Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

When the Alchemy God left, Momo found herself feeling so relieved that she nearly felt weightless. Her heart still beat as fast as ever, but it was now winding down, and her nervousness was replaced by a feeling of pure joy and happiness.

She heard the noise from above, marking her completion. Her name had appeared out of nowhere, landing her 7th overall in the competition. She wondered how much faster she would've completed it all had she not been sidetracked by her Dao.

She was excited to learn this new Dao, which she didn't even know existed before, but at the same time, she felt guilty that her Dao had to come at the cost of her master's advantage in the tournament.

The Divinity who stood next to her finally smiled at her again. "Congratulations on passing."

Momo looked toward him, only just remembering his presence. "Thank you, senior," she said hurriedly. "And… I hope you can forgive my rudeness earlier. I did what I thought was right."

The Divinity simply shook his head. "Don't worry about that. I understand you had to," he said and showed her the way out of the place.

Momo left the platform and arrived back at the hall that now held just 6 other disciples. They all looked toward her as she walked in, staring as if they were seeing a monster.

Momo felt uncomfortable with their stares, so she walked to the side where she could be alone and cultivate. The effects of the Endurance test had still not fully worn off, so she needed to deal with that as well.

Thankfully, everyone seemed content to leave her alone, so Momo could think by herself on her future.

Now that she had come 7th overall, she quickly noted the other 6 who had passed. Other than Shenxian and Yuren, the other names were newer. By the looks of it, the two Immortals hadn't passed yet. That surprised her since they had done quite well in the first 3 competitions. She wondered why.

After some thought, she realized that the Immortals were not as good as she thought during competitions that solely relied on their alchemy knowledge.

For Ingredients gathering, they had done well thanks to their expansive Spiritual sense.

For the Speed test, their Qi gave them far better control than anyone else, allowing them to make those pills quickly.

For the Endurance test, it went without saying that the Immortals would obviously have an advantage thanks to their cultivation base as well.

However, now that the task was to replace ingredients—a task where cultivation base didn't matter in the slightest—they were failing to keep up. Their names weren't even on the list yet as they hadn't replaced a single ingredient.

'They must've been forced to cultivate while learning to simply make pills the best they could,' she thought. It made sense that they would be given knowledge of how to make pills to the best of their capability without knowing much about alchemy or its ingredients as a theory.

'That hurts them in this competition, but they will beat us in the next competition, won't they?' she thought. She knew that the next competition was one where they were going to be allowed to make any pill they wanted to. And that would be the exact scenario these Immortals would've trained for.

'What can I do?' Momo thought.

In the first place, she wondered where she stood in terms of ranking. She ranked first in the first competition, but each time after that, she had failed to do so. She had gained a high rank in general, but it was unclear if she was first at all.

As it stood, there was not a chance that she ranked first. The Shenxian woman might rank higher than her if she continued outperforming her. But it was unclear where she would land in the end.

'Those Immortals might even take it,' Momo feared.

In the end, however, she couldn't let uncertainty scare her. Whatever the future may hold, good or bad, she would do her best. If fate was with her, she would win the overall competition. If it was not, then she would just have to ask her master for forgiveness.

As her master had told her, doing her best was all she could do in the first place.

* * * * * *

Alex looked at Momo's overall ranking and worried that she wasn't going to win as well. She was going to rank high, that much was certain. But first place was still up for grabs.

It was between 4 people in total, he realized. His disciple, Leafheart's disciple, and the two Immortal disciples—whose masters he still couldn't figure out—were most likely going to win.

It was sadly clear that Aethersage's disciple wasn't going to win. Even if he ranked first in the next competition, he still wasn't going to win overall. His previous ranks were just that bad.

The competition on stage went on for the entire week, during which only 288 of the participants managed to replace 3 ingredients. The rest were left unable to do so, showing a lack of alchemy knowledge.

They failed.

Some puppet show took the stage as entertainment after the competition was over, with an explanation that the next and final test for the disciples would take place the next morning.

The disciples had about 14 hours to choose now.

Alex watched the puppet show for a while, witnessing master puppeteers control the puppets as if they were their own body. And the puppets weren't simple humanoids either. They were all types of beasts and monsters that could only come from the puppeteer's imagination.

He was in the middle of a match when he sensed the air warp a little and saw the bright silver flash of teleportation.

Everyone's attention was immediately grabbed by the arrival of the Alchemy God.

Whitesong stood before all, inspecting the alchemists that were before him. He peered through them, noticing everyone gazing back at him before smiling.

"I hope you all are having some pleasant time here. Our previous test is complete, so I came to let you know a few things before we move on to our first test tomorrow."

Everyone was immediately attentive to his words.

"As previously mentioned, tomorrow's test is going to be a simple test where they will make the best pill they can," he said. "We will rank them depending on the quality of the pill they create as well as the rank."

"That is, we will consider an Immortal pill better than a Saint pill, and a Saint pill better than a True pill. Your disciples have been allowed the choice to choose whatever pill they wish to make, so they should be making that choice right now."

Alex was a little surprised to hear that. He hadn't expected Immortal pills to be involved at all. He wondered if those two Immortal disciples would bother making an Immortal pill. Or would they rather make a Saint pill at a higher chance of making a better quality pill?
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"That is all I have told your disciples. They believe this is all the rule there is to the final competition," the Alchemy God said. "However, there is one more rule that they do not know, which will determine whether or not they will be disqualified from the overall competition."