Chapter 418: Lost Skill

Ma Rong flew through the air, and Alex maintained his distance. Along the way back, she did not speak a single word and kept to herself. 

Only when they reached the sect did she speak and say, "Come to my place." Alex nodded and followed behind her quietly. 

Once they were inside, Alex felt a rush of spiritual sense go past him as Ma Rong checked the surrounding. Alex did the same and noticed that the girls that were looking after his master were all gone. 

He then noticed Ma Rong's serious face and asked, "What's wrong, master? You seem worried." 

"That's because I am," Ma Rong said. "They are already suspecting malpractice against their uncle. What did you do with the body? Did you destroy it?" 

"Uh… no. I buried it underground, inside the formation," Alex said. He started getting worried too now. "Can they find the dead body?" 

"I don't know. There are beasts with a sense of smell so good that they can smell the other person's aura on you. Hmm…" Ma Rong thought and quickly pulled out a pill. 

"Here, eat this now," she said. 

Alex quickly ate the pill without hesitation and felt his entire body suddenly convulse. It then released back to normal as an inordinate amount of Qi from his body was forced out from every single pore in his body. 

This was a painful experience to most people, but thanks to the Mortal Cleansing that Alex went through, there was no filth to stop the sudden release of Qi and they all went out in record time. 

"That was faster than I had expected," she said with a face full of surprise. 

"Aura Removal pill…" Alex said mindlessly. 

"You've seen this pill before?" Ma Rong asked. 

"Uh… no. I just remember the recipe," Alex hastily made up an answer. 

"I see. Well, that pill should have removed whatever aura Zexi left on you," Ma Rong said. "Thankfully, the princess was too busy making herself hidden to search for you. Or maybe they don't expect him to have truly gone missing yet."

"However, once they realize a High Prince is missing, they will truly try to find him. Hopefully, his body decomposes by then," Ma Rong said. 

"It should be fine master; It has already been over a month. His body should be at least halfway decomposed," Alex said. 

Ma Rong shook her head. "No, Cultivator's bodies take much longer to decompose. Sigh, we can only hope the beast invasion keeps everyone on constant alert and not enough time to go search for him," Ma Rong said.

"Alright, we should get to making the pills now. You need to improve on it as well," Ma Rong said. She then took out her nameplate and notified the elders that she would be busy for a few hours. 

She then walked into the alchemy room and sat down to make the pill. Alex sat down opposite her and waited. 

"Show me all the pills that you did make," Ma Rong asked. "Maybe there are some useful ones."

"Okay," Alex said and gave her all the different recipes that he had.

"Hmm… this is useless, this does nothing basically,… you said this one increases heartbeat?" Ma Rong asked. 

"Yes," Alex replied. 

"That might be useful somewhere, especially for mass-producing given how low cost the materials are," Ma Rong said. She continued looking through the other pills and found nothing useful. 

"I guess the 4 of these are the only good ones," Ma Rong said. "Still, it's not a bad idea to have those other 4 work as cheap alternatives to most pills that the outer sect disciples will use."

"We can end up using less expensive materials to train them," Ma Rong said. 

"Ah, I didn't even think about that. Of course! Using these pill recipes as training pills is a great idea," Alex said.

"Okay, I will show you the method to improve pill recipes. Do you have any questions before we start?" Ma Rong asked. 

"Uh, yeah. I have quite a lot actually," Alex said.

Ma Rong's eyes perked a bit. "A lot? Ok then, ask," she said. 

"What exactly are Composition and Structure?" he asked. "I tried understanding on my own, but I got nowhere."

Ma Rong's face got a little shock on it. "Where did you learn about it?" she asked. 

"Um, in the library back in the capital, and also the Royal Alchemist said something about my pill's composition and structure needing work," Alex said. 

"I understood a little, but I feel like I got nowhere close to what is required to understand it all," Alex said.

"Sigh, the truth is, I too don't know anything about it at all. The only one who knows about it, as far as I know, is senior Lai," Ma Rong said. 

"The Royal Alchemist? He is the only one?" Alex said in surprise. He was hoping that his master would know about it. "So, am I not going to understand it at all?" 

"I have asked senior Lai myself too. All he says is that it has something to do with the shapes of the pill and powders and how they are mixed together." 

"I see, I guess I will learn it myself once I learn more," Alex said. 

Alex asked a few more questions that he had come across while making pills back in the formation. One of the most common questions he kept asking himself was how people practiced with ingredients that were rare. 

"Well, there are 2 assumptions you're making that a normal alchemist just wouldn't make with rare ingredients," Ma Rong said.

"First of all, you assume someone else hasn't used the ingredient before. Most of the time, you can find recipes that already have the ingredients in use. You can just read that recipe and understand the rate at which the energy is released through that."

"You can also understand what energy is released through it most of the time."

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"The second assumption you make is that just because something is rare, you have to protect it. Just because something is rare, doesn't mean it has value. You can destroy that ingredient and take the opportunity to learn from it."

