Chapter 156: The Boring Alchemist Grand Meeting (II)

Hearing the three distinct 'clink' sounds, Liu Ling and Princess Yue Er's expressions changed as they turned to look at Xiao Yan in the center, their eyes filled with utter disbelief.

Xiao Yan smiled faintly upon sensing their gaze. He took out a Bone Growing Pill and said with a chuckle, "Thank you for letting me win."

Then, he flicked his finger, and the Bone Growing Pill flew into the testing device before him. Instantly, countless eyes from the spectator stands, the VIP seats, and even the alchemists still refining their pills all turned to this most attention-grabbing spot.

Everyone wanted to know how the top seed and hottest contender from the preliminary test had performed.

A moment later, a subtle muffled sound rang out. A dazzling green pillar of light suddenly shot up from the stone platform in front of Xiao Yan. The intensity of the color was such that even though others had not yet completed their refinement, they all knew what that rich green represented.

That beautiful jade-like color mesmerized everyone in the spectator stands.

"Incredible! Some people are still reading the pill recipe, yet he's already finished refining!"

"That's too fast! Is this really alchemy? Why is his refinement process so different from ordinary people's?"

Fa Ma nodded in the VIP seats. It would be strange if Xiao Yan wasn't fast using that technique. But despite Xiao Yan's speed and perfect extraction of medicinal properties, only alchemists of tier 4 and above could understand the difficulty involved.

Deputy Chairman Qie Mi Er frowned slightly and said with some concern, "Xiao Yan's refining speed is so fast; it might not necessarily be a good thing."

Sure enough, just after Xiao Yan completed his refinement, some alchemists who couldn't understand the pill recipe and had exited early began to whisper among themselves.

"How could he possibly refine it so quickly without any instructions in the pill recipe!"

"Exactly! If he hadn't practiced beforehand, there's no way he could be so fast!"

"Hmph, so this is the so-called number one seed? He must have known the test questions in advance."

"What's the point of winning the championship by cheating? The Alchemist Association is just this corrupt."

For a while, various voices of doubt arose due to Xiao Yan's excessively fast refining speed.

Xiao Yan naturally just smiled faintly upon hearing these doubting voices. Outsiders watch the excitement, insiders look at the skill. Without a certain level of ability, they naturally couldn't understand how he was able to complete the refinement so quickly.

Just as Xiao Yan was about to take out a chair from his storage ring to sit and rest for a while, a beam of light nearly on par with his own shot out from a corner.

The second to finish wasn't Liu Ling or the Little Princess, but an alchemist wearing black robes!

"That person..." Fa Ma narrowed his aged eyes, a sharp glint flashing in his cloudy pupils. He lightly tapped his finger on the railing and said in a low voice, "That black-robed man seems rather strong."

Even Xiao Yan hadn't expected that someone else's speed could rival his own!

"Who on earth is this guy?!" Still in the midst of refining, the Little Princess and Liu Ling stared in astonishment at this formidable opponent who had suddenly appeared, their faces full of bewilderment.

The first round of the competition wasn't difficult. Soon, Liu Ling and Yue Er also completed their refinements. However, the beams of light from the two of them were noticeably thinner than those of Xiao Yan and the mysterious man.

From the thickness alone, one could tell that the quality of their Bone Growing Pills was inferior to the two of them.

Xiao Yan looked at the mysterious black-robed figure, a strange glint flashing in his eyes. He smiled faintly, "It seems this boring Alchemist Grand Meeting might become a bit more interesting."

"Qie Mi Er, get me his information." In the VIP seats, Fa Ma suddenly turned to Qie Mi Er and said in a deep voice.

Qie Mi Er also sensed that something was amiss. He took out a stack of documents from his storage ring and quickly flipped through them. After a moment, he handed a thin sheet of paper to Fa Ma.

In the data, the picture of the mysterious black-robed man looked to be around seventeen or eighteen years old, so young that it seemed somewhat uncanny.

"An alchemist from the Chu Yun Empire?" Fa Ma frowned. The Chu Yun Empire bordered the Jia Ma Empire, and the two often had conflicts. They could be considered hostile nations.

"How come it only states he's a 2nd-tier alchemist here? From what I can sense, that fellow is at least a 4th-tier alchemist." Fa Ma frowned as he glanced at the tier recorded in the information.

"A seventeen-year-old 4th-tier alchemist? Chairman, that's simply impossible no matter how you think about it. No matter how much of a genius he is, alchemy requires time and the accumulation of experience," Qie Mi Er said with a wry smile.

Hai Bodong lightly coughed twice from the side and said, "Some things aren't necessarily impossible. Don't be so sure."

"Then what should we do now?" Qie Mi Er asked.

"What else can we do? We can only continue with the Grand Meeting for now. We'll discuss it after today's competition ends. Tonight, we'll investigate further," Fa Ma said.

