Alex had started the competition by figuring out just the ingredients that worked with the given 3 ingredients and figuring out which ones he had.
Then, he went through each one of those ingredients to see if any of them could work as a main ingredient, or even work with each other at all. He also had to compare them with the rest of the ingredients he had.
It had taken him a while before he realized that doing so was going to take too much time. With over 20 thousand ingredients, trying to match each and every ingredient wasn't going to work at all.
He would have to look at things in sets and groups. That was when he recognized the fact that most of the ingredients that worked with the 3 initial ingredients had water energy in them.
After finding that, Alex started checking the properties of those ingredients and matching them to each other. It didn't take him long after that to start getting ideas for pills, but most of them weren't good enough for a competition like this. He needed something more.
It took him a day of doing so before he saw something in those ingredients that surprised him a little.
If he tweaked a few things here and there, he could use some more Water ingredients that he had already used in another pill and make it work like that pill.
'Can I do it?' Alex wondered. He had about 5 days remaining, so he had to start thinking very hard to go through his mind and focus on how the effects of the various ingredients would affect each other.
One ingredient had a small healing capability, another was filled to the brim with water energy so pure that it nearly made the ingredient Immortal rank. Another one affected one's body, making them slightly more aware of the water-energy around them.
Alex had to also include a metal ingredient to empower another water ingredient that he needed more effects out of, and two wood ingredients to weaken the effects of two other ingredients.
As Alex simulated what it would be like to make a pill out of those ingredients, to see how the effects would end up interacting with each other in various orders, he finally ended up on a permutation that left him with a stable energy combination.
And the effect of the resulting energy was exactly what he had wanted.
After all the mental work was done, on the 8th day, Alex finally opened his eyes and began making the pill.
The first pill was a test. There were multiple ingredients he hadn't used before, but he had some idea of how they could function, so he jumped straight into pill-making.
It took him merely 10 minutes to create a pill that had about 40% harmony. He didn't worry about the quality of the pill just yet. For now, he needed to make sure the effect that he had simulated was the one that he had managed to make.
The resulting energy was most definitely the same. As for the effect? He would have to check.
Alex ate the pill without hesitation and let it dissolve in his body on its own. As the energy dissolved, it started showing its effect.
He waited for a few moments it took to fully show the effect. When that happened, Alex couldn't help but open his eyes wide in surprise. 'I can't believe something like this can actually exist as well,' he thought.
But he had heard from the senior back in the Central Continent that pills only got more and more ridiculous in effect the more energy they had, so maybe this wasn't that bad.
Once he confirmed the pill worked, he ate a pill to nullify the effect of the previous pill and got to work.
He started making powders out of the ingredients he had never worked with before, and after doing that for 6 of the 13 ingredients necessary in that pill, he closed his eyes and began formulating the best pill recipe that could help him reach the highest harmony.
As he did that, he also began improving the energy in the ingredients of his pill using Supreme Elemental Accord. He could've used the mushrooms, but he wanted to people who were keeping track to see what he was capable of even without the mushrooms.
At some point, he noticed that the Emperor was done, and decided to take his time with making the pill. He waited until the very last hour before he finally began making the pill.
Having the perfect pill recipe and the perfect set of ingredients prepared, there was nothing left for Alex to do but make the perfect pill.
Mere minutes into starting the pill, he had already gathered the attention of every single person in the audience that was watching him to see what they would consider a desperate attempt on his part.
As Alex made the pill, he quickly reached the end of the process where he needed to form the pill. That was when he used the Vortex of Perfection skill.
Vortex of Perfection was what he had decided to call the Pill-splitting Qi that only now worked on a single pill. Using that technique, he was able to gather every single energy in the cauldron into the pill that formed inside the cauldron at the same time.
After all the energy was sucked in by the vortex, the sky darkened as pill clouds came out of nowhere. Almost no one except for a handful of people knew anything about pill clouds, so seeing such a phenomenon scared many people.
"What is going on?" the Queen of the Ivory kingdom asked.
"Lightning? Why?" the King of the Emerald Kingdom couldn't understand.
"It's like that one day from all those years ago," the Ebony Kingdom's King spoke as he looked up.
"Now that you mention it," the Silver Kingdom's Queen stared at the sky with a shocked expression as well. It did look similar to that day.
"It's called a pill cloud," the Crown Prince quickly explained. "It happens when one reaches 100% harmony in a pill."
As the Crown Prince explained the kings, queens, and other important figures of the continent, the first lightning bolt fell from the sky.
Most of the audience members jumped in their seats, afraid of the lightning strike. Most of them too remembered it very clearly.
However, they soon realized this was different. Once the lightning fell, they realized that it didn't have much power. At least, not enough to kill the King who it targeted.
As they were wondering what was going on, another lightning strike fell from the sky, surprising them. Was this going to fall a third time too?
The crowd wasn't surprised when the lightning strike fell for the third time as well. However, when it fell for the 4th time, they knew something entirely different was going on.
The lightning fell for the 5th time before the clouds started dissipating.
Then, Alex pulled out the 5-veined pill he had just created and placed it on a bottle before handing it over to the headmaster along with a talisman explaining everything.
With both of the monarch's pills completed, the competition was over.
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