Bai Yun went down to the alchemy room and started to study the recipe that the shopkeeper had given him. It was a local recipe and Bai Yun had never seen it before. But since it was quite a simple recipe, it only took Bai Yun a few minutes to understand it.

After Bai Yun studied it, he understood that it was a recipe for a pill that could help in cultivation at the qi condensation realm. Bai Yun had many recipes for many such pills in his memory. Most of them were far more effective than the one in his hand. There were some which even used the same ingredients.

But after thinking about this for a while, Bai Yun decided to use the same ingredients as the ones given, and the same recipe too. If he had changed the recipe too much, then the shopkeeper would notice. But he did decide to improve it a little bit. It would not increase the efficiency by a lot, maybe ten percent, and reduce the pill toxins a little. It would be of some help, but people would just chalk it up to chance. The shopkeeper would not notice such a small change.

Bai Yun put away the excess sets of raw materials quickly and got to work on the pill. Bai Yun was confident that he could definitely have a hundred percent success rate in making this pill. In fact, this pill was so simple that even regular alchemists would have more than a seventy five percent success rate.

Bai Yun spent the entire day until midnight making pills. As time passed, he became more and more proficient in making the pill. So the time taken to make a pill decreased, and the quality of the pill also increased quickly. Toward the end of the night, Bai Yun could even make pills with circles, but he refrained from doing so. He didn't want to make pills that were of too high a quality, and scare the shopkeeper. A pill with a circle was a big deal in terracotta hill after all.

After this Bai Yun went upstairs to train and then went to sleep in the morning. The next day, Bai Yun didn't open his shop, but continued to refine pills. This day he was a lot more confident of his success, and decided to make two cauldrons of pills at a time.

Making two sets of pills at the same time was exponentially more complicated than making just one set. Not only did you have to split your focus and energy, Bai Yun also had to control the hundred beast flame. Thankfully Bai Yun had the infinitude heavenly thought to help him. At first, Bai Yun was not too familiar with the process and wasted a few sets of raw materials. But he quickly got used to the process, and once again started to succeed. After a few failures, Bai Yun had a hundred percent success rate once again.

Bai Yun spend most of the day making two sets of pills in parallel. Towards the end of the day, he even tried to make three sets in parallel. When he tried that, sometimes one of the sets of raw materials would go to waste. But Bai Yun had more than enough to experiment and improve his alchemy skills.

Bai Yun spend the next few days in a similar manner. He would work on the pills in the day time and train in various battle techniques in the night time. As time passed Bai Yun grew more and more proficient in both, but he was unable to make a definite breakthrough in his battle techniques. But on the pill making side, Bai Yun was able to successfully make four pills at a time. Bai Yun thought that he could try for a higher number of cauldrons simultaneously, but he was not confident of maintaining the quality. He had wasted a few sets of ingredients while mastering this, but it was only a fraction compared to the amount of spare raw materials he had called collected from the shopkeeper.

Finally, three days later Bai Yun finished with the quota he had taken from the shopkeeper. Bai Yun still had an entire day left to make the pill, but he had finished faster than he thought. As he grew more and more familiar with the pill, Bai Yun's speed at producing the pill also increased.

After finishing all the pills, Bai Yun took out another few sets of raw ingredients. These sets consisted of the best ingredients among the ones given to him by the shopkeeper.

Bai Yun wanted to use these sets of ingredients to make pills. Except that Bai Yun was going to use a slightly different recipe than the one given by the shopkeeper. He was using a better recipe using the same ingredients so that the shopkeeper would not be able to say that Bai Yun copied their recipe. Bai Yun was planning on making a pill with multiple circles. Not only would this be a reaffirmation of his skills, he could also sell it for a lot of money.

Bai Yun then spend an hour meditating carefully to recover himself to the optimum position. Bai Yun then very carefully started to prepare the pill.

It took Bai Yun over an hour to make the pill. It was a long time considering that Bai Yun only took ten minutes to make a set of the same pill. Of course, Bai Yun was working with a much more complex recipe, but the fundamentals were the same.

When Bai Yun opened up the cauldron, he saw a single pill lying at the bottom of the cauldron. Bai Yun quickly pulled it out of the cauldron and studied it carefully. He gave a small smile when he saw two circles on the pill.

Bai Yun carefully put the pill away in a jade bottle. After this Bai Yun once again rested for a while before beginning on the next set of pills.

