Fang Qiu had now been in the sect for three years and many eventful things had happened in that timespan. 2 months after joining the sect, a massive previously undiscovered inheritance opened up a few empires away from the phoenix empire which caused a massive commotion. The phoenix empire even sent many cultivators from the empire rankings to said inheritance and out of the 100 people they sent only 12 made it back out alive. This caused lots of new people to enter the rankings and rise to fame. But this was all useless to Fang Qiu. In those two months he was busy with familiarising with all the different alchemical ingredients and learning about their properties and usage and how to get the maximum effect out of the diffirent ingredients before making them into a pill.
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One year after joining the sect Fang Qiu finally memorised all the info about the one star herbs which all alchemists needed to do. Every year the sect held a massive examination with an entry fee of ten low grade spirit stones, if a disciple passed the examination they could be promoted officially to a one, two, three of four star alchemist depending on the examination.
in his first year at the academy Sun Qiang successfully got promoted to a one star alchemist and Fang Qiu passed one year and two months after joining the sect. He was a super talented individual of the spirit clan after all so once he started refining pills his talent really started to shine. After all most people only got promoted to a one star alchemist after 5 years or more of being in the sect.
His nearly forgotten mindspace also gave him some small advantages in alchemy but sadly it could only sense the situation inside of his body and not inside of the cauldron. It was not completely useless though as the mindspace was capable of sensing when his mind was losing focus thus avoiding many instances that could have led to ruined pills or exploded furnaces. Refining pills also used up lots of spirit qi as he needed to constantly expend some to maintain control over his flames so his mindspace could also constantly monitor his expenditure of spirit qi which helped avoid lots of issues.
In general though the mindspace was not a massive help to alchemists and refiners, where it truly shined was when it was being used by a normal cultivator.
In his second year of being at the sect, a few months after being promoted to a one star alchemist a genius disciple appeared in the myriad sword sect who possessed almost perfect control over his sword techniques, Fang Qiu suspected that person was a human from earth since a rumour was going around that the youth was soulless until he was fourteen years of age. The mindspace system could detect flaws in combat techniques since those flaws were related to body movement and spirit qi circulation. In other words, for a cultivator that focuses on combat the mindspace was like a perfect teacher.
Fang Qiu wasn't unhappy because of it though, after all he was an insane genius from the spirit clan so he could for sure keep up in the long run and maybe even surpass all those geniuses from earth that were soon to appear all over the continent. After all, the mindspace could make almost anyone a genius as long as they were not too old when they awakened.
The thing that surprised Fang Qiu the most though was that only one such genius appeared in the phoenix empire, after all not every human had a mindspace installed in their brain since it was a thing that only upper class people could afford but every person that had one and was below eighteen years of age should have awakened by now which should still amount to about a million people easily. It seems the phoenix empire is only a small place after all seeing that only one person appeared here.
What Fang Qiu forgot to think about though was that only a small amount of people ever got a chance to cultivate and humans from earth only had a chance to shine using their mindspace after becoming a cultivator so the amount that actually made it to becoming a genius cultivator was horribly low.
Fang Qiu was even debating whether to reach out to the genius from the myriad sword sect but in the end he decided not to, he needed to get more powerful first before he could gather powerful cultivators with the mindspace system around him. So he continued with his daily routine of refining pills with second and third brother during the day and cultivating at night.
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Two and a half years after joining the sect second brother finally passed the 2 star alchemist examination becoming one of the few 2 star alchemists in the outer core. After all over 90% of the outer core disciples were 1 star alchemists and they might never make it to three star alchemist their whole lives. Mainly this was due to the fact that 2 star alchemy ingredients cost a lot and being an alchemist cost massive amounts of resources because when learning to create 2star pills one failed most of the time and the pills they did create contained so many impurities that they couldn't be sold, thats why being an alchemist requires astronomical resources unless you were a genius because then you would have an easier time making money and would also get more resources from the sect.
In face the only thing second brother lacked was the experience in refining since 2star herbs were very expensive for him, in fact during his almost fifteen years at the sect he barely got to practice using 2 star herbs and every attempt cost him multiple weeks of refining and selling one star pills. But since he was now one of Fang Qiu's assistants he got his own monthly allowance on par with an inner disciple which allowed him to practice more and made him just barely pass the examination of two star alchemist which consisted of refining a pill with 60% purity and a theoretical exam.
And as for Little Rou, in those two and a half years she didn't sit still either, she was now known as one of the four great beauties of the academy and second and third brother liked her a lot aswel, they even discussed about alchemy ingredients a lot together and They all learned a lot from their conversations. Little Rou had also stepped into the sixth rank of the human realm whilst Fang Qiu was already at the seventh rank which could be considered average. After all the human realm was the easiest to pass through.
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three years had passed since Fang Qiu joined the sect and he finally decided it was time to start his road to fame, he had hidden away his talent as a spirit clan member for three years, and he finally found the perfect chance to shine! The nine sect gathering taking place once every five years! As a future powerhouse how could he not participate in a gathering like this.
The only thing he needed to do now is compete and claim one of the spots to participate during the sect competition held in a week's time!