Nine Star Hegemon Body Arts

By exhausting almost all his Spiritual Strength, Long Chen had managed to activate eighty percent of the runes on the Demon Moon Furnace. As a result, Ling-er was now able to control her body much easier.

When they started refining again, it was much smoother. The refinement was quickly finished, with nine high grade pills forming. Furthermore, three of them had pill rings.

The higher the quality of the refinement, the more it benefited her. It was a slow improvement. A furnace that had managed to go through ten thousand refinements only continued to improve as it aged.

"Ling-er, let me demonstrate again. There were a few parts where your flame control wasn't good enough. Otherwise, we would have a sixty percent chance of refining top grade pills. Here, follow along," said Long Chen.

"Yes!" Ling-er nodded enthusiastically. She already viewed Long Chen like a god. His alchemy arts were so amazing that she felt like her future was full of light now.

Blue flames ignited within the pill furnace. The temperature slowly climbed.

Long Chen explained, "What I taught you before were just some middling techniques. You've grasped the fundamentals and are just lacking experience in this regard. To save time, I'll pass on some higher tier techniques. They have more stringent requirements. Hence, there can't be the slightest error when using them or the result will be garbage."

Long Chen's flame energy suddenly rose to a new level. He was no longer using small flames. The pill furnace began to rumble.

"This kind of flame can increase the refining speed, as well as seal more of the medicinal energy inside the pills. That will give the resulting pills greater spirituality…"

As Long Chen explained, he gave a demonstration as well. He was just like a master chef, perfectly controlling the heat and ingredients as they merged together. Ling-er was dazzled.

In just a few breaths' time, the refinement was complete. Long Chen smiled. "After activating the runes, the Demon Moon Furnace is much more effective."

It sounded like monsters were trying to charge out of the furnace. Ling-er was delighted by this because she could already tell what grade the pills inside were.

As expected, when the lid opened, it revealed nine top grade Life Star Pills. They were smashing around the furnace, trying to break through it. When the lid opened, they charged toward Long Chen and Ling-er as if wanting to murder them.

"I made you, and you want to kill me? Rude. Let's see just how strong you are." Long Chen waved his hand, and lightning blasted into them. The nine Life Star Pills were enveloped by lightning, and their auras exploded.

They transformed into giant tree demons larger than Magical Beasts. Their branches twined around Long Chen and then pulled, trying to tear him apart.

Creaking sounds rang out from how hard they pulled, but suddenly, the branches were blown apart. The tree demons vanished from the impact and reverted to medicinal pills. They were blown back, but they didn't flee. Instead, they charged back.

Long Chen reached out and stuffed one of them into his mouth.

BOOM!

The pill actually exploded in his mouth.

Although Long Chen had been prepared for how ferocious these pills would be, his mouth was now numb, with his tongue feeling too swollen to use.

"Wipe them out." Long Chen called out to Ling-er.

The Demon Moon Furnace's runes lit up, and blue light swords shot out, destroying the pills. As he had thought, the Demon Moon Furnace wasn't just capable of refining pills. It was also a frightening demonic weapon.

"Big brother Long Chen, you're amazing! Just from those nine top grade pills, I definitely felt my power increase slightly!" Ling-er was incredibly excited.

Long Chen waved his hand, indicating for her not to talk now. He was still sensing the power of the pill he had consumed. After a moment, he spat out black mist.

"That demonic pill was pretty strong. Its energy was definitely ten times greater than the normal variant. But it's also not something that just anyone can eat," sighed Long Chen.

Just now, he had intentionally unleashed his lightning to stimulate their spirits, increasing their power to the maximum by turning them into tribulation pills.

However, the result of consuming the pill was something that only he was able to endure. Even a Dragonblood warrior would be blasted apart.

This was just a Life Star Pill, something that was very gentle and its main ingredient was just a plant's flowering fruit. If it had been something like a Magical Beast's crystal core, then it would be even more violent.

Life Star Pills were useless to him now, but since he was most familiar with them, he used them as an experiment to gain some fundamental knowledge of the power of demonic pills. This would also serve as Ling-er's foundation for refining other pills.

"Again. Ling-er, focus yourself. I'm going to refine a top grade giant pill," said Long Chen.

Long Chen took out new medicinal powders. A flame rose, even more intense than the last time. Heaven and earth began to quiver.

Ling-er was watching with rapt attention, not daring to be the slightest bit distracted. One medicinal powder after another entered. The energy of heaven and earth poured into the Demon Moon Furnace crazily, creating a giant whirlpool in the air.

"Ling-er, control the demonic runes!" reminded Long Chen.

This phenomenon was astonishing. Ling-er was nervous as she had never seen such a thing.

Suddenly, a powerful explosion blew the lid off. A pillar of light soared into the clouds, blasting away the giant whirlpool. The furnace was empty. All the energy was unleashed in that one blow.

"Sorry, I…" Ling-er was uneasy. She had been focused on controlling the demonic runes, not expecting the medicinal merger to suddenly explode from the inside and break out of the lid.

It had all vanished. Ling-er almost wept from the loss.

Long Chen patted her head. "You did well. Or I should say, we did well. A failure isn't to be feared. All successes are built upon failures. This is a law of the world. We also haven't refined it before, so failures are natural. Don't worry, this is the first failure, but it won't be the last."

Ling-er was extremely moved by Long Chen's comfort. "Big brother Long Chen, you are really great. All my past masters didn't view me as a person."

As a demonic weapon, she was enslaved by her past masters. At the start, she hadn't been very powerful. She hadn't had the power to choose her own masters, so she had also experienced quite a bit of torment. Her past masters always felt immense pressure since they knew how disaster followed the master of a demonic weapon. Not knowing when that disaster would strike, some of them would use her to slaughter countless people to unleash the darkness in their hearts.

Even after passing through thousands of hands, she had never encountered someone like Long Chen. Even when she made a mistake, he didn't blame her, instead he drew the responsibility onto himself.

"Ah, don't think about those things. Here, let's challenge our next mistake. Don't worry, every mistake is another step to success." Seeing her eyes redden as if she were about to cry, Long Chen hastily comforted her.

They failed the refinement three times in a row that day. Eventually Long Chen had to rest. Not only because his own energy was lacking, but because they had taken in too much Heavenly Dao energy from the surroundings.

This time, he was attempting to refine a Nethergate Pill, and a giant pill at that. If he used the Moon and Star Refining Furnace, it would be much simpler. It had refined countless pills throughout the years, and the memories of those refinements were locked within its runes.

However, the Demon Moon Furnace hadn't refined many pills at all. Long Chen was opening it up to a new world. He was also refining demonic pills, so the difficulty was much greater.

Seven days later, after many failures, there finally came a moment when the pill furnace suddenly grew heavy. Long Chen shouted, "Ling-er, stay steady!"

BOOM!

The earth collapsed and the heavens turned dark as endless tribulation clouds filled the sky.