Misty Rain of the Old Times

Chapter 213 Pharmaceuticals
At night, at the entrance of Changshou Alley in Mo City, Chen Xuan came here in disguise.

After a short wait, the agreed time arrived and the person he was waiting for arrived on time. He was the one who had been agreed upon two days ago and brought the goods he had ordered.

The man was elderly and was carrying a heavy load with some difficulty. It was dark and he had to work hard to see the road clearly.

Chen Xuan stepped forward and said, "You are here."

"I'm here, and I've brought the things too," the old man said, nodding as he placed a heavy bundle on the ground with a slight clatter.

Looking at the things he brought, Chen Xuan asked, "Is it authentic?"

"Don't worry, it's absolutely authentic. I watched it grow up and I cut it with my own hands. It will definitely meet your requirements. It's no older than you want. Otherwise, you can come to me for settlement at any time!" The old man said firmly.

Nodding, Chen Xuan said, "Okay, how much?"

Hearing this, the old man gritted his teeth and ruthlessly quoted a high price, saying, "Six copper coins!"

The old man felt a little embarrassed when he said the price. If Chen Xuan bargained, his psychological bottom line was three copper coins. Any less...it was not impossible. After all, he couldn't work in vain.

After a brief pause, Chen Xuan took out six copper coins and handed them to him, saying, "Count them. Once you confirm they are correct, we'll settle the bill."

sloppy.

The old man regretted that he had offered a low price, but the goods had already been exported and could not be taken back. If he had known that this man was so easy to talk to, he would have quoted a high price of ten copper coins even if he had been cruel.

He took the money and counted it, and then carefully put it in his arms, patting it with some worry, and then said: "The money and goods are cleared. If you have such a thing again, just come to me."

"Okay, I won't send you off."

At this moment, Chen Xuan was playing the role of a middle-aged man who didn't talk much, so there was no need to talk too much with the other party.

After the other party left, he easily carried away a bundle of heavy objects. This was the most critical material for his medicine making, but also the cheapest.

In a house not far away, someone in the dark room secretly looked at where they were trading. When he saw clearly what Chen Xuan was holding in his hand, he rolled his eyes. He thought it was something shameful, as if it was an illegal transaction. He was planning to report it to the police afterwards, but this is the result?
Chen Xuan was holding a bundle of very old bamboos in his hand. They had obviously been cut down not long ago and cut into small pieces one or two meters long. The bundle was still quite heavy, probably about fifty or sixty kilograms.

Six copper coins for a piece of bamboo is indeed a bit expensive, but it is not easy for the old man to run around, and Chen Xuan is too lazy to bargain with the other party. He will just take the loss. Besides, the bamboo is more than ten years old, so he is too lazy to go to the trouble of looking for it.

Well, in the city, if you really want to be serious, every blade of grass and every tree has an owner. Chen Xuan would rather spend money to buy a bamboo than secretly cut down someone else's. Although it is not valuable and can be done without anyone noticing, what if someone finds out later and curses you? Why bother to take advantage of such a small profit?

The materials are ready, and he plans to start making medicine tonight and try to find money.

When he arrived not far from the deserted house, he carefully felt the slightest movement within a radius of hundreds of feet. After waiting for a moment, the woman in black came out of the well and quickly disappeared into the night. He did not withdraw his gaze until she was far away.

"Very good. According to the usual routine, the neighbor won't be back until dawn. This saves us the trouble of not attracting her attention. After all, medicine does have an odor."

After the other party left, Chen Xuan walked in right after him, came to the well, "opened the door" and sent sections of old bamboo into the basement. Then he crawled in himself and closed the "door" tightly from the inside.

The medicine he wanted to make required a total of fifteen raw materials, all of which were in place, and the tools were also in place.

The fifteen raw materials, except for old bamboo, are all common herbal medicines. They are not expensive and have been processed, but Chen Xuan needs to further refine them.

Some medicinal materials cannot achieve the desired effect without special processing, and the processing tools are also very particular, otherwise the efficacy will be greatly reduced or even the finished product will be harmful.

Then he got busy. Some medicinal herbs needed to be ground into powder using tools made of specific stones, some needed to be baked over low heat, and some needed to be soaked in water without roots for a period of time.

As for the most critical main material, those old bamboo segments, they need to be roasted over fire to extract bamboo liquid, and all that is needed is the roasted liquid.

This work took Chen Xuan almost an hour. Fortunately, the neighbor was out, otherwise even if it was underground, the smell of various medicinal herbs might be detected by her, and it would have dissipated by the time she came back.

In fact, it doesn’t matter whether the other party is there or not. At most, Chen Xuan uses his innate true energy to wrap the air in the space and send it to a height of hundreds of feet, ensuring that not a trace of smell is leaked around.

After the preliminary work is done, the next step is to actually make the medicine.

It's not worthy of the word "alchemy" because the process involves boiling in a clay pot over charcoal fire.

But this step is the most difficult. The proportion of medicinal materials, the order of adding, and the size of the fire are all extremely important. Even a slight mistake will not do, otherwise it will affect the effect or even become directly harmful.

