Chapter 451: Life Essence.
He decided to do something else in the meantime since he couldn't wait. But first, he decided to set up some boundaries for the parameters that the sensors were tracking and make the sensors alarm him if the parameters go beyond the boundaries.
After setting the alarm, he moved on to the next vat. In this vat is the prepared inner pill.
This inner pill is one that has spent four days being converted from his bone into a living flesh organ. The flesh organ is a soft white ball with a softer red inner layer full of flesh, blood, and blood vessels.
The formation had done its job of transforming his flesh into an organ capable of living on its own. But this is an overestimation of the ability of the inner pill. It can't survive on its own at all. It still needs his help, or it would die.
The nutrient solution in the vat will keep the inner pill alive for a long time. But it won't be able to grow without more assistance.
In order to make it grow, he must create a special serum called life essence. The patriarch was the one who created this serum, not Daoist Blood Pill.
The serum is made from corpses. Or maybe it is more accurate to say that it is extracted from corpses.
Unlike the Daoist Blood Pill's initial plan, which transformed a whole person into a life pill, the patriarch went with the approach of slowly extracting this special serum from corpses, purifying the serum, and then feeding it to the life pill in order for it to grow.
He had to be careful in the first stage of creating the revised life pill because he needed his flesh as raw material. But this second stage of producing the serum didn't need so much caution because the raw materials were already dead, and he had a lot of them.
The corpses were placed in another formation in a vat. Then life essence was slowly squeezed out of them into the water around them.
The process is similar to fermentation. But the product is not alcohol, and the raw material only slowly loses weight and body mass as if it is being dissolved by acid instead of being crushed.
After a while, the water changes from a transparent liquid into a thick red liquid, and the corpse has become an empty husk. He will then stop the operation of the formation, remove the husk from the vat, and begin the work of purifying the red liquid.
The process of purification takes place in a machine that he had to build from the ground up. The schematics were in the material that the patriarch gave him, but it still wasn't easy work.
The machine also consumed a lot of energy stones and made a lot of noise while it operated. It does all of these and produces a thicker white liquid that the patriarch calls life essence.
In theory, this life essence is supposed to be an elixir for body forgers. It should also be able to hasten the healing process and even help with foundation establishment.
This is the theory, though. Arthur had made so many mistakes with the purification machine that he knows that a poorly made serum can also act as a dangerous toxin that will cause cellular matter and tissues to break down quickly.
His first failure caused the life pill that he made to melt into black sludge. It was why he decided to create more life pills whenever he was about to try a step of the refinement process he hadn't mastered yet.
He has mastered making the serum now, so he has no problem feeding it to the newly minted life pill. All he needed to do was take the life pill out of the vat and place it on the feeding platform.
The feeding platform is a large glass plate. The soft life pill is placed on this glass plate with care. Then electrodes and other sensors are attached to the life pill to monitor its health.
In this state without the nutrient solution, the life pill will start to die a slow death. He could already tell that the life pill was in distress from the readings of the sensors. So he began feeding it the serum by dropping the white liquid onto the white ball of flesh a little at a time.
The white serum was quickly absorbed by the life pill. The liquid practically disappeared as soon as it touched the ball of flesh. This was due to its quick absorption and utilization rate.
As the life pill ate more and more life essence, it became bigger and more robust. The life pill increased in size and has also become tougher and harder. This was because it was growing stronger.
Even without any exercise or cultivation, the life pill was quickly undergoing physical transformation. It was growing stronger by the moment. It even looked as if it didn't have a limit.
The life pill looked ready to grow stronger forever. But its growth slowed down after it reached the ninth transformation.
It didn't stop growing at the ninth transformation because it came from his flesh, and he was already at the peak of the second mortal coil. This meant that the life pill wouldn't need to comprehend a force intent in order to transcend the first mortal coil.
So the life pill kept growing. It didn't stop when it reached the second mortal coil. It only slowed down again and consumed more life essence in order to grow.
After it reached the second mortal coil, the life pill stopped increasing in size even as it continued to grow stronger. It also became capable of surviving on its own by feeding on ambient mana.
Technically, the life pill possesses his life force. This is why it is so compatible with him. It is also why it possesses the wood element mana affinity. This is both a disadvantage and an advantage for him.