Beauty and the Bodyguard

Chapter 1461 - Learning Refinement

In the next few days, Lin Yi spent all of his time studying the notes left behind by Zhang Liju.

Taking things slowly, Lin Yi didn't rush right into practical practice right away- he tested the chants and the Refiner's arts slowly, studying them. It was a short chant, but it was hard to understand- before he fully understood everything, he wouldn't move a single step forward into practitioning!

Some less patient people, upon getting their hands on a special text, would quickly practition... Only to find out after a while that they had been doing it wrong, or if they had been going the wrong direction, taking a wrong turn...

There were plenty, plenty of these people- people who would have to redo everything if they were lucky, and people who went off the edge if they weren't. Lin Yi didn't want to go there.

It was similar to a joke Lin Yi once saw- it told of a person who got an ancient text, and was extremely pleased when he read the first line of the book. "One must castrate oneself to succeed in this art." The man thought of a long time, and, for the sake of becoming the strongest under the skies, made the decisive move and went through with the deed. The intense pain made him pass out, and when he woke up, he flipped to the second page to feel his blood pressure go up... "Even if castration is done, success is not guaranteed!" He held in his emotional pain and physical pain, and got to the third page- the frustration he felt took the form of spit blood as he died on the spot! The third page said: "Success if possible, even without castration."

Of course, this was just a joke, an exaggerated one. Lin Yi didn't know if someone so dumb and impatient in this world existed, but impatient people were aplenty on this Earth!

Zhang Naipao was training with all his might in the midst of poison wasps, under the scorching sun... Sweat dripped down his entire body, but he didn't find it difficult... Suddenly, he sneezed!

"?" Naipao scratched his nose and looked up at the bright sun. Why was he sneezing on such a hot day? Was someone talking about him or something?

Naipao spent a while thinking about it and shook his head, continuing practitioning. He swore in his heart- he needed to become a super-powerful master to beat Lin Yi to death!

Lin Yi first studied the fire element of the refinement fire arts- this was what all refiners went for at first since it had the most practical routes as well as allowing for the refining of many different common medicines and elixirs. Of course, some people might have some conflict with the element, for example, an inherent conflict with the fire element-those with a tendency for ice and cold. People like that wouldn't even succeed if they went for fire, so they went for water for a better chance.

Other than qi, it took a huge amount of will and sensitivity to practice the refinement fire.

Sensitivity and will was something a bit more mysterious here- in simple words, one used his focus and will to feel the state inside the fire of the furnace- adjusting the temperature in response. Every medicine and elixir went through a different process, after all, and if the refinement fire burned too bright or too long, it might affect the pill and turn it into a faulty one, even!

Of course, one didn't need to do that if they were used to it. Refining the same medicine over and over again for hundreds or thousands of times would allow the refiner to find the tricks and faults, ending up getting a success rate from all the times of failure!

But, while this may be fine for those elixirs made with low-level ingredients, it was different for higher-level elixirs, which required more expensive ingredients. You couldn't just waste them in tons of tests- it was hard enough just to get all those ingredients together. Nobody had the luxury to be wasting those rarities on tests.

And so it was decided in that sense, that those refiners without strong will sensitivity would be stuck in the beginner stage- even if their refinement fire was trained to the seventh level, they wouldn't be able to make an elixir that was of the seventh level quality.

The profession of a refiner, as a result, became especially brilliantly perceived, better than practitioners. House Suns' support based healing arts already made them a noble house, let alone the refiners who could make elixirs and pills of the same effectiveness.

However, because of the difficulty of the refinement fire, as well as the immense qi required to be burnt through- along with the requirements for will sensitivity... All of this greatly limited the number of refiners- they were destined to be a rare breed!

Refiners also became powerful figures that factions fought over for- after all, if a family or group got their hands on a refiner, their position in the world would fly far and high.

Naturally, the reason why Lin Yi was learning all of this was simple- it was because he had nothing better to do, so he might as well do it. Who knew when the snow would stop, after all- it was pretty boring.

After completely memorizing the refiner's arts chant, Lin Yi started getting ready to work on the refinement fire. A refinement fire wasn't made of thin air- it was created using the refiner's arts, using the qi within the body and converting it into a refinement fire. A practitioner that wasn't high level really wouldn't be able to sustain such a huge amount of qi consumption- this was also why Golden class practitioners couldn't become Golden class seventh level refiners, it was because the qi couldn't keep up, resulting in the refinement process being cut short. The elixir may be destroyed, or the furnace could explode.

The faster qi was used, the more powerful the refinement flame- but if the rate of qi conversion was slow, the flame would be small. The art of refining was a practice that put serious emphasis on the control of the fire- the refining process required different types of constant fire adjustment for different elixirs, and sometimes one had to suddenly increase the fire or vice versa. If the refiner only had immense qi and nothing else, he wouldn't be able to do much with the refinement fire- he'd very well blow everything up!

And so, with all these limitations, many refiners stopped progressing in their paths, and never became true refiners. In fact, the number of refiners was so small that it could be described as pitiful- though that was also in comparison to the number of available practitioners.

But even so, this also explained what a big deal refiners were, and also why people like Zhang Liju had his name spread over the skies- his list of friends filled to the brim. Everyone wanted to be friends with someone like him.

Usually, refiners were rarely self-taught, and always had a mentor or senior guiding them, from the beginning making of the refinement fire and the control of it. Afterward, the training would fall to one's own hand- the mentor's job was only to get the student on the path, and that was it.