Alex was greeted by the now-familiar Focus Mode. He very quickly adjusted to the amplified sense and looked around. The sun was up by now and the room was lit.
'What's the time?' he thought and looked. It was 6:42 PM. 'Oh, I took quite a while today to log back in,' he thought.
Had he not woken up early, he might have missed today's competition start.
Very soon, there was someone calling them by knocking on their door, and in a usual fashion, Alex and Wan Li walked out.
"Everyone is here. Let's leave," Ma Rong said and walked down the stairs with the whole group. In 15 or so minutes, the group reached the coliseum and entered it.
They went to the stage along with the other dozens of sects looked at the competition for now. For the Alchemy competition, the competition was that they would learn a new pill recipe, made specifically for the competition by the Royal Alchemist and the participants would have to follow it to make the best pill in under an hour.
This required a lot of knowledge regarding the different pills and how ingredients interacted as well as being able to remember every single movement from the pill-making process, including the timing, the flame temperature, the order of ingredients as well as the movement they had to make in the cauldron.
The competition asked for a lot, and only those that could deliver on it could win.
Alex was sure he would do quite well in the competition but still didn't want to take part in it. He wanted to experience the combat or specialized competition at least once.
Ma Rong took the ones that wanted to participate and took them to register, while the rest of them went to the seating area.
Alex saw the Tiger sect and greeted his master and his senior sister, but didn't go join them. Luo Mei insisted on it so he promised he would do that the next day.
Once she agreed, he went back to the Hong Wu sect seating area.
"I don't think I've said this before but I am really surprised that you are the disciple of the sect leader of Tiger sect as well," Wan Li said.
"Haha, that sorta just happened. I can't believe it myself as well," Alex said.
"Learning both Alchemy and battle at the same time, I'm very envious of you, Brother Yu," Wan Li said while making a weird face.
'Huh?' Alex was a little surprised but Wan Li focused back on the stage, so Alex let go of it.
The first few competitions started and Alex looked at them. He felt very unenthusiastic towards the whole competition as a whole today.
People were learning before doing anything, so they made a lot of mistakes and not many intense competitions took place.
Even the formation ones that kept his attentions usually didn't manage to grab his interest. 'Sigh, this is boring,' he thought and looked around the coliseum.
It seemed a lot of people held the same sentiment as him. Some of the audience members even left their seats and left the coliseum entirely.
"Sigh, the Royal Fu Academy should have made the learning competitions on the 2nd day or the third day and kept yesterday's competition for today. That would've made the competitions much more exciting," The second elder said.
"Yes, I feel the same way dear. They screwed up really bad this time. Well at least the alchemy competition starts at 9, so we can leave early if we want to," the third elder said.
Alex nodded when he realized that. Soon the competition on the stage ended and the girls walked onto the stage for the alchemy competition.
Nobody really expected the male disciple to show any amazing performance and only Fan Ruogang and Zhou Mei were what the rest of the sect were focused on.
Alex looked at the stage and saw all the top 3 disciples from the Spring song sect as well as the Twin harmony sect, which was another well-known alchemy sect.
Only the Hong Wu sect didn't send out their A team for today's competition.
"Oh wow, even that guy is there," someone commented.
Alex looked at the stage and saw Huang Fu, who seemed to be looking around the stage for someone. He walked up to Fan Ruogang and asked something, who replied back.
Huang Fu immediately turned towards the audience and looked at Alex and shook his head in disappointment. 'He must've been looking forward to winning against me today. That's a shame, I would've probably taken part if I could take part in the combat ones as well,' Alex thought.
The competition soon started and the host relayed the basic rules.
The rules were the same as the ones for the other competitions. The only difference this time was that everyone got the ingredients from the staff themselves.
So no one had to bring any on their own.
The regular rules applied and everyone was handed a recipe. Then, the timer started. Each one of them had exactly 60 minutes to learn the recipe and make the pills.
The audience could do nothing but watch them just read the recipe for nearly half an hour, if not more. They needed to memorize every movement, every step before they could hope to make the pill.
The timer was running out, so everyone started making the pills immediately. There wasn't enough time to make multiple pills so they had to rely on this one pill.
The audience was a little surprised when a pill cauldron actually exploded while the person was making their pill. Thankfully, the staff member immediately went and stopped the explosion and sound from spreading.
Slowly, one by one the participants started finishing the pills and started walking to the front to show off their creations.
Fan Ruogang, Zhou Mei, Han Long, and Huang Fu too walked to the front of the stage and started putting their pills into the pill tester one by one.
