‘If I think about this a little differently, my birthday would be tomorrow, on the 6th day of the third month, would it not? I don’t think I’ll have the opportunity to celebrate, nor would I want to rejoice over reaching the age of 41 despite only living for nineteen years of Planar Continental time,’ Wei Yi thought as she walked towards the site of the upcoming duel that had finally been decided to be on the fifth, ‘No matter. I should focus on today and see what occurs tomorrow rather than speculating about such insignificant things.’
On the topic of today, she had browsed through a large number of documents and recipes prior to today, having been satisfied with her Red Shaper’s Grasp and deciding that knowledge was more important to acquire for the moment than sheer power, causing her overall awareness of pills and recipes to grow by several folds.
There were many types of pills within the Ning District that were entirely unnecessary or unused within the Yi District, and were thus difficult to locate in the typical library of the latter district, and had not been mentioned by Chu Ling during all of the time she had spent learning under her, meaning that with several days of intense study, she had been able to accumulate an incredible amount of knowledge that would be unseen in her home district, and get different variants of the same recipes that she was already familiar with. Some would have viewed that as a disappointment, or otherwise a waste of time, but it ensured that she had the opportunity to further obscure her identity by combining those variants into something of her own creation, which would then mean that nobody could be certain of her exact origin.
Fortunately for her, even those recipes that she only knew a single version of would not be sufficient for most to learn of her origins, as the vast majority of them were created before or during the time of the Master of Yi City, during which it was incredibly easy for the districts to communicate and share their knowledge with one another, meaning that the only reason for the existence of the many variants was that the alchemists of each district thought that they were able to improve on the original.
Considering the fact that all of the originals appeared to be entirely lost, she could not confirm the truth of that sentiment, although based on Yi Shi Ming’s descriptions of the world back then, it was likely that all of the ingredients used in the original recipes were long gone from the world.
As a result, she could claim that any recipe was her own variation, and that it matched that of the Yi family’s version was a simple coincidence, although she did not think that such an explanation would be necessary as the only people that would actually question her about this would be doing so with great confidence in her identity and would not be put off by the simple excuse, but there were plenty other reasons for someone to obscure their origins, meaning that unless the person’s intentions were malicious, they wouldn’t be inquiring about this to begin with.
‘Actually, this also doesn’t require this much contemplation. I already have a few plans on dealing with annoying people, so overthinking it won’t do me any good right now,’ she reminded herself as she approached the venue of the duel, dressed in clothing that appeared both familiar and yet new, which she had reworked and remade the day before as to ensure that she was at her best when the largest quantity of people since leaving the prison realm witnessed her.
She naturally wished to look her best in front of a crowd, but it was more important to convey the proper aura of a master.
That was exactly what she brought as she came into the sight of a small crowd that had gathered, subtly displacing them with spiritual will so that they could be moved out of the way without needing to come into physical contact with them, as random shoving wouldn’t be suitable for someone that could alter countless lives with simple combinations of certain plants and herbs.
Although some certainly noticed her actions, nobody understood exactly how she was moving them out of the way and found themselves incapable of resisting energy of the fifth realm, thus permitting her to ascend onto the makeshift stage untouched and unaffected by potential outside influences, of which there were several. A few people likely just wanted to speak to her, perhaps aware that she had supplied them with some pills that might have saved their lives or the lives of their friends or family, but two hid weapons that they might have intended to use against her, although the exact nature of their motives was not clear to her from a simple glance at their surface memories that she was able to view on short notice.
Either way, she took her seat on the left of the wooden platform, waiting for her competition to appear and occupying the time by cultivating with the planar energy that was near her, keeping the range of absorption just low enough for nobody in the crowd to be able to notice anything.
Most of the energy that she absorbed came from above her, slowly adding to her pool of planar energy and mixing with the constant supply of the nascent rift to progress her cultivation at a far slower pace than she would have really preferred, but if she had been able to continue at the same pace for a month, she would have achieved the second stage and the first perfected stage of the Emergent Anchor realm.
On the topic of the crowd, someone that had never attended a public event such as a Refiner’s Duel might wonder why so many would willingly gather to watch something that they did not understand and would not profit from, and was not intended to be entertaining as some kind of play or performance specifically tailored to the crowds, then the answers that could be given to them were rather simple and straightforward.
Above all, people valued spectacle and entertainment in occupying their spare time, and even the calmest of duels allowed one to witness a complex performance that matched the complexity that could be shown by choreographed dancers attempting to portray a lengthy story. Alchemical flames, mixing ingredients, the occasional explosions and everything else that would typically occur made any Refiner’s Duel an interesting sight for those that did not care about the craft itself, and for those that had any surface-level knowledge and wished to expand it, it permitted them to freely witness high-level masters at work, trying out certain techniques that they may otherwise never show outside of their personal laboratories and workshops.
As for why they arrived so incredibly early… that was difficult to state with certainty. According to the schedule, Wei Yi had arrived with up to an hour to go, so for the spectators to be standing there even earlier was not something that she could possibly understand.
After a few moments of cultivation, she also began to circulate her cosmic energy throughout her body to take advantage of the innate properties of it, permeating throughout her every vein, meridian and part of her body to continue their seeming infinite refinement through the five elements infused into her characters and technique, a small part of her mind occupying itself with attempting to extrapolate the existing variations of the cultivation technique into new elemental combinations.
Some time later, a little more than ten minutes after she had sat down, she felt the approach of Chu Huazhi.
He had climbed onto the stage from the back, using the stairs that had been set up there, avoiding the crowd entirely as he approached the seat designated for him on a route that clearly and intentionally brought him close to her so that he could address her regarding some information and questions that Wei Yi was already able to guess, even though it was one that shouldn’t need to be asked again.
“Is your servant going to be coming here with the refining furnace that you intend to use?”
“Min Lian will be here in time, and I think you already know the answer to whether she will be bringing anything of note with her,” Wei Yi replied, not opening her eyes as she still waited for her competitors while she thought, ‘Frankly, I don’t blame him for assuming that the stunt with refining something without the use of a proper furnace was a one-off case which I would not repeat again due to how expensive and difficult it could have been for me, but at the same time, it would be silly for me to do something like that if it was costly when I could have just asked for his furnace, so I am saying that his logic is somewhat faulty.’
The manager did not reply immediately, deciding to sit down in his designated seat in the middle of the stage. He called for a servant to bring him something to drink, ignoring those in the watching crowd that had assumed that his arrival meant that something of interest would finally occur.
For a few more minutes, they continued to sit in place, before Chu Huazhi became bored of doing nothing and reached out to her with a combination of spiritual will and planar energy that bridged the two of them with a connection through which they could communicate without those around them being able to observe it properly. It was a rare technique, but not an unusual one, as it was far weaker than spiritual will communication that permitted one to show no signs of speech at all while speaking with even greater clarity and detail than through this method.
“Are you aware of the appearance of a strange faction on the outside of the district? They have singlehandedly reduced trade by a significant margin,” he conveyed, “Have your activities been hampered by their interference, or do you typically use ingredients that can easily be gotten from within the district?”
His kind questioning of her status was, naturally, also an attempt to learn more about her, which seemed to be this man’s general modus operandi. It was for this reason that Fu Xiu had made him out to be a kind individual, but after all of the times that she had interacted with him, it was rather clear that he was not that simple. Wei Yi suspected that he was truly a softer individual than most, but had reasonably tempered his general kindness with reason, using it to gain information at the same time as expressing his usual tendencies.
‘Of course, this might be a simple misconception of mine, but I doubt it will be relevant any time soon,’ she thought before answering, “I have heard some things, but I have not bothered with them. Above all, I am an alchemist, so the most I could do would be to provide my products to those that seek them for their attempts to ward off that faction.”
“Oh, I was not suggesting that you ought to go out there and fight. Personally, I would not do such a thing either,” Chu Huazhi said back to her, a trace of admiration in his voice from how well she was able to reply using this technique, “They are said to be in the fifth realm, after all, with unknown numbers.”
“Frankly, I believe them to be using some kind of illusory technique.”
