Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Alex was taken to another location on the stage after the first round ended and was given a pill vial each.

"Now begins the second round of today's competition," the second host spoke to them.

'What? There's another one?' Alex thought. Since the room he was in previously was soundproof, he couldn't hear to know that there was another competition there. Not to mention, this one seemed more secretive than the other one.

Alex was handed a talisman paper as well and the host started explaining the rules of this competition.

"There are 3 of the same pills in there, the name of which has not been set yet."

"The pill uses exactly 10 different ingredients, and your task is to name the ingredients. You have exactly 1 hour to name it all and you may use whatever method you require to find out the name of the ingredient."

"You will not be given any other hints aside from the information that the pill is not harmful to eat."

"Points will be based off of the number of ingredients you get correct, and points will be deducted per ingredients you get wrong."

"Your 1 hour starts now."

The moment the host said that every single one of the 20 participants immediately sat down on the ground and started looking at the pills.

Alex sat down too and brought out the pill. It was a greenish pill with specks of black scattered throughout the surface.

Alex took one of the 3 pills out and looked at it. He tried to think of any pill he had made that looked the same as this one, but given how this was a new pill, there was likely no way for him to figure out the ingredients in this way.

He could tell that the pill had about 35% harmony, but other than that, he was getting no information at all.

"Smell then," he said to himself and started taking in the smell of the pill.

He got a distinct acidic, citrusy smell amongst the many other smells and wondered what it could be.

He made a mental list of all the ingredients that he could think of that made this smell when performing alchemy.

Alex then went on through the rest of the smell and one after another, he made 10 different lists of what it could be.

Once he had the list, he started going through each ingredient and seeing if they would ever cause pigmentation on the pill to cause it to become green.

He didn't toss away those that didn't, but he did pay extra attention to those that did.

Once it was all done, Alex wondered what else he could do. He put the pill between his fingers and crushed it.

He checked the powder with his eyes, and once he realized that wasn't helping, he started using his spiritual sense.

He went through the powder and found the 10 different shapes. Then, he started comparing it with the information he had in his mind through the many months of refining pill recipes.

This was a really hard task and Alex barely stumbled on 2 different ingredients that he was sure belonged to the pill.

Still, he waited before writing it down.

He took the powder of the pill and put it in his mouth. The competition holders had mentioned that there was no problem with eating the pill, so tasting it would cause no problem either.

Not that Alex had to worry about it either way.

Alex tried to isolate the multitudes of tastes he was getting. It was hard, but he managed to separate them to a certain level and figured out the 3rd ingredient.

Unfortunately, most of the flavors weren't unique enough to pinpoint them to the ingredients on the list.

"Guess there's only one thing left to do then," Alex thought and took out one of the remaining two pill. Then, without any hesitation, he popped the pill into his mouth and swallowed it.

Alex waited around for a second for the pill to take effect and realized that he could feel his cultivation base elevate a little.

'It improves your cultivation base huh?' Alex thought. That gave him some more ideas.

He felt the energy from the pill for a few moments and started going through his list one more time.

He waited for a few moments for the pill's effects to disappear and ate it one more time to see what he could find out.

There wasn't much difference between the second and the third pill, so there wasn't much Alex could figure out.

'Well, I guess I'm only doing this much then,' he thought as he looked through the 6 ingredients he had figured out.

The rest of the ingredients were hard to figure out and he didn't want to risk points for something he wasn't even sure about.

So, Alex stuck with the answer and didn't write in anymore.

'This would've been so much easier had they given us a pill that we actually knew about,' He thought.

He handed the answer over to the staff around the 50 minutes mark and waited for the hour to end.

Once the hour ended, the results were published.

Alex got 12 points with his 6 ingredients, while someone actually managed to get 7 ingredients.

Most, however, struggled with around 3 or 4 ingredients.

'I need to experiment more with the ingredients,' Alex thought.

Once the competition was over, Alex was let go to the audience. He quickly went and found his mother sitting alongside many of the people from DawnSpring's Alchemy guild.

Alex recognized a lot of them, so he sat together with them.

"That was amazing, brother Yu," they said.

"Yeah, it was fine," Alex replied.

"No, no, that was amazing. You are the first person to get 32 points in the first day's competition," they said.

"Oh, what's the highest point?" Alex asked.

"You can see up there," they said as they showed a large, hovering ranking screen where his name was on the top with 32 points.

The 2nd closest one was at 26 points, which was really surprising for him. He looked at the name and realized he didn't know the person.

"Have Zhou Ren and Xue Meirong not come out yet?" he asked.

"I don't think I've seen those names before here, so likely not," his mother said.

"Oh," Alex said. "Then I haven't yet won anything."

Alex turned around to the group that was currently transitioning from the first round to the second one and noticed Zhanrou.

"How much did Zhanrou get?" he asked his mother.

"I think she got 7 names right," his mother said.

"7 huh? So 14 points. She will need to get 6 ingredients correct in the next one to tie for 2nd place," Alex said.

The host started introducing the 5th group and that was when Zhou Ren came out.

Alex sat and watched Zhou Ren's match which ended with him taking the most points with 8 different ingredients named.

Surprisingly, there were still 5 ingredients on the table remaining by the time all 20 of the contestants had used up their 10 turns.

That meant that either the contestants had gotten the ingredients wrong or didn't choose to answer.

'Each missing ingredient name is more points for me,' Alex thought and watched.

Zhanrou seemed to have guessed only 5 of the ingredients and got 10 points, bringing her total to 24. It wasn't bad on its own, but it struggled against Alex and the 2nd place.

Nothing worth mentioning happened for the 6th group, while Zhou Ren's fifth group was done with the pill as well.

He surprisingly found 7 ingredients in the pill and got a comfortable 30 points to get to the 2nd place right behind Alex.

In the 7th group was Xue Meirong who managed to name 9 of the ingredients, but on the 10th one, she got overconfident and named it wrong. In the end, she only got 16 points from there.

In the second round, she named exactly 7 ingredients, once again showing her capabilities as an alchemist. Alex couldn't help but be surprised at how talented they were.

'Had she not answered the final ingredient, she would've been equal with me. Not just that, had she named it correctly, she would've come in the first place,' Alex thought.

The rest of the group had nothing noticeable and as such, all the 200 different participants were done for the day.

Zhou Ren and Xue Meirong tied for 2nd place while Alex got 1st place in the first day's competitions.