Chapter 2435: Risk
Momo slowly opened her eyes as she came back to her senses. Having learned the Dao of Detoxification, the Worldly Laws had left her and gone back up into the heavens, letting her awaken.
Momo slowly realized what had happened. She had learned a Dao without intending to. She had lost herself in her mind, entangled in the threads of poisons and their counters in her thoughts. And now, she knew more about it than many could ever hope to.
She looked up at the Divinity she was assigned, who looked to be surprised and amazed by his expression, and asked how long it had been.
"It's been more than 4 hours since we started," the man said, pointing to the sky above. "You can check the time and the ranking up there."
"Ranking?"
Momo looked up at what the man pointed to, and her heart skipped a beat. Up in the sky was an ongoing timer now, along with a ranking next to it that had names and the number of ingredients replaced.
Two of the names had 3-of-3 next to them, meaning they had already completed the competition and left.
'No…' Momo thought. She was now over 4 hours late and was behind two people before she even got properly started.
She looked at the two names, recognizing Yuren immediately in second place. Before him, in first place, was the name Shenxian. If she wasn't mistaken, it was the same woman who had defeated her previously.
Aside from those two, there were a dozen different names with two ingredients replaced and over 50 with at least one replaced.
'What do I do?' Momo thought. The feeling of starting with a handicap felt wrong. Whatever she had to do, she needed to do it quickly.
First things first, she made the pill as written in the recipe. She made the pill with the full understanding that she was doing it to understand the pill's energy constitution. She cared little for how the pill turned out in the end.
She did it one more time to be certain of every little thing the pill did. A small 'Ting' caught her attention, forcing her to look up.
Someone else replaced all three ingredients.
'I need to hurry,' Momo thought.
She looked at the ingredients on the recipe, wondering which one to go for first.
'If I want to speed things up, I should go for all three at once,' she thought. 'But would that be easy? Isn't that against the rules?'
She thought for a moment, going back to what she was told.
During the Replacement test her master had to take, he was forced to replace ingredients one at a time until all of them were replaced. Each time a replacement happened, they had to show it to the staff to confirm it.
However, after going through the rules, Momo came to understand that was not the rule at all. She could replace all three at once, and so long as the pill came out right, they would have to accept it.
A curious thought came to Momo right then. An idea that was either going to ruin the competition for her or make it. There were no rules against what she wanted to do, but there were no rules for it either. She was just going to have to take the risk.
'Sometimes, the only way to win is by taking risks,' Momo thought and went ahead with her idea.
She closed her eyes to begin thinking. The moment her mind pulled up the mere thought of poison, her Dao helped her understand it clearly and tell her what could be done to get rid of it.
The Dao of Detoxification was the Dao to remove all toxins from a human body and heal it for the better. With that Dao, she could form ideas a hundred times faster than she could do so previously. Her thoughts raced faster than her mind could catch up, and within minutes, she already had a list of ingredients ready to request.
The Divinity was surprised when Momo made her request. Instead of just asking for one or two ingredients every few minutes, she asked for 11 in total, causing the man to hesitate.
"You do realize that you will be disqualified from this competition if you waste these ingredients, right? Failing this test won't stop you from moving onto the next competition, but disqualification kicks you out of the tournament altogether, voiding all the previous ranks and points you have gathered."
"Thank you for your concern, senior. I understand the rules and I still must request you to bring me these ingredients," Momo said.
The man looked at Momo for a second before nodding. A minute later, someone rushed onto the stage, bringing all 11 of the ingredients. The Divinity checked the ingredients first before handing them over to Momo.
"Make good use of it," he said as he gave them to her.
Momo nodded and immediately pulled out the ingredients. Another 'Ting' haunted her from above, but she didn't even look at it. She needed all of her focus on this.
She looked through the ingredients, making sure she got the right ones. She went through each one slowly, trying to make sure everything she asked for did exactly what was needed and nothing more.
After some deliberation, during which someone else completed the test, she began turning the ingredients into a pill.
Having worked with all of these ingredients before, she knew how they would interact with each other. She would need multiple tries to get the recipe right, but that was not what she was doing here. She was only finding ingredients that could work as replacements and proving it.
Momo began making the pill under the careful eye of the Divinity, who made sure she did not waste the ingredients.
The ingredients went in one after another, which she refined to the best of her abilities, but she still ended up making a lot of mistakes. She had to learn while refining those ingredients to understand what she had to do to get them to mix together as she wanted.
There were multiple times when everything nearly failed, but she pulled it all together, and by the end of it, she managed to turn it into a pill.
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Momo pulled out the pill and placed it onto a Pill Tester that was next to her. The result came out to an embarrassing 31% Harmony, but Momo didn't care.
There were no requirements for the pill's Harmony during this competition. It was all about the ingredients she replaced. The pill was merely proof that the replacement worked.
Momo pulled out the pill, placed it into a bottle, and handed it over to the Divinity, who watched her intently.
"Here, senior. I'm done."
The Divinity appeared puzzled for a moment. He glanced toward the other contestants that were under him, making sure he wasn't taking up their time by helping Momo. Once he was certain, he walked up to her.
He took the pill, still confused, and asked, "What is this?"
"A pill with replaced ingredients," Momo answered.
"No, this is a new pill entirely," the man said.
"Yes. I replaced all ingredients at once," Momo said. "This way I have replaced more than just three ingredients at once."