The lid of the alchemy furnace was blown off by a blast of air. Inside, clouds of smoke billowed out, carrying a thick medicinal smell.
Jiang Chen's brow furrowed slightly. That acrid odor immediately made his heart sink.
Even though he had never refined a Five Dragons Open Heaven Pill in his previous life, he knew that if the pill was successfully forged, it would naturally exude an aura of a dragon swallowing the heavens. That kind of energy would absolutely not smell like this.
Sure enough, when the pill finally appeared, Jiang Chen didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Looking at that grimy, blackened thing, he knew right away — this pill was a complete waste.
Forget about a finished product; this didn't even qualify as a half-finished one. You could toss it by the side of the road and nobody would bother picking it up.
"As expected — the first attempt failed."
Jiang Chen wasn't in a hurry to start a second round. Instead, he sat cross-legged, adjusted the true qi within his body, and mentally retraced every step of the refining process.
Every detail, every step, played through his mind like a movie.
"Theoretically, nothing I did was wrong. So where's the problem?" Jiang Chen meditated, reviewing the first attempt — what he gained, what he lost.
Yet he couldn't find any flaw in the first try at all.
"Could it be that I made some small operational errors? Or maybe my control over the flame intensity wasn't precise enough?"
In his previous life, Jiang Chen had been a master of alchemy, highly skilled in the art of pill refinement. But he had never made a Five Dragons Open Heaven Pill before, so he had no direct reference point.
He couldn't pin down the exact cause.
After an hour of meditation, Jiang Chen had restored himself to peak condition. Only then did he begin the second attempt, this time with even greater caution and care.
He pursued perfection in every single step.
And yet, when the result was revealed, he was disappointed once more.
Just like the first attempt — it didn't even qualify as a half-finished product. It was nothing but a complete waste.
A third time. A fourth time…
Each time, Jiang Chen felt certain that there were absolutely no mistakes this time. But the end result was the same piece of junk as before.
"Damn it — when has Jiang Chen, in either of my lifetimes, ever been this pathetic? A single Five Dragons Open Heaven Pill, and without an alchemy formation to assist me, I can't produce one decent pill on my own?"
The stubborn competitiveness buried in Jiang Chen's bones was ignited.
However, he knew that something had definitely gone wrong somewhere. If he just kept going at it without changing his approach, things wouldn't improve.
He had prepared enough materials for ten attempts. Having failed four times, he now had six chances left. Every failure meant one fewer opportunity.
"There shouldn't be any issues with the details. So where exactly is the problem? The Five Dragons Open Heaven Pill isn't some impossibly rare creation. With my abilities, I shouldn't be stumbling over the same obstacle four times in a row. Something must be off."
Jiang Chen entered a meditative state again. This time, he decided to shift his thinking — change his entire mental framework.
"The Five Dragons Open Heaven Pill — drawing qi like a dragon, cracking open heaven and earth. The name itself carries grand, sweeping power…" Suddenly, a thread of inspiration seemed to catch Jiang Chen's attention.
"That's it! The Five Dragons Open Heaven Pill draws qi like a dragon, tears open heaven and earth — what magnificent boldness! I've completely lost touch with the true essence of this pill. In the refining process, I've been overly cautious, afraid of failure, and entirely stripped the pill of its alchemical spirit. I was tracing the outline without capturing the soul — painting a tiger that ended up looking like a dog."
A flash of insight sparked in Jiang Chen's mind, and ideas came flooding in. He had found the root of the problem.
After all, he was a master alchemist reborn — when it came to the art of alchemy, his understanding was as clear as looking through fire. Once he identified the root cause, the path forward became obvious.
It was never about errors in the refining process. The mistake was in his mindset from the very beginning — he hadn't approached the task with the conviction of victory.
Refining a Five Dragons Open Heaven Pill with that attitude — of course it would fail.
Jiang Chen understood that the root cause was still the fear of failure. Without the support of an alchemy formation, he had started out lacking full confidence.
For an alchemist, that was a fatal flaw.
Having found the reason for his failures, Jiang Chen's ability to recalibrate was impressive. Any ordinary alchemist who had failed four times in a row would inevitably have developed mental problems.
But Jiang Chen had trained in the "Heart of Rock." His mental fortitude was as solid as bedrock — no amount of repeated failure could shake his emotional balance.
Sure enough, when he opened the furnace for the fifth time, the pill had actually taken shape. It was still a bit short of low-grade quality, but it could barely be called a finished product.
"It looks like the direction was right. The fifth attempt was still somewhat affected by my mindset. On the sixth try, I'll definitely succeed!"
Jiang Chen's brand of confidence was something other alchemists simply couldn't replicate.
The sixth attempt came out even better. This time, the Five Dragons Open Heaven Pill had truly reached low-grade quality.