Chapter 23: Tempering Through Refinement, the Seven Refinements Pill.

For Jiang Xincheng, the best way to solidify his cultivation realm right now was to refine pills. Using pills could help him stabilize his cultivation level, which would save a lot of time and quickly strengthen his cultivation foundation.

As Earth’s top Alchemist, how could he just let all kinds of Natural Treasures scattered across the planet go to waste.

After thinking it over carefully, Jiang Xincheng picked the Spiritual Elixir he wanted to refine.

The Seven Refinements Pill!

A first-tier High-grade Spiritual Pill. After taking it, it could temper the Dantian and Meridians, making a shaky cultivation foundation solid and firm, stabilizing the current realm.

What’s more, besides tempering the cultivation foundation, the Seven Refinements Pill could also strengthen various parts of the body, making the Primordial Warrior’s physical toughness increase quite a bit. But compared to the effect on the cultivation foundation, that benefit wasn’t much.

Now that he had decided which Spiritual Pill to refine, Jiang Xincheng didn’t delay. He immediately left his dorm, took the few hundred Credit Points he had left, and went to buy the various Spiritual Herbs and materials he needed.

After the Fourth World War, the whole world was divided into three major powers: the Shenxia Alliance, the Non-Aggression Pact Organization, and the Mowei Empire. To make trade easier, the three powers abolished all the old currencies and changed everything to credit currency, called Credit Currency for short, also known as Credit Points, which could be used everywhere in the world.

Credit Points could be kept in bank cards or exchanged for physical money, circulating globally, and they were very convenient to use.

Luckily, there were no other Alchemists on Earth now, so no one competed with Jiang Xincheng for these alchemy materials. Thus, these materials were extremely cheap. Unlike in later times, when the materials for even the lowest-tier first-grade Spiritual Pill were terribly expensive, costing at least several thousand Credit Points.

The only somewhat expensive material for the Seven Refinements Pill was the main ingredient, Seven Refined Iron. ‘Tempering iron a hundred times makes steel’ meant iron had to be refined a hundred times to become steel. Of course, ‘a hundred times’ was just a general number; iron didn’t necessarily become steel exactly after a hundred refinements.

But Seven Refined Iron really had to be refined precisely seven times, and it had to be refined using Primordial Force, no more and no less. Tianhai City was an international metropolis, so naturally there were no old-style blacksmith shops like in ancient times. Therefore, Jiang Xincheng couldn’t go to a blacksmith to make Seven Refined Iron.

However, Jiang Xincheng had his own way. He bought a set of old forging equipment for just five hundred Credit Points and planned to make the Seven Refined Iron himself. In his previous life, Jiang Xincheng had been a fourth-tier High-grade Alchemy Master. He had refined the Seven Refinements Pill countless times and prepared all the materials himself, so he was quite skilled at making Seven Refined Iron.

Apart from this used forging equipment being a bit expensive, everything else was cheap. As for iron, it went without saying; he could just pick up piles of it at some junkyards, more than he could carry.

Another material for the Seven Refinements Pill was the Century-Old Tree Root. It wasn’t hard to find either, and it cost no money. He just took a stroll through a well-preserved ancient garden in Tianhai City, and Lu Jingwei’s pocket ended up with half a kilogram of Century-Old Tree Root, only paying a little over ten Credit Points for the entrance ticket.

There were also some other scattered Spiritual Herbs and materials, costing Jiang Xincheng just over a hundred Credit Points. They were as cheap as could be, letting Jiang Xincheng fully enjoy the advantage of being ahead of the world.

If this were in later times, this pile of materials would cost at least tens of thousands of Credit Points, especially the Century-Old Tree Root, which would be terribly expensive. It definitely wouldn’t be like now, where he could get a bunch so easily, with no one trying to fight him for it with knives or guns.

The forging equipment and all the materials together cost Jiang Xincheng a little over six hundred Credit Points. He still had over two hundred Credit Points left. Using over a hundred Credit Points, he rented a remote old house, put all his things inside, and prepared to refine the Seven Refinements Pill.

Tianhai University was located in the suburbs of Tianhai City, where renting was very cheap. A single room near the school cost just over two hundred Credit Points per month, not to mention the old house Jiang Xincheng rented was several miles away from the school, and in a rural area, so over a hundred Credit Points per month was even a bit expensive.

Jiang Xincheng chose this place because it was very quiet, the environment was good, there were few people around, and his secrets wouldn’t be easily discovered.

He skillfully set up the forging equipment, lit the charcoal fire, and began preparing the first material for the Seven Refinements Pill, which was also its main ingredient: Seven Refined Iron.

The furnace fire blazed. Jiang Xincheng used his Primordial Force to draw out the Primordial Force within the coal, generating a Yuanli Flame, and began refining the raw iron.

Everything on Earth contained Primordial Force; hardly anything was without it. Calling Earth a Primordial Force planet was not an exaggeration. But under normal circumstances, the Primordial Force within these things lay dormant and wasn’t released.

Humans had lived on Earth for millions of years, and civilization had developed over thousands of years, yet throughout all this time, humans had never discovered Primordial Force nor could they use the Primordial Force within all things. They only used the Primordial Force-rich materials in the most crude ways, wasting vast amounts of precious high-grade Yuan Stones.

Even though Primordial Force had been discovered now, people still didn’t know how to use the Primordial Force hidden within all things. They continued to use everything with the lowest efficiency, except for Yuan Crystals, which humans utilized a bit better.

If people didn’t use special methods to activate the Primordial Force within things, then all these things remained just ordinary objects, not precious high-grade Yuan Stones.

For example, rice. If you didn’t stir its Primordial Force and activate it, the rice was just ordinary food to fill your stomach.

But if you activated the Primordial Force within it, this rice became a third-tier High-grade Yuan Stone that could kill an ordinary Primordial Force Practitioner. If an ordinary Practitioner absorbed the Primordial Force from it, at best, their Primordial Force would become impure, requiring lots of time to refine and purify, otherwise their foundation would become unstable. At worst, the Primordial Force inside them would go chaotic, and they could explode and die.

Time passed, the flames roared, and Jiang Xincheng took off his shirt, wielding the hammer, pounding heavily.

Once…

Twice…

Three times…

…

Up to seven times. The Seven Refined Iron was finally formed. Looking at the piece of Seven Refined Iron glowing with faint red light, Jiang Xincheng smiled broadly. With the quenching from seventh-tier High-grade coal Yuan Stone, his decades of experience, and a bit of luck, he had actually forged a very precious, superior quality Seven Refined Iron material. This should be enough for him to refine quite a few valuable Seven Refinements Pills.

Smiling slightly, Jiang Xincheng packed up the forging equipment. Such a large piece of Seven Refined Iron was enough for him to refine more than a hundred batches of Seven Refinements Pill, so he didn’t need to make more Seven Refined Iron for now.

The main material, Seven Refined Iron, and the Century-Old Tree Root were all ready. So next, it was time to refine the first-tier High-grade foundation stabilizing Spiritual Pill, the Seven Refinements Pill. Once the Seven Refinements Pill was successfully refined, the problem of his unstable foundation would be solved immediately, and Jiang Xincheng could then rush towards higher realms.