more efficacious the pills were going to be.
During the lotus root's growth, the bonded mark on its surface had also changed slightly in appearance. Not only had it grown larger and darker, certain patterns had emerged within it, resembling the veins of a leaf.
Furthermore, Han Li could sense law power fluctuations emanating from the mark, albeit only very faint ones.
However, it wasn't time law fluctuations. Instead, it was some other type of unknown law power.
This was quite a surprise to Han Li as he definitely hadn't sensed any law power fluctuations from the bonded mark before this, and they had most likely arisen due to the watering from the Heaven Controlling Vial spirit liquid.
In the wake of this discovery, he couldn't help but feel a little intrigued by this bonded mark, and he was eager to see how it was going to change in the future.