Page 68: Meant to fail

While waiting in his designated place in the stadium, Long Bai's mind has been preoccupied by the martial competition.

'I wonder if the martial contest has already started. I was supposed to take a peek on the other side but senior Li pulled me and insisted on getting to the alchemy contest platform on time. Haa... Look at this stadium. Even though the platform is filled with participants, the bleachers felt so empty. Only 30% of the stadium is occupied and most likely that these spectators are alchemists waiting for the next turn or at least these are the inspiring ones. I bet that the other side is more exciting. Who would be so excited in watching us just write things in a parchment for two hours? Maybe some of these people must have just been hired to watch over the examiners to prevent cheating.."

Long Bai was screaming inside. This is why he dislikes double events taking place at the same time. He remembered back on earth that two of his classmates celebrated their birthday during his highschool days. It was a travesty for his friend since the other was the popular one and have more peers. Although such thing happened, they were still able to celebrate his birthday in a more subtle way. It's just that Long Bai can imagine the feelings of others who wanted to give their greetings personally. Really there, such could be a fickle thing.

Luckily, he was on the first batch from the three sessions of examiners. If he will be able to finish after two hours, he could go to the other side and see what is going on. He can't just stay here and do nothing afterwards.

He looked at the other contestants and their silence was too disturbing for him. It was even more silent than a civil service examination that he previously took back on earth to enter public service. While looking for his senior, he met eyes with one examiner beside him. The look in his eyes were shallow and dark rings have become prominent under them. This guy must have crammed over night for this first event. Seemingly, many of them have similar state of mind, spaced out and mostly worried but there are ones who were composed. In Long Bai's opinion, these composed ones must have taken some medication to stabilize their minds. Although it looks like cheating, the sect doesn't actually mind it since everyone has their own capabilities. Taking in pills of any sort is not prohibited nor any type of medication. The only thing they consider cheating is the copy and paste method that everyone knows where one will write down codes or the answers itself in something else and then secretly bring it out during the course of the exam or anything similar of the sort.

A few minutes later, an elder alchemist in front of all stood from his seat and announced the instructions.

"We will begin the competition shortly. The instructions are simple. A book will be given to you and inside it are just the images of the herbs used in alchemy. You need to identify the name and the properties of the herb on each page. There are 120 questions and anyone who can answer 100 correct questions will proceed to the next round. In 5 minutes, grind your own ink. When you hear the sound of the gong, that starts the exam. Remember, anyone who are caught cheating will never be allowed to join any competitions in the future or join any association related to alchemy. Do your best. The 5 minute countdown starts now!"

Everyone took their own inkstone to grind and started making ink. While the sound of grinding reverberated all throughout the area, Long Bai sighed. The exam they just gave was actually an identification type of exam for the whole duration of 2 hours. Back on earth, this type of exam was not allowed. Exams usually should be diversified or at least should be with choices. After four minutes have passed, assistants began to put down the exam books on each table. Looking at it, it wasn't a book. It's more like a portfolio or a binder that is 6 inches thick with a black cover page. That was his first time seeing such thick exam paper.

Just after the last participant of the 1st batch was given the exam sheets, the elder presiding over the competition signalled the start. With the sound of the gong, every participant silently took out the first page and started answering. From that moment, the place was filled with a deafening silence.

Long Bai wasn't taking his time too. With the help of the system, he scans the page and writes the details given to him by the system. In modern times, it was similar with an online exam where an internet search is allowed but doing such in this world is just a total cheat. What Long Bai usually does is that he reads a lot of literatures and other references so that the information can be stored in his system library. Sometimes, even listening to lectures will also do.

With the herbarium that his senior Li gave him, most of the elementary herbs for pill making are already registered. This was one of the features of the system. On the other hand, there's also another feature that he was able to be cleared with. This feature opens when he encounters something new without prior knowledge of the event or the thing. Just like when he was strolling in the woods and encountered new type of plants for the first time, the system identifies it for him but with an expense. Before, he wasn't been able to notice it since he wasn't exposed to the knowledge of essence but now that he directly interacts with it, the effect was noticeable. Everytime that the system produces an information that is not in his library, the system utilizes his inner essence depending on the situation.

An example of it was the comparison of the system's utilization of essence during identifying herbs versus when the system tried to analyze the transport array back in the cave. The more the complex the analyzation be, the more the essence would be used. To Long Bai, using small amounts of essence during minor analyzations would just be replenished by his central core's gravity. Since his core behaves like a nucleus that attracts the essence around even when he is idle, the small usage of essence will be replenished in no time. If it is compared to a game status, he has a passive essence recovery to a certain percentage.

Long Bai was steady but he is taking more time than he is expecting for the unknown herbs since he needs the system to analyze before giving him the details. With such situations, he tries to answer fast when the item is already known by the system. Twenty minutes have passed but no one yet from the participants surrendered or made any reactions yet. Long Bai was about to check on the others but before he could fully make a full sweep of the other participants, his eyes met with senior Li who was sitting on the bleacher perpendicular to his orientation. Zhang Li glared at Long Bai with sharp and menacing look giving him a warning that he should not be distracted no matter what. With what he saw, Long Bai retrieved his sight and went back to his work.

