"Just a twenty to thirty percent chance?"
Miao Wuyin heard the confidence in Shi Feng's tone regarding her advancement and couldn't help but feel a mix of confusion and curiosity.
Advancing as a Life Profession wasn't the same as advancing a player's combat tier — it wasn't enough to simply pass a test. You had to meet the required profession proficiency and, on top of that, create a design or recipe corresponding to the next tier. And to advance to Advanced Master Alchemist, one needed to craft an Advanced Master Recipe. But creating an Advanced Master Recipe was several times harder than a regular Master Recipe. It wasn't merely a matter of material blending anymore — it involved magical formations, mastery over mana, and a host of other complex factors.
That was why advancing to Advanced Master wasn't something that could be accomplished simply by throwing more resources and guidance at the problem.
Her twenty to thirty percent confidence came entirely from the Research Workshop providing direction, the Drop of Life recipe for reference, and her own accumulated experience, which gave her a rough sense of the research direction. But even so, it would require enormous amounts of time for continuous experimentation and adjustment — not something achievable in six or seven days.
"I can't say for certain yet, but if you already have twenty to thirty percent confidence, then over the remaining time, there should be roughly a seventy to eighty percent chance." Shi Feng smiled.
"Seventy to eighty percent?!" Miao Wuyin's voice rose involuntarily, and she stared at Shi Feng with utter disbelief.
Creating an Advanced Master Recipe was far easier said than done. Even if all the major superpowers emptied their coffers to fund her research and experiments, it might improve her odds by ten or twenty percent at most. Jumping from a twenty to thirty percent success rate straight to seventy or eighty percent — if the other Master Alchemists heard that, they'd probably laugh Shi Feng out of the room. They'd say he was a complete outsider who didn't know the first thing about alchemy.
But Shi Feng was no outsider. He was a genuine Intermediate Master Blacksmith, standing at the very peak of the blacksmithing profession, and one of the earliest players to reach the rank of Life Profession Master. In terms of understanding Life Professions, there were probably only a handful of people in the entire Candlelight Trading Company who could rival him.
"You'll see when the time comes. For now, go to the Research Workshop and study the Drop of Life recipe thoroughly. If you can fully master that recipe, it might even push you one step closer to creating your Advanced Master Recipe." Shi Feng didn't say more — the secret of the Void Stones was far too important. If it leaked, it would send shockwaves throughout the entire Divine Realm.
For secondary professions that had reached Master rank, the leap from Intermediate to Advanced was an enormous threshold. It was said that over ninety percent of Masters were blocked at the gate to Advanced Master. This was no longer just a matter of technical skill — it also involved the player's mental level.
The simplest way to raise one's mental level was to advance the player's combat tier. The higher the tier, the greater the increase to one's mental state. This was why the top Life Profession players in the Divine Realm all had impressively high combat tiers.
Currently, Miao Wuyin was only a Tier 2 player, and her level was just 97 — still a considerable distance from Level 100, let alone advancing to Tier 3 to boost her mental level.
And items that could enhance a player's mental state in the Divine Realm were extraordinarily rare. The Void Stones were one such item. This secret hadn't been discovered until mainstream player levels had reached around 150 to 160.
Once word got out, the major superpowers had gone into a frenzy snatching up Void Stones. They were no longer viewed as mere tools for increasing mana density — they became invaluable resources for both combat players and Life Profession players to study and grow with.
Although Void Stones only boosted mental levels by about twenty to thirty percent, that was already incredibly precious for players. After all, advancing a combat tier only provided a slightly bigger boost than that.
So if Miao Wuyin had no issues on the technical front, once she met the mental level requirements, breaking through to Advanced Master Alchemist would be a natural, inevitable outcome.
After that, Shi Feng had Miao Wuyin devote herself entirely to studying the Drop of Life recipe in the Research Workshop, while he focused on two things simultaneously: waiting out the cooldown on the Shared Vault retrieval, and promoting several Candlelight Trading Company shops to Three-Star Sub-Shops — the Candlelight shop in Nightfall City, the Candlelight shop in Black Dragon City, the Candlelight shop in Revelation City, and the Candlelight shop in Twin Towers City.
Five fully established Three-Star shops spread across five locations would provide tremendous convenience, both for recruiting Life Profession players and for sourcing materials.
And with these five Three-Star shops deployed, it wouldn't take long before Zero Wing's roster of Life Profession players surpassed those of the major superpowers. That would transform Candlelight into a genuine trading powerhouse — one capable of competing against the superpower-backed trade alliances in major NPC cities, rather than having to rely on Stone Forest City's temporary outpost to attract large guilds.
But to make Candlelight into a truly competitive trading company capable of earning vast amounts of gold, having enough Life Profession players alone wasn't nearly enough. He also needed products of sufficiently high quality.
"Looks like it's time to study these forging blueprints," Shi Feng murmured, glancing at the ancient parchment scrolls sitting in his inventory — still sealed.