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Chapter 501: The Only Uncertainty

Although it was only the results from the first category, Ouyang De still couldn’t accept his grandson being ranked at number three. In his heart, he’d never thought that Ouyang Chao would fall short of the champion’s rank, much less than be ranked at number three! Not only was this a humiliation for Ouyang Chao, it was even more so for Ouyang De.

He’d been the crowd favorite before the competition and had enjoyed so much support, all sorts of fawning compliments and lavish praises. The continued flattery had been music to Ouyang De’s ears, and he’d accepted it all.

If Ouyang Chao really did lose out, it would make the Ouyang clan a laughingstock in the eyes of everyone.

Jiang Chen was a lone man kicking up a dust cloud up front, far ahead of the others and soon vaulting into the fourth category of manipulation. This category involved both refining pills and cultivating spirit herbs. There were three topics in total.

The first was about cultivating spirit herb seeds. To succeed, one had to plant the spirit herb seeds and have them germinate in three days. Completion was worth 20 points.

The second topic of refining pills was worth 40 points. If the pill refined was of lower rank, that would earn 10 points. Mid rank would be 20, upper rank 30, and supreme rank 40 points.

The third was relatively complex, requiring candidates to draw a refinement formation. This would undoubtedly the highlight of the competition, and was worth 40 points.

All three of them together were worth 100 points.

Jiang Chen received the seeds and its the accompanying materials, traveled to the cultivation area and observed the soil there to make an analysis before returning to the testing area. He made a few adjustments to the materials on hand and returned to the cultivation area to plant his seeds.

With that, the first topic was temporarily concluded; all that remained was regular fertilization. Jiang Chen made some time calculations before entering the second topic of refining Origin Fostering Pills.

The Origin Fostering Pills were the most popular pills in the Regal Pill Palace. Along with Spirit Consolidation Pills, these were the two pills most used in the sect.

Those who could refine the Origin Fostering Pills by themselves amongst the younger generation were few and far in between. A few decades of work were needed to do so successfully. Although Mu Gaoqi didn’t boast of proper training, his innate wood constitution and potential in pills allowed him to stand among the few who were capable of refining the Origin Fostering Pills alone.

For those geniuses entering the finals, this was also the first time that they were attempting to independently refine the Origin Fostering Pills. As for Jiang Chen, although he hadn’t personally refined this pill before, it didn’t mean he didn’t know how to. He only hadn’t wanted to waste this time.  After all, the thousand Origin Fostering Pills he’d gained from Elder Yun Nie was enough for him to use for a long time.

The materials for the Origin Fostering Pills seemed to be enough for six pills from one cauldron. The contest requested candidates hand in their highest quality pill. Therefore, it was fine if there was one supreme rank and five other trash pills in the cauldron. Of course, special marks had been made on the ingredients so that there was no possibility of taking out a pre-made Origin Fostering Pill to cheat.

Jiang Chen entered the pill refinement room and took out the Skyweave Cauldron that Palace Head Dan Chi had gifted him. “Palace Head Dan Chi must’ve had certain hopes in gifting this cauldron to me. If I can’t use this cauldron to refine a supreme rank pill, that would be an insult to the cauldron.” Jiang Chen thought so in his heart, but was in no hurry. He meditated on the complete refinement process in his mind once and simulated it once as well, before finally beginning.

He didn’t place all the ingredients in the cauldron in his first go, but used the amount for one pill to experiment. He produced an upper rank pill on his first try.

Jiang Chen wasn’t satisfied and went back over his refinement process, once again firing up the cauldron again. On his third try, a supreme rank pill emerged from the cauldron.

The Origin Fostering Pill wasn’t a particularly complex pill. Many elders refined it in batches in the Regal Pill Palace. With Elder Yun Nie as an example, he always refined cauldrons worth of Origin Fostering Pills, with twenty to thirty pills to each cauldron. They were usually upper rank. If he bent his mind to it and refined them pill by pill, then it wouldn’t be difficult to refine supreme rank pills as well. Even when he refined in batches, Elder Yun Nie had a twenty to thirty percent chance of forming a supreme rank pill.


Jiang Chen’s second topic was over with the emergence of the supreme rank pill. When he left the pill refinement room, Jiang Chen went to fertilize his seeds, then took a quick break before taking the third challenge, the final of the competition. All would be complete after this one.

Jiang Chen had striven for perfection in all his previous undertakings and his results had been almost flawless. Most of these tests were child’s play to him. However, this last one did pose a slight bit of technical difficulty.

To Jiang Chen, he had studied formations in his past life, but he hadn’t had much experience in manipulating pill refinement formations in this life. Still, this didn’t stump him, merely making him spend a bit more time, and time was the last thing he was short on. He was ahead of the other geniuses by almost an entire category. When he’d entered the last category, many were still at strength of heart. There weren’t many who’d entered the fourth category at this time, so he had plenty of time.

