"Woah, the participants are quite good this time around, aren't they?" one of the staff members said.
"Yeah, look at that fellow, his pills just showed 42% harmony. Wow, is that the highest yet?" the other staff members asked.
"No, the highest one belongs to that one guy in green. His pill had a 43% harmony," another one of the staff said.
"Let's wait for our Huang to do his best. He will probably win this competition," they said.
"Oh look, here he comes."
Huang Fu stood up from his spot and walked up. Alex too stood up, only 1 step behind. His pills hadn't shown the harmony level he had desired, so he had taken the best of the two and left the other one inside. He would take care of it later.
Huang Fu walked up and put his pill inside the tester. By the time Alex reached his, the pill tester slowly fogged up and started going up.
Alex put his pill inside the tester too to show his harmony level. He, just as everyone around right now, looked at Huang Fu's pill tester rise up.
Soon it crossed 30% and kept ongoing. Alex's own pill tester was above 20%, but he didn't care about it as he already knew the result.
Huang Fu's harmony level kept on increasing and increasing until it stopped right before it reached Heaven grade. His pill's harmony was 49%.
Sounds of gasps appeared from everywhere as people realized how great his pill was. Alex turned around and looked at his own 43% pill and shook his head.
'If the pill splitting Qi appears once more, I'm as good as having lost the competition,' he thought. He took his pill and went back to his area.
The other pill inside the cauldron was at 42% harmony. So in total, he had lost about 15% of the energy either due to the ingredients being bad, him making a mistake, or the energy just escaping from the cauldron.
He couldn't do anything else, so he simply just crushed the extra pill inside the cauldron and removed all the powders outside.
And then, he was ready for another batch of ingredients. He looked at the time and realized that he still had a little over half an hour to make his pill.
So, he could take his time. He looked around and saw that a few of the participants had beads of sweat on their faces.
'Huh? I remember master saying that normal people can't make pills for too long, but is it really this bad? They are only done with a single pill though,' Alex thought.
He looked around and saw that it was only a few of the participants. The good ones weren't really tired and could probably go on for a few more rounds.
However, unlike Alex, they couldn't last for a whole day of pill-making. 'That's because of how robust my qi is right?' he thought.
Finally, he stopped distracting himself and put in the first ingredient once again. He slowly moved it around the cauldron. He wasn't in a hurry, so he followed the recipe as well as he could.
Once the ingredient was down to powder and all the energy had escaped from it, Alex put in the second ingredient.
The lid was still on the cauldron, but by now the staff members had pretty much ignored it. They were still talking in low voice about how the Royal Alchemist's direct disciple had nearly made a heaven rank pill.
Alex continued making his pill but was definitely taking his time. He looked up at the clock from time to time and by the time he put in the 5th ingredient, only 15 minutes were remaining.
He continued making the pill and put in ingredients every minute or so as per the recipe's instruction. After 10 or so minutes, he finally finished putting in all the ingredients.
The metal energy was now fully covering the inside of the cauldron. Just at this time, a contestant stood up and went to get her pills tested.
Alex continued his task while keeping an eye on the contestant's harmony. Unfortunately, the contestant got 41%. She had lost.
A few more contestants started standing, while Alex decided to focus back on his pill-making. He used Elemental guidance to force the energy to flow into the powder to make the energy in it more concentrated. He needed as high a harmony level as possible.
Thanks to the resulting energy being Metal in nature, controlling it wasn't as hard as with the other energies.
Finally, it was time to form the pill. He slowly got the powder together and started forming the pill. He kept on using Elemental guidance to help the energy go into the powder, but it didn't do as well as he could have hoped for it.
Suddenly, he heard gasps throughout the surrounding, most of it coming from the staff members. He wondered if Huang Fu did something good again, but he wasn't there this time.
Instead, he saw a familiar green-robed figure standing in front of the pill tester. Alex saw that Han Long was there too with his dropped jaw.
Alex noticed that he had a 47% harmony pill, yet he was flabbergasted by Wan Li's performance.
Alex turned his attention back to Wan Li and saw that the fog in the pill tester had reached unusually high. He slowly looked at the number and was surprised himself too at how great the harmony was.
The pill he made had 49% harmony. That was the same as the harmony level of Huang Fu.
Most of the contestants stood up and went to check their pill's harmony level, and only 2 were remaining. One was Alex and the other was Huang Fu.
With 1 minute left on the clock, Huang Fu stood up from his seat and took the pill out of the cauldron before walking upfront to the pill tester.
It was time for him to check.