The technique wasn't overly complex. But, in reality, neither were any of the other ones that Ryu had seen. The techniques of the True Martial World were inherently simple. By their very nature, they made cultivation as straightforward as it gets.
However, even in comparison to others, this was even more simple. Though, just from a glance, Ryu could easily see just how complicated this technique could become.
The essence of the technique wasn't hard to grasp. You cultivated by refining pills. The medicinal fragrance of the pill was used to refine your qi and strengthen your body.
Interestingly enough, the pill never needed to be swallowed. The technique relied on snatching the support the pill refinement process gained from the Heavens to then, in return, refine the body itself.
To the Heavens, the greatest form of "pill" were Spiritual Herbs themselves. This was the "pill" processed and formulated by the Heavens for human consumption.
However, cultivators insisted on taking this a step further, fusing together Spiritual Herbs to create greater and more powerful effects. This process was similar to a Dao, in that way. It was snatching more from the Heavens than it deemed appropriate to give.
At their root, whether it was pill refinement or blacksmithing or formation mastery, all of these professions took the raw materials of the Heavens and used them as catalysts to take more than the Heavens had already given. By definition, they were stealing from the Heavens.
This technique found a method of becoming a middleman in that process, cutting in and taking advantages that should have been left to the pill.
It was as simple as it got. The more powerful the pill refined, the greater the benefits the pill refiner would receive.
So, why was this technique so low-class, then?
Well, the truth of the matter was that too much was reliant on the cultivator. The more Ryu thought about it, the less "simple" this <Pill Refinement Sutra> seemed. While the circulation method was simple enough, nothing else about it was even remotely "user friendly".
It was difficult to describe in just a few words how complex this technique was, especially for Ryu who had very little understanding of alchemy and pill refinement to begin with. Ryu had only just barely begun to dabble in Blacksmithing and only had two creations to his name, both of which hadn't even survived to this point. And, of course, he knew even less about Alchemy.
However, if he were to apply his knowledge of Herbology to try and extrapolate instead, the vastness of this technique's scope left him quite speechless.
The kind of Heavenly Favor you could snatch was entirely reliant on the pill you were refining. For example, if you had more Yin leanings, then you should focus on refining Yin type pills. This would give you the greatest benefits from the technique.
This sounded straight forward enough, until you thought of all the paths something like Yin could follow. Even when it seemed that you were running along the same road, you could actually be clashing headlong.
To wrap his head around this, Ryu thought of Herbology. Take two Yin type of Spiritual Herbs as an example: The May Flower and the Ice Veined Mercury Sprout.
Both of these Herbs were Heaven Grade in Ryu's world, both were Yin in nature, both were designed to soothe the soul and both could be used to calm the mind. In fact, their greatest benefit was in increasing the chances of entering a State of Meditation.
Their purpose was exactly the same. On the surface, it would just seem that their names were different and other than that, they were nothing short of identical. In fact, it might even seem smart to take them together in hopes of maximizing the effects.
However, any Herbologist worth their salt would spit in your face for even suggesting such a thing. This was because if you took both Herbs at once, even if they wouldn't clash, their union would kill anyone below the Dao Pedestal Realm—it was that lethal to take such an approach.
The May Flower worked by causing a cascade of reactions in the mind that resulted in a flow of energy entering the Spiritual Sea. Upon entering the Spiritual Sea, the temperature of the Spiritual Sea itself would begin to slowly lower, thus causing a soothing effect on the mind.
The Ice Veined Mercury Sprout, however, worked differently. It approached the heart first, causing a cascade of chemical reactions that coated the blood vessels of the body in a thin layer of Ice Veined Mercury. If one peered into the body during this time, it would look as though silver branches were taking root in the cultivator's body.
This process slowed the heart and the rush of blood, plummeting internal temperature and allowing the body to enter a state of deep sleep.
