Li Tao

Li Tao is the approachable master alchemist who gives Meng Hao practical pill-making experience and turns shared insight into his own near-Furnace-Lord achievement.

Biography

Practical apprenticeship

Li Tao accepts Lu Song's commission for Six Harmonies Pills and brings Fang Mu and Bai Yunlai in as assistants. Fang Mu's speed, precision, and plant handling impress him, so he continues hiring and teaching the newcomer. He treats Meng Hao as a peer in skill before formal rank catches up and helps him seek admission to the master-alchemist examination. (Chapters 214–219)

Foundation Establishment Day

After discussing plant interactions with Meng Hao, Li Tao develops three bottles of Foundation Establishment Day at forty-five-percent medicinal strength. Meng Hao's suggestions account for a forty-percent route, while the final five percent comes from Li Tao's own enlightenment. The pills sell to the Li Clan for four million Spirit Stones, earn an invitation, and establish Li Tao as a plausible future Furnace Lord rather than someone merely copying a prodigy. (Chapters 231–244)

Later expedition trace

Li Tao continues exchanging formulas and performing public concoctions, including a hard pill refined from hundreds of plants under Earthly fire. He later appears among the disguised experts in the Crow Divinity undertaking; when Ji Clan Karmic Severing destroys the thread connecting him to Meng Hao, he survives but loses that karmic link. (Chapters 224–238 and 420–424)

Appearance and personality

Li Tao first appears as a blue-robed man around thirty. He is kind, accessible, and unusually willing to acknowledge another alchemist's superior plant knowledge. His success is collaborative but not derivative: he absorbs Meng Hao's suggestion, adds personal insight, and produces a result neither man had fully specified beforehand. (Chapters 214–215 and 231–232)

Abilities and cultivation

Master-alchemist refinement

Li Tao can catalyze medicinal plants, manage furnace heat, and refine commissioned pills with the smooth efficiency Meng Hao studies. His Foundation Establishment Day reaches forty-five-percent medicinal strength, close enough to Furnace Lord quality to change his reputation. The achievement remains below perfect extraction and does not by itself confer Furnace Lord rank. (Chapters 214–232)

Catalysis

His catalyzing method increases medicinal age and prepares ingredients as part of the actual refinement process. Meng Hao learns that it is not merely pre-processing: correct catalysis changes how efficiently plant properties combine in the furnace. (Chapters 214–224)

Foundation Establishment cultivation

Li Tao's early Foundation Establishment base supports travel, alchemy, and participation in dangerous expeditions, but his principal role is technical rather than front-line combat. At Crow Divinity Mountain the group relies on disguise and shared planning rather than Li Tao demonstrating a named battle art. (Chapters 214–424)

Relationships

• Meng Hao: Assistant, student, colleague, and source of mutually beneficial alchemical insight.
• Bai Yunlai: Fellow assistant and organizer in the East Pill Division.
• Lu Song: Client whose Six Harmonies Pill commission begins the practical collaboration.

Items

• Pill furnace: Used for commissioned and public refinement.
• Foundation Establishment Day: His signature auction achievement, sold as three bottles of six pills.