I began by sorting the herbs and placing them into the cauldron one by one. This only served to bring even more attention to me. No one would do what I’m doing, because simply it was not the orthodox way of alchemy.

As most of the competitors would start with the essence extraction of one herb at a time, starting with the ones that would need the least heat, then up to the ones that would need the most heat to have their essences extracted. While I placed everything in my cauldron at the same time.

“The hell are you doing? That’s a blasphemy against alchemy!” Du Ming said as he addressed me, hand pointing and face raised up while his eyes looked down one me as if he stood on a higher moral and social pedestal.

“Little kid, this is a test of one’s alchemy, not how loud you shout nonsense otherwise, I’m afraid no one would be your rival,” Take that double jab little bitch.

“Ming Du, focus on your own alchemy, and please don’t directly disturb your fellow alchemists.” The administrator sternly admonished the kid who immediately looked back at his cauldron grumbling prophanities under his breath. But the administrator’s own eyes were focused on me nonetheless. He was definitely thinking along the same lines as Ming Du.

But I didn’t care, there is a huge gap between this crude thing you call alchemy and the Receptarisme of the Poison God, though I still don’t have the required Heart Flame to do Receptarisme, I’ll have to make do with what I currently have.

Once all the herbs were placed in their respective compartments within the cauldron, I needed to start heating them up, though this would need me to light the heart fire, I wasn’t going to do that and ruin some really good herbs. I’ll use my own inscriptions, the ones I worked damn hard on.

“Sorry for this,” I muttered then raised my palm. Green poison Qi gathered around my palm, and when the administrator noticed my raised arm. He flinched as I struck at the side of the cauldron loud enough that a couple of focused alchemists jumped up from their places in fright.

A loud clang sounded through the audience, then I followed with another slap at the cauldron’s side.

“You like that don’t you!” I jokingly said to the cauldron then struck a third time. Some began looking at me weirdly, but I didn’t really care enough to humor them.

With every strike, more alchemists would lose focus and start angrily at me and my eccentric ways.

“Are you planning on winning by disturbing everyone else!” one of the random cultivators spoke up.

The administrator came to me and said, “You’re distracting the rest of the alchemist, Shen Bao. And what are you doing?” he asked looking intently at all the inscriptions on the cauldron.

I slapped the cauldron one more time and said, “Look for yourself.”

I opened the cauldron that was now steaming hot without any hearth fire being lit. The look of shock and awe on the alchemist’s eyes was evident enough that I wasn’t fooling around.

He turned and called one of his colleagues and spoke. “Please create a sound barrier around Shen Bao lest the sound of his ingenious alchemy disturbs more of the participants.”

The alchemist nodded, and he seemed even happy by the fact that he’s able to see a new method of alchemy. Though to be honest this is just using Inscriptions with alchemy. And making use of both.

I continued slapping the cauldron, and it heated up even more, though the sound was muffled, every time I raised my hand I could notice a few cultivators next to me flinch.

My hands slapped at the cauldron-like a professional drummer. And with every slap, the cauldron’s various inscriptions would lit up, and more commands would be evoked. Causing the cauldron to either heat up, or cool down, transfer the extracts, eject the useless scum and then merge the extract and coat them.

I couldn’t help but grin as I continued slapping the cauldron then with a final slap, three pills flew up and I gracefully caught them inside a pill bottle. I nodded at the cultivator next to me and he removed the barrier.

“Brother Shen Bao, may I see the inside of your cauldron?” he asked.

“Yes, I have no problem,” I said and showed him the cauldron. It was already perfectly clean, as that was a simple fact of using an inscription that denied the materials sticking to the cauldron.

Once he saw the inscriptions, I could swear he felt dizzy.

“This is some ingenious work. Who made this cauldron?” asked the alchemist, to which I said, “I did.” As I grinned.

The old man nodded at me and said, “I wish you the best of luck.” He then moved away to speak with the rest of the exam administrators.

I sat down and pulled out a small box. This is something I created to help me in what I’m about to do right now.

I pulled out my pipe and filled it with Joyful Weed. The amount of Poison Qi I used right now was not much, but I needed to be in top shape for the next round. As for the toxic fumes, the moment I took a puff, the small box lit up and began sucking in the released smoke. Encompassing it within it and not letting it out to harm any of the audience or the alchemists.

My casual pipe smoke break brought a lot of laughs to the audience. It was obvious, I was the only competitor treating this competition like a joke and having fun while the rest were vigorously fighting among themselves to secure first place.

After a while, Meng Hao was the first to finish, and surprisingly he never wavered never flinched when I started my eccentric behavior of slapping cauldron. He seemed to be in his own little world, unworried about anything when he was doing alchemy, quite an impressive resolve.

Ming Du followed suit, and so did Yan Song. And then the rest of the cultivators almost at the same time. The test ended and then the administrators began by checking the results. A few cultivators had their cauldrons explode, and some only resulted in sludge. May had cracked pills but the majority had good pills to present.

And after an hour, fifty of the original one hundred were all disqualified.

“You have all been qualified to the second round. You’ll need to make a Soul Condensing Pill, once you make this pill, no matter if you win the competition or make it to the top ten, you’ll be rewarded a ninth-grade alchemist token provided by the guild.” The leading administrator said.

‘Soul Condensing Pill, fuck… I’m screwed.’

The rest of the fifty all smiled and had a happy atmosphere about them.

“I have some grievances.” Ming Du said, “Fellow alchemist Shen Bao had been the cause of many alchemists to lose focus. I say he should be stripped of the right to partake in the next alchemy test.”

This guy really has it for me, is it because I got first place twice in a row?’ I mumbled under my breath.

“Though something like that did happen, many cultivators kept their focus and continued their alchemy, a good alchemist needs to be fully focused even if the world was being turned upside down, we can’t have alchemists lose their bearings for every single little thing, this will actually teach them to have more focus on their work. Take Meng Hao for example, he was so focused on his pill-making that even when a furnace exploded right next to him, he managed to catch a shard of the furnace with his hand lest it would contaminate his own cauldron and continued working as nothing had happened. This is a testament to will and patience and focus. You should all learn from him.”

‘Huh, something like that happened, man, that’s so badass. Meng Hao really looks like the main character.’ I jested to myself.

Still, dejected Ming Du added, “Still, his cauldron is nothing but a meteorite steel cauldron, and it has some inscriptions on it, wouldn’t it be unfair for the rest of us, this is clearly using external tools and is considered cheating.”

“I made this myself, I didn’t use external aid,” I replied shrugging.

“And I polished the moon and lit up the sun, we can all lie.” Ming Du crossed his arms and looked at me haughtily, “You’re cheating.”

“It doesn’t matter,” one of the alchemists spoke, this one was the one who spoke about executing any cheaters.

“The next test isn’t something that a meteorite cauldron can handle.” The alchemist said.

‘And he couldn’t be more right. Because the Soul Condensing Pill needs far greater heat than what the Meteorite Steel Cauldron can sustain.

Damn, I think I’m really screwd this time…