Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

This test was a test of Momo's resolve more than anything: resolve to continue making pill after pill despite all of her body telling her to stop.

Recovering Qi was a good way to prolong the duration of her endurance as she made the pills, but it wasn't as simple as simply cultivating. Stopping to cultivate for 10 minutes before continuing again did her only some good compared to what one might think at first.

Instead of helping her last 15 hours, it helped her last 18. Three hours wasn't a small period, but it wasn't big either. And everyone received the same amount of time, so she couldn't even say she benefited more from it compared to others.

She felt like a dying man by her 19th hour, at which point she should have made over 70 pills. She wasn't sure if she was right about that or not. She had lost track of her count a while ago.

She had at times seen people walk away from the stage, so she knew many had failed already, but there were still people there, and so she kept on going. Her mind was in a haze at this point, and that one thought was all she had to keep pushing her to make more pills.

Each time Momo received a new set of ingredients, she cultivated for about 5 minutes to gain as much benefit from it as she could. It wasn't much, but it would help her feel refreshed enough so that she wouldn't make any mistakes right from the start.

She quickly made the pill, doing her best to conserve her spiritual energy. Her master had taught her about it, and through that, she knew that she needed to rely on external factors as much as she could.

That included letting energy escape the cauldron, allowing there to be some mistakes in control, as well as letting the fire be more or less hot than what was required.

That meant Momo had also completely abandoned the use of her Dao during this competition and had reserved as much of her spiritual energy as far as she could go, and this seemed to be it.

She was feeling her thoughts slip away moment by moment. She had gone through this before during her tests with her master, and it was around this time when she truly failed.

She pushed herself to continue for as long as she could, doing whatever she could to keep herself up. However, after another hour of doing this, she couldn't continue any longer. During one of the pill-making sessions, she ended up slipping her control a bit too far and let the energy get out of control.

The lid to her cauldron immediately shot out, the energy dissipating outside of the cauldron. Had the cauldron been weaker, the energy would've most likely exploded the cauldron itself.

Before anything could happen to Momo, one of the staff was already by her side, holding her. The staff gave her a pill, and Momo woke up again. She was still very tired, but she was awake.

"I… failed?" Momo asked.

"You did," the staff said. "But you failed after doing quite well."

The man pointed her to the sky where her name was present. She looked at it and was surprised into taking a deep breath.

"I came 4th?" she asked, turning to look at who all were still present on the stage. As expected, there were still the 2 Immortal disciples who were there before, but aside from them, there was another woman who hadn't done well in the competitions before.

She had lost behind her.

Momo left the stage and returned to the hall where she met Yuren. After checking his name, she found him to be ranked in the top 20. He had done well, but not that well.

The competition ended a while later, with the last Saint realm lady coming in third, followed by the two Immortal cultivators who took the first two ranks.

"They only won because of their cultivation base," Yuren said, feeling annoyed at his own shortcomings.

"It's not something that was given to them though," Momo said. "They cultivated hard to get there, even going so far as to risk Qi deviation. It was a risk they took, and they passed." Discover hidden tales at My Virtual Library Empire

"I… suppose," Yuren said.

Momo was certainly not happy about the two Immortals getting the better of her, but that was something she had expected. This young woman, however, had come out of nowhere.

She looked in her direction, the young red-haired lady with a mole under her right eye. She was no stronger than Momo in terms of cultivation base, so there must have been something else that made her perform better in the upcoming tournament.

Momo quickly ignored her, though, focusing her attention on her cultivation. There was only a single day before the next competition, so she needed to prepare for it.

A single day wouldn't be enough to get rid of all of her exhaustion for the day and fill up her dantian, but that was all she had for now. So she began her cultivation, waiting for the next competition.

* * * * * * *

"That's your disciple?" Alex asked, surprised when he heard Leafheart shout out in glee.

"Yeah, Shenxian. She did well, didn't she?" Leafheart asked.

Alex couldn't help but nod. "She did quite great," he said. He couldn't lie in this case. Coming 3rd overall was an extremely difficult task that this young woman had managed to accomplish.

"Your disciple did good too," Leafheart said and went back to watching the screen where a bunch of people had come out to play some sort of music.

Alex couldn't focus on the show at all and was instead distracted by Momo's stats. He hadn't expected much from the start. He knew she would do well, but not this well, and now he was beginning to hope for another pin.

With her ranking first in the first competition, third in the second one, and fourth in the third one, she was still in the top 2. The process the tournament would take to understand who got what rank in the end would certainly be to add all of the ranks and go with the ones that had lower numbers.

At the moment, Momo's total came to 8. From what Alex could tell, no one else besides her had that low a sum right now. However, depending on how well she did in the next two competitions, it could go either way.

Alex couldn't help but laugh at himself at the moment. 'All this time I tell her that I don't care where she ranks, and when she starts doing well, the first thing I worry about is whether or not she'll win the whole thing.'

It was hypocritical of him to expect victory from her after telling her she had no reason to seek it, but now that he had come here, he found himself wanting it.

The second pin would be great, after all. Having one more advantage over the others would help him a long way, certainly.

So now, despite all of his thoughts of not putting any pressure on Momo over the years, he needed her to win this whole thing.