Chapter 325: Chapter 250 What Went Wrong?
 

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“The better the drink, the longer the brewing time it requires. Your batch of elixirs is of the third order; although they have been set aside for a long time, the quality isn’t bad. Ten years of brewing is almost enough. If you’re not satisfied, I can ferment it for twenty years,” Master Bai Liu explained.

Jiang Cheng said, “No, Senior, it’s not that I find the time too short, but rather that it’s too long. A pot of wine in ten years – the daylilies would have died several times over.”

“You think ten years is too long? I’ve never met anyone who complained about that before. You should know, the longer the wine brews, the better its quality,” Master Bai Liu mused, then asked, “So how soon do you want the wine?”

“Three months,” Jiang Cheng said.

Master Bai Liu’s face was full of astonishment, and he said, “The wine that comes out in three months can only be said to be drinkable. The goods in your hand are third-order elixirs; to brew them for only three months would be too wasteful.”

Jiang Cheng thought about it, and it made sense, if the quality of the wine was too poor, others might not be willing to buy it.

He changed his question, “Is there a way to speed up the brewing time?”

Master Bai Liu, with both hands behind his back, wondered, “Why are you always fixated on time? A mere ten years will pass quickly with a few cycles of meditation and cultivation.”

Jiang Cheng thought to himself, I have the Dayan Sect’s cultivation method; as long as the territory held by the Dayan Sect is large enough, I could reach Mahayana in ten years of meditation. Cultivating so fast, am I preparing to be captured for dissection?

“The junior does not wish to waste time idly,” Jiang Cheng could only explain this way.

Master Bai Liu sighed and began to explain the brewing process to Jiang Cheng.

To be honest, the process of brewing isn’t a secret; as long as one is determined to learn, there’s nothing that cannot be learned, so there was no fear in divulging it to Jiang Cheng.

“First, the ingredients are cleaned and soaked, then steamed and cooked. After cooling, yeast is added. Then comes the wait for fermentation, the removal of impurities, and the obtaining of wine. The fermentation process takes the longest; the other steps can be completed within a few days.”

Jiang Cheng summarized simply, “We just need to shorten the fermentation time to speed up the wine production, right?”

“It’s not as simple as ‘just needing to’; this step isn’t as easy as you think,” Master Bai Liu began to educate Jiang Cheng about the important matters of the fermentation process.

After listening carefully, Jiang Cheng summed up again, “We just need to make the time inside the wine vat pass faster, right?”

Master Bai Liu, puzzled, said, “Why do you make controlling the passage of time sound so easy? As far as I know, even cultivators at the Integration Realm can’t manage such a spell. How do you plan to accelerate time inside the wine vat?”

Jiang Cheng pondered, “Senior Bai Liu, perhaps we could broaden our thinking. Maybe what we need is not to speed up time but to make the ingredients in the wine vat age faster.”

“Huh!?”

Master Bai Liu’s eyes widened, seemingly astonished by Jiang Cheng’s idea.

Compared to the high-end spells for controlling time, aging spells seemed rather “low-end.”

“Aging” is a type of curse spell that is usually used against many “organic” spells, such as growing vines, rapidly growing forests, insect attacks, and so on.

Some higher-level “aging” spells can also be used against “inorganic” spells, like metals, earth walls, swamps, and the like. It can cause metals to rust, earth walls to weather, swamps to dry up, with the primary effect being to weaken.

Aging the fermenting elixirs to speed up their process is theoretically similar to accelerating time.

But this technique had never been used before.

After all, who would have nothing better to do than to think of using a “curse” method to brew wine?

As a cultivator at the Void Refinement Realm, Master Bai Liu was not entirely ignorant of aging spells.

“Jiang Cheng, as far as I know, aging can only target a single type of object, right? You should know that fermentation reactions are constantly happening inside the wine vat,” he said.

Jiang Cheng smiled and said, “That should be easy to deal with. A friend of mine previously researched a talisman that could ‘name’ a target, changing the difficulty of selecting objects for a spell. It allows the aging spell to target the entire vat, avoiding the problem of uneven aging.”

“Oh? There’s such a talisman?” Master Bai Liu’s interest was piqued, and he strongly requested Jiang Cheng to show it to him.

Jiang Cheng had no choice but to say to Master Bai Liu, “Senior, if convenient, please take out a second-order magical treasure.”

Without a word, Master Bai Liu took out a second-order gourd magical artifact and held it in his hand.

This item was a specially customized wine flask, capable of heating or cooling, and equipped with the ability to adjust the temperature of wine.

“Come on. Let me see what you can do!”

Jiang Cheng took out the Magical Treasure Naming Talisman that he and Yue Linger had jointly developed and assumed the correct stance to use this talisman—left hand on the storage bag, right hand on the talisman.

After activating the talisman, a flash of talisman light shot out like a meteor, hitting the wine gourd in Master Bai Liu’s hand.

Immediately, the gourd was renamed by the Magical Treasure Naming Talisman, changing from an item of Bai Liu’s to an item of Jiang Cheng’s.

Then Jiang Cheng squeezed his storage bag and said, “Take!”

The wine gourd in Master Bai Liu’s hand disappeared in an instant, stored inside Jiang Cheng’s storage bag.

Jiang Cheng’s fluent operation left Master Bai Liu stunned.

“Where’s my wine gourd?”

“In the junior’s storage bag.”

Jiang Cheng took out the wine gourd.

“Quite impressive,” Master Bai Liu praised sincerely from the heart.

Instantly stealing an opponent’s magical treasure, not even demon cultivators could manage it.

If Master Bai Liu wasn’t many realms above Jiang Cheng, his confidence allowing him to be unafraid, Jiang Cheng’s treasure-stealing method would have truly startled him.

This method of stealing treasures could be said to be invincible in battles between equals…

“The junior has shown off a little too much,” Jiang Cheng said humbly.

The problem with the Magical Treasure Naming Talisman was that it was only effective against magical treasures of the same rank; it couldn’t capture those of a higher rank.