Chapter 98 - The Cauldron Lid That Ascended The Heavens
Back at the Inner Palace, the palace maids had finished cleaning Leon's room after much difficulty. The metallic texture of the room should have made wiping stains a simple task, but the aftermath of pill cauldron explosion had scorched the room with blackened remains of the pill concoction. The remains had seeped into the surface of the room and made it particularly difficult to scrub off. the bed mattresses, blankets and pillow particularly had to be swapped out for new ones.
By the time the palace maids were done, the bedroom was as good as brand new and sparkling clean. However, they were exhausted at the hard labor and their faces were covered in black smudges. They were vexed at the prince for making their life difficult.
The inner palace had a specially designed pill refinement room for alchemists. Why did the prince had to use his own bedroom and not the specially designed one!?
"Hmph!"
They harrumphed out of the courtyard. Towards this, Leon could only put on a forced smile. He had not known the existence of such a room within the palace. However, after staying many days in the palace, he had pretty much familiarized himself with it. The royal palace was very large, enough to be considered a small city in and of itself. Within its walls in addition to the two palatial buildings, there many other smaller buildings like the royal library and treasury.
One particularly large gateway stood out among the many sights Leon took in within the palace grounds. It was one of the few places he had yet to explore within the palace grounds, but he had an inkling that on the other side lied the entrance to the underground ruins.
Watching the departing backs of the palace maids, it was apparent that the attitude of these maids was quite special. Even the guards, whom were stronger than him still showed him respect, but these maids didn't bother to hide their discontent. It could even be said that they were feisty and weren't afraid of displeasing him.
Leon shook his head and no longer paid attention to them. It was just a small episode he didn't need to pay heed to.
In the private courtyard, He had been sitting outside in cross-legged position to cultivate. He did not move inside his bedroom. The open environment of the outside was more suitable for cultivating.
Although he was unable to perfect his flight ability these past days, he had been able to develop another method of flight with his ability to tackle the high energy expenditure of flying. The second method involved condensing fire wings with his fire essence.
This method had extremely low expenditure as he could recover the fire essence back into his fire seed. However, there were pros and cons to everything.
Condensed fire wings grant him long airtime but sacrifices his speed, while the fire thruster method had short airtime for extreme speed.
In battle, the fire thruster flight method was still more suitable as the fire wings were too big of a target for his opponents. Once they get cut apart, all the invested fire essences in the severed wing would be lost.
But that was only under the circumstance of them being capable of fighting him in the air. If they could not, then the problem did not exist. Either way, the fire flight ability could be considered a lifesaving skill that will allow him to escape from danger.
With that settled, Leon resumed focus on the 5-Element Enhancing Pill. He had not succeeded in creating the pill, but he had already given it a name, albeit a simple one derived from the Spirit Enhancing Pill.
Leon glanced at the new pill cauldron that had been sitting in his courtyard for some time. It was bigger, thicker and hopefully much sturdier, roughly the size of a watermelon. He wasn't sure if the palace guards had picked the sturdiest available pill cauldron in storage, but the new pill cauldron was of a much higher grade than the trashy old one.
While inspecting the pill cauldron, Leon concluded the quality of the pill cauldron was just a step short of being graded as a spirit treasure.
Leon had an inkling of how to proceed after the initial failure. However, in the case that he still fails, then the explosion would be much more potent than the last.
"Everyone stay back. If anything goes wrong, it could become life threateningly dangerous. Do not approach the pill cauldron under any circumstances."
Leon warned the guards.
"Your safety is our greatest concern, your highness! Please allow us to stay within proximity to protect you!"
The palace guards protested. What a joke. If something happened to the prince, they wouldn't be spared from the queen's fury! Even if they care about their own life, they had to protect the prince in order to protect themselves! Such contradictions! But it is what it is.
Leon frowned at their strong protest. It didn't seem like they would accept it any other way.
"Fine, but you must also protect your own life. I will naturally worry about my own life if something goes wrong." Leon conceded.
"Yes, your highness!"
With the second portion of the 5 spirit herbs laid out in front of him, Leon commenced his second attempt at pill concoction.
The first two steps of pill concoction were a repeat of last time; preheating the cauldron and herbal essence extraction step. The steps proceeded quickly, and finally arrived at the merging step once more.
This step was the most important and also the most difficult step in pill concoction. Leon tossed all five herbal essences in the pill cauldron and forced them to merge under his will. The expected resistance began to occur. When this was happening, Leon started channeling his pseudo-Grandmist energy into the chaotic essence in hopes that it would succeed this time.
His pseudo-Grandmist energy was the product of the five basic elements fusing perfectly. It was most suitable catalyst to help the herbal essences merge.
When the energy was mixed with the chaotic herbal essence, the merge did not occur like he had hoped. In fact, the results of the contact were as he had feared! The chaotic herbal essence grew even more chaotic!
Leon had focused his full concentration on the chaotic herbal essence. The moment something went wrong, he knew immediately, but he could not fathom why it was happening.
Why!?
Logically thinking, the pseudo-Grandmist energy should have merged the herbal essences perfectly.
Leon frowned as his mind was racing for an answer. He wanted to ponder the issue further, but the chaotic herbal mix of essence and energy wasn't going to give him that time.
"Maybe I'm not using enough pseudo-Grandmist energy?"
When the additional energy was added into the pill cauldron, the chaotic herbal essence started to calm down, but it still refuses to merge. Leon was disappointed. The fact it was calming down was a positive reaction! He just needs to add more energy.
"It's working!"
Leon was excited and started pouring in more energy, ignoring the fact that it was lowing his own divine cultivation.
However!
Things never go as planned! Man proposes, but God disposes! The chaotic herbal essence started reacting more violent and at an alarming rate!
Since there had been no time to ponder the issue previously, Leon was prompted to come up with a solution spontaneously. He thought the solution he came up with was good, but it was in fact the worse one he could have come up with!
The calmness was an illusion. The chaotic herbal essence was just taking its time to break down the energy like dropping salt in water. The dissolution would not be completed immediately, but when it does, the broken-down energy was really reactive to the chaotic herbal essence.
He was already cooking up a shitstorm, the additional energy was like adding oil into the fire. The chaotic herbal mixture reached a boiling point, and nothing can no longer stop what was about to happen.
Leon paled at the imminent explosion. He slammed the cauldron lid on top to seal the cauldron and retreated at his quickest speed.
"Everyone get back now!"
KABOOM!!
The explosion was earthshaking. The queen was alarmed! The guards and maids were alarmed! The whole palace was alarmed! The king was… not.
…
Elizabeth shocked at the earthshaking explosion and raced outside, before taking to the sky to look at the source of the explosion.
She saw a rising pillar of flame coming from her son's courtyard and was relieved. Why relieved? Because she could see at the foot of the pillar of flame, the pill cauldron was surprisingly intact, and no one was harmed by the explosion.
Leon had no idea how the pill cauldron was able to withstand the force of such a huge explosion, but thanks to it, the force was very controlled and escaped towards the skies.
Everyone had came outside to take a look at the spectacle of rising flame pillar. Even the reclusive Crazy Don, who was always holed up in his pill concoction room exited for a curious look.
"T-T-This… this is… art!"
Crazy Don exclaimed in appreciation and awe. He had never seen a more majestic and beautiful explosion.
The flame pillar rose to a certain height before hitting the limit and slowly began to disperse in all directions.
However, at the forefront of the flame pillar, the lid of the pill cauldron continued rising with ever growing momentum like it was trying to ascend the heavens!