By this point, one might be able to see the issue. Playing with the temperatures of the soul and the body wasn't a joke in the slightest. In fact, the amount of power it took to forcefully lower an Immortal Cultivator's body and soul temperature was beyond what most could imagine.
If you took both of these Spiritual Herbs at once, you'd both force your body and your soul into a state of deep sleep. By that point, you'd be no different from dead. Your soul wouldn't be able to keep your body alive, nor would your body be able to keep your soul alive.
The result would be entering such a deep sleep that you would eventually die. Even after the effects of the Spiritual Herbs wore off, it would long be too late. You would never wake up again.
Now, this was considered an extreme example leading to death. However, most clashing Spiritual Herbs were far more subtle than this, subtle to the point that it might only impact the overall result by one or two percentage points.
This didn't sound like a big deal, but what if these poor results accumulated over the course of years, decades, centuries, millennia, millions, billions, to even trillions of years? Would you still dare to say it wasn't a big deal then?
It was already terrible from a normal perspective, but what if this was the core of your cultivation path? These small and tiny little deviations over a long period of time would be enough to swallow even the greatest of geniuses whole, and that was just if you were using Spiritual Herbs.
Pills were the result of a combination of Spirituals, sometimes dozens, and at the highest levels, hundreds if not thousands. On top of this, the refinement process would often change the core function of the Spiritual Herb as well. If you dried a Spiritual Herb and then refined it, it would have one effect. If you soaked it in a medicinal path to extract some unwanted components first and then refined it, it would have a different effect.
And then there was the matter of how well you processed the herb to begin with. If you refined it poorly, its effects would deviate from the wanted target. Then you would have to multiply such variables over however many pills you needed to refine.
On top of this, you would then need to consider the clashing effects of the Spiritual Herbs when they were combined, what residual medicinal energy still remained in your cauldron, the atmosphere you chose to refine in, what formations your pill concoction room used, there was even the maturity of the Spiritual Herb and the environment it was grown in to consider!
Was it more humid than usual? What sort of predators did it survive? What sort of beast dung had it been fertilized in?
All of these variables suddenly made the cultivation techniques of Sacrum seem overly simple to the point of being trash.
One could normally mostly ignore these effects. So long as you had a method of expelling Pill Impurities, and you didn't rely too much on pills, these sorts of variables wouldn't bother you too greatly.
However, if you quite literally had to rely on pills to cultivate day after day after day, then how could you ever avoid these effects?
The worst part was that if you refined Heavenly Favor from a pill not perfectly compatible with yourself, it wasn't nearly as easy as expelling Pill Impurities. And, from the very beginning, Pill Impurities weren't a simple matter to deal with. Only high class Clans and Sects had methods to deal with them, and these usually relied on Natural Treasures that had existed for countless generations.
Ryu's fingers squeezed the jade, hard.
He knew that this was just the tip of the iceberg. This Pill Refinement technique was considered Common Grade because it didn't carry any of its own Charm. How powerful this technique became was reliant on the individual concocting the pills, what pill formulas one could get their hands on or what pill formulas one could create for themselves.
However, this introduction also mentioned that this Cultivation Technique allowed you to also absorb what it called Heavenly Favor to strengthen your Dao and Inheritances as well. That added a whole other layer of complexities Ryu couldn't even begin to fathom with his current knowledge.
Was this it? Was this what his <Intuition> wanted him to wait for?
Ryu knew that the answer to this question was no. It wasn't his instincts calling out to him right now, it was something else, something that felt deeper.
If he wanted to break free of his reliance on his Heavenly Pupils, then why was he still chasing after what it wanted him to do?
This <Pill Refinement Sutra>, this technique even Working Disciples neglected, he would take it and bring it to the top of the world.
'It's called the <Pill Refinement Sutra>, but nothing about it says that you can only do this with Pills. In that case, I'll call you the <Refinement Sutra> from now on. I'll take you on a journey to the top of the world.'
The jade seemed to vibrate in Ryu's hands, glowing with a barely perceptible light.