“I have heard this theory before, and it is one that can be believed. Out of all of them, only four or five are said to ever interact with anything around them, and that enormous phantom is… curious, to say the least. Reports about it are even more mixed than those about the dark soldiers, as it is sometimes on the ground, sometimes in the air, sometimes above the leader, and occasionally even interacts with the people and the terrain… It can be quite confusing,” the man relayed.
“You appear to have been researching this for some time, considering how much knowledge you have,” Wei Yi commented, breaking the connection before he could reply to her.
She did not do this out of her usual tendencies to cut people off in the middle of conversation, which she did far more than she would like to admit, but because she had sensed the approach of one of her competitors in this duel, Chen Shujin, who did not appear to be in the best of moods and would thus benefit from immediate attention.
As her range of spiritual will was significantly larger than the local manager’s, he nearly recreated the communication connection before he noticed the woman’s approach and thus stopped, seeing as it would be a complete waste of his energy, even if there was little to expend it on today.
“Those were clearly there just to obstruct me! They are trying to exhaust me before the duel as an obvious tactic! They think that I will not be able to understand their plots and will then fall to them and waste my energy enough for me to lose my concentration and fail at a crucial step of refinement that would then cost me my natural victory and the many recipes and techniques that I had bet on the victory that I was destined to have over the petty thief and coward that is the woman with red hair, so obviously…”
The rather insane mutterings of the female competitor were so absolutely similar to Yi Henghua that Wei Yi instinctively pulled away her spiritual perception, afraid that she would somehow replicate her thought process and join the team of the absolutely insane women that she somehow had the misfortune of encountering.
‘Is she another otherworldly demon? No, nothing about her would suggest that other than the absolutely maddening chatter… Shit, she isn’t even speaking to anyone, she’s just muttering to herself while walking through the street… By the heavens, what did I do to exist in a time so full of madmen and otherworldly demons that I can seemingly encounter them every other day without any effort?’ she resisted the urge to change her position and posture and instead extended her range of energy absorption to make her cultivation more effective, ‘Still, I don’t think she was that irrational the last time that I had seen her. Perhaps she’s just getting nervous.’
The local manager, although he was not gifted with the same level of awareness as her, also noticed her muttering and decided to allow her onto the stage without any attempts to speak with her, instead allowing her to set up her furnace and to prepare.
Once more, some people in the crowd attempted to begin a cheer and applause as an introduction to the event, but they calmed down even more quickly when Chen Shujin raised her gaze and stared at everyone who dared to make a sound. After a moment, some of the more attentive members of the audience also pointed out that there was still an empty seat and an empty place for a pill furnace to stand, meaning that this new arrival would not begin the duel no matter who they were or how they behaved.
Some more time passed, most of which the brown-haired woman had spent on staring directly at Wei Yi with such a furious expression that the target of the stare was concerned that an entirely new art would be created through the sheer dedication of Chen Shujin that would first make its mark upon the world with the absolute annihilation of her skull.
It was unlikely, but there had been more unlikely tales in the past, and anything became ten times more likely when one of the otherworldly demons could have been involved.
Almost forty minutes after Wei Yi had sat down at the stage, the other competitor came to the stage, with Ning Fangtie’s entrance being far more reasonable and dignified as one of his apprentices brought a furnace beside him and placed it in front of him as he also sat down.
He glanced at Wei Yi with an initially proud and confident expression, but it broke down almost instantly when he realised that there was no furnace in front of her, prompting him to look away and sit down while he muttered something about the competition intentionally being thrown or something along those lines. As if to demonstrate the appropriate method of preparing for alchemical refinement, he got his assistant to clean his furnace while he closely inspected every part of it with both sight and spiritual perception.
Regardless of his actual intentions with this move, he became incredibly focused on it shortly after he began, entirely abandoning any of his original staring and distractions to purely occupy himself with this task so intensely that his assistant stepped away a short while later, glancing around to make sure that he was not being watched before departing from the stage and heading to a skewered meat stall.
Judging by the familiarity with which he spoke to the vendor, and how he calmly sat down beside him to discuss all kinds of random topics, this was not the first time that this had occurred.
If one continued to pay attention to the apprentice after that, as Wei Yi had decided to since there were still at least a few minutes left to go until the Refiner’s Duel would begin, it was also possible to observe him go on to a local tavern to have a drink, not caring about the potential fallout of his master finding him away in the slightest, suggesting to her that not only was this a common occurrence, but one that his master was incapable of noticing or punishing him for.
Since he appeared so nonchalant about his actions, she suspected that he would not reappear during the competition itself, so she did not continue to monitor him too closely, instead returning her attention to the other two competitors and the judge that was currently drinking some tea.
The paranoid woman was not looking much better than before, but she did stop muttering and complaining, sitting and sulking in silence as she rubbed one spot on her furnace and seemed to glare at it in a manner that would indicate her to be imagining this one spot to either be Wei Yi or whichever person was the primary perpetrator for today’s interference, likely unintentionally damaging her own equipment for no good reason and assisting the very same individual that would then benefit from the damage.
Ning Fangtie continued to caringly clean his equipment, carefully ensuring that every small detail, every contour of the metal on the furnace and every single individual piece was as polished as anything could possibly be, taking far more care than his opponent to ensure that he would not damage his possessions by doing so.
Chu Huazhi was not bothered by either of their actions, instead quietly speaking with one of the other high-realm cultivators presiding over the duel through his communication technique and giving him some instructions whilst also querying him about matters that included the subordinate of the grey-haired alchemist and Min Lian, as well as the Mirror Plane Aberrations and a whole host of other topics that Wei Yi could not assume to be important in the slightest.
Finally, the cause of the entire event, Wei Yi, had finally decided to conclude her cultivation for now as she sensed Min Lian’s approach. The assassin used a few side paths and alleyways to avoid the crowd and appeared on the stage beside her, kneeling with her head lowered as she always did.
“Master, it appears that there is some action from the other forces.”
“As expected, although not when it would have been most convenient. Now, look a little less submissive, please,” Wei Yi said, opening her eyes and looking towards the judge of the duel, transmitting her voice to him through a somewhat crude imitation of the technique he had initially used to speak with her, “I seem to recall you speaking of other alchemists that would be presiding over the duel. Are we still waiting for them, or have they decided not to appear?”
“They… They should arrive shortly. You really don’t intend to use a refining furnace today, do you?” he almost spoke normally before he noticed the method of communication being used.
“As someone with experience in the field, you should know what this kind of refining allows me to do, and what it entirely avoids. I’m sure that if you were competing against those two and wished to be absolutely certain that you will win, you would be using this exact same technique – provided that you were be able to do so, of course.”
“That is true. Avoiding elemental contamination, structural weaknesses and more is worth… hm.”
He appeared to be about to ask about the way in which she accomplished the feat of freezing matter in mid-air and refining something with only some vague energy, but before he could do that the people that they had just been discussing finally appeared, walking out of the same tavern that Ning Fangtie’s apprentice had entered not too long ago with a trace of an alcoholic smell around them – for whatever reason, alcohol was not one of the things that Wei Yi was unable to perceive, perhaps due to the prevalence of it within certain alchemical concoctions that were more common in small countries to the west of the land, where pill refining was less common, making it less of a common drink and more of an ingredient – and heading straight towards the front of the stage, which they ascended calmly in a professional manner.
“Finally, we may begin. We’ve waited for quite a while…” Chu Huazhi commented, coughing loud enough to indicate his displeasure before turning to the crowd, who had now collectively come to the understanding that there was nobody else that could delay the event and began to quietly cheer for what felt like the thirtieth time, “Quiet down, everyone. Before I tell you which pill we will be refining, I will allow the competitors to introduce themselves… from my left to right. Yes. Begin.”
The first on his left was Chen Shujin, who rose quickly and immediately began to speak, although she suddenly stopped when an invisible thread of energy stabbed into her back.
She had wanted to turn around to figure out who it was, but whatever semblance of reason that still existed within her convinced her to shut up and instead say, “I am Chen Shujin, and I will be victorious, understand?”
