Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Alex sat stunned after the Alchemy God left. “Did he… forget to mention how many participants were getting culled this time around?”

“I don’t see him forgetting something so important. They must have something else planned,” Killersky said. “We don’t have to worry though, we’ll easily pass this, won’t we?” Alex and the rest tried coming up with plans on what a good approach was and what wasn’t. There were two approaches to this task from what everyone could see.

You either had to make one pill at each ring and go through them one at a time, or you could make them all at once and go through the rings without stopping. Depending on how they got the ingredients, either method could be possible.

If they were to make them one by one, even then, one had to plan. How would you go about it?

Would you make the faster pills first and quickly reach the inner rings, where you could begin making the pills before the others? Or, would you take your time with the first few rings, making only the difficult ones, so that you could breeze through the latter ones where you hopefully wouldn’t be behind others?

Depending on what the others chose, any of the ideas could be practical.

As they planned, the staff members called out to them, asking for the people who were called to go to them.

They began calling the numbers that were on the talismans they had first received, and people went over. Each of them left with a small metal coin. Some names were called out, but people didn’t go over.

‘Are they taking attendance, perhaps?’ Alex wondered.

His was called out soon, and Aethersage’s right after him. They were given the coins as well, which they looked at to see a number etched on either side.

Alex’s number was in the four thousands, which caught him off guard. ‘From 15,000 to 4,000?’ he thought. Had over 10,000 people already been disqualified before him? That was over two-thirds.

He went back and sat down, where he kept looking at the coin, wondering if it had another significance beyond just giving him a roll number.

“Huh, at this rate, we might be next to each other for the remainder of the tournament, Brother Dawnblade,” Aethersage said with a light chuckle. “Imagine we went to the finals side by side.”

“That would be…” Alex trailed off. He looked back at his number and then at Aethersage. Then, he looked at the top-down view of the maze that lay visible on the screen before them and the openings at the start.

Each of which was supposed to have two cultivators to start.

“Shit!” he said in a low voice.

“Huh?” Aethersage looked at Alex, confused at his sudden cuss. “What’s wrong?”

“They are pairing two people as opponents from the start,” Alex told Aethersage. “There’s a fifty-fifty chance that we might be going up against each other.”

Aethersage’s eyes widened, and he quickly looked at his coin and then the map. “Oh, screw off. That’s so annoying.”

The others realized what was happening and frowned. At the same time, Riveroak and Jai Heiyun looked at each other, which the others noticed.

“What’s wrong with you two?” Killersky asked.

“We… we joined together,” Jai Heiyun said.

“So we are going to be together as well,” Riveroak said. “Just like you two.”

“Sheesh. I should count myself lucky for being alone during the start then,” Killersky said and looked around the place. “Did they do this on purpose? Pit friends against each other? From the looks of it, many people just got screwed from this contest.”

Alex looked around on her prompting and saw that many others were complaining silently just as he was. Many friends were pitted against each other, and that started causing a rift between people.

“Brother Dawnblade, I’m sorry, but I won’t be holding back,” Aethersage said. “If we are against each other, get ready to add 40 seconds to your overall time.”

Alex looked at Aethersage and smiled. “You wish.”

It was clear pretty soon that neither of them was going to let the other one get a free rein over them. They were both going to fight really hard.

Given that there were so many people in the hall, it took hours for the ones at the end to receive their coins. Once the staff was done with it, they gave a piece of information.

“We will hand over the ingredients exactly an hour before your turn is to begin. And in contrast to the last competition, we will be starting from the end this time.”

“Due to the number of participants, we cannot have 128 contestants each round, so we will need to make a decision on how we make that separation. That will take us some time to decide. We will return in a short while.”

Many of them left after that, leaving only the ones that were there to watch over the participants.

It had taken so long for it all to be done now that the night had long since fallen, and it was perhaps even midnight now. With nothing else to do, Alex began lightly cultivating to be at his peak.

From what he could understand, it was going to take a while before it was his turn.

The hours passed very quickly, and the staff members returned. They called 127 members at the start, even though there were to be 128 in total. Due to the odd number of participants, they had to do this.

One of the participants, chosen by placing their coins into a bag and pulling at random, got the chance to be alone at the start. That meant, for the first four rings of the maze, he didn’t have to compete against anyone and thus didn’t have to worry about losing eight seconds.

Those eight seconds could be the difference between taking first place or not.

Those people were then handed their storage bags full of ingredients —some random, some they chose— and were told to prepare, for the competition was soon to begin.