After seeing Ye Hen off, Yang Kai exchanged a few words with Chi Yue and the others before entering seclusion.
Chi Yue and the rest were still too weak in their Cultivation. If they wanted to advance, spirit pills and medicinal elixirs were indispensable. Yang Kai's seclusion was specifically to refine pills for them. He had gathered quite a few spirit herbs and medicinal ingredients during this period — more than enough to refine pills that could help Chi Yue and the others cultivate all the way to the Emperor Realm. The Source Gathering Pill, which converted source power, was especially critical for them right now.
Inside the side chamber, silence reigned. Only the occasional whoosh of the furnace fire broke the stillness as Yang Kai immersed himself completely in his alchemy.
His skill in the Dao of Alchemy had always kept pace with his cultivation, so since the beginning of his journey, he rarely needed to purchase spirit pills. Anything he required, he could refine himself — fully self-sufficient.
This time, having advanced to the third-layer Dao Source Realm inside the Thousand Leaf Sect's secret realm, his strength had increased considerably, and he found that his alchemy had become even more effortless.
A single batch of Source Gathering Pills — he could usually produce seven or eight pills per furnace. On a lucky day, he could even achieve the perfect yield of nine!
Even an Emperor-Rank alchemist, refining Source Gathering Pills in person, could produce at most nine pills per furnace. Nine was the number of completion, the maximum number of pills any single furnace could yield.
Not only that, the quality of the Source Gathering Pills he produced was exceptional. Pills that had developed pill veins accounted for nearly a tenth of the total output.
The same held true for every other type of spirit pill.
During the first month of seclusion, Yang Kai still needed to pay close attention to flame control, the inscription of spirit arrays, and the timing of adding ingredients. But as time passed, refining Dao Source Realm pills became as easy as eating or drinking — entirely subconscious actions that required no deliberate thought. During the idle moments between batches, he even had time to work on his own Cultivation.
Batch after batch of spirit pills came out of the furnace. Yang Kai's alchemy skill soared, and at the same time, his recently advanced third-layer Dao Source Realm cultivation slowly stabilized. It was no longer as unsettled as before.
By the end of the second month, he had exhausted all the Dao Source Realm spirit herbs and ingredients in his possession, converting every last one into pills.
By the third month, he had begun using Emperor-Rank materials to refine pills.
After testing over a dozen furnaces of ingredients, he finally succeeded in refining a batch of low-grade Emperor-Rank spirit pills. The birth of these pills marked the moment Yang Kai's alchemy truly entered the Emperor-Rank level!
He was still somewhat unpracticed at this tier and would need large quantities of spirit herbs to hone his skills further.
But even so, an Emperor-Rank alchemist was an extraordinarily prestigious and rare figure throughout the entire Star Realm. If Yang Kai let this information slip, there was no Sect in existence that wouldn't scramble to recruit him.
He naturally had no intention of revealing his status as an Emperor-Rank alchemist. He had learned the art of alchemy from the very beginning solely to serve his own Cultivation and had never planned to go far along the path of alchemy. Reaching this level could only be attributed to fortunate coincidences.
If he were really taken in by one of the great Sects, he would have no time left for his own Cultivation. He would spend every day dealing with ingredients, refining pills for those organizations.
Looking back now, that incident on Shuiyue Star — the main planet of the Heng Luo Trading Company — where the Heavenly Resonance of Alchemy had manifested was the fundamental reason he was able to become an Emperor-Rank alchemist. Without that Heavenly Resonance, he could never have reached this level.
That Heavenly Resonance had been the Heavenly Dao itself serving as his teacher, imparting to him many supreme secrets of alchemy that had existed since the dawn of heaven and earth. His current pill-concluding technique — the Nine Heavens Profound Pill Art — had been comprehended precisely because of that encounter.
Only after advancing to Emperor-Rank alchemist did Yang Kai begin using a particular batch of special spirit herbs to refine pills.
These herbs were the ones he had obtained in the Emperor Heaven Valley within the Thousand Leaf Sect's secret realm. There were quite a number of them, and because they had grown in the Emperor Heaven Valley for countless years, every single one had absorbed the Emperor Intent and Emperor Aura permeating that place.
Pills refined from these herbs and fruits would perfectly inherit that Emperor Intent and Emperor Aura.
In other words, anyone who consumed these pills would be able to thoroughly comprehend the mysteries of Emperor Intent from the inside out. The secrets of the Emperor Aura could help third-layer Dao Source Realm warriors gain insight into the Emperor Realm. The direct medicinal effects of the pills themselves were secondary.
Both he himself and Hua Qingsi were at the third-layer Dao Source Realm, and they were both desperate for these special pills.
Yang Kai spent half a month converting the entire batch of herbs and fruits into pills. He divided them into several portions, keeping one for himself and setting the rest aside for Hua Qingsi and the others.
A seclusion lasting nearly four months, spent entirely on refining pills — this was a first for Yang Kai. In the past, his seclusions had always been devoted to Cultivation, and even when he did refine pills, it never lasted this long.
When he emerged from seclusion, he swept his spiritual sense outward and discovered that Hua Qingsi and the others had all vanished, their whereabouts unknown.
However, the dense spiritual energy suffusing heaven and earth immediately caught his attention and invigorated him.
Compared to four months ago, the concentration of spiritual energy within the Thousand Leaf Sect had undeniably risen by several orders of magnitude. It still couldn't compare to his Small Mystic World or the spiritual energy inside the secret realm, but it had genuinely improved by a great deal.
Yang Kai guessed this was because the secret realm's entrance had been fully opened.
Ye Jinghan had told him before that the secret realm was the source of the Thousand Leaf Sect's spiritual energy. It was precisely because the entrance had been sealed that the Sect's spiritual energy had grown thin and the Disciples' Cultivation speed had been underwhelming. Now that Yang Kai had repaired the inter-realm spatial formation, Ye Hen had naturally opened the entrance immediately, allowing the spiritual energy from within the secret realm to flow into the Sect.
This was only the change after a few months. If the Thousand Leaf Sect were given more time, the spiritual energy might become even richer. When that happened, the multitude of Disciples would cultivate with far greater efficiency.
The Thousand Leaf Sect truly had a solid foundation. If not for tens of thousands of years of decline, it would absolutely stand shoulder to shoulder with the great Sects like the Green Sun Divine Temple.
Just then, a streak of brilliant light suddenly entered Yang Kai's vision, hurtling toward him from the distance.
Its speed was extraordinary. Yang Kai had barely detected it when it had already appeared before him.