“Charming. I, Ning Fangtie, should be well known to many of you for the services I have provided you for a long time,” the grey-haired man finally rose and left his refining furnace alone, not sparing a single glance to the apprentice that should have been by his side, “The audience has little involvement in this competition, but if any of you observe any kind of unfair behaviour from my opponents, or even from me, do not hesitate to shout it out and ensure that it has been noticed. Above all, this has to be a fair competition!”
“My name is Wei Yi, and I do agree with my opponent on this. A fair duel is the only one that can have the meaning it is intended to have. Nothing else will truly convey pure skill and knowledge.”
Chu Huazhi gave her a moment to add something, but when she instead sat back down and focused, he said, “Very well. All of you will need to work on the very same type of pill, but you need not use the very same recipe and ingredients. You will be provided with enough materials to prepare one set of pills alongside a single spare to allow you to recover from slight failures. Not all of the materials have to be used, but if they do not coincide with any of your known recipe variants, a recipe can be provided to you.”
Although he stated this, it was known even to many members of the audience that a recipe needed to be practised and learnt carefully before it could be used proficiently. If any one of the three was to declare their lack of knowledge of the recipe, they would need to be several stars of knowledge above any of the others in order to still succeed.
For once, Wei Yi wasn’t really an exception to this. Even if she was to resort to the Antithesis method, she would still be unable to maximise the efficiency of the process without understanding exactly what and how to intentionally ruin so that it could eventually be reversed into perfection. In theory, she could even accidentally succeed in a part that she meant to fail, resulting in her losing out on the total quality of the pill through good fortune being inverted into failure. If this did occur, she could not be sure of claiming her victory, as there was always the possibility of the pill being one of those that the other two had mastered to an extreme.
In the same way that most warriors would have a single technique or martial art that they used the most and potentially reached the level of the technique stages, all masters of the five great arts would focus on a single type or even a specific pill, array, talisman, inscription or piece of equipment which they would make and experiment with whenever they did not need to work on something else. Even if this was not done intentionally, those who chose a random known recipe to practise with would likely turn to the same one many times, eventually completing it reflexively and thus identifying it as their strong point. For her, the martial equivalent would be the Yang Elysian Storm, Storm Blade Wreathing and Elysian Palm, which she had used so many times that even removing the very knowledge of them from her mind would still permit her body to replicate the appropriate movements to execute them.
Unfortunately, she had not been able to deduce what the preferred pills would be for her opponents. Spying on them and checking what they sold most frequently did not yield anything that was substantially more common than anything else, meaning that they were either diversifying their practise to ensure their success, or that they only produced their preferred pills at certain times and did not sell them, perhaps utilising them on their subordinates and apprentices.
As such, she could only hope that the choice made was one that permitted her a calm victory, since there was a certain factor that meant that she would do best without unnecessary danger.
“Bring up the ingredients!” exclaimed Chu Huazhi, waiting for the boxes to be half-way to the competitors before he dramatically unfurled a scroll and looked upon the text concealed within. Whether or not he had actually seen what was written upon it, he did an excellent job of convincing everyone that this was the first time he had seen it as he stated firmly but not too loudly, “Your task is to create the Extreme Yin Decomposition pill! As per the average requirement for this pill, you have two hours to complete it!”
The eyes of all three competitors sparked, for this was a recipe that they had at the very least heard of, meaning that they still stood a chance. Chen Shujin leapt into action immediately, grabbing some of the ingredients being delivered to her and lighting a flame beneath her furnace. Ning Fangtie acted slower but was still confident, waiting for his ingredients to be set down before him while he deliberated on which recipe he was going to use. Wei Yi, on the other hand, had scanned through the ingredients some time ago and had pulled up everything she knew about the pill within her Ascendant’s Library to understand exactly what she was dealing with.
As far as she was aware, the Extreme Yin Decomposition pill was created some time after the disappearance of the Master of Yi City, intended to be used for the exploration of a certain ancient tomb of someone that had possessed an extreme version of the Yang Physique and had created an enormous stretch of land filled to the brim with absolute yang, with the tomb itself being built out of dense, solid yang energy.
By consuming the pill, one could ward off the passive dangers of the ancient tomb that would attempt to invade the body and immolate it from within, or by breaking it and scattering the medicinal essence within over obstacles in the terrain, it had been possible for the expeditionary team to discover whatever it was that they had gone in search of in the first place, after which their usage had been limited to the occasional extreme yang fog that still spread from the former site of that tomb, meaning that the pill was only one to learn in order to understand how to condense yin and yang from substances that typically do not display them in extremes.
Although this was not something that she had attempted to create more than once in the past, she did have a recipe for this pill that matched with the ingredients available to her, meaning that she would not need to request a different variant.
There was only a single small issue with it, and that was that she did not have one of the primary ingredients required to achieve the effect of condensing immense yin, a certain kind of planar root that had become much rarer since the recipe that she was aware of had been created, meaning that she would need to somehow circumvent this issue. The only thing that she could think of, however, was not only rather unconventional, but also required quite the unusual approach. Otherwise, she would need to attempt the creation of absolute yang through what she already had and invert it via the Antithesis energy.
The first option was somewhat preferable, mostly due to the issues mentioned previously, but it came at the potential cost of the judges not being able to perceive the truth of the final creation.
‘Still, I don’t think that I can bypass this without wasting a lot of time. I had mentally practised with the recipe a few times while in the Kong Prison Realm, so there is bound to be a method of making this work with enough work,’ she thought, passing the ingredients that she did not require for Min Lian to put away while she condensed the furnace from spiritual will and cut the ingredients that she would need to use first via killing will.
Before the furnaces of any of her opponents finished heating up and their ingredients were cut, she begun to toss her first ingredients into the invisible cauldron in the air, earning a collective gasp from the crowd as they witnessed the medicinal essence slowly flow out through the influence of her energy.
That gasp also attracted the attention of her two foes, who had intended to only distract themselves for a moment and then immediately return to their work, but when they saw the same sight, they couldn’t help but stare at the mirage of a pill furnace floating within the air, just at the right height for Wei Yi to access it comfortably – not that she needed to do so when every single ingredient was carried by her energy rather than any kind of physical force.
Fortunately for them, they had not yet begun to refine their pills, meaning that this distraction amounted to little in the short term, but their minds were somewhat shaken. Unless she was demonstrating some kind of false art, something that only looks good without the abilities that the art is supposed to have, then this would not only mean that their initial assumptions of her abilities being lacking were entirely false, but also that she had awareness of an entire art, if not something greater, that was wholly unknown to them, their students, teachers and possibly even the great masters that the two of them had the opportunities to encounter in the past.
If that was truly the case, then what chance did they have?
Alongside the negative thought, the positive did also appear within them, whether to make their previous actions seem more reasonable or to justify not dropping out of the competition and losing their pride. So long as they claimed their victory over her, would they not receive the very technique displayed to them right now?
Depending on the true depth of this miracle, they had the potential of rising to a peak beyond any alchemists that currently lived, perhaps allowing them to rise in cultivation as well as knowledge and attain the realm of the former legends of the Planar Continents. None of them ever dreamt of surpassing the Master of Yi City, of course, for such a thing was akin to the highest blasphemy in a faith or the greatest betrayal of the past that anyone who is not truly gifted could make, but the potential of greatness did lie ahead of them. So long as they acted reasonably, they could grasp the opportunity to restore the long-forgotten work of the past heroes and let their names shine once more, putting their own titles alongside these ancient legends.
On that note, the more knowledgeable Ning Fangtie suddenly recalled an ancient tale that was likely relegated to the dustiest pages of history even before the time of the Master of Yi City. It spoke of a refiner on the Eastern Continent whose name was not recorded, but the one deed that was firmly stated was that of completing the entire refinement process in minutes and to the absolute peak of quality through an art that involved processing every ingredient and its medicinal essence through nothing but the densely condensed spiritual will of the alchemist, which somehow allowed them to extract all of the essence without a single loss or impurity.
There were no alchemical fires, no furnaces, no kindling nor planar energy, everything was complete in just a few moments through something that seemed to be a miracle.
He had thought of it being a fantastic tale, for spiritual perception could do little more than cause a slight breeze even when used at the very peak of the sixth realm, so how could someone with a far lower cultivation achieve something so much greater?
