Page 86: What they cooked

The arena was quiet as they watched the three participants starting their move. Yusheng came first in collecting his herbs followed by Tan Zhong who returned to his furnace five minutes after Yusheng. As for Zhang Li, she calmly took her time that required her a whole 30 minutes to finally have all the ingredients.

These were the time noted by the audience:

Yusheng: 15 mins herb gathering

Tan Zhong: 20 mins

Zhang Li: 30 mins

Long Bai: just started collecting

Yusheng started his furnace first after putting down all the herbs in there proper places. On one corner of the arena, the judges were monitoring each of the participants. One elder looked at Yusheng's herb selection and something caught his attention.

"Hm? This set of herbs..don't tell me."

"What is it, 2nd elder?" the elder beside him asked after he noticed his reaction.

"4th, check the herb list of this young man named Yusheng. Doesn't that tell you something?"

The 4th elder looked at the said table and understood what he meant. On Yusheng's herb selection, it strongly suggests that the pill to be refined could be on the grade 4 list.

"2nd, there's something peculiar about it. Two of the herbs should not be there. Is he trying to create a lowered version of a grade 4 pill? What do you think?"

"I can agree to that. Instead of using the original strong herb, he used a subtle one as a substitute. Making a grade 4 pill would require great stamina, he might be compensating with his lack of essence by doing this. If he can make a high quality of this downgraded grade 4 pill, it can be considered as a low quality grade 4 pill. However, if he's not successful, ot would just be automatically considered as a low quality grade 3 pill. This is a huge gamble considering he hasn't fully recovered from his injury. What made him think of such choice that he'll choose to bet on a small percentage of success?"

"Hm, it might be because of that guy."

The elder was pointing at Long Bai who just started choosing his herb selection.

"He might have heard that a participant was planning of refining the bloody pill, a grade 4 pill. This might have been the cause of his current actions. Since he was the most senior of all the disciples, he can't take the pressure of being overdone by a junior disciple. Oh, I remembered because of him you lost your two precious herbs. Haha, how was it?"

"Tsk. Don't try. But if he can really refine a grade 4 pill, such embarrassment can just be forgotten. It seemed that sect leader was expecting too much from this kid. Although I can't deny, I also feel there's something off with this young lad. But look, he just started picking. I don't know if that Long Bai is just lax or he's already stumped. Since he claimed that he have the recipe for the said pill, I doubt he can make it. Look at those amateurish slow moves."

"It might be slow but since the beginning, he hasn't made any questionable actions. I monitored him from the beginning and looking at the herbs he's picking, they looked like they would definitely go with each other."

The two elders were having their own conversation but same with the other five. They were also discussing about the other two participants, Zhang Li and Tan Zhong who chose to make the same pill.

Back on the stage, Tan Zhong was already starting his extraction phase. Compared to Zhang Li, he was ahead of few steps. It also seemed like he would be the first one to finish among the rest with his current pace. With the lesser blood rejuvenating pill, a grade 3 pill that the two decided to refine, this would give them the highest chance of creating a a better quality. If they are lucky enough, they can achieve refining a high quality grade 3 pill. This blood rejuvenating pill has two types, the lesser pill and the greater pill. The lesser pill is a grade 3 pill while the greater pill is a grade 5 pill. Compared to the other well known grade 3 pills, the lesser pill requirements are more simple thus allowing the alchemist to have more chance of refining a higher quality.

The blood rejuvenating pill required 9 different herbs and each herb when extracted independently would at least take 4 minutes. Add the final stages of pill refining, the whole process from extraction, condensation and pressure application would require at least an hour. Now that an hour has passed since the beginning of the test, Tan Zhong has already started his condensation process of the pill while Zhang Li was still at her eighth herb extraction. Yusheng on the other hand was at his eight herb extraction although he started early. Judging from his pace, the toll of having an injury slowed him down significantly. On the 4th table, Long Bai just started arranging the 12 herbs required to make the bloody pill.

The bloody pill or the Blood beast enhancing pill is not a pill for a cultivator but a pill for a spiritual beast. When a wild beast is fed with the pill, the beast would be able to purify its blood lineage and gain spirituality. This means that the beast will gain sentience and would be eternally grateful to ots owner. In the mainland, they call them companion beasts. They can be used for mounting while others use them as a companion for fighting and hunting. Since beasts that have gone tribulations are not tameable because they gained spirituality on their own and that they posses great strength, people used this method to raise beast while they are still at their early ranks. The only reason why there's no companion beast in the union islands was that no one knows the pill recipe for it. Only nobles of high ranks have their own alchemists hide the recipe to keep its sacredness or some thinks its for profit.