……

Mu Gaoqi had emerged from the strength of heart category at this time and had performed above his usual level in the first and second categories. But strength of heart had always been his weakness, and although it’d seen some improvement thanks to Jiang Chen during this time, he still hadn’t performed up to his own expectations.

“Sigh, I really need to do well in this category, it can’t be the one that drags me down. It’s a good thing that I did well in the first two. If I perform like normal in strength of heart, it would just so happen to cancel out the advantage I built up in the first two. Let’s put the true test in the fourth category! Manipulation of pills is my strength!” Although Mu Gaoqi was a scion of the Herbal Hall and was called self-taught by others in the Regal Pill Palace, his ability in manipulation was widely acknowledged. He had more of a unique advantage thanks to his innate wood constitution.

The rankings for the first three categories were refreshed shortly after all the candidates entered the fourth category. Jiang Chen was still solidly first at full marks.

All the elders were numb at this point, and their thoughts ranged at the extreme of the spectrum. One side acknowledged that Jiang Chen was a genius, the other was certain that Palace Head Dan Chi and Elder Yun Nie were colluding to cheat for Jiang Chen.

Those who thought Jiang Chen were cheating were waiting to see him make a fool of himself in the fourth category. If he received full marks in the first three and saw a tremendous drop in his scores in the last, that was absolute evidence of cheating and grounds for them to bring up complaints. Therefore, they all watched him with ulterior motives and waited Jiang Chen to fail spectacularly.

This group of people included Ouyang De. He now thought with great bias that there was someone helping Jiang Chen cheat. However, what he was slightly satisfied with was that Ouyang Chao’s scores had finally rushed forward, beating Mu Gaoqi to take third place with 280 points.

Mu Gaoqi had had a poor performance in the strength of heart category and was now at third with 270 points and tying with Ling Hui’er. There was another with 260 points, and the rest weren’t more than 240 points. There was basically no Sovereign Area residence for them in the future.

Of course, nothing was absolute. The fourth category was quite intricate and it was still very possible for something different to develop in the fourth category, particularly as the fight for second was a tight race.

Although Jiang Chen was at 300 points, those who thought he was cheating felt certain that he would reveal his true colors in the last category and be dragged down from his throne. Although Ouyang Chao’s advantage wasn’t that apparent at number two, Ouyang De felt even more reassured when he saw his grandson at number two. With his understanding of the self-taught Mu Gaoqi, it was highly unlikely that he would surpass Ouyang Chao in the fourth category.

Of course, Ouyang De didn’t know that Mu Gaoqi had been baptized in the spirit spring, nor did the former know that Mu Gaoqi now possessed the spirit pearl of fire and ice. Only Jiang Chen and Mu Gaoqi knew of these two trump cards.

The baptism in the spirit spring had enhanced Mu Gaoqi’s potential. He would be even more masterful at cultivating spirit herbs, refining pills, and exercise more minute control over ingredients. The spirit pearl would enable him to have finer control over fire, and the greatest ace of all was the discourse the two had the night before. This had helped Mu Gaoqi obtain at least 20 more points in the previous categories!

This was why he was solidly in the top three, otherwise, with the previous Mu Gaoqi, his distance from Ouyang Chao would be definitely more than 10 points!

Shortly after Mu Gaoqi and the others entered the fourth category, Jiang Chen was sitting in the pill refinement room, looking at his almost completed formation etching. This was just an initial draft, and as easy as breathing to Jiang Chen.

If it wasn’t for the fact that he’d yet to attempt this in this life and had acted rather cautiously, he wouldn’t been long since completed by now. Although simple, he was still very prudent. This had to do with 40 points, and he wouldn’t allow for any mistakes.

Jiang Chen finally carved in the final stroke after an hour. Apart from the formation etching, there was also much to do with spirit stone allocation, intra-formation resonance, its arrangement… There was much theory even to a novice formation.

Jiang Chen heaved a long sigh of relief when he confirmed that there were no mistakes after a round of checking. He had been hard at work for almost two straight days by now, and although he felt a bit tired, all of this was worth it. He firmly believed that with this kind of performance, a Sovereign Area residence was absolutely within his grasp. All he had to do now was to silently wait for the spirit seed to sprout and also wait for the final results.

He wasn’t worried about himself. All he was uncertain of was whether or not Mu Gaoqi could triumph over Ouyang Chao. He was most concerned about Mu Gaoqi’s performance in the strength of heart category. If Mu Gaoqi made it through, then he’d have no problem winning out over Ouyang Chao. If to the contrary, the competition between the two would be up in the air and be determined in the last possible second.





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