‘Is this that very art? Has this Wei Yi come from the Daoist Continent, where she had recovered a fragment of that fantastic ability?’ he pondered, glancing towards her once more as he finally completed the necessary preparations to place his first set of ingredients into the pill furnace, which now glowed with a slight orange light as the entirety of it was filled with heat.
Meanwhile, Chen Shujin, who had reached a similar point in the process, also had her own idea, but it went away from the direction of the ancient legends and towards forbidden arts, for they were the easiest method of acquiring power, and she was in no mood at all to ascribe anything but the least charitable explanation to her foe’s ability. Since Wei Yi must have resorted to cheating and trickery to delay her – in Chen Shujin’s mind, of course – then how could she have obtained anything genuinely impressive?
It had to be something with an immense downside, or an outright falsehood, for anything else could not possibly fit within her vision of the world, in her perception of reality, and that was something that she could not break on a whim.
Potentially, even if she had countless decades to work on her thoughts, such deeply engrained ideas could not be shaken.
She did not know exactly what kind of forbidden skill would allow such miracles to be performed, but she wasn’t even sure whether this was something that she really wanted. All forbidden skills came at a cost, without any exception, and as much as her foe might be able to accomplish with it, the costs that she has to bear could easily outweigh the rewards by an enormous margin. And yet, since so many people had previously fallen to their allure, she knew that if she got her hands on it, she might also struggle to resist, meaning that it would almost certainly be best to avoid coming anywhere near that technique unless she could guarantee that it could be destroyed.
Every one of them began with similar ingredients, several portions being thrown into their respective furnaces before any differences appeared within their recipes. The first to change their ingredients was Chen Shujin, who confidently removed one of the core herbs that the other two were about to use and instead crushed a clump of violet moss into the mixture of ingredients within her furnace.
The second change was made by Ning Fangtie, who replaced the Effervescent Root with the stalk of a black flower with black petals and black roots that would typically hover in the air and seek food not from the ground, as most plants would through their roots, but from various insects and small critters that approached it, feeding on their blood and lifeforce just enough to bring them close to death, but not directly to it. At one point in time, it was thought that the best way to harvest them was by allowing them to latch onto the harvester, giving them a gift of blood before plucking them from their aerial roots and using them in their own refinement. As with anything that required sacrifice, it was quickly learnt that the roots could be neutralised entirely with the combination of authamite wine – funnily enough, the beverage that was never meant to be found yet another beneficial use – and Plague Bearer’s Rot, a variety of moss that tended to grow upon the long-dead cadavers and skeletons of plague victims.
Some of that information was propagated throughout the audience, at which point their attention was turned to Wei Yi once more so that they could observe whatever trick she would display this time.
They were disappointed to find that, at first, she did not seem to be doing something unusual nor uncommon. Those that were less knowledgeable turned to the more well learned, and those turned to the alchemists that stood in the audience, who turned to their superiors, with all attention eventually being bound onto Chao Juzan, who stood up whereas everyone else had failed to provide an answer and explained what he had noticed.
Rather than changing the ingredients she used, her very approach to the refinement of the pill differed significantly, and not just due to the spiritual will furnace. Instead of forming a complete pill structure, as most would due to the obvious benefits of creating everything at once and achieving far greater stability, she instead used mostly the outside of the furnace to compose the outside layer of the pill.
Once this was brought to their attention and their interest was caught, everyone naturally desired to understand exactly why this was done, causing them to turn to the alchemist once more in search of further answers. He wished to present the answer to them, seeing as the fervour of the crowd was rather significant whenever they were presented with rather small secrets that would still be revealed within a matter of minutes at least and hours at most, but as he thought more and more, he seemed to only be getting further away from their desired conclusion. He, too, had some familiarity with the Extreme Yin Decomposition pill, and so he understood well that the only time that this approach could be used was if she could somehow create absolute yin without the herbs typically used to manufacture it.
However, Chao Juzan did not have a physique nor a yin or yang skill, meaning that he could not sense her physique, and nothing about her suggested that she could manifest a form of extreme yin on a whim, like she would need to be able to do.
Wei Yi was not paying attention to this, but she still happened to act just in time to prevent the crowd from devouring the poor alchemist when she threw the last of her ingredients into the furnace and then placed her hand near the opening of the furnace, sliding her sharp nail across the skin on her finger to draw some blood that she then threw into the furnace, shutting it afterwards. She covered her hand with a simple black glove to obscure the wound as it healed in a matter of moments, then willed all of the physique energy she had stored within the blood droplets to explode outwards.
Bright moonlight suddenly flooded the furnace of pure spiritual will, piercing the dense wall of medicinal essence and the impurities that hovered around it, illuminating the spectating crowd, the other two alchemists, the judges and even the sky above it, touching the clouds and softly shading them in ethereal blue.
All of the essence that gathered around it did not immediately approach to seal the physique energy within itself, but instead divided itself into nine distinct segments while retaining the shape of the hollow sphere, spinning around the central physique energy without any intersections or collisions between the nine separate parts, which, the longer they remained in motion, seemed to resemble a dense stream of petals, each one being carried by an invisible stream of wind that slowly changed from a fixed circular shape into a complex figure that could not be named by anyone alive within the Planar Continents.
Together, the medicinal essence slowly pursued the shape of twenty-four individual shapes, although one would be hard-pressed to see such a thing within the complex weave of the many flowing lines of essence. It was something that could be followed by experienced alchemists at first, but the longer it went on, the more confusing the shape began to become, eventually conveying something that was entirely beyond their understanding.
Wei Yi had not created any new techniques in preparation for this, nor during the refinement process, but was instead accessing certain elements of the Cherry Revolving Blossom art that had previously been subdued without access to the full power of the Ascendant’s Dao that she now unleashed to stabilise her physique energy as she sealed it within the medicinal essence that had been condensed from the parts of the recipe that would typically make up the outside of the pill, the shell that every pill would have so that the medicinal essence within would not seep out and deteriorate within the ever-changing air of the world. The shapes of petals mixing with the essence, however, was a little bit of a surprise to her, even if it did make sense due to the name of the art only being half accurate before.
While she did this, the other two did their absolute best to look away and focus on their own tasks, with both of them adding their own elements of the eventual internal structure of the pills in order to begin the condensation of the extreme yin that needed to be contained within.
For several lengthy minutes, nothing of note occurred, except for the luminance of the physique energy slowly growing despite the lack of support from her body or the planar anchor that rested within her planar aperture, as each one of them was building up to the ultimate conclusion of the duel, when they would be able to conclude the refinement process and then present their completed work to the judges, who would then need to establish whether they had cheated and what the final quality of the pills was.
Despite the rather disparate approaches and the speed at which they had been able to complete certain steps, all three of them neared the conclusion of their work at a similar time, although it was difficult for either Ning Fangtie or Chen Shujin to overcome the head start that Wei Yi had enjoyed thanks to the spiritual will furnace, meaning that her medicinal essence and the energy within suddenly ignited, as if they were set aflame, a fantastic radiance that was many times brighter than that of the moonlight before it surged out with such brightness that it instantly blinded all that were in the audience and in the authoritative seats of the judges, with only the other two refiners managing to get away mostly unscathed.
By the time the glow had been subdued, the inside of the furnace had changed to contain only twenty-four pills that each seemed to be more similar to a hollowed gem filled with fluid moonlight rather than the usual appearance of pills. The audience and the judges had been unable to witness how the process had concluded, much to the disappointment of the former and the dismay of the latter.
Shortly afterwards, Chen Shujin also began to complete her pills, forcing the disparate pieces of medicinal essence together with her planar energy, doing her best to remove the dregs of impurities that still remained within the essence, a step that she suspected Wei Yi was able to bypass due to the particular nature of her unusual creation – there was no need to clear away the impurities from something that lacked them in the first place, such as whichever energy she had used to substitute the manufactured extreme yin within the pill.
A little after that, Ning Fangtie also approached the end of his refinement, making him the last to finish, slightly lowering his chances of eventual victory but hardly removing them entirely.
With three sets of pills ready for review, the contest was up to the judges to conclude.
