The first set of competitions was for Artifact making, poison making, and dancing.
Alex watched from the seating area as the group of participants put in metals and different materials inside the giant cauldron and started melting them.
However, unlike last time, they didn't put all the ingredients in and instead just the bare minimum of them. Instead, once the cauldron had melted what they had put in, the participants took out the molten object and started beating them with giant hammers as they were cooling.
From time to time, they would put in other ingredients and hammer it away. Once the new object was cooled, they would put it back in the cauldron and melt it once more.
Then, they would take it out and start beating it with a hammer once more. As such, through a back and forth method, they used up all the materials they owned and made the perfect artifact they could.
Everyone started giving their resulting product to the host, and Alex realized it would take them some time to test out the effectiveness.
So, he diverted his attention to the poison-making.
Poison making was very simple to grade. All the host had to do was check the effectiveness of the poisons by mixing them with a predetermined solution and the winner would be easily determined.
Within a few minutes, the result was up. The winner was a disciple from a sect called the Heaven Poisoning sect, beating another participant from the Dark Forest sect by a small margin.
Royal Fu academy wasn't even in the top 5 this time around, which was surprising. Alex then looked towards the Dancing competition, however, that was over already.
It was the first one to have been completed and he had missed it. So, he went back to looking at the artifact competition.
The way to determine whether an artifact was good or not was a little different from grading a pill or formation or poison.
Pill grades were based on the harmony of said pill, poison on the effectiveness of the poison, and formation on the efficiency of the formation.
They all could have had different ranks, but that was what the grades were based on.
For artifacts, however, the things were rather arbitrary. An artifact didn't have a specific grading system and instead lied at the whims of its maker.
Still, they had to follow some sort of sense because the rest of the world had the ability to set its grade as well.
The creators mostly set the grade based on what the artifacts could do and how well they could do it.
For example, a simple sword made using the True rank recipe. No matter how well it could be made, would still only remain a normal sword.
As such, it had anything more than a mortal grade was hard to justify. Unless it could somehow suddenly cut through metals like paper, it would always have a mortal grade.
In comparison, a pill cauldron made using the finest of golden jade, one that could transfer heat very well could be an Earth-grade artifact without a problem. If it was very well made, it could also be a heaven-grade artifact.
As such, the grade was there to just show the value of the artifact based on its purpose.
The rankings for the artifacts currently were being checked as exactly that. The artifacts were being based on their usefulness.
A weapon would be graded based on how strong it was, an armor was based on how much damage it could stop, a necklace was based on what effects it had, a storage bag was based on how much storage it had, and so on.
Alex simply watched the host of the artifact competition do a bunch of testing with the different artifacts, and in the end come up with the rankings.
The third place was someone from the Royal Fu Academy, the second place was from the Southern Sanctuary sect, and the first place was from the Tranquil Union sect.
The next set of competitions were Formation and Music.
The formations were simple. Whoever could set up the highest efficiency formation would win. As for music, whoever could keep up the overall melody would win.
Alex watched the different disciples take part in the competitions. The formations required quite a lot of space so the competition holders only held a single other competition concurrently.
Alex watched Luo Mei's sister, Luo Xing take part in the formation competition and watched it as he wondered how she would do.
At the same time, he also saw Meng Yun taking part in the music competition.
While the formation competition participants started laying down the formation flags carefully, the music group started playing their instruments.
Meng Yun didn't have to rush through her piece like last time, so she played it very slowly. The green line on top of her head never dropped below 40%, while it went to over 50% quite a lot.
The other participants were playing their piece quite well as well. A lot of them were around Meng Yun's level, some even higher.
Alex switched his attention to Luo Xing and saw that she had finished preparing her flags. After that, she placed a few spirit stones around the area and suddenly closed her eyes to do something.
At once, the formation came to life and a purple barrier appeared around Luo Xing. The other disciples finished theirs as well, and the host decided the rankings.
Surprisingly, Luo Xing got second place in the formation competition.
On Meng Yun's side, they were finished as well. Everyone's information on the piece they performed was clearly floating on top of them.
Meng Yun was good, but she only managed to get 3rd place with an average melody of 46%. The second place got an average melody of 47%, and the winner got an average melody of 49%.
None of them managed to reach Heaven grade, but reaching what they did was already was amazing. After that, the group left the arena to make room for the next set of competitions.