After watching it for a bit, I cut my wrist and swallowed it.
The healing was visible — the bleeding slowed and stopped faster than it should have. It wouldn't restore the Qi I had spent or the density in the blood I lost, but it worked. Effect roughly the same as a standard Low-Grade pill.
Then something crossed my mind. Other refiners existed. The market had pills. But unless every refiner was bleeding themselves to produce them the supply couldn't be explained — there weren't enough of them. Unless each one was destroying their foundation to meet demand, which was impossible.
Someone had solved this already. I just didn't know how yet.
I used the blood still on my wrist to refine the last set of ingredients and sold it the next morning for five silver. The materials had cost half a silver for two sets — or less if you sent a collection request to the guild and waited anywhere from a few days to a month depending on availability.
The margin was significant.
Weeks passed.
The silver accumulated. Hundreds eventually, faster than any amount of beast hunting could have produced. With the extra I bought a proper manual — not the cheap incomplete one I had started with, a real one.
That was when I found out how alchemists actually refined pills.
Beast blood.
Beasts absorbed Qi instinctively their entire lives — of course it would be present in their blood. The moment I read it I understood why my method had worked at all, just at a cost it was never supposed to carry. I switched immediately.
The profit margins dropped slightly with the added material cost, but the scale more than compensated. No more rationing sessions. No more waiting for my body to recover between refining days.
I learned the cultivation pill and breakthrough pill recipes shortly after. Same process, different herbs. The cultivation pills sold almost as fast as the healing ones — consistent demand, anyone would buy them. The breakthrough pills were different. Harder to sell in bulk, longer between buyers. I kept production of those low and focused on the other two.
The days were repetitive. Wake up, refine, cultivate, sleep.
It was enough.
Compared to beast hunting daily it was incomparably better. No risk, no chance of dying somewhere outside the city. Just a rented room, a pill furnace, and silver accumulating steadily. I couldn't ask for more than that.
A few more months passed. I reached the 1st tier peak.
I prepared everything carefully. Double the pills I had used last time. No emotional interference this time — nothing to grieve, nothing to lose focus over. I had the experience of the previous attempt too, knew exactly where it had gone wrong.
In theory it should have been almost impossible to fail. But a 0.1% chance was still a chance. Better to be safe.
I started the process.
First a healing pill — I didn't have any injuries, probably a waste, but I had too many to care. Then the cultivation pill and the breakthrough pill together. The warm flow spread from my mouth down through my meridians. The meridians began to soften. My Qi moved steadily, striking at the barriers, expanding and strengthening them with each pass.
Everything went smoothly.
I broke through to the 2nd tier.