He followed the prescription meticulously, trying to avoid mistakes and achieve success the first time. Half an hour later, he added the fourteen ingredients according to the prescribed time intervals, simmered them down to a simmer, and then simmered them for another quarter of an hour, strictly adhering to the prescribed time limit. He filtered all the residue through gauze, leaving only half a pot of brown medicinal soup.

He put the stove back on low heat to boil it. After a while, when only one third of the medicinal soup was left and it was a bit thick, he poured in three grams of bamboo liquid according to the proportion, and then stirred it with a wooden stick over high heat to reduce the juice.

When the medicine soup became a paste, he quickly took the casserole off the fire, tilted the casserole, and let the greenish sticky paste drip naturally. A basin of clean water was placed underneath.

The paste-like ingredients are dropped into water and cooled quickly, becoming pills the size of water babies, just like the "pearls" in bubble tea.

In total, there were two or three hundred pills in the water.

Then Chen Xuan put down the almost empty and cooled casserole, looked at the finished product in the clear water and thought to himself that it was not bad. He made more than 300 pieces on the first try.

Then he used a bamboo colander to skim off the pills floating on the water. Those floating on the water were all waste products, accounting for about one-third. The proportion was too high. There was no other way. It was his first attempt and he lacked experience.

Then, he poured the water and pills in the basin into a bamboo sieve for filtering. While filtering out the water, he also discarded some small unfinished parts.

In the end, I got about 180 pills. But that’s not all. I just put the sieve on low fire and baked them.

After about ten minutes, the soft and elastic pills like jelly were baked and hardened, and their size also shrank a circle, about the same size as soybeans.

After picking and choosing and throwing away some of the poor quality ones, there are only about 150 left.

After placing all of these on the wooden tray and looking at them, Chen Xuan frowned slightly. First, the scrap rate was too high, more than half. Second, the final product did not match the description on the prescription.

"According to the recipe, the finished product should be emerald green with a hint of red, and have a delicate herbal fragrance. That would be considered a true success. But these... are dark green, with no hint of red, and the smell is a bit pungent. Clearly, they've failed. What's the problem?"

It was Chen Xuan’s first time making medicine, and he had no experience, so it was normal for him to fail. This was a relatively simple method.

After careful consideration and summary, and recalling the possible failures in the prescription description, Chen Xuan narrowed down the problems to two points: the first was the heat, and the second was the height of pouring the "water refining" and the temperature of the water.

"I didn't control the heat well. After all, it was charcoal fire, so there was no way to regulate the temperature. The temperature difference during the pouring process would also affect the results. Also, I poured it all into a basin of water, and as the subsequent pills were added, the temperature rose, affecting the results."

After summarizing, Chen Xuan roughly knew where the problem lay. Alchemy was actually just like doing a chemical experiment. There could not be any mistakes. The slightest mistake would affect the final result.

After all the hard work, all of them turned out to be waste. They might have some effect, but it was hard to say whether they were good or bad. Chen Xuan had no intention of cheating or harming anyone, so he just destroyed them all at once.

He roughly understood the problem and thought he could try twice more since it was still early, so he cleaned the tools and started the second round.

The second time, in order to control the heat, he simply kept his hand on the casserole to feel the temperature. Anyway, this temperature could not hurt him. When pouring, he placed five basins of water in a row and poured the semi-finished products into the basins respectively, adjusting the height and quantity respectively.

After filtering and drying, the results came out. This time, the total number of pills was only about 120, but they were still almost all waste. He only saw three finished products that matched the ones described on the prescription.

"I wasted two batches of materials, but only got three pills. This success rate is truly touching, and the effect has not yet been verified."

Chen Xuan himself was speechless by his own actions. You know, this didn't even reach the threshold of real alchemy. How could he not be speechless when doing such a simple thing step by step turned out like this?

What's going on? If all your talents are put into martial arts, then the rest will be useless.

Fortunately, there is still a finished product, and it is not completely a failure.

"I'll try it again, but I won't believe it. I've gained experience after two attempts, especially the second time. The heat wasn't a big problem. The key lies in the pouring height and the water temperature. Of the three finished products, two came from a height of one foot. There are about thirty pills in the basin. Next, determine this height and adjust the number of pills poured around thirty. The success rate will definitely increase significantly."

With experience, Chen Xuan started his third attempt.

The result did not disappoint him. He got a total of thirty pills that met the description of the prescription. Although 90% of them were useless, the progress was a revolutionary one.

He later concluded that the best number of balls to be dumped into the water was about twenty-five, and the height and distance could be fine-tuned by one foot. By following these steps, the success rate would continue to increase.

"Then there's the size of the basin, the temperature of the water at the beginning, the depth, and the pouring height. These all need to be fine-tuned based on what's already been done. I don't believe that the success rate of such a simple medicine can't be increased. It should at least reach 50%. Once all the details are determined, I can build up several furnaces at the same time to mass-produce pills. If the success rate is not good, I can make up for it with quantity. The cost is just that anyway. I don't have time tonight, so I'll continue tomorrow. I'm going back now to get the finished product to test the effect. I remember there are quite a few monkeys in the mountains behind the academy."

After summarizing again, Chen Xuan cleaned up the mess and left quietly.

Before dawn, the woman in black returned, slightly injured, and returned to the underground through another entrance. She didn't notice anything unusual here at all...

(End of this chapter)