Another 20 minutes passed and Long Bai started to feel the pain in his wrist because of writing nonstop. He remembered his elementary days where he needed to write the numbers from 1 to 100 in words in an entire notebook and during high school, he needed to summarize the content of his history and economics book. The pain in the hand was really a big deal back then. Some participants have also started making some painful sounds.

After an hour, Long Bai was able to count how many were already identified. On his table, the finished paper counted to 60 which means that if he continued his pace, he would be able to finish all of them within two hours. For the first hour, there were only two herb that was not on the volume 1 and 2 herbarium that her senior Li lent. It was the book that all alchemist of grade 1 and 2 must be familiar with. This mean that the competition was actually having their standard with the grade 2 alchemist as the minimum. Although there are grade 1 alchemists, memorizing the volume 2

of the herbarium is not a problem. They can still pass this exam as long as they have memorized all of the two volume books content.

An entire 1 hour and 20 minutes have passed since the start if the test. Starting from here, Long Bai began picking unknown pages. His guess is that these pages were meant for a higher alchemy grade since they were all spiritual herbs.

There are four kinds of herbs; common herbs which are as common as grasses, rare herbs which most likely are from the shroom family, spiritual herbs which contains rich essence, and the last, a heavenly herb which are herbs that have gained sentience. From rare herbs, they can have an age of 10 to 19 years, these herbs are called spiritual herbs when they reached the age of 20 until it will die. For a heavenly herb, their age may range from a very young age till hundreds to thousands. There are heavenly herbs that are born naturally while most of them become one once they reached a hundred years or more. Depending on the richness of essence, it would dictate how difficult it is to be gathered. In one literature, Long Bai read that some sentient herbs can absorb the heavenly essence and receive tribulations. Some of them can become powerful that an earth realm cultivator can be in danger or even die while catching it. Many of the sentient ones have developed mechanisms to protect themselves. One example is the use of poison to ward anyone who would dare to pluck them or catch them.

Another 20 minutes have passed. There's only 20 minutes left until the test will be forcibly stopped. Counting the next pages, Long Bai was only able to finish an addition of 30 pages. If this continues, he would only be able to finish another fifteen and miss to read all the contents. Long Bai speculated that the test was rigged so that only grade 3 alchemists will be able to pass. He started to feel anxious about it specially for his senior. If his speculation is true, the test was already fixed. From what he know, there are only three grade 3 alchemists in the sect which are the first apprentices of the three alchemy elders of the sect. One of them is the 1st apprentice of the master who took him during the alchemy tower incident. Long Bai's master, alchemist Wei didn't show up today together with the 1st apprentice. This must be the reason why his senior sister Zhang Li was very serious since he saw her. There must be something going on which tries to sabotage Long Bai's master in alchemy, alchemist Wei but for what reason?

Because Long Bai doesn't have the luxury to pause and think, he just continued answering the pages. There's just 5 minutes remaining before the test ends and he just reached the hundred mark page. The scanning of the page was not supposed to be a problem but if the next succeeding pages are all unknown, it will really take more time which is why there are still 20 pages left from that last 5 minutes mark. Long Bai thought for a second and calculated that if he would continue, he will still pass but have wasted the chance to scan the remaining pages. The remaining pages would definitely be useful in the future so he decided to leave them blank and instead just scan them.

With the remaining time, he used that to scan the remaining 20 pages so he could add those info in his library. In case a contest like this will happen tomorrow or in the future, he would not be constricted by the time.

"5..4..3..2..1..stop writing! Put your brushes down and step back for once. Now exit this stadium in an orderly fashion. The results will be posted this afternoon. You may check it that time."

The order was given by the presiding elder and lead the collectors to take the exam papers. The first batch exam papers were stored in a cosmic pouch after organizing them to avoid mix-up. While they were doing that, Long Bai gave Zhang Li a serious look and a smile afterwards. He wanted to encourage his senior but since interacting with anyone on the bleachers is not allowed, he just did such in a way.

After getting out of the stadium, everyone who took the exam seemed like they were in trouble. Some were already screaming in disappointment while many were in tears. Only Long Bai was not reacting similarly with them which was noticed by one of them.

"Good morning brother. You don't seem to be in distress like us. How was the exam for you? Ah, by the way, my name is Mo Shan, a grade 2 alchemist."

Long Bai smiled at Mo Shan and shook his head.

"Even for me(without the system), the exam was really too much. The last pages were like impossible to answer. If it would be the past(back on earth), I would have cried but since I have found a new purpose(new life), this doesn't bother me at all. I'm Long Bai."

"Ahh, fellow alchemist Bai. You have a strong mind. I envy you. If only I have the same mind as you... Haaa."

Mo Shan let out a sigh. Long Bai was able to sense his disappointment so he thought of something.

"Do you like to vent some steam? How about we go and watch the martial competition?"