A day passed and it was time for the tournament.
"Do you know the schedule of the tournaments?" Ning asked Ely.
"Hmm… I'm not sure," Ely said, so she asked the same question to Yola who was starting to act weird around Ning.
"The saint alchemist has requested that the alchemy competition be the first one, so that will take place in the first 10 days, I believe."
"Followed by another 10 days of other production-based competitions. Finally, ending with last 10 days of combat-based events," Yola said.
"Oh, Alchemy is getting such a center stage huh, the Saint Alchemist's influence must be a lot," Ning said. "I wonder if it's comparable to Anya."
"Who's Anya? Either way, I doubt anyone can compare to Saint Alchemist," Yola said.
"Do you think Anya is as good as the Saint Alchemist?" Ely whispered into Ning's head.
"She's comparable to me, so she has to be better than that old man,' Ning said. "Besides, he spent the last 2100 years figuring stuff out, while Anya knew them all from the start. The advantage she got from the books I left was not small. And I kept adding onto them a few every century."
"Sigh, it's a shame she won't be coming then," Ely said.
The group soon reached the competition ground which actually had a small secret realm in the center.
"Oh, an active secret realm. I'm surprised you don't have to open this one yourself," Ning said.
"All the competition takes place in there. We can see what happens inside out here," Ely said. They all had designated seats and it seemed they didn't have to leave at all.
The desert island was filled with nothing but seats to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of people that had come to the place.
"I will go up there now. You guys go in when it's your time," Yola said to the rest of the teachers and students and turned around to leave.
Just then Tsado came over to their group and bowed. "Senior Ning, would you be so kind as to grace us with your presence in the tower?" he said.
"Oh… uhh… can Ely come?" he asked.
"Um…" Tsado looked over at Ely wondering if he should let her go up to the tower or not.
Ning saw the hesitation and said, "You do know that she's thrice as old as you, right?"
Tsado's eyes immediately went wide and he turned around to look at Ely with a new eyes of reverence. "Senior, I'm so sorry for my rude behavior. Would you please come up to the tower to watch the competition with us? It will be our honor if you did," he said.
Ely chuckled and nodded. Together, the three of them flew off to the top of a massive tower north of the secret realm entrance with Yola following behind them.
"Oh, there are quite a few people here already," Ning said, looking at the group of people in the tower already.
People of every color and culture were here, and Ning recognized quite a lot of them. He was just looking around when he noticed an old man come up behind him and immediately bowed.
"Inikaka, you're finally here," the man said.
Ning turned around and smiled. "It's good to see you again, Hijaka. I didn't know you guys had already arrived," Ning said.
Hijaka smiled and said, "We arrived late last night, so we couldn't come to meet you."
Hijaka was now an old man with a white beard and hair. Being Hyesi's eldest grandson, Ning cared for Hijaka quite a lot as well.
"Senior Ely, it's great to see you again," Hijaka said.
"Please don't call me a senior. You are my elder," Ely said. After all, Hijaka was born way earlier than Ely ever did and was just as if not stronger than her.
"No, you are Inikaka's friend, so I cannot address you as anything other than a Senior. Please do not take away this honor from me," Hijaka said.
Ely hesitated a bit. "It's fine. Let him say what he wants to," Ning said.
"Alright, let's go sit," Ely said. So, the three of them went up to their seat and sat down. More and more people arrived, and Ning talked with Hijaka for a while to pass the time.
The Saint Alchemist arrived too and got a seat for himself. Ning watched as the competition was finally starting.
The host for the competition started introducing it while Tsado gave his own small explanation for the people sitting high in the tower.
"So, per the Saint Alchemist's request, we are going to have 10 different challenges for the Alchemy part of the tournament."
"Every 3 challenges, we will weed out 80% of the contestants such that by the final day, we will only have to choose the winner from one-hundredth of the original amount," Tsado said.
Everyone nodded as they heard him. The host was explaining the same thing down below and soon nearly 50,000 contestants were gathered in front of the entrance to the secret realm.
"So young," Ning said when he saw the contestants. "Did you have some sort of requirements?"
Tsado looked at Ning and said, "Yes, senior. Since these are all here to fight for senior Saint Alchemist's inheritance, they are all required to be no older than a century old."
The other people in the room showed no reaction when they heard that. 'So everyone but me knew, huh?' he thought.
"So, what's the first challenge?" someone asked.
Tsado turned back towards the rest of the crowd and continued explaining. "So, for the first round, it will be Ingredient recognizing test. The participants will be sent into the secret realm and will have to write the name of every ingredient they see in that order."
"Based on the correct name, in the correct place, they will earn exactly one point," Tsado said.
"Oh, they started going in," someone said. Everyone looked down to see the first person go in.
"Since they just went in, we will have to wait about 9 minutes for the numbers to start popping up since they will only have 5 seconds per ingredient to recognize them without touching."
