~SPLASH~

~SIZZLE~

Lin Mu blocked the hot liquid gold from splashing on him with his hands. The armor of the mortal strengthening scripture appeared and quickly stopped it with ease. The fragments of the cauldron also pelted the armor, but did no damage.

A few seconds later, Lin Mu opened his eyes and saw the scene. The fragments of the cauldron were lying everywhere, while the splotches of gold were equally spread. Still, one one of the biggest fragments of the cauldron, Lin Mu could see something.

The bottom part of the cauldrons had been heated the most and thus it had directly cracked along the heated edges. It was like a shallow bowl that had fallen and it still contained some gold in it.

Lin Mu took a closed look and saw that the gold was cooling. Just from watching it physically, it was hard to tell if the gold had changed, but with his spirit sense Lin Mu could clearly feel the difference.

"Alright, so first failure." Lin Mu said, "but the next will be a success!" he said with surety.

He changed the location and went slightly away from the previous one and took out another cauldron.

~DENG~

The cauldron landed on the hard, rocky ground and slightly vibrated. Unlike the previous cauldron, this was an actual professional one that alchemists would use. Lin Mu had learned from his last mistake and picked a good from the many he had.

"This should be better." Lin Mu said as he took out another chunk of gold from the ring.

He didn't really care for the gold that had spilled everywhere and now cooled into solid form. Just collecting all of the fragments of the gold would take a long time and Lin Mu didn't want to waste time in doing that at all.

Thus, he simply took out a new chunk.

~CLANG~

Throwing it into the new cauldron, Lin Mu created the flames and started the entire process again. This time though, he could feel that the process was way smoother.

~humm~

The runes on the cauldron faintly glowed, showing that they were working as per their functions. The cauldron that Lin Mu had used this time had the functions such as heat distribution, sound dampening, vibration suppression along with the earlier ones that toughed it. It was also a bit bigger in size than the previous one and also thicker. 

Time passed as Lin Mu repeated all the steps until he reached the final step where he had failed.

~HONG~

The runes on the cauldrons glowed with a greater intensity as they did their duty of suppressing the unwanted vibrations caused due to the sputtering of gold in the cauldron. Such vibrations can cause the refiner to make some mistakes, thus it was best to not have them.

While Lin Mu wasn't exactly refining pills, the same concept could be applied here as well. In fact, seeing the complexity that was in all this, Lin Mu was rather appreciative of old man Jing Wei.

'He managed to refine Green Gold from raw gold back then. I don't know if I can fully refine it for just the technique, which isn't even on the level of green gold.' Lin Mu thought.

"That is the difference between many years of experience. Don't put yourself down. I'm sure you will be able to do it as well, if you just get more practice. Besides, the current technique does not call for Green Gold anyway. So no use thinking about that." Xukong suddenly spoke.

Lin Mu nodded his head and replied, "you're right senior. I best just focus on the task at hand."

With that little counseling, Lin Mu focused on the cauldron and could feel the spirit Qi being absorbed into the gold. His spirit sense focused on the liquid metal and saw that it finally started to shrink.

'Interesting… so the more spirit Qi it absorbs, the more condensed it gets.' Lin Mu thought.

While he couldn't understand the exact mechanism behind it, Lin Mu still memorized this observation. It was at this point that he needed to supply even more spirit Qi to the gold.

The more it got condensed, the greater amount of spirit Qi it needed. Which also got Lin Mu to think about how Jing Wei did this since his cultivation base was sealed and he didn't really supply any spirit Qi on his own.

'Maybe some other method.' Lin Mu thought and pushed out more and more spirit Qi.

Nearly an hour passed, after which the gold had reduced to the desired volume.

~phew~

Lin Mu let out a breath of relief and finally opened the lid of the cauldron, that was tightly closed. 

~clang~ clang~ clang~

This one had clasps that held the lid instead of being screwed on. With the three clasps released, the lid was easily lifted and the hot yellow gold could be seen inside it. The volume had greatly reduced.

"Whoa! This isn't even a glassful, this is like just a cup's worth." Lin Mu said, seeing the actual liquid with his eyes.

The gold was roughly twenty five milliliters in volume now. Looking at the still liquid gold, Lin Mu felt like testing out something.

Gritting his teeth, Lin Mu dipped a finger into the liquid gold. He deactivated the Armor of the mortal strengthening scripture beforehand, though, or it wouldn't really be a test.

~Sizzle~

The hot gold evaporated the moisture on his finger almost immediately and soon Lin Mu felt the heat.

His eyes were tightly closed, but then ten seconds later he opened them.

"Huh?" A confused voice escaped his lips as Lin Mu saw the gold.

"It… doesn't hurt?" Lin Mu muttered in surprise.

He lifted his finger out of the gold and looked at it. Other than some redness on it, there were no burns that he could see. And he didn't feel any pain from it either.

"This… is the gold really supposed to hurt me?" Lin Mu said in confusion again.

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