The King and the headmaster backed off after giving the Emperor the storage bags. The Emperor took the talisman and started reading it. He looked through the ingredients and how they interacted before coming to the conclusion that it did in fact work.
Without hesitation, he took the pill out and ate it. He didn't even spend a moment looking at the 5 magnificent lightning scars on the pill that was called veins.
In the midst of everyone's gaze, the emperor stood there as the pill dissolved inside of him and the intense water energy inside of it started flowing through him looking to go to the dantian.
They stopped right outside of the emperor's dantian, where he only had 4 different spiritual roots. Other than the neutral spiritual root, one was a Fire Spiritual root, another a Wood Spiritual root, and finally a very weak Yang spiritual root.
The energy repelled itself from all the other types of elemental energy, falling into the one neutral spiritual root, where it slowly started transforming the neutral spiritual root to have a water attribute to it.
It took about 10 whole seconds for the change to happen, but given the significance of the change, the emperor did not care how long it took.
As soon as the change was completed, he tried using a technique he knew. His Qi flowed through his veins, coming out into the palm as Water Qi which genuinely surprised him.
The Qi flowed out, but it did nothing. His skill did not activate.
"Huh?" the Emperor frowned for a second. He tried again and again, but the technique didn't work at all.
"Techniques that require regular Qi won't activate with Water Qi," Alex said. "Unless you've trained a water technique, it won't necessarily help you."
"Then there is no use to this pill, is there?" the Emperor asked as he looked toward Alex who had just walked up.
"Come on now, Dragon Emperor. You know that to be wrong yourself. Just because it doesn't help you, won't mean that it won't help others," he said. "Test how strong your spiritual root is at the moment. It's nearly comparable to Superior Water spiritual root."
"Give the pill to someone who has been learning water attribute skills their whole life with inferior spiritual roots, and you will make him feel like he found a new life."
"Give the pill to someone without water spiritual root, and he can also learn to use important water-related skills from early on. Aren't most healing techniques water related? One wouldn't have to look for others to help heal them. They can always heal themselves."
The Emperor couldn't help but frown at the fact that Alex was correct. The sheer amount of possibility the pill opened up by the mere fact that anyone could now have Water Spiritual root whenever they wanted was insane.
Especially the fact that most had not even considered after hearing about the pills.
Having a water spiritual root meant that you could also learn Water Dao in due time. If that information were to be made public at the moment, the amount of chaos it would cause in the market would truly be insane.
The Emperor clutched his fist in annoyance, but he couldn't lie that a truly amazing pill had been created here today.
"I concede. My poison pill is nowhere near as good as the Water pill King Alex has won. It is his victory."
The announcement left the crowd in awe as they couldn't believe that their emperor had lost. Their emperor, a man who had reached the unthinkable Level 10 of Alchemy knowledge of the Eastern Continent, had failed against another king.
"Do you want to give your victory speech?" the Emperor asked.
Alex thought for a bit. "Sure, why not?" he said and looked toward the crowd.
"I am Alex Benton, King of the Southern Continent, the direct subordinate of her majesty the Phoenix herself," Alex started. "Thank you all for watching this small competition between our two continents."
"I hope this has served you all as motivation to improve yourself, especially to the alchemists out there. Please do not think you can't do it yourself. Just half a century ago, I used to be just a young farm boy, living in the Maplewood region of the Central Continent."
"After entering the game and being teleported out of the Central continent, I have managed to make it this far in just 50 years. I am certain you all can do so as well."
"Good luck."
Alex waved at them and turned around to see the other kings' confused looks.
"Your majesty," the Ivory Kingdom's Queen spoke. "What… do you mean you came from the Central Continent?"
"Exactly what I said," Alex replied. "Oh, has the news now come to here? I thought you would have all known by now."
"What news?" the other Kings asked curiously.
"That the players come from the Central continent. There is a small piece of land in the central continent where a settlement of humanity exists, completely unaware of the outer world. That is where we all came from, and 3 years ago, we got to return back."
The kings were confused and surprised at the same time. They hadn't expected that there was another world in the Central Continent.
The Emperor was somewhat surprised too. He had heard about people teleporting to the Central Continent, but he hadn't expected there to be an entire civilization.
So had all the different things that the players had mentioned not belonged to some higher realm? Was it really all just the Central Continent?
"I can tell you more if you want," Alex said. He was more than happy to let the people learn about the Central continent if he could. It would just make Hao Ya's work easier and also jog up a bunch of players into wanting to go back.
"Actually, your majesty, can you tell us about those lightning strikes? What were those?" one of the kings asked.
"It's called a pill cloud, and no, he will not teach you anything about it," the Emperor said. "He has only just accepted my trade offer to teach me to form the pill clouds in the first place."
"Manyin, end it now," he told the headmaster.
The headmaster bowed and left to announce to the audience about the competition coming to an end.
The crowd started leaving one by one and the people on the stage were also forced to leave. They bowed toward the Emperor and Alex as they left, most requesting Alex to visit them when he had the time.
The emperor watched them all leave and sighed. "The competition took more out of me than I expected it to," he said. "Let us leave now."
Alex nodded and walked along with the Emperor. The Crown Prince had already left with his fiancee, so it was just the Emperor and Alex, followed by their subordinates in another carriage as they returned back to the palace.
They both got off the carriage and the Emperor turned toward Alex. "You can go and rest for now, or we can act upon our agreement and start the trade right now. What do you say?"
Alex smiled. "Let's start the trade right away."
