What Li Luo hadn’t counted on was the embarra.s.sment would come knocking a lot quicker than he expected.
The next morning, he was still lost in sleep when an urgent knocking roused him from his dreams. He opened the door and peered out drowsily.
Bai Mengmeng.
She had dark eyebags, which looked comically odd on her fair face, but he barely noted it because of her words. “Leader! Leader! I’ve done it!”
“Done what now?” he asked blearily.
“Four-star spirit liquid formula!” She said triumphantly, blus.h.i.+ng with pride.
Those magic words wiped the drowsiness away from him, and suddenly he was wide awake. “Done?!”
“Mm!”
Bai Mengmeng nodded madly.
“I’ll get changed!” Li Luo yelled with excitement. Seizing her hand, he dragged her into the room and closed the door.
On the balcony, Xin Fu had been trying to get some sun, when he saw this bizarre scene take place before him. More artistic inspiration.
Cras.h.!.+
Very soon the door burst open with a loud bang, and Bai Mengmeng leaped out, blus.h.i.+ng to the tips of her ears.
“Why would Leader bring me into the room when he’s changing…” She whispered to herself, touching her warm cheeks.
“But…
he has quite a nice figure.”
The door flew open again to reveal a fully dressed Li Luo, who gave her a sheepish grin. “Sorry. Too excited.”
She shook her head kindly. She too was excited, just not that excited.
“Let’s go to the refining workshop. I can’t wait to get my hands all over your stuff.” Li Luo took her hand and shot off. His eyes glanced past Xin Fu on the balcony.
Xin Fu gave him a bright, sunny smile.
Li Luo had a bad feeling about the kid, but now was not the time. He could only hope the kid would stop trying to bury him.
The two reached the refining workshop quickly enough.
Bai Mengmeng pulled out a special slip. It was a waterproof and fireproof paper, designed to hold ink for a long time. Her meticulous writings were all over it.
She handed it over with great ceremony to Li Luo. “A third-grade spirit liquid, four-star formula.” She announced proudly.
Li Luo took it as carefully as if it were his newborn child. These words were worth a fortune, precious knowledge detailing reactions that made the spirit liquids.
Li Luo read it, rapt. As a third-grade resonance artificer himself, he had come across a fair amount of formulas himself. Enough to know that Bai Mengmeng’s formula was nothing less than an inspired masterpiece.
Each line of instruction on that paper represented countless experiments. Each experiment was carefully crafted by a fine mind, intimately familiar with the properties of each ingredient, and with a natural intuition for their combinations. Finally, this was the result.
“Truly befitting of a four-star formula…” Li Luo marveled.
In Xia Kingdom, spirit liquid formulas were divided into five star gradings. The higher the star grading, the rarer and more powerful the spirit liquid was. Simply put, the higher the star rating, the higher the upper-limit of the tempering strength.
Take a third-grade spirit liquid, for example. A two-star formula could reach about 60% tempering strength.
A three-star formula could reach 65% tempering strength.
A four-star formula could reach a whopping 70% tempering strength at the limit!
Which meant that generally, the quality of the formula determined the potency and worth of the spirit liquids and purifying lights.
With a poor formula, even the best artificer with the best watersource could not push past a certain hard limit.
Just like a skilled chef couldn’t cook with no ingredients.
With unlimited talent and a pure watersource, the formula became the limiting reagent. The final result would be mediocre.
That was why it was so important for villas to have good formulas.
Of course, reaching that hard limit was easier said than done as well. Back when Li Luo had competed against Tang Yun, he had created a third-grade spirit liquid with a two-star formula. The limit was 60%, but he had only managed to achieve 58%.
Of course, Li Luo had been fresh into the ranks of a third-grade artificer, but it nevertheless proved that maxing out the potential of low formulas was easier said than done.
“Since it’s a third-grade formula, I can try it out myself,” Li Luo said eagerly.
Bai Mengmeng nodded. Her own talents leaned towards research, while her actual execution skills were not as spectacular. Although she was the creator of this formula, she hadn’t actually made her own creation before.
It was always going to be a combination of theory and execution.
Of course, making this formula was 90 percent of the work.
There were plenty of ingredients at the refining workshop, left over from Bai Mengmeng’s experiments. Of course, they were the exact ingredients needed for this formula.
Li Luo began refining immediately.
From the moment he started, his enthusiasm started to fade away into worried concentration. Suncreek Villa had third-grade formulas, but they were far more straightforward compared to Bai Mengmeng’s.
Truly a four-star formula.
Li Luo failed dozens of times from the get-go.
He was looking a lot surlier now, and then threw Bai Mengmeng an embarra.s.sed smile. “It’s my first time working with something so sophisticated. Forgive me.”
d.a.m.n, he was the young lord of House Luolan, for crying out loud. Since when had he become so pathetic?
“You can do it!” She encouraged him.
Li Luo nodded fervently, then threw his energies back into his task. Suppressing his impatience, he began to tackle the problem with cool-headed a.n.a.lysis.
This time round, things went a lot smoother.
After a full two hours, Li Luo had burned his way through almost all the ingredients in the workshop. But his refining process was almost at the end as well.
Before him stood 18 different test tubes. Each one held a concoction of hundreds of ingredients.
Li Luo took a deep breath and rubbed his palms together. He held them up, and brought his resonant power forth.
The contents of all 18 test tubes rose obediently, hanging in mid-air before starting to swirl.
A ring of swirling liquids, intertwined with resonant power.
This process continued for several minutes before the spinning began to slow. A twinkling liquid had emerged, and Li Luo guided it gently into a crystal vial.
As the last drop plopped into it, Li Luo lifted the vial up with wild joy written all over his face.
“I DID IT!”
Bai Mengmeng was equally emotional, and she raced to the nearby table and back wiht the tempering measurement needle.
Li Luo stuck it into the crystal vial.
Two pairs of eyes watched the instrument eagerly.
The indicator jumped immediately to the 60% mark.
Li Luo gasped. That was insane. His first attempt, and already it was stronger than the Birds of Pa.s.sage spirit liquid he had made back at Suncreek Villa!
When he mastered the formula, surely the tempering strength would rise even further!
It was a sensational result, testament to the effectiveness of Bai Mengmeng’s formula.
“Wow! I did it!”
Bai Mengmeng grabbed both his hands in her own and pumped them up and down, lost in her elation.
Li Luo looked down at the girl before him.
A great treasure!