363: Routine

Routine

Alex tried to learn whatever was being taught in the class, but couldn't keep much focus at all. He was way too excited at the prospect of learning alchemy tonight.  0

After learning how alchemy ingredients interacted, at least to a basic level, he was going to start making his own pill tonight. Or, at least try to. 

He wasn't really confident that he could make a pill today or within the next week. He was pretty much sure he would fail a lot. But what mattered was not that he failed,  but that he learned from his failure.

After the classes ended, he went to the driving range with Hannah. Today was the third day of driving, and he felt like he was getting good at it.

Still, he was a little sad he wasn't going to learn it as fast as he did with his bicycle back at home. "Sigh, I guess a car really is different," he thought. 

Once the driving lessons ended, he and Hannah directly came back home. They ate something from the fridge and both went back to their room. After which, Alex excitedly logged back into the game.

Opening his eyes, Alex didn't even have to look around. He immediately got to the daily routine he had set to learn starting today. 

From the moment he logged back into the game, he would train for about 3 hours. He had the perfect training ground, so he was free to temper himself however he wanted to. 

Then, he would train physically with Pearl for the next 3 or so hours. After that was done, he would practice alchemy until an hour before it was time for him to log out. At which point, he would try to revise everything he learned that night.

He took out a cheap sword, one of the many he had bought in the Cardinal City, and started practicing. He send out attacks without restraint as there was nothing there for him to hurt at all. 

Sword slashes, palm attacks, fist attacks, kicks, punches— he did whatever he wanted to and trained in it. Space shifted around, but he didn't care. He simply kept on training.

After 3 hours were over, he finally stopped. He was breathless, but he wasn't Qi-less. Even with all the training, he managed to end with a little less than half of his Qi left. Which should go back to being relatively full by the time he was done training with Pearl. 

Pearl came out with a hearty 'Meow'. It seemed his instinct to fight as a monster made him really excited about the training. 

The both of them didn't hold back when fighting. That was because when Alex suppressed his Qi, his body had the same cultivation base as Pearl. However, Pearl had both Qi and Body cultivation with him. 

So, in a sense, he was stronger than Alex at the time. Despite that, the reason they didn't hold back was because of the armor that Alex was wearing. 

It could block attacks from an early True realm expert, attacks from a little cat in the Organ Tempering realm were nothing to him. 

Still, it would hurt him if Pearl attacked his head, so he had spiritual sense running on full throughout the training session. In between the training, they would sometimes be separated by the space shifting around inside the formation, but within a few seconds, they were able to find each other again.

The training ended 3 hours later with both of them rather tired. However, Alex didn't really care much about it. He took a 5-minute rest and got to setting his furnace with the metal formation plate. 

Once everything was set, he put down a disposable cauldron and started making his pills. He had already planned a set of ingredients that didn't adhere to any recipe he knew, but based on the elemental theory should technically work. That was of course assuming he perfectly knew the elemental theory of alchemy. 

Once the cauldron was hot enough, he put in his first ingredient. The moment he put in that ingredient, he realized something and immediately pulled the ingredient back out. 

"Sh*t," he thought. "I have to worry about this too now?" he thought. He realized that he was so excited about the elemental aspect of the pill making, that he forgot the most fundamental ones— The fire, the motion, and the timings. 

A regular recipe of a pill consisted of a few things. 

First of all, was the list of the ingredients required. The second was the order of those ingredients. The third was the temperature in which the ingredients were to be burned, the fourth was the motion in which you had to move the ingredients around the cauldron, and finally, the timing at which it was appropriate for the next ingredient to be added. 

Alex realized that he knew only 2 of the 5 requirements of a recipe. He thought about what was the correct thing to do and finally realized his mistake. It wasn't that he had to be more prepared, but rather…

"I shouldn't have prepared at all," he thought. Making a list of ingredients basically forced him down a path of pill-making that wasn't flexible at all. While some would argue that it made the discovery of new pills easier, some would also argue that the alchemist should change what is required, when it is required based on the alchemist's wishes. 

So, Alex dumped the list and randomly took out an ingredient, and dropped it into the cauldron with no hesitation. He tried to move it around to release energy. While what he randomly tried did produce energy, it was only in a small amount. 

He needed to change the approach and be fast about it, or he would end up burning the ingredient. He tried a few different variations and in the end found one that he thought fit him, but by then the ingredient had started charring and it was unusable. 

He had somehow managed to fail before he had even started with making the pills.

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