‘If I think about this a little differently, my birthday would be tomorrow, on the 6th day of the third month, would it not? I don’t think I’ll have the opportunity to celebrate, nor would I want to rejoice over reaching the age of 41 despite only living for nineteen years of Planar Continental time,’ Wei Yi thought as she walked towards the site of the upcoming duel that had finally been decided to be on the fifth, ‘No matter. I should focus on today and see what occurs tomorrow rather than speculating about such insignificant things.’
On the topic of today, she had browsed through a large number of documents and recipes prior to today, having been satisfied with her Red Shaper’s Grasp and deciding that knowledge was more important to acquire for the moment than sheer power, causing her overall awareness of pills and recipes to grow by several folds.
There were many types of pills within the Ning District that were entirely unnecessary or unused within the Yi District, and were thus difficult to locate in the typical library of the latter district, and had not been mentioned by Chu Ling during all of the time she had spent learning under her, meaning that with several days of intense study, she had been able to accumulate an incredible amount of knowledge that would be unseen in her home district, and get different variants of the same recipes that she was already familiar with. Some would have viewed that as a disappointment, or otherwise a waste of time, but it ensured that she had the opportunity to further obscure her identity by combining those variants into something of her own creation, which would then mean that nobody could be certain of her exact origin.
Fortunately for her, even those recipes that she only knew a single version of would not be sufficient for most to learn of her origins, as the vast majority of them were created before or during the time of the Master of Yi City, during which it was incredibly easy for the districts to communicate and share their knowledge with one another, meaning that the only reason for the existence of the many variants was that the alchemists of each district thought that they were able to improve on the original.
Considering the fact that all of the originals appeared to be entirely lost, she could not confirm the truth of that sentiment, although based on Yi Shi Ming’s descriptions of the world back then, it was likely that all of the ingredients used in the original recipes were long gone from the world.
As a result, she could claim that any recipe was her own variation, and that it matched that of the Yi family’s version was a simple coincidence, although she did not think that such an explanation would be necessary as the only people that would actually question her about this would be doing so with great confidence in her identity and would not be put off by the simple excuse, but there were plenty other reasons for someone to obscure their origins, meaning that unless the person’s intentions were malicious, they wouldn’t be inquiring about this to begin with.
‘Actually, this also doesn’t require this much contemplation. I already have a few plans on dealing with annoying people, so overthinking it won’t do me any good right now,’ she reminded herself as she approached the venue of the duel, dressed in clothing that appeared both familiar and yet new, which she had reworked and remade the day before as to ensure that she was at her best when the largest quantity of people since leaving the prison realm witnessed her.
She naturally wished to look her best in front of a crowd, but it was more important to convey the proper aura of a master.
That was exactly what she brought as she came into the sight of a small crowd that had gathered, subtly displacing them with spiritual will so that they could be moved out of the way without needing to come into physical contact with them, as random shoving wouldn’t be suitable for someone that could alter countless lives with simple combinations of certain plants and herbs.
Although some certainly noticed her actions, nobody understood exactly how she was moving them out of the way and found themselves incapable of resisting energy of the fifth realm, thus permitting her to ascend onto the makeshift stage untouched and unaffected by potential outside influences, of which there were several. A few people likely just wanted to speak to her, perhaps aware that she had supplied them with some pills that might have saved their lives or the lives of their friends or family, but two hid weapons that they might have intended to use against her, although the exact nature of their motives was not clear to her from a simple glance at their surface memories that she was able to view on short notice.
Either way, she took her seat on the left of the wooden platform, waiting for her competition to appear and occupying the time by cultivating with the planar energy that was near her, keeping the range of absorption just low enough for nobody in the crowd to be able to notice anything.
Most of the energy that she absorbed came from above her, slowly adding to her pool of planar energy and mixing with the constant supply of the nascent rift to progress her cultivation at a far slower pace than she would have really preferred, but if she had been able to continue at the same pace for a month, she would have achieved the second stage and the first perfected stage of the Emergent Anchor realm.
On the topic of the crowd, someone that had never attended a public event such as a Refiner’s Duel might wonder why so many would willingly gather to watch something that they did not understand and would not profit from, and was not intended to be entertaining as some kind of play or performance specifically tailored to the crowds, then the answers that could be given to them were rather simple and straightforward.
Above all, people valued spectacle and entertainment in occupying their spare time, and even the calmest of duels allowed one to witness a complex performance that matched the complexity that could be shown by choreographed dancers attempting to portray a lengthy story. Alchemical flames, mixing ingredients, the occasional explosions and everything else that would typically occur made any Refiner’s Duel an interesting sight for those that did not care about the craft itself, and for those that had any surface-level knowledge and wished to expand it, it permitted them to freely witness high-level masters at work, trying out certain techniques that they may otherwise never show outside of their personal laboratories and workshops.
As for why they arrived so incredibly early… that was difficult to state with certainty. According to the schedule, Wei Yi had arrived with up to an hour to go, so for the spectators to be standing there even earlier was not something that she could possibly understand.
After a few moments of cultivation, she also began to circulate her cosmic energy throughout her body to take advantage of the innate properties of it, permeating throughout her every vein, meridian and part of her body to continue their seeming infinite refinement through the five elements infused into her characters and technique, a small part of her mind occupying itself with attempting to extrapolate the existing variations of the cultivation technique into new elemental combinations.
Some time later, a little more than ten minutes after she had sat down, she felt the approach of Chu Huazhi.
He had climbed onto the stage from the back, using the stairs that had been set up there, avoiding the crowd entirely as he approached the seat designated for him on a route that clearly and intentionally brought him close to her so that he could address her regarding some information and questions that Wei Yi was already able to guess, even though it was one that shouldn’t need to be asked again.
“Is your servant going to be coming here with the refining furnace that you intend to use?”
“Min Lian will be here in time, and I think you already know the answer to whether she will be bringing anything of note with her,” Wei Yi replied, not opening her eyes as she still waited for her competitors while she thought, ‘Frankly, I don’t blame him for assuming that the stunt with refining something without the use of a proper furnace was a one-off case which I would not repeat again due to how expensive and difficult it could have been for me, but at the same time, it would be silly for me to do something like that if it was costly when I could have just asked for his furnace, so I am saying that his logic is somewhat faulty.’
The manager did not reply immediately, deciding to sit down in his designated seat in the middle of the stage. He called for a servant to bring him something to drink, ignoring those in the watching crowd that had assumed that his arrival meant that something of interest would finally occur.
For a few more minutes, they continued to sit in place, before Chu Huazhi became bored of doing nothing and reached out to her with a combination of spiritual will and planar energy that bridged the two of them with a connection through which they could communicate without those around them being able to observe it properly. It was a rare technique, but not an unusual one, as it was far weaker than spiritual will communication that permitted one to show no signs of speech at all while speaking with even greater clarity and detail than through this method.
“Are you aware of the appearance of a strange faction on the outside of the district? They have singlehandedly reduced trade by a significant margin,” he conveyed, “Have your activities been hampered by their interference, or do you typically use ingredients that can easily be gotten from within the district?”
His kind questioning of her status was, naturally, also an attempt to learn more about her, which seemed to be this man’s general modus operandi. It was for this reason that Fu Xiu had made him out to be a kind individual, but after all of the times that she had interacted with him, it was rather clear that he was not that simple. Wei Yi suspected that he was truly a softer individual than most, but had reasonably tempered his general kindness with reason, using it to gain information at the same time as expressing his usual tendencies.
‘Of course, this might be a simple misconception of mine, but I doubt it will be relevant any time soon,’ she thought before answering, “I have heard some things, but I have not bothered with them. Above all, I am an alchemist, so the most I could do would be to provide my products to those that seek them for their attempts to ward off that faction.”
“Oh, I was not suggesting that you ought to go out there and fight. Personally, I would not do such a thing either,” Chu Huazhi said back to her, a trace of admiration in his voice from how well she was able to reply using this technique, “They are said to be in the fifth realm, after all, with unknown numbers.”
“Frankly, I believe them to be using some kind of illusory technique.”