All in all, Bai Yun made ten sets of pills. Of the ten, eight of them had two circles, and two of them even had three circles on them. Bai Yun very carefully put away each and every pill in a separate bottle. Bai Yun was planning on auctioning off these pills with the help of the Alchemist Association. After all, pills with circles were not that valuable to ordinary people unless they had four circles or above. But alchemists, especially alchemists of a backward place like terracotta hill, would definitely pay great prices to get pills with circles to study them.

And it was also due to this that Bai Yun stopped with just ten pills. Having a lot of them would reduce their value and Bai Yun would not be able to sell them for a lot.

After making these pills, Bai Yun directly went to sleep without training. Not only had he wasted a lot of time on making those pills, it was also necessary to take breaks in training every now and then. When you go back to a technique after taking a break, it could give you new inspiration.

The next day Bai Yun finally opened his shop. When he did so the shopkeeper was a bit surprised. He quickly ran over to see if everything was alright. He was worried as Bai Yun was supposed to hand over the pills tomorrow, and he seemed to have finished working already, a day in advance. It was only after Bai Yun showed him all the pills that he finally calmed down.

The shopkeeper quickly looked through all the pills that Bai Yun had made to make sure that there were no defective products. After this, he quickly paid Bai Yun and went back to his shop.

Bai Yun sat in the shop for the entire day, but once again no one came in. After closing up his shop, Bai Yun went back up to train.

The next day also Bai Yun opened the shop at noon. Bai Yun was almost about to close the shop when two people suddenly walked into the store. One of them was a burly middle aged man with a scar on his face The other was a thin young man. With one look Bai Yun could guess that they were mercenaries.

"We would like a consultation." The middle aged man with a scar said.

Bai Yun nodded and pointed to a few chairs opposite him. The two people quickly sat down opposite Bai Yun. Bai Yun closed the door of the shop to give them some privacy. Bai Yun then sat down and raised his eyebrow in question to ask them what they wanted to discuss.

The middle aged man looked around for a while before taking out a jade box from inside his backpack. He then handed over the box to Bai Yun.

"Consultations aren't free." Bai Yun said without opening the box. "Of course this is only in the case that I can answer your questions. Otherwise, there is no charge."

The two men looked over at each other, and then turned to Bai Yun and nodded. Bai Yun then opened the box.

Inside the box was a colorful little flower. It looked like a violet rose in the middle. It was surrounded by red petals like a lotus. At the end of each of the petals was a small fruit like green bud.

"We found this flower in the evergreen hills. We hadn't seen anything like it before, but we figured that it must be quite valuable from its looks. So we took it around to various places to have it analyzed. But no one could tell us what it was. The last shop we went to said that there's a shop here that claimed to be able to make any pill in the qi step and also does consultations, and told us to try our luck here." The middle aged man explained.

Bai Yun took a close look at the flower. Then sniffed and licked the flower. After this Bai Yun took a needle and scraped it along the flower's petals. Bai Yun then dipped the needle in a potion only to see the potion turn black. Bai Yun then studied the flower for a while longer before going silent.

"There is a flower called morning glory sunflower." Bai Yun finally said after a while. "It is a common and powerful medicinal herb of the soul step. It is a key ingredient in many medicines. If there were any of it in Terracotta hill, the city lord will probably kill for it."

"Are you telling me this is a morning glory sunflower?" The thin young man asked hopefully.

"God no. If it were one, all those shopkeepers would recognize it." Bai Yun said. "And they would have never let you leave with a morning glory sunflower. They would have used all of their tricks to make you think that this was a simple flower and would have made you sell it to them for cheap."

"So why did you mention the morning glory sunflower?" The middle aged man asked.

"Because this is a mutated version of the morning glory sunflower." Bai Yun said. "Not just the appearance, but the medical properties of the herb had also changed drastically. It would be of no use even if someone was to add this to a recipe that called for a morning glory sunflower. That is why no one was able to recognize it."

"We don't care what it is. We just need to know if it is valuable?" The young man asked.

"There is not a single person in terracotta hill, including me, who would buy this thing." Bai Yun said.

Hearing this the duo looked sad. They had come here with great hope that they had found a windfall. Bai Yun smiled when he saw their reaction. And then Bai Yun said the finisher.

"That is because no one would be able to afford it."