Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

The Alchemy God welcomed the audience who had come to watch the tournament once again. There were seemingly far more people this time around, all of whom sat in the stadiums that were established at the edge of the secret realm.

The participants inside the hall watched the happenings through the panels that had come alive in many places within the hall, projecting images from the outside.

The premise of the competition was explained to the audience, all of whom became very excited. Even then, they weren’t told just how many people were going to get disqualified past this point. That increased the suspense that everyone felt, making them more determined to work harder.

The first group finally left as the contest was set to start.

Everyone watched the panels, where they saw the 127 people arrive at 64 different openings on the outermost ring. There, they all sat in preparation, waiting for the go-ahead.

As soon as the competition began, they started making pills.

Some worked with a single cauldron, while others worked on multiple ones. They waited and watched, and just five minutes later, one of the participants stood up from their place, having made a pill.

They presented it to a staff member who sat by the gate. The staff member took the pill, swiftly put it into a pill tester, and let the participant move to the next ring, where they began making the next pill.

“Four minutes per pill,” Alex said softly. “That’s 80 minutes for all. That isn’t a good strategy.”

Making one pill at a time was definitely not the way to go, at least if you wanted to be fast.

Alex wondered what he should do. Was slowing down time during this process? Each pill was going to be different, so he couldn’t make 20 at once even if he wanted to.

“If I do it, it’ll have to be in three batches,” he thought. “Seven, seven, and six.”

He would have to watch and come up with more ideas depending on how the following matches proceeded.

Participants began standing up one after another, making their way through the rings, while others remained behind, making multiple pills at once.

A while later, some of them began standing up as well, passing through several rings at once when they did. Some of them immediately became the faster ones.

‘A few seconds is totally worth it,’ Alex thought.

Everyone continued watching for almost the entire hour before one of the contestants made their way through the final ring, becoming the first person to reach the center.

At the center, a staff member sat, who took their information, which soon appeared on the panel alongside their name and affiliation.

Alex looked at the time and was a little surprised. Instead of just the overall time they had taken to complete the contest, the time was separated into two parts.

One was the time they took to complete, written as Real Time, and another, which added the multiple two-second penalties from being late to cross the rings, written as Final Time.

In this person’s case, the Real Time was 52 minutes and 21 seconds, while the Final Time was 53 minutes and 13 seconds. They had incurred a total of 52 seconds of added time overall.

Alex had seen what the participant had done. They had made pills in five different batches, four at a time, which had helped them take the lead. And even then, 52 minutes for 20 pills felt too long. Surely it could be done faster.

And yet, that was the fastest of the 127 participants. The rest were still taking their time and would have even more time added to theirs. It was looking bad for most.

As the others began finishing their pills, it soon became clear how long participants took in general. The average Real Time of the 127 participants came out to be around 58 minutes.

Everyone in the hall believed they were slow, but no one blamed those people, as none of them had the luxury of watching others make mistakes.

What they did would serve as valuable lessons for everyone else on what not to do.

“That’s weird,” Aethersage said, catching everyone’s attention.

“What is?” Killersky asked.

“That,” Aethersage pointed to the screen that showed part of the audience, through which they could see a small image of the panels being shown to the audience, just as they were to the participants.

Alex looked at it carefully, trying to determine what was so weird when he noticed it.

“That’s… just the Real Time listed there,” he said. “Why aren’t they listing the Final Time?”

Riveroak gasped. “You’re right. What are they doing?”

The others shrugged, unable to voice a possibility for why there was a mistake on the outer panels. Alex and the rest weren’t the only ones to notice, and others let the staff know about the mistake.

The staff acknowledged it but did nothing else.

“Looks like it’s deliberate,” Aethersage said. “I wonder what the reason is.”

They could only keep guessing.

Alex fell into thought, considering the possible reasons, but his attention was grabbed by the people entering the hall. To his surprise, the ones who had just completed the competition were sent back into the hall.

“They’re… back?” Jai Heiyun asked. “Why?”

“I wonder,” Killersky said. “Do they not want these people to talk to the outsiders?”

“They are definitely doing something,” Riveroak said. “We’ll just have to wait and watch.”

The next group went up and took part in the competition again. They did better than the first group, but barely. It was overall a good thing, because some of these participants didn’t seem to have learned any lessons from the first group and ended up taking far more than an hour to complete all the pills.

One of the participants even managed to earn over five minutes of extra time. It was surprising.

The new highest Final Time was now just over 48 minutes.