“I have heard this theory before, and it is one that can be believed. Out of all of them, only four or five are said to ever interact with anything around them, and that enormous phantom is… curious, to say the least. Reports about it are even more mixed than those about the dark soldiers, as it is sometimes on the ground, sometimes in the air, sometimes above the leader, and occasionally even interacts with the people and the terrain… It can be quite confusing,” the man relayed.
“You appear to have been researching this for some time, considering how much knowledge you have,” Wei Yi commented, breaking the connection before he could reply to her.
She did not do this out of her usual tendencies to cut people off in the middle of conversation, which she did far more than she would like to admit, but because she had sensed the approach of one of her competitors in this duel, Chen Shujin, who did not appear to be in the best of moods and would thus benefit from immediate attention.
As her range of spiritual will was significantly larger than the local manager’s, he nearly recreated the communication connection before he noticed the woman’s approach and thus stopped, seeing as it would be a complete waste of his energy, even if there was little to expend it on today.
“Those were clearly there just to obstruct me! They are trying to exhaust me before the duel as an obvious tactic! They think that I will not be able to understand their plots and will then fall to them and waste my energy enough for me to lose my concentration and fail at a crucial step of refinement that would then cost me my natural victory and the many recipes and techniques that I had bet on the victory that I was destined to have over the petty thief and coward that is the woman with red hair, so obviously…”
The rather insane mutterings of the female competitor were so absolutely similar to Yi Henghua that Wei Yi instinctively pulled away her spiritual perception, afraid that she would somehow replicate her thought process and join the team of the absolutely insane women that she somehow had the misfortune of encountering.
‘Is she another otherworldly demon? No, nothing about her would suggest that other than the absolutely maddening chatter… Shit, she isn’t even speaking to anyone, she’s just muttering to herself while walking through the street… By the heavens, what did I do to exist in a time so full of madmen and otherworldly demons that I can seemingly encounter them every other day without any effort?’ she resisted the urge to change her position and posture and instead extended her range of energy absorption to make her cultivation more effective, ‘Still, I don’t think she was that irrational the last time that I had seen her. Perhaps she’s just getting nervous.’
The local manager, although he was not gifted with the same level of awareness as her, also noticed her muttering and decided to allow her onto the stage without any attempts to speak with her, instead allowing her to set up her furnace and to prepare.
Once more, some people in the crowd attempted to begin a cheer and applause as an introduction to the event, but they calmed down even more quickly when Chen Shujin raised her gaze and stared at everyone who dared to make a sound. After a moment, some of the more attentive members of the audience also pointed out that there was still an empty seat and an empty place for a pill furnace to stand, meaning that this new arrival would not begin the duel no matter who they were or how they behaved.
Some more time passed, most of which the brown-haired woman had spent on staring directly at Wei Yi with such a furious expression that the target of the stare was concerned that an entirely new art would be created through the sheer dedication of Chen Shujin that would first make its mark upon the world with the absolute annihilation of her skull.
It was unlikely, but there had been more unlikely tales in the past, and anything became ten times more likely when one of the otherworldly demons could have been involved.
Almost forty minutes after Wei Yi had sat down at the stage, the other competitor came to the stage, with Ning Fangtie’s entrance being far more reasonable and dignified as one of his apprentices brought a furnace beside him and placed it in front of him as he also sat down.
He glanced at Wei Yi with an initially proud and confident expression, but it broke down almost instantly when he realised that there was no furnace in front of her, prompting him to look away and sit down while he muttered something about the competition intentionally being thrown or something along those lines. As if to demonstrate the appropriate method of preparing for alchemical refinement, he got his assistant to clean his furnace while he closely inspected every part of it with both sight and spiritual perception.
Regardless of his actual intentions with this move, he became incredibly focused on it shortly after he began, entirely abandoning any of his original staring and distractions to purely occupy himself with this task so intensely that his assistant stepped away a short while later, glancing around to make sure that he was not being watched before departing from the stage and heading to a skewered meat stall.
Judging by the familiarity with which he spoke to the vendor, and how he calmly sat down beside him to discuss all kinds of random topics, this was not the first time that this had occurred.
If one continued to pay attention to the apprentice after that, as Wei Yi had decided to since there were still at least a few minutes left to go until the Refiner’s Duel would begin, it was also possible to observe him go on to a local tavern to have a drink, not caring about the potential fallout of his master finding him away in the slightest, suggesting to her that not only was this a common occurrence, but one that his master was incapable of noticing or punishing him for.
Since he appeared so nonchalant about his actions, she suspected that he would not reappear during the competition itself, so she did not continue to monitor him too closely, instead returning her attention to the other two competitors and the judge that was currently drinking some tea.
The paranoid woman was not looking much better than before, but she did stop muttering and complaining, sitting and sulking in silence as she rubbed one spot on her furnace and seemed to glare at it in a manner that would indicate her to be imagining this one spot to either be Wei Yi or whichever person was the primary perpetrator for today’s interference, likely unintentionally damaging her own equipment for no good reason and assisting the very same individual that would then benefit from the damage.
Ning Fangtie continued to caringly clean his equipment, carefully ensuring that every small detail, every contour of the metal on the furnace and every single individual piece was as polished as anything could possibly be, taking far more care than his opponent to ensure that he would not damage his possessions by doing so.
Chu Huazhi was not bothered by either of their actions, instead quietly speaking with one of the other high-realm cultivators presiding over the duel through his communication technique and giving him some instructions whilst also querying him about matters that included the subordinate of the grey-haired alchemist and Min Lian, as well as the Mirror Plane Aberrations and a whole host of other topics that Wei Yi could not assume to be important in the slightest.
Finally, the cause of the entire event, Wei Yi, had finally decided to conclude her cultivation for now as she sensed Min Lian’s approach. The assassin used a few side paths and alleyways to avoid the crowd and appeared on the stage beside her, kneeling with her head lowered as she always did.
“Master, it appears that there is some action from the other forces.”
“As expected, although not when it would have been most convenient. Now, look a little less submissive, please,” Wei Yi said, opening her eyes and looking towards the judge of the duel, transmitting her voice to him through a somewhat crude imitation of the technique he had initially used to speak with her, “I seem to recall you speaking of other alchemists that would be presiding over the duel. Are we still waiting for them, or have they decided not to appear?”
“They… They should arrive shortly. You really don’t intend to use a refining furnace today, do you?” he almost spoke normally before he noticed the method of communication being used.
“As someone with experience in the field, you should know what this kind of refining allows me to do, and what it entirely avoids. I’m sure that if you were competing against those two and wished to be absolutely certain that you will win, you would be using this exact same technique – provided that you were be able to do so, of course.”
“That is true. Avoiding elemental contamination, structural weaknesses and more is worth… hm.”
He appeared to be about to ask about the way in which she accomplished the feat of freezing matter in mid-air and refining something with only some vague energy, but before he could do that the people that they had just been discussing finally appeared, walking out of the same tavern that Ning Fangtie’s apprentice had entered not too long ago with a trace of an alcoholic smell around them – for whatever reason, alcohol was not one of the things that Wei Yi was unable to perceive, perhaps due to the prevalence of it within certain alchemical concoctions that were more common in small countries to the west of the land, where pill refining was less common, making it less of a common drink and more of an ingredient – and heading straight towards the front of the stage, which they ascended calmly in a professional manner.
“Finally, we may begin. We’ve waited for quite a while…” Chu Huazhi commented, coughing loud enough to indicate his displeasure before turning to the crowd, who had now collectively come to the understanding that there was nobody else that could delay the event and began to quietly cheer for what felt like the thirtieth time, “Quiet down, everyone. Before I tell you which pill we will be refining, I will allow the competitors to introduce themselves… from my left to right. Yes. Begin.”
The first on his left was Chen Shujin, who rose quickly and immediately began to speak, although she suddenly stopped when an invisible thread of energy stabbed into her back.
She had wanted to turn around to figure out who it was, but whatever semblance of reason that still existed within her convinced her to shut up and instead say, “I am Chen Shujin, and I will be victorious, understand?”
