Wan Li, Zhou Mei, and Fan Ruogang all walked out of the barrier and went into the arena. Inside was a section separated entirely for pill-making.
It was a similar place to the artifact-making section, and thus had small openings on the ground from where the fire was constantly burning.
They walked up to their place and were given an empty storage bag. They were made to keep the pill's ingredients in the storage bag and give all their storage bags away except the one they had provided.
Everyone took their one storage bag and walked up to a random seating area. Not a single one of them was provided a pill cauldron as at this level they were all expected to have one of their own.
All 3 of the disciples took out their own pill cauldrons as expected. It was hard to tell a cauldron's grade just from looking at the visual information, but each of them at the very least held a Common Heaven grade cauldron.
The information from this morning had a bit of info to get the participants ready, but the host needed to explain it in detail and to the audience.
The host was the one from Alex's last competition and he started speaking.
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Fastest pill-making competition. Without delay, I will explain how this competition will work."
"You each have chosen to make a pill of your own choice and have thus prepared your own ingredients. You will get one shot, one opportunity to make the pill."
"You are considered to have completed the task if you make a pill and quickly run up front and put it inside any one of the pill testers that will be laid out soon."
"If the harmony crosses over 25%, you will have completed the task. If not, you will have failed and will not be in the final ranking," the host said.
"You will be disqualified if your ingredients burn or your cauldron explodes. You will be disqualified if you intentionally create disturbances for the other participants."
"You will be disqualified if we find out that you cheated during the pill making process in any way. That is all," the host said.
"Now prepare," he said.
Everyone started heating their cauldron and got ready. The competition would begin the moment they put in their first ingredients.
Once everyone was ready, The host gave the go. "Start."
Immediately, the entire group of participants poured in their first ingredient and started constantly stirring it. Wan Li, Zhou Mei, and Fan Ruogang did the same.
They now had 5 more ingredients to go.
One of the methods to making a pill fast was choosing a recipe that didn't have a lot of ingredients. The lesser ingredients there were, the faster one could complete making the pills. That was obvious.
As such, all the participants had chosen a pill that required ridiculously few ingredients. The recipe that the Hong Wu sect disciples chose was a simple pill called Gorilla strength pill.
It did what it was named, and gave a person the strength of a gorilla for a short burst of time. It didn't last long and honestly wasn't a very good pill.
Most alchemists wouldn't make this pill if possible, but this was a perfect pill for the competition.
Already, people were on their second ingredients, controlling the energy coming out of it. These alchemists didn't have spiritual sense, so they couldn't really feel the energy, but thanks to their experience they knew it was there.
Wan Li was the first to put in the third ingredient, followed by Fan Ruogang and then Zhou Mei amongst the group from Hong Wu sect.
As for the other ones, the Royal Alchemist's disciple wasn't here, so instead there were other disciples from Royal Fu Academy, and a few disciples from the Spirit Song sect who started putting in the third ingredient.
Alex was in the seating area with the Tiger sect, completely flabbergasted as to how the competition was going.
"Are they good, junior brother?" Luo Mei asked. Ever since learning that Alex made Heaven-grade pills, her respect towards him and his credibility as an alchemist had shot up high in her mind.
"They— they are good. Very good. Much better than me actually," Alex said, still in awe at what he was seeing.
"What? They are better than you," Luo Mei said in surprise. Then she slowly came close and whispered, "but you can make Heaven grade pills are they still better than you?" she asked.
"No. This is a different kind of better," he said. Luo Mei was a bit confused so Alex explained.
"What do you think is easier sister, making a pill with high Harmony, or low harmony?" Alex asked.
"Of course, it's high harmony," Luo Mei said. That was an obvious choice.
"Yes, but that is very hard to do without proper focus and time. You need to be careful of your mistakes every single step of the way," Alex said.
"That makes sense," Luo Mei said.
"However, they are doing something else. They are… deliberately making mistakes," Alex said.
"Huh, Mistakes?" even Wen Cheng was curious now.
"Yes, master. They are doing the best they can while constantly making small mistakes in their pill making that would either let them speed up some steps or skip it entirely."
"Making a lot of mistakes would ruin your pills, that obvious. However, their objective isn't to make the best pill, it is to make the fastest. As long as they can make a pill in Earth grade, they are safe. So they are deliberately making mistakes that will help them get a faster time, while still staying above 25% harmony by the end of the process."
"Just the fact that they know what to do is amazing enough, but the ability to do so is something else. What they are doing requires years and years of practice, something I could not hope to replicate in the near future. As such, each and every single alchemist on that stage right now are much better than me."
