At first, the master had mixed feelings about this situation. In his eyes, he should be leading disciples by example, allowing them to learn more about the mysterious and wonderful world of alchemy.
Seeing a friendly competition that was supposed to have a positive impact over these kids turning into such bloodlust confrontation wasn't sothing he desired.
Also, the idea of letting a seasoned spirit master challenge a just newcor, in his very first class was sothing that made him more annoyed.
It was like allowing a disciple to bully the other, which was sothing he never accepted.
However, when William agreed, the master couldn't do anything but try to make him reconsider. Who knew this stubborn kid wouldn't listen to his good will and instead insist on competing?
Then it ca down to such a weird request from this kid. In fact, the master thought this kid didn't even know a single na of any herb.
So, it was quite expected when he got inwardly shocked. Then William dared to say he knew a new recipe to make this potion, which was sothing that made him curious and a little doubtful.
He got out his recording crystal just in case the words of William turned out to be right. Even if there was a slight possibility for such a thing to be true, the master saw many things already in the world and learnt it was better to be safe than sorry.
However, when William started to concoct, the old master couldn't help but stare and not dare to blink while watching William's hands move to process the herbs he got.
The master knew that concocting potions and pills weren't just done by throwing herbs in order into the cauldron.
This might be considered a way, but it was a rough and crude way to do it.
The best way was through dealing with each herb separately. What alchemists wanted wasn't the entire herb but the effective ingredient inside each herb.
And so, each herb would require a different way to process it, to get the useful part which held the effective ingredients and get rid of the useless parts that might lower the effect of the final potion.
One might require squeezing, others might need crushing, and part required a knife or a sword to get rid of unused parts.
Few herbs even required a second round of processing. It was to better extract the active ingredients from the inside of these herbs.
For example, few might need fire, others might need getting boiled, and another part might need to get filtered by spirit power.
Knowing all this wasn't enough. As the seasoned master knew, each potion would require a different way of handling to give the best result out of its herbs.
So, despite it might seem like there were few processing ways to handle herbs, one had to morise the different ways to process herbs in each formula separately to beco a good alchemist master.
And if one learnt how to further process the herbs on two steps, then he'd beco a grand alchemist master.
It wasn't a simple task. And the more tedious task of the alchemists on top of others was to try new ways to find better processes than what was already known previously in making potions and pills.
Knowing all this was essential for any alchemist master. Or else the future path one had to tread would be filled with wrong turns and tons of mistakes.
However, seeing a kid doing such things was a novel experience that this master never thought it could happen!
Under the watchful and shocked gazes of the master, William started processing one herb after another, using different ways to get the best out of each one.
At so point, William asked for small flasks to store the filtered and processed essence of so herbs aside.
The master complied, while he kept wondering about the logic and concept behind this.
To his shock, William did another round of processing before finally selecting five herbs and did a third round of processing.
'Third round? Damn! I only heard that the legendary alchemist, Hatong, was the only grand alchemist in the current world to process the ingredients in three steps!'
This master here wasn't that knowledgeable ot quite talented in the academy, but he once was lucky to get trained on the hand of such a legendary figure.
He stayed with Hatong for a few days and learnt tons of things from him.
Yet he never saw him do any further processing as he claid that it'd ruin the essence and wouldn't bring any better results.
But under the watchful gazes of the master, he saw William not stopping after doing the third round of processing on the five herbs. Instead, he mixed two together and then processed them using fire. Then he mixed the remaining three together and processed them using his spirit power.
To the master's eyes, this was a brand new way to perform processing. And when he thought about this, he knew the general concept wasn't wrong or impossible to grasp.
Thinking back to the detailed answer of Hatong when one of the trainees back then asked him that question, this master seed to get enlightened.
'So, this is the solution to such a dilemma… But to think about trying and mixing the previously processed herbs together to be the right way to avoid damaging the already processed ingredients… It has an almost infinite number of possibilities! Just how long did this kid train in alchemy? Since being in his mother's womb or what?!!!'
The master had all the reason to be shocked by William. William didn't invent any of this for sure. This was the crystallisation of endless efforts of many seniors before. He just got lucky to learn about all this when he went to the outer world.
The outer world was much bigger than this one, and it had an ancient history that spanned for millions of years.
Such a place was filled with endless knowledge, and William just was blessed to get his hands over them.
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