“Charming. I, Ning Fangtie, should be well known to many of you for the services I have provided you for a long time,” the grey-haired man finally rose and left his refining furnace alone, not sparing a single glance to the apprentice that should have been by his side, “The audience has little involvement in this competition, but if any of you observe any kind of unfair behaviour from my opponents, or even from me, do not hesitate to shout it out and ensure that it has been noticed. Above all, this has to be a fair competition!”
“My name is Wei Yi, and I do agree with my opponent on this. A fair duel is the only one that can have the meaning it is intended to have. Nothing else will truly convey pure skill and knowledge.”
Chu Huazhi gave her a moment to add something, but when she instead sat back down and focused, he said, “Very well. All of you will need to work on the very same type of pill, but you need not use the very same recipe and ingredients. You will be provided with enough materials to prepare one set of pills alongside a single spare to allow you to recover from slight failures. Not all of the materials have to be used, but if they do not coincide with any of your known recipe variants, a recipe can be provided to you.”
Although he stated this, it was known even to many members of the audience that a recipe needed to be practised and learnt carefully before it could be used proficiently. If any one of the three was to declare their lack of knowledge of the recipe, they would need to be several stars of knowledge above any of the others in order to still succeed.
For once, Wei Yi wasn’t really an exception to this. Even if she was to resort to the Antithesis method, she would still be unable to maximise the efficiency of the process without understanding exactly what and how to intentionally ruin so that it could eventually be reversed into perfection. In theory, she could even accidentally succeed in a part that she meant to fail, resulting in her losing out on the total quality of the pill through good fortune being inverted into failure. If this did occur, she could not be sure of claiming her victory, as there was always the possibility of the pill being one of those that the other two had mastered to an extreme.
In the same way that most warriors would have a single technique or martial art that they used the most and potentially reached the level of the technique stages, all masters of the five great arts would focus on a single type or even a specific pill, array, talisman, inscription or piece of equipment which they would make and experiment with whenever they did not need to work on something else. Even if this was not done intentionally, those who chose a random known recipe to practise with would likely turn to the same one many times, eventually completing it reflexively and thus identifying it as their strong point. For her, the martial equivalent would be the Yang Elysian Storm, Storm Blade Wreathing and Elysian Palm, which she had used so many times that even removing the very knowledge of them from her mind would still permit her body to replicate the appropriate movements to execute them.
Unfortunately, she had not been able to deduce what the preferred pills would be for her opponents. Spying on them and checking what they sold most frequently did not yield anything that was substantially more common than anything else, meaning that they were either diversifying their practise to ensure their success, or that they only produced their preferred pills at certain times and did not sell them, perhaps utilising them on their subordinates and apprentices.
As such, she could only hope that the choice made was one that permitted her a calm victory, since there was a certain factor that meant that she would do best without unnecessary danger.
“Bring up the ingredients!” exclaimed Chu Huazhi, waiting for the boxes to be half-way to the competitors before he dramatically unfurled a scroll and looked upon the text concealed within. Whether or not he had actually seen what was written upon it, he did an excellent job of convincing everyone that this was the first time he had seen it as he stated firmly but not too loudly, “Your task is to create the Extreme Yin Decomposition pill! As per the average requirement for this pill, you have two hours to complete it!”
The eyes of all three competitors sparked, for this was a recipe that they had at the very least heard of, meaning that they still stood a chance. Chen Shujin leapt into action immediately, grabbing some of the ingredients being delivered to her and lighting a flame beneath her furnace. Ning Fangtie acted slower but was still confident, waiting for his ingredients to be set down before him while he deliberated on which recipe he was going to use. Wei Yi, on the other hand, had scanned through the ingredients some time ago and had pulled up everything she knew about the pill within her Ascendant’s Library to understand exactly what she was dealing with.
As far as she was aware, the Extreme Yin Decomposition pill was created some time after the disappearance of the Master of Yi City, intended to be used for the exploration of a certain ancient tomb of someone that had possessed an extreme version of the Yang Physique and had created an enormous stretch of land filled to the brim with absolute yang, with the tomb itself being built out of dense, solid yang energy.
By consuming the pill, one could ward off the passive dangers of the ancient tomb that would attempt to invade the body and immolate it from within, or by breaking it and scattering the medicinal essence within over obstacles in the terrain, it had been possible for the expeditionary team to discover whatever it was that they had gone in search of in the first place, after which their usage had been limited to the occasional extreme yang fog that still spread from the former site of that tomb, meaning that the pill was only one to learn in order to understand how to condense yin and yang from substances that typically do not display them in extremes.
Although this was not something that she had attempted to create more than once in the past, she did have a recipe for this pill that matched with the ingredients available to her, meaning that she would not need to request a different variant.
There was only a single small issue with it, and that was that she did not have one of the primary ingredients required to achieve the effect of condensing immense yin, a certain kind of planar root that had become much rarer since the recipe that she was aware of had been created, meaning that she would need to somehow circumvent this issue. The only thing that she could think of, however, was not only rather unconventional, but also required quite the unusual approach. Otherwise, she would need to attempt the creation of absolute yang through what she already had and invert it via the Antithesis energy.
The first option was somewhat preferable, mostly due to the issues mentioned previously, but it came at the potential cost of the judges not being able to perceive the truth of the final creation.
‘Still, I don’t think that I can bypass this without wasting a lot of time. I had mentally practised with the recipe a few times while in the Kong Prison Realm, so there is bound to be a method of making this work with enough work,’ she thought, passing the ingredients that she did not require for Min Lian to put away while she condensed the furnace from spiritual will and cut the ingredients that she would need to use first via killing will.
Before the furnaces of any of her opponents finished heating up and their ingredients were cut, she begun to toss her first ingredients into the invisible cauldron in the air, earning a collective gasp from the crowd as they witnessed the medicinal essence slowly flow out through the influence of her energy.
That gasp also attracted the attention of her two foes, who had intended to only distract themselves for a moment and then immediately return to their work, but when they saw the same sight, they couldn’t help but stare at the mirage of a pill furnace floating within the air, just at the right height for Wei Yi to access it comfortably – not that she needed to do so when every single ingredient was carried by her energy rather than any kind of physical force.
Fortunately for them, they had not yet begun to refine their pills, meaning that this distraction amounted to little in the short term, but their minds were somewhat shaken. Unless she was demonstrating some kind of false art, something that only looks good without the abilities that the art is supposed to have, then this would not only mean that their initial assumptions of her abilities being lacking were entirely false, but also that she had awareness of an entire art, if not something greater, that was wholly unknown to them, their students, teachers and possibly even the great masters that the two of them had the opportunities to encounter in the past.
If that was truly the case, then what chance did they have?
Alongside the negative thought, the positive did also appear within them, whether to make their previous actions seem more reasonable or to justify not dropping out of the competition and losing their pride. So long as they claimed their victory over her, would they not receive the very technique displayed to them right now?
Depending on the true depth of this miracle, they had the potential of rising to a peak beyond any alchemists that currently lived, perhaps allowing them to rise in cultivation as well as knowledge and attain the realm of the former legends of the Planar Continents. None of them ever dreamt of surpassing the Master of Yi City, of course, for such a thing was akin to the highest blasphemy in a faith or the greatest betrayal of the past that anyone who is not truly gifted could make, but the potential of greatness did lie ahead of them. So long as they acted reasonably, they could grasp the opportunity to restore the long-forgotten work of the past heroes and let their names shine once more, putting their own titles alongside these ancient legends.
On that note, the more knowledgeable Ning Fangtie suddenly recalled an ancient tale that was likely relegated to the dustiest pages of history even before the time of the Master of Yi City. It spoke of a refiner on the Eastern Continent whose name was not recorded, but the one deed that was firmly stated was that of completing the entire refinement process in minutes and to the absolute peak of quality through an art that involved processing every ingredient and its medicinal essence through nothing but the densely condensed spiritual will of the alchemist, which somehow allowed them to extract all of the essence without a single loss or impurity.
There were no alchemical fires, no furnaces, no kindling nor planar energy, everything was complete in just a few moments through something that seemed to be a miracle.
He had thought of it being a fantastic tale, for spiritual perception could do little more than cause a slight breeze even when used at the very peak of the sixth realm, so how could someone with a far lower cultivation achieve something so much greater?
