Leafheart frowned deeply as she looked at the ingredients before her. Which one was she going to have to use this ti? Which one had she not used often? What pill could she make?
As soone suffering from creation fatigue and unaware of it, she tried to force her way through the new idea. She wanted it to happen, and she was going to make it happen.
However, even as she tried to think of new recipes, she couldn't co up with any idea at all. Why was it that she couldn't think of anything?
Surely, there was sothing she could make? She couldn't have run out of every idea that was out there.
She looked around, trying to find inspiration in the mundane, but that wasn't possible here. All around her were just barriers that didn't let her see anything.
The only thing she was allowed to see was the tir in the sky and how it said that she was already four hours into the round. While over an hour had been lost because of Faithseeker, she couldn't complain.
The rules were the rules, and they were laid out from the start. There was no room for complaint.
Leafheart grumbled as she failed to co up with any idea. In the end, she decided she was going to leave it up to luck. Maybe luck would have a better chance than she did.
So, she closed her eyes, withdrew her senses, and began grabbing ingredients at random with just her Qi and moving them around. After a while, she opened her eyes and saw what order they had ford.
Then, she took the random order of the ingredients and began refining them with so semblance of thought on how things went. She hoped that, at the end of it all, she would have a usable pill with her.
* * * * * *
Aethersage refined the Heavenly Emberroot Skin and watched the fire energy that filled his cauldron. He grabbed another ingredient at random and tossed it into the cauldron. It just so happened to be the Heavenly Mountain Grass.
The Wood energy of the grass was stronger than the fire energy of the Emberroot skin, so instead of making the fire stronger, the fire made the Wood energy weaker, leaving behind a strong energy with a faint Wood aura to it.
Aethersage felt the energy and felt that it needed a boost. Water energy would empower the Wood energy, so long as it was weaker itself.
He searched for the perfect ingredient for that.
Aethersage was in a similar situation as everyone else. He, too, suffered from creation fatigue. But unlike the others, he knew about it and had worked through it before.
Taking ti away from what he was doing helped deal with it, but that usually took a long ti. The other way was to force your way through the block.
The easiest way he had found until now was to start doing things at random and go along with the plan. If he did the thing, sooner or later, he would get an idea.
It probably wouldn't be for what he was making, but it helped. Given that he had hours to waste on this, he could spend ti doing this as many tis as necessary.
And he fully planned on spending every hour necessary for it. After all, he was going to pass no matter what.
* * * * * *
Alex could not get his conflicting minds to co to an agreent, so he decided to take a different approach to finding the answer here. He had both half of his mind answer a very important question that involved the current tournant.
Was he willing to fail this tournant just to stick to his belief?
Alex's critical side imdiately rejected that possibility. The tournant was the most important thing here, after all.
His other side, which believed that all pills that could not be consud to be used were no pills at all and thus a failure in the eyes of Alchemy, had a much harder ti coming up with an answer to his current predicant.
He wanted to stick to his own belief, but the tournant was important too. It was not just the rewards in the tournant that mattered, but what it ant for his family. What it ant for his master.
He cared little about anything else he gained from the tournant, but he could not deny others everything they would receive from his victory. Even his mind that wanted to stay true to itself could not stand and watch their hearts break.
So, both his minds ca to a single conclusion.
They would make the exploding pill.
Alex did not like the thought of doing this, but he thought of it as creating a failure instead of creating a pill, and that helped calm his heart a little more.
'What a weird feeling,' he thought as he cald himself. It struck him as unusual to be thinking in this manner. Had he really changed so much just because he began thinking about the Dao of Alchemy?
Having co to the conclusion to make the pill—as much as he hated it—Alex began preparing its recipe. While he did have an idea of how he was going to make it, he still needed to work for it.
He had a base to go off of, so Alex first started with the Discordant Duality pill and began pulling out anything that could cause instability in the pill.
This was a tricky thing to figure out as well. Removing ingredients certainly caused instability, but it was a sudden instability. The equilibrium couldn't break while he was making the pill or keeping it. The instability needed to be sothing that could be introduced later on.
Alex began replacing ingredients next, all just to keep a frawork of stability. It didn't need to be very stable in the first place.
It took Alex quite a few hours to co up with the best way to introduce instability. Instead of targeting the entire structure of the pill, he would directly attack the source of the equilibrium, which ant he was going to destroy the Frostfire sap right from the start.
He needed to replace a few ingredients here and there, but he ca up with a way where the final pill would still be in great equilibrium, but with the slightest introduction of Water or Fire energy, one side would tip over the balance and then destroy everything in the process, resulting in a strong explosion.
Alex began formulating the recipe and, halfway through, added two more ingredients. The Golden Mind Chrysanthemum was added to empower the Water energy of the Eight Twilight Silk Seeds, and the Immortal Jadehorn Leaves were added to empower the Fire energy of the Carnelian Assault Boar's tusk.
These two ingredients added a layer of stability and power to the pill that made the final explosion much larger than before.
Having completely ford the idea, Alex began completing the rest. He determined the amount of energy he would require, then the amount of ingredients he would require for all of that.
Finally, he formulated the refinent thods and completed the pill recipe. Now that he was done, he could begin making the pill.
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