Awakened: Evolving to Godhood

"Follow me to the alchemy hall!"

"For what! Wait, are you finally going to stop beating around the bush and teach me alchemy?"

"I never beat around the bust! It was for your good! I don\'t think it\'s good to accuse me without proof."

"Okay, okay, teacher, I was in the wrong. Sorry, alright?"

"Hmph!"

After scolding Elliot, Pill Emperor took him to the alchemy hall. It had many spiritual oak wood cabinets with dozens of shelves, and each of them had a tag on it, showcasing what ingredients a person could find after opening it. Then, there were dozens of tables, trays, and large pots.

Each pot came equipped with a lid, arc-shaped hangers, three to six legs, and many intricate designs that were spirit marks!

Before Elliot could examine the effects of these marks and what made the alchemy cauldron here more remarkable than the ones on planet Xavier, Pill Emperor said, "Go and get me two batches of the ingredients that are needed to make the Energy Circuit Expanding Pill!"

The Energy Circuit Expanding Pill was better than both the energy channel opening pill and the energy channel connecting capsule. It was a high-class pill recipe.

Elliot knew about the ingredients necessary to create it because of the books he had read last night. He went to one cabinet after another, opened them up, and took out the ingredients inside them.

After half a minute, he returned to the Pill Emperor with two bags of ingredients.

"Set them up on the trays." He ordered.

Elliot carefully arranged two trays with a batch of ingredients needed to make the pill.

"Here you go, teacher," Elliot said with an excited smile as he offered the trays to the Pill Emperor. Elliot wanted to see how a professional alchemist would perform and was also looking forward to learning from him!

Pill Emperor only picked up a single tray from his hand.

Elliot looked at him confusedly, and the Pill Emperor replied, "You will be using that."

"Ah, okay," Elliot said.

Pill Emperor went to the table near him, placed the tray on it, and said, "The first step of alchemy is gathering ingredients, and the second step is purifying them. As you have already read the books, I believe there is no need to explain the harm imposed by impurities, right?"

"Yes, there is no need," Elliot replied.

He knew that except for ingredients that soak in the energies of the purest kind, such as mana and spiritual energy, other ingredients gather impurities within them. And that\'s why pills made out of such ingredients also have impurities that cause disease and other sicknesses if they accumulate inside a person. For that to not happen, alchemists needed to purify ingredients.

"Alchemists have different ways of creating pills, but they all share the same moral code. Do not offer poison to others, but a drug that would help them advance. Alchemists only use ingredients with 50% or less than 50% impurities to create pills. Those who don\'t do that are called evil alchemists. I detest them the most. These guys, for the sake of easy profit they feed others their corrupt creation while spewing out lies and hiding the harmful effects of their pill. What do they get out of it? Profit, streams of riches! But their customers? Their lives gt destroyed. They get stuck in their realm, unable to advance for centuries. Or they become infected with dreadful diseases with no cure and die sick and frail! You must not become like them. Do you get that?"

Elliot had seen the manifestation of impurities with his own eyes back in the spirit forest, so he knew the adverse effects of an accumulation of contaminants, and he was confident that he wouldn\'t create pills with impurities and feed them to his loved ones.

Of course, the situation would be different if he was giving pills to his enemies or people that had problems with him.

"Teacher, trust me, I will never let greed blind me, and I will never dishonor your teachings by fooling people into buying fake pills disguised as high-quality ones," Elliot said with an honest expression on his face.

"Good!" Pill Emperor said, "Now, let me teach you a high-grade skill to purify ingredients. Look at my hands carefully."

"Hmm-mph." Elliot lifted his eyelids and stared at the delicate jade-like hands of the Pill Emperor that had repeated thousands of lives as if they were scythes belonging to a reaper.

The pill Emperor started performing hand signs, and a moment later, mana surged out of the tip of his fingers and thumbs, charging straight into the ten ingredients on the tray.

The mana went into the ten ingredients, beat the shit out of the impurities before pushing them out of them.

In the end, all of the ten ingredients lost most of their impurities.

"As you can see, by using the divine stream purifying technique, I have distilled 90% of impurities from ingredients. In our world, that\'s the highest anyone has ever reached. If you learn it, then you can do the same." Pill Emperor explained to Elliot, who wasn\'t impressed.

"Teacher, I have a question." 

"Shoot."

"Is it hard to remove all the impurities from an ingredient?" Elliot asked.

"Yes, it is hard, more complex than you think." Pill Emperor said, "An ingredient has impurities in four places."

Pill Emperor raised his first finger and said, "Their outer surface; impurities here are the easiest to remove."

Pill Emperor raised his second finger and continued with his explanation, "Their inner surface; impurities here are harder to remove, but if you have a reasonable control over your mana, it would not be challenging."

Pill Emperor raised his third finger and said, "Their innermost area, a place which is only an inch or a few inches away from an ingredient\'s medicinal essence. If you don\'t have high-level control over your mana, then three things would help while you remove impurities from this area."

Elliot\'s ears perked up, wondering how dreadful those three outcomes are going to be.