"It's settled then," the Emperor said. "We will start our Pill-Creating competition right now. Headmaster, tell them the rest of the rules."
The headmaster nodded and started explaining the rules to the audience members. For the sake of saving some time, the competition between the two monarchs was going to take a maximum of 10 days.
Anyone who failed to make a pill in those 10 days would be disqualified. If both failed, a single day would be added. The days would continue to add up until one of them made a pill.
When that happened, the other person would get a single day to finish his pill or lose.
Once the explanation was done, the staff members of the school began preparing the stage for the two monarchs in different corners. At the same time, the headmaster started making up a list.
Both Alex and the Emperor were provided a list of ingredients that were available in the Royal School's storage.
They were now going to have to choose 3 ingredients each that would throw off the other person. They were both only allowed to choose ingredients that there was plenty of, none of which could be below Saint rank.
While Alex was only starting to give some thought to what to choose, the Emperor spoke up. "I'm done," he said.
Alex paused and looked up. "Already?" he asked.
The Emperor smirked. "I told you, I already had this idea before. As such, I had already thought of what ingredients I would choose too," he said.
"I see," Alex said. "Please wait a few minutes while I look through this list." He hadn't expected the Emperor to be so thorough in his preparation.
Alex looked through the entire list for a few minutes, not only to find the 3 ingredients but also to memorize what ingredients there were that he could use.
After looking through them, he chose 3 ingredients.
Scales of a Spotted fire lizard, a fire elemental ingredient that was known for its corrosive nature. Roots of a Green Squid flower plant, a wood elemental ingredient known for its hallucinative nature. And the seeds of a Great White lotus flower, a water elemental ingredient known to improve someone's lung capacity if taken daily in small amounts.
"I'm done," he said. Both of them chose the ingredients and let the headmaster know. The headmaster ordered two people to bring out the ingredients that were written down, who soon returned back with spiritual bags full of them.
The two people handed over the storage bags to the respective monarch.
Alex took the storage bag and looked at what was inside it. He recognized the three unique ingredients immediately.
The first ingredient barks of the Four-leaved tree, where every leaf was actually four leaves stuck to the same stalk. It was a neutral elemental ingredient that wasn't known for much, except for improving the effectiveness of some other ingredients in some very rare cases.
The second ingredient was the petal of a dark blue flower that Alex recognized as the Blue Onyx Daisy. From what Alex knew this petal was the same as the first one. It was a neutral elemental ingredient that wasn't known for much except for improving the effectiveness of a few ingredients when making a pill.
Alex frowned. 'No way,' he thought and looked at the last ingredient.
The third and final ingredient was a Purple limestone powder, which also was a neutral elemental ingredient with nothing notable to its nature, and only helped improve a small group of ingredients.
'That bastard!' he thought to himself as he looked at the Emperor who was looking at him with a smirk on his face.
"Good luck!" the Emperor said and walked away to a corner where he was going to work on his pill.
Alex grumbled internally but didn't let it show up on his face. He walked to one corner and sat down as multiple formations appeared around him.
He looked to the side at a small teleportation formation where he could request for ingredients that he needed.
Alex didn't need to use that right now. Right now, he needed to figure out how the hell he could get out of this predicament.
Being given 3 ingredients with neutral elements was already annoying, having none of them have any effects on their own was even more annoying. Normally, that would mean that Alex would have to look for other ingredients on the list to use as the main ingredients.
In that case, these 3 ingredients would have to be supplementary, which while still annoying to do, he could do.
However, the fact that all these ingredients did was improve just a few other types of ingredients meant that Alex would have a severely limited amount of ingredients that he was forced to use.
He did not have the same level of freedom as other neutral ingredients might provide. The difficulty had definitely gone up as a result.
'He came well prepared,' Alex thought. The Emperor had played a dirty trick on him while remaining under the rules. 'No point in getting angry. I need to figure out a pill soon.'
Since the two of them were going to be busy trying to come up with pills, that wasn't very entertaining for the audience.
So, some simple performances, such as battles, Qi controls, paintings, and other stuff that the audience would find entertaining were being put on show.
While the outside world was rowdy, the Emperor and Alex were lost in their own world, unaware of what was happening inside.
The world looked at them and was very surprised by their approach.
On one side, their Emperor had his cauldron on top of the fire, his hands moving in front of him as he put ingredient after ingredient to check on them.
On Alex's side, there was nothing happening at all. Alex had his eyes closed as if he was cultivating instead of trying to make a pill.
Many people were confused as to exactly what he was doing. Not even the elders from the Southern Continent knew what he was doing since they had never seen him come up with pills.
They were a little concerned about whether their king could complete the competition or not. Each time he had to come up with a pill, it had taken him years at a time.
This time, he was going to get 10 days at most. Was it going to be enough?
Alex sat in his little corner with his eyes closed, his mind going through the thousands of ingredients that were on the list and that were on him.
He had to first list out all the ingredients that would benefit from the three ingredients he had and then he could start from there.
Once he list them all out in his mind, he began looking for connections between those ingredients and what they did.
An entire day passed by in which he achieved absolutely nothing. The next day was the same where all he could do was mix and match the ingredients, trying to find complementary results.
Finally, on the third day, he saw a single connection between the ingredients that he could maybe make use of.
He found that the most common set of ingredients between the 3 separate lists of ingredients were ingredients with Water Elements in them.
