Alex moved on to the second event of the day and soon realized it was a written exam with 20 questions, 1 point each.
They would also deduct 1 point for each question wrongly answered so it made it hard for everyone to simply guess.
Alex read the questions and surprisingly found most of them easy. The exam lasted about an hour, and Alex finished it in about 20 minutes.
He went over his answers a couple of tis but nothing seed wrong, so he gave his answers to the staff and had them evaluated.
Just as he hoped, he got the perfect 20 points.
'That went well,' he thought as he walked towards his mother's location. However, before he could get far, a staff mber suddenly stopped him.
"How can I help you?" Alex asked him.
"Dear participants, as you may know, on the third day there is going to be a speed pill-making competition. We would like to know what pill you would like to make for that," the staff asked. "You can answer right now or go to the guild before tomorrow noon and answer there."
"Oh, uh… I will make the… Purple Crane pill," Alex said.
"Thank you," the staff then went away, leaving Alex to go back to his mother and the rest.
"Good job," his mother said as he arrived. "You're still in the lead."
"Am I?" Alex turned around and saw the rankings.
He was in the first place with 72 points, and both Zhou Ren and Xue irong were trailing behind him at 70 points.
"It seems no one got an answer wrong today," Alex said. He looked through the ranking and as expected, most of them got the full 40 points.
He waited for a while and watched through the rest of the competition, but there was no one to do better than him so he had nothing to worry about.
"Just 2 more days of this and my son will get first place," Helen said.
Alex doubted he could keep this up for 2 more days. He was going to have to start making pills from the next competition onwards and that was going to be problematic.
After all, due to his condition, it had been nearly 2 months since he last made a pill or even dared to make one.
'I need to go practice,' he thought. He turned to his mother and asked for his items before leaving the competition ground.
He told her that she would only see him on the day of the competition itself.
Alex then went to the guild directly and got himself a room to start making pills. He brought the ingredients for the Purple Crane pill and prepared his cauldron.
Then, one after another, he put in the ingredients and began. The Purple Crane pill only had 6 ingredients, as opposed to most other pills that had at least 10 or higher normally.
As such, this was the perfect pill to choose for fast pill making. The only problem was that this was a very well-known pill and everyone else would go for it as well.
So, Alex had to use the advantages he had to beco faster than everyone else.
As he moved the ingredients around, Alex realized that he was having trouble maintaining the fire's temperature despite his Dao.
If he let the fire be, its temperature would slowly creep up until it was so hot that his pill was getting ruined. Then, he would have to pull his attention away from the ingredients and fix the temperature before going back to the ingredients.
Alex trained for the whole night, but he barely saw any improvent. What little adapting he did beca useless as the more Alchemy he did, the more he lost Qi, which in turn made him cultivate to gain Qi and that increased his yang once more.
Frustrated, Alex left the room multiple tis to go find so yin treasures. However, each ti he went to the staff, the answer was still no.
Alex trained for the entire next day as well as the night and finally left the guild on the day of the competition.
He t his mother outside the competition ground and gave her his things before going to the waiting hall.
He found Zhanrou and the rest waiting around, but he was too frustrated to make small talks.
Surprisingly, he was given group 1, which included no one from the rest of the top 10.
Then, the competition began and Alex walked out.
The cheers he heard from the audience rang full and far wide. He had co to the competition with a certain prestige and had kept it up throughout the first 2 days, even exceeding the expectations of many.
Had he done a little worse than the others, he might have been called a dark horse of the competition. But since he was doing so good, he was now considered one of the better ones in the tournant.
A lot of the people even expected him to win the whole thing with how it was going.
That just created a sense of pressure for him that he didn't need right now.
He waited for the host to start explaining about the speed competition, but contrary to his expectation, the competition that was being held currently was a different one.
"For the first round today, you will all be making a new pill you've never seen before," the host said.
Each one of them was passed along a talisman with a recipe and Alex understood where this was going.
"You will have exactly one hour to learn the recipe and make the pill," the host said. "You will be ranked from best to worst based on your pill's harmony."
"You may begin the mont you get your ingredients," the host said and imdiately a group of staff mbers ca up to them with storage bags.
Alex looked into the storage bag and was beyond surprised to see what he did.
There was only 1 set of ingredients.
'So I have to get it right on the first ti for a new pill I've never seen before?' Alex worried when he saw the ingredients.
This wasn't a speed thing so he could take his ti, but he still only had an hour to prepare the pill.
Alex sat down and closed his eyes to visualize what he was going to do. He thought of putting the ingredients in the correct ti and order, collecting the ingredients, and finally preparing the pill.
In his mind, nothing could go wrong, but Alex knew there would co so problem.
'How am I going to make the pill in the end? Should I use the technique or just clump it all together. If I do use the technique, how am I supposed to figure out how to make the combination?' Alex thought.
Since this wasn't sothing he had made before, he couldn't visualize the powders before getting into the pill. Not to ntion there were ingredients in there that he had never interacted with, so he didn't even know what shapes they would form when put through the recipe.
'I can only rely on my luck now,' Alex thought as he decided to not use the technique in the end.
He brought out his cauldron and started heating up the cauldron while he prepared himself.
Then, he started making the pill.
The mont the first ingredient went in, Alex started increasing the temperature to reach the required amount. Thanks to his Dao of Heat, that happened instantly, but as his focus shifted to the ingredient, the temperature slowly slipped out of control.
Alex imdiately focused back on the temperature and lowed it while also moving the ingredient around.
Then he changed it once more and put in the second ingredient. The problem with the temperature kept popping up each ti he put the ingredients, but he was always conscious of the temperature so he thought he could keep it in check.
A few problems appeared here and there, but mostly he thought he did a fine job with the ingredients.
Once it was all powdered, Alex pulled the energy into the powder and then ford a pill out of it without using any technique.
When the pill finally ford, he brought it out and looked at it, only to get a disappointed look on his face.
His pill barely reached 44% harmony.
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