Faithseeker looked at the timer in the sky. With this sixth pill, he had now completely spent up the hour he had been given to make his pill. The round was technically over now, and the semi-finals had begun, and yet he was still fighting to win it.
He should have won it by now, but his opponent was particularly tough. He had underestimated the alchemist, Leafheart, and as a result, even after making six 100% pills in a row, he still hadn’t won it.
It would be quite embarrassing, if not for Alex and Palesilver, who were still going up against one another. Only Aethersage and Treegold had begun searching for the next recipe.
Since Faithseeker had to make his pill once again, he brought out the necessary ingredients. The quantity of ingredients he was using was a fraction higher than what was necessary for the pill.
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Faithseeker had never been one to waste resources, but this competition was forcing him to. He didn’t like that he was forced to be wasteful, but there was no other choice.
Victory was all that mattered right now.
He placed the first ingredient into the cauldron and began making his pill. Throughout the rest of the process, Faithseeker kept careful attention on his pill, and when he was finally done refining all the ingredients, he formed the pill.
Just as he formed the pill, however, he compounded just the physical shape of it. He pushed the shape of the pill just to the edge of what was acceptable and then poured the energy into the newly formed sphere.
Since the size was now smaller, the energy was now relatively overflowing. He poured the energy into the pill with a pill-forming technique that had come down from the current Alchemy God himself.
The chances of failure under the current circumstances were just way too low.
Once he poured the energy into the pill, he looked at the sky and smiled as the pill clouds formed up above him.
Each time he made the pill, it was a gamble on whether or not the pill clouds would come, and each time it came, it brought along a smile on Faithseeker’s face.
There were only so many times the woman he was up against could win. So, each time he made the pill, it was another chance at overall victory, for this time around, his opponent could have possibly failed.
* * * * * *
Alex watched the number next to Palesilver’s name arrive at 100% once again. So, once again, he needed to make the same pill.
’Just how long is this going to continue?’ he wondered.
With how long it had been, it was all but certain that Palesilver was very much using a lot of ingredients.
Alex worried that he was letting minutes slip through his fingers—minutes he could spend thinking about the next pill recipe. There were still two more recipes to form, and he had no idea for any of them.
’Focus,’ he told himself and brought out the next set of ingredients.
Palesilver had managed to make him make the same pill eight times in a row. By now, Alex was so confident in making this pill that he could swear he would still get 100% if he were to make the pill while breaking through.
He still focused every part of his mind on making this pill. He could not afford to make any mistakes since it was difficult to fix the pill, if not entirely impossible. Your journey continues on freewebnovel
By now, he didn’t have to go so slow with making this pill, so Alex completed making it in a relatively average time. When he completed it and the pill clouds formed, he wondered if people had gotten bored by the constant pill clouds.
Surely, they had more or less gotten used to it.
Alex stopped after the fourth pill lightning and brought out the pill. The sinuous line that separated the two hemispheres of the pill denoted the Discordant Duality category this pill fell under.
He handed the pill over to the Divinity before him and looked toward the brackets. For the first time, it seemed, he had made the pill faster than Palesilver.
So, all he could do now was wait.
* * * * * * *
Alex wasn’t entirely wrong in his expectation of how the audience would react to the constant Pill Clouds, but that was only for the simplest of audiences who did not know much about Pill Clouds, except that they were difficult.
It was only those that had meddled with pills and alchemy that understood the true enormity of what they were witnessing.
Four Immortal Realm cultivators were making Pill Clouds form with every pill they made. In the past hour, they had seen nearly 30 Pill Clouds.
That sort of number was simply unheard of.
Silvermist’s eyes were wide open in shock. He remembered Alex’s words of being able to form Pill Clouds whenever he wanted, but he had expected it to be a slight exaggeration on his end.
He believed that his disciple was very capable, but what he saw today was a frightening proof that his disciple had never lied.
He could see all six participants on the stage and what they were doing. To them, everything that was being done was clearly visible.
Silvermist could see Palesilver’s mushrooms, Leafheart’s pill refining, and Faithseeker’s higher portion of ingredients. He had seen Aethersage’s use of twice as many ingredients as well.
And among all those, his disciple was the only one who didn’t seem to be using any such outside aid at all. All he was doing was using the bare minimum. In that way, his disciple was clearly better than all.
However, being better didn’t mean he was the victor.
Alex still needed to win.
Silvermist looked at the brackets and frowned when he saw that his disciple had tied once again. That little girl from Goldgrass’s sect was stubbornly matching his disciple’s record.
She was not the only one. The other two matched as well as they tied too.
"What is this, the ninth pill?" Silvermist asked. "How are they going at it for so long?"
Grimsight simply watched as he had no answer.
Momo had long since been stunned by her master’s capability to produce so many Pill Clouds in a single competition. And from the looks of it, every pill he made had a Pill Cloud.
This was entirely different from the others, who were making half a dozen pills before they finally created a Pill Cloud.
The sky grew cloudy around the same time, and Silvermist shook his head at the sight of it. Since they were forming above the same area, they tended to mix together as one.
Silvermist looked at the four alchemists and noticed that all of them had stopped creating their pills. So the pill clouds in the sky were for all of them.
"Is that all four pill clouds this time too?" he asked without much expectation.
However, Grimsight’s response surprised him. "No, that’s only three."
Silvermist turned to him swiftly. "Three? Someone failed?" he asked.
Grimsight waited for the first lightning bolt to fall and slowly nodded. "Yes," he said and pointed at someone who seemed to have realized their own failure already.
"She failed."