Time passed by second by second. Participants continued to either qualify or fail and leave. By the time the sand in the hourglass ran out, the original thousand-plus alchemists had been reduced by a third, leaving only about three hundred.

After the first round was completed, servants walked out from the passageway one by one, placing two sets of medicinal ingredients and a pill recipe scroll in front of each qualifying alchemist.

Xiao Yan sighed when he opened the scroll and looked at the standard pill recipe. This time, they were still refining according to a pill recipe. Although it had changed from tier 2 to tier 3, it was merely a low-grade tier 3 medicinal pill—the Wind Walking Pill.

"It allows the consumer to become highly sensitive to the wind attribute natural energy for a short time, thereby achieving the effect of increasing movement speed."

"It does have some use."

To Xiao Yan, whether it was tier 2 or tier 3, the difficulty was actually the same—that is, no difficulty at all.

He looked at the surrounding alchemists who had already begun refining. Even Liu Ling and the Little Princess quickly entered a focused state and started refining, seemingly spurred on by Xiao Yan's speed to compete. None of them wanted to be slower than him, and all began refining earnestly.

Xiao Yan shook his head. He leisurely took out a bottle of iced mineral water from his storage ring, took a couple of gulps, stretched his body, and assumed a relaxed expression.

He planned to let them refine for a while first.

Once again, there were two sets of medicinal ingredients. As before, Xiao Yan directly stored the second set into his storage ring and tossed all the ingredients into the medicinal cauldron at once.

He didn't even need to clean out the residue inside the cauldron because the Nihility Devouring Flame would completely incinerate even the residue into nothingness.

Deputy Chairman Qie Mi Er smiled slyly when he watched Xiao Yan throw all the ingredients into the medicinal cauldron like in the first round. He muttered, "Heh heh, this time we've finally set a trap for this kid. Let's see how he handles it."

At this moment, a bang was suddenly heard in the plaza. A 3rd-tier alchemist's medicinal cauldron had detonated, and the ingredients were utterly destroyed.

This wasn't an isolated incident. Not long after, another explosion occurred nearby. Soon, more and more alchemists experienced cauldron explosions. Even the Little Princess, Liu Ling, and the mysterious black-robed man beside Xiao Yan all had their cauldrons explode.

Liu Ling and the Little Princess's expressions immediately turned ugly. They slowly exhaled and both looked toward Xiao Yan's position.

Because Xiao Yan had been slow and leisurely, he had only just tossed the ingredients into the cauldron not long ago and hadn't completed the extraction yet.

"Something seems off." In the VIP seats, Ya Fei looked at the alchemists in the plaza, almost all of whom had turned into dumbstruck statues, and said softly.

"Indeed, something's wrong," Nalan Yanran replied, knitting her delicate brows. "Although I'm not an alchemist, I know that refining according to the pill recipe will undoubtedly greatly increase the success rate. But those people below including Liu Ling and the Little Princess all seem to have failed."

Princess Yao Ye glanced at the area where the Alchemist Association's higher-ups were seated. She crossed her slender right leg over her left, gazed at the somewhat strange atmosphere in the plaza, and murmured, "It seems there's something fishy about this test. I just wonder if that alchemy genius can pass this round."

Before long, since no one knew what was happening, they all stopped to study the situation. The originally slow and leisurely Xiao Yan unexpectedly became the fastest again.

Just as the medicinal essences were about to fuse into a pill, suddenly there was an energy fluctuation inside the cauldron. A violent energy began to spread outward.

Xiao Yan shook his head helplessly and said, "Playing such petty tricks, you people at the Alchemist Association are really childish."

"Mao Wu."

Whoosh!! Inside the black flame-filled medicinal cauldron, a black cat suddenly appeared and swallowed all the medicinal essences that were about to form into a pill in one gulp.

Instantly, the violent energy disappeared.

Xiao Yan's fingers moved nimbly and removed all of an ingredient called 'Thick-soil Ganoderma' from the other two sets of medicinal essences inside the cauldron.

His powerful Spiritual Strength had clearly grasped the entire pill fusion process just now and naturally knew exactly which step had gone wrong.

Before long, two crisp clanging sounds were heard as two cyan-green Wind Walking Pills were collected by Xiao Yan into a pill bottle.

'Originally it could have been three pills in one batch, what a pity to waste one.'

Xiao Yan glanced at Liu Ling and the Little Princess who were gaping at him in astonishment, then at the flabbergasted Alchemist Association higher-ups on the stage. His eyes narrowed slightly as he suddenly said out loud, "It seems it's better not to include the Thick-soil Ganoderma."

! ! ! ! !

Fa Ma and the others immediately widened their eyes when they heard Xiao Yan reveal the answer to everyone.

You're cheating!!