"Most of the time, Ingredients aren't both important and unknown. As long as the ingredient is either one of it, you can easily learn about it," Ma Rong said. 

"On the off chance, however, when you come across an ingredient that is blatantly important yet you've never seen before, don't use it."

"Spend time learning about it as much as you can. Learn its weight, its size, its density. Try and see how much liquid it holds, if any at all. Try and see if there are parts that would be hard to destroy with fire."

"Most alchemists in the True realm use Qi sense to do that, however, since you have Spiritual sense, it must be easier," Ma Rong said. 

"Basically, learn about the ingredient as much as I can before it even goes into the cauldron, right?" Alex asked. 

"Yes," Ma Rong said with a smile. 

"I see, that does make sense," Alex said. He then asked a few more minor questions which Ma Rong easily answered. After a while, Alex was finally out of questions with almost all of them answered. 

'Now I just need to learn about Composition and Structure from somewhere else,' he thought. 'Maybe I should meet with the Royal Alchemist sometime soon,' he thought.

"Okay, if you have nothing else, I will start making pills now. Watch and learn how I improve on it," Ma Rong said. "Let's look at the ingredients first."

She looked at the recipe and said, "These are quite easy to get ingredients as well. Its True rank counterpart might be a little hard though. Let me try making this pill alone first."

"Do you have the ingredients?" she asked. 

"Yes master, right here," Alex said and took out the ingredients for the sweating pill from his storage bag. Ma Rong put on her cauldron in the fire and got ready. 

Once the cauldron was heated enough, he put in the first ingredient. Alex looked at the ingredient with his spiritual sense and followed it closely. 

He waited for his master to do 3 turns with the ingredient in a clockwise direction with a flame temperature of 560 degrees. With his spiritual sense, he could see that that was exactly what she did. 

The temperature was no higher or lower than 560 degrees, the ingredient was indeed moving in a clockwise direction and lastly, Ma Rong did exactly 3 rounds with the ingredient in the cauldron. 

However, unlike Alex's expectations, the ingredient did not get turned into powder. 

"Huh?" he was surprised. It took Ma Rong a few more turns to finally turn the ingredient into powder. 

"Did you write the wrong recipe?" Ma Rong asked. "Did you not double-check it?" 

"I… don't think so… did I?" Alex questioned himself. He hadn't spent much time trying to perfect this pill, so there weren't many recipes to go through. 

He quickly checked what he did with what was on the recipe and it was the exact same.

"The recipe is correct, master. In fact, I know all the timings to release the energy too," Alex said. 

"Then why didn't it work?" Ma Rong asked. 

"I- I don't know, Master," Alex said. 

Thankfully, the first ingredient's only job other than the shape of the powder was to release energy. It did not matter what rate it was released at, or how much. As long as all the energy of the ingredient successfully came out with the powder of the ingredient in the cauldron, that was a success. 

So, Ma Rong matched the timing with the ingredient and put the second ingredient in. 

'1120 degrees, 5 rotations, and in a counterclockwise direction,' Alex thought to himself and waited. With the slow release of energy, the two energy in the cauldron would be able to counter each other at just enough speed so that one of the ingredients didn't get ruined.

Ma Rong upped the temperature and was about to put in her second ingredient. Just as she did that, Alex stopped the ingredient midair. 

"Master, up the temperature, it's not enough," he said. 

Ma Rong checked the temperature and was surprised that it was indeed not enough. She poured in more Qi to increase the temperature, but that was nearly not as effective. 

"What's going on, Master? Just increase the temperature," Alex said. 

"I'm trying… "Ma Rong grunted, and barely got the temperature to 1120 degrees. Finally, Alex put in the 2nd ingredient and let Ma Rong control it. 

'Hopefully, that little time lost isn't enough to totally ruin the whole operation,' Alex thought. 

Ma Rong proceeded to follow the recipe. She did exactly what the ingredient said and realized that the energy wasn't releasing fast enough and that soon, the first energy would ruin each other, leaving up the potential for a hefty explosion. 

Ma Rong immediately opened the lid of the cauldron and used Elemental Guidance to quickly shift all the energy outwards. Doing so, she prevented herself, Alex, and her cauldron from a nasty case of exploding cauldrons. 

She huffed a bit after having to do that and her thoughts went into disarray. Her eyes started darting around as she tried to search for things in her own mind. 

Alex watched in worry, not really knowing what was happening. 

Ma Rong quickly slapped her storage bag and brought out a bunch of ingredients. Alex looked at the ingredients and realized it was one of the common rank pills from the library. 

The recipe was very simple, and Ma Rong started following it. Alex looked as well, curious what she was trying to do.

However, it became very apparent what she was trying to do, and even Alex started to get afraid. 

"M-Master," he said with shock in his voice. 

"I-I…" Ma Rong had a blank look on her face as she stared at the ruined ingredients, and with quivering lips, she said out the next sentence.

"I've lost my skills as an Alchemist."

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