This was the clue at which the sect leader was holding on that is why he was too enthusiastic with Long Bai's attempt. When he heard he wanted to attempt making the pill, he immediately recalled that such capabilities are only kept to high profiled cultivators of the mainland.

On the 4th table, Long Bai was trying to adjust his pace. He can't make his pace too fast or else it would look unnatural while he can't take too long or it would reflect bad on his capabilities. Now that 1 hour had passed, he started the extraction process. One after the another, he put all the herbs inside the hot furnace and started the extraction. After doing this, he heard some gasps and exclaims from the audience. On the elder council's bleachers, some stood up from their seats due to what they saw.

"What is going on? He's trying to extract all of those herbs at the same time? Did he already gave up on the test?"

A lot of people who saw what Long Bai did were whispering the same thing. Among the participants, only Long Bai opted to do this method. Although it is not uncommon, the difficulty of extraction increases when someone do this but on the other hand, they would be able to save time. There were a lot of debates going on at at the audience's area.

Long Bai did not mind the little disturbance and proceeded to the extracting process. All twelve ingredients were being extracted at the same time while he was supplementing the process with essence. From the outside, there's nothing special happening but inside him, he can read the information given by the system.

[System Notice: Pill refining for the Bloody pill has started. Efficiency of grade 4 pill refining required Choose the pill quality for refining:

~grade 4

-low (100%)

-mid (100%)

-high (100%)

-mystic (91%)

High quality pill (100%) has been selected.

Extraction has begun. Estimated time of completion: 5 mins, 45 seconds.]

Long Bai have chosen high quality instead of mystic since that quality would attract a strong tribulation cloud. He doesn't want to wreck havoc in the area.

While waiting for the time to pass, Long Bai sneaked a peek at the other participants. First, he checked on Zhang Li's progress.

Zhang Li was still on the extraction process same as him however she's on her last herb. Just a minute or two, she can already proceed to the condensation process. On the 2nd table, Tan Zhong has been steadily adding the extracts together. During this stage of pill refining, he must slowly combine the extracts while maintaining a heat that would not evaporate the extract or while maintaining a heat that's not too weak or else the evaporation rate would not allow the condensation of the pill. If Long Bai would describe it, it would be similar to when someone boils coconut milk. If the heat is not enough to remove the water, the extract or residue (partly sugar) won't appear while if its too hot, the solid residue will get burnt and it would just be wasted. This was how taxing this process was. One must try to divide their concentration; one part for controlling the flames while the other will initiate the lumping or condensation of the solid parts.

On the first table, Yusheng was also on the last steps of extraction. It seemed that the three of them, him, Yusheng and Zhang Li are on similar processes while Tan Zhong was on the lead. The test continued with such regular pace. If there's the most exciting part of the alchemy process, that would be the pressure application on the pill. It is the last step that would require great conncentration to apply huge amount of essence to create great pressure and temperature inside the furnace. This is the part in which most alchemists fail due to slight distraction, misstep, lack of essence or even damaged furnace. The end result when one of these are present would always be an explosion.

...

...

[System Notice: Extraction completed. Would you like to Initialize second stage of pill refining? Estimated time of completion: 4 mins, 50 seconds.

Target: High quality pill (100%)

Max output: 8 pills ]

After Long Bai received the next notice from the system, he retracted back his focus on his pill making. This time, he needs to make the timing. He should at least try to have the average pace of the three.

The pill refining process was not tiring for Long Bai at all however the need for him to regulate his pace proves to be a bit stressful. If he's too fast, people will accuse him of cheating. If it's too slow, they would put high regards to the effort. It was similar to a martial cultivator. If he was too strong for his age, they would deem that person a demonic cultivator while if the pace is too slow, they would label the person incompetent. At this event, Long Bai just don't want to have complications which would give those who dislike him a reason not to reap the benefits of being a successful alchemist. Of course, he doesn't know that the sect leader favors him which such thinking was useless. If only he knows that the sect leader thinks differently, then he would not need to do such extrenious things.

[System Notice: Initializing second stage of pill refining. Estimated time of completion: 4 mins, 50 seconds.

Target: High quality pill (100%)

Max output: 8 pills ]