‘Is this that very art? Has this Wei Yi come from the Daoist Continent, where she had recovered a fragment of that fantastic ability?’ he pondered, glancing towards her once more as he finally completed the necessary preparations to place his first set of ingredients into the pill furnace, which now glowed with a slight orange light as the entirety of it was filled with heat.
Meanwhile, Chen Shujin, who had reached a similar point in the process, also had her own idea, but it went away from the direction of the ancient legends and towards forbidden arts, for they were the easiest method of acquiring power, and she was in no mood at all to ascribe anything but the least charitable explanation to her foe’s ability. Since Wei Yi must have resorted to cheating and trickery to delay her – in Chen Shujin’s mind, of course – then how could she have obtained anything genuinely impressive?
It had to be something with an immense downside, or an outright falsehood, for anything else could not possibly fit within her vision of the world, in her perception of reality, and that was something that she could not break on a whim.
Potentially, even if she had countless decades to work on her thoughts, such deeply engrained ideas could not be shaken.
She did not know exactly what kind of forbidden skill would allow such miracles to be performed, but she wasn’t even sure whether this was something that she really wanted. All forbidden skills came at a cost, without any exception, and as much as her foe might be able to accomplish with it, the costs that she has to bear could easily outweigh the rewards by an enormous margin. And yet, since so many people had previously fallen to their allure, she knew that if she got her hands on it, she might also struggle to resist, meaning that it would almost certainly be best to avoid coming anywhere near that technique unless she could guarantee that it could be destroyed.
Every one of them began with similar ingredients, several portions being thrown into their respective furnaces before any differences appeared within their recipes. The first to change their ingredients was Chen Shujin, who confidently removed one of the core herbs that the other two were about to use and instead crushed a clump of violet moss into the mixture of ingredients within her furnace.
The second change was made by Ning Fangtie, who replaced the Effervescent Root with the stalk of a black flower with black petals and black roots that would typically hover in the air and seek food not from the ground, as most plants would through their roots, but from various insects and small critters that approached it, feeding on their blood and lifeforce just enough to bring them close to death, but not directly to it. At one point in time, it was thought that the best way to harvest them was by allowing them to latch onto the harvester, giving them a gift of blood before plucking them from their aerial roots and using them in their own refinement. As with anything that required sacrifice, it was quickly learnt that the roots could be neutralised entirely with the combination of authamite wine – funnily enough, the beverage that was never meant to be found yet another beneficial use – and Plague Bearer’s Rot, a variety of moss that tended to grow upon the long-dead cadavers and skeletons of plague victims.
Some of that information was propagated throughout the audience, at which point their attention was turned to Wei Yi once more so that they could observe whatever trick she would display this time.
They were disappointed to find that, at first, she did not seem to be doing something unusual nor uncommon. Those that were less knowledgeable turned to the more well learned, and those turned to the alchemists that stood in the audience, who turned to their superiors, with all attention eventually being bound onto Chao Juzan, who stood up whereas everyone else had failed to provide an answer and explained what he had noticed.
Rather than changing the ingredients she used, her very approach to the refinement of the pill differed significantly, and not just due to the spiritual will furnace. Instead of forming a complete pill structure, as most would due to the obvious benefits of creating everything at once and achieving far greater stability, she instead used mostly the outside of the furnace to compose the outside layer of the pill.
Once this was brought to their attention and their interest was caught, everyone naturally desired to understand exactly why this was done, causing them to turn to the alchemist once more in search of further answers. He wished to present the answer to them, seeing as the fervour of the crowd was rather significant whenever they were presented with rather small secrets that would still be revealed within a matter of minutes at least and hours at most, but as he thought more and more, he seemed to only be getting further away from their desired conclusion. He, too, had some familiarity with the Extreme Yin Decomposition pill, and so he understood well that the only time that this approach could be used was if she could somehow create absolute yin without the herbs typically used to manufacture it.
However, Chao Juzan did not have a physique nor a yin or yang skill, meaning that he could not sense her physique, and nothing about her suggested that she could manifest a form of extreme yin on a whim, like she would need to be able to do.
Wei Yi was not paying attention to this, but she still happened to act just in time to prevent the crowd from devouring the poor alchemist when she threw the last of her ingredients into the furnace and then placed her hand near the opening of the furnace, sliding her sharp nail across the skin on her finger to draw some blood that she then threw into the furnace, shutting it afterwards. She covered her hand with a simple black glove to obscure the wound as it healed in a matter of moments, then willed all of the physique energy she had stored within the blood droplets to explode outwards.
Bright moonlight suddenly flooded the furnace of pure spiritual will, piercing the dense wall of medicinal essence and the impurities that hovered around it, illuminating the spectating crowd, the other two alchemists, the judges and even the sky above it, touching the clouds and softly shading them in ethereal blue.
All of the essence that gathered around it did not immediately approach to seal the physique energy within itself, but instead divided itself into nine distinct segments while retaining the shape of the hollow sphere, spinning around the central physique energy without any intersections or collisions between the nine separate parts, which, the longer they remained in motion, seemed to resemble a dense stream of petals, each one being carried by an invisible stream of wind that slowly changed from a fixed circular shape into a complex figure that could not be named by anyone alive within the Planar Continents.
Together, the medicinal essence slowly pursued the shape of twenty-four individual shapes, although one would be hard-pressed to see such a thing within the complex weave of the many flowing lines of essence. It was something that could be followed by experienced alchemists at first, but the longer it went on, the more confusing the shape began to become, eventually conveying something that was entirely beyond their understanding.
Wei Yi had not created any new techniques in preparation for this, nor during the refinement process, but was instead accessing certain elements of the Cherry Revolving Blossom art that had previously been subdued without access to the full power of the Ascendant’s Dao that she now unleashed to stabilise her physique energy as she sealed it within the medicinal essence that had been condensed from the parts of the recipe that would typically make up the outside of the pill, the shell that every pill would have so that the medicinal essence within would not seep out and deteriorate within the ever-changing air of the world. The shapes of petals mixing with the essence, however, was a little bit of a surprise to her, even if it did make sense due to the name of the art only being half accurate before.
While she did this, the other two did their absolute best to look away and focus on their own tasks, with both of them adding their own elements of the eventual internal structure of the pills in order to begin the condensation of the extreme yin that needed to be contained within.
For several lengthy minutes, nothing of note occurred, except for the luminance of the physique energy slowly growing despite the lack of support from her body or the planar anchor that rested within her planar aperture, as each one of them was building up to the ultimate conclusion of the duel, when they would be able to conclude the refinement process and then present their completed work to the judges, who would then need to establish whether they had cheated and what the final quality of the pills was.
Despite the rather disparate approaches and the speed at which they had been able to complete certain steps, all three of them neared the conclusion of their work at a similar time, although it was difficult for either Ning Fangtie or Chen Shujin to overcome the head start that Wei Yi had enjoyed thanks to the spiritual will furnace, meaning that her medicinal essence and the energy within suddenly ignited, as if they were set aflame, a fantastic radiance that was many times brighter than that of the moonlight before it surged out with such brightness that it instantly blinded all that were in the audience and in the authoritative seats of the judges, with only the other two refiners managing to get away mostly unscathed.
By the time the glow had been subdued, the inside of the furnace had changed to contain only twenty-four pills that each seemed to be more similar to a hollowed gem filled with fluid moonlight rather than the usual appearance of pills. The audience and the judges had been unable to witness how the process had concluded, much to the disappointment of the former and the dismay of the latter.
Shortly afterwards, Chen Shujin also began to complete her pills, forcing the disparate pieces of medicinal essence together with her planar energy, doing her best to remove the dregs of impurities that still remained within the essence, a step that she suspected Wei Yi was able to bypass due to the particular nature of her unusual creation – there was no need to clear away the impurities from something that lacked them in the first place, such as whichever energy she had used to substitute the manufactured extreme yin within the pill.
A little after that, Ning Fangtie also approached the end of his refinement, making him the last to finish, slightly lowering his chances of eventual victory but hardly removing them entirely.
With three sets of pills ready for review, the contest was up to the judges to conclude.
