Alex was a little surprised, but he shrugged his shoulders and let her do whatever she wanted.
He looked at the iron cauldron in front of him, way better than the black cauldrons that he would find in the Crimson Empire.
He looked around and saw the lid propped against the wall not far from him. With a thought, the lid flew towards him and stayed to the side.
Then, he got to cleaning the cauldron. Who knew what sort of pills were made in this cauldron, so the first thing he needed to do was remove the powders that may be stuck on the inside of the cauldron.
Han Sha looked at him weirdly but didn't say anything. Every alchemist had their own thing that they would do before making a pill.
"So I should start with the common pill right?" he asked her.
Han Sha nodded and handed him the storage bag that had the ingredients for the common pill.
Alex increased the fire beneath the cauldron to prepare to make the Purple dream pill.
Han Sha's face suddenly turned weird. 'Why is he putting on the lid?' she asked himself. Not a single one of the different alchemists she knew would ever close the lid.
Alex ignored her and put in the first ingredient. He used his spiritual sense to look at what was happening inside and moved it around.
'Oh…' Alex thought as he moved the ingredients. He realized that information of the ingredient, the shape of it to be exact, was being sent to Alex.
The shape was quite important for the structure of the pill, but he wasn't sure why he was getting that information. Did he get that information before?
Only then did he come to realize that this was the first time he made a common pill. All the other times he made a common pill, the memories he had weren't his own.
The experience felt so much like his own that he had mistaken it.
He would have to be extra careful now.
Just slightly off the timing, Alex put in the second ingredient. He hoped that was good enough to make enough mistakes that he didn't accidentally create an Immortal grade pill.
The information of this ingredient's shape was also getting back to him through his spiritual sense. In the back of his head, he was almost sure that if he slowed down the motion of the 2nd ingredient while lowering the heat at the same time, the shape of the powder would be a different shape.
This continued for all the different ingredients that he put in after that. The shape and a mild hint of what could be if he tweaked the recipe around floated into his head.
When he was done in the end, he took out the pill from the cauldron and gave it to Han Sha.
At the same time, he closed his eyes and started thinking of what had happened.
'The shapes… if I can change it… will I be able to better fit them together?' Alex wondered.
No-Gap. He remembered what the Royal Alchemist had told him. If he could remove the gap from a pill, its harmony would shoot up.
'I see,' he thought. His ability to improve a common pill that he thought was automatic was not. It was all based on his instinct and knowledge that he would have to use to make a recipe whose powders would fall into the perfect shape.
"67%!" Han Sha said with a bit of a shock. "You are not a bad Alchemist," she said.
Her record for a common pill was around 70% after reaching the True realm. On a normal day, however, it would be around 50-55%.
Seeing Alex casually make such a high-grade pill so casually hit her pride a little. 'And here I made an implication that he wasn't an Alchemist.'
She waited for Alex to start, but he kept his eyes closed. She wondered what he was doing, but then he opened his eyes.
He seemed to have a bit of understanding about something. 'Did he go through an enlightening? No way, that was too quick,' she thought.
"Will you continue?" she asked.
"Ah yes," Alex said and cleared the cauldron again before asking for the ingredients.
Han Sha handed it to him and waited for him to start.
Alex thought back to the recipe of the new pill called Clear Eyes0 Pill. According to the recipe, it was a pill that would help magnify the vision in one's eyes to see everything around them more clearly.
Alex had remembered the Royal Alchemist using a similar pill and had wondered if it was the same pill.
It was a useless pill to anyone with a spiritual sense, but to a normal cultivator, it could come in quite handy.
Alex waited for the cauldron to reach the appropriate temperature before putting in the first ingredient.
As he moved the ingredients around, Alex nodded to himself internally when no information of the shape appeared in his mind despite looking at the shape directly with his strained spiritual sense.
He understood that the Alchemy God's Knowledge technique was also responsible for what happened during common pill making aside from just his instincts.
Or, it would be better to say that the technique was honing his instinct to realize what he did.
He put away those thoughts for now and focused on making the Clear Eyes pill.
As Alex put the 2nd ingredient in, he wondered where he should make the mistake. It was certain that he didn't want to get a Silver badge, but he also didn't want to make enough mistakes to not even reach the Earth grade.
So, he only made a small mistake every 2 ingredients. He decided to make the rest of the mistake later on.
As the combination of powders swirled around inside the cauldron, finally it was time to gather them all and make the pill.
The pill forming process went normally, but when it came time for the Elemental Guidance technique to move the energy through the pill, he slackened off a bit.
Instead of giving his 100%, he gave 85%. With the mistakes he had made before, he was sure that he would get a good harmony that would fit where he wanted to be.
So, he opened the lid and pulled out the pill. When the pill fell on his hand, he smiled.
He gave it to Han Sha, who was about to snatch it from his hands if he didn't and put it in the Pill tester.
The pill tester looked a little different from what it would in the Crimson Empire, its shape was more cylindrical, rather than conical, it still had the same metal plate on the bottom, making it more or less the same item.
The fog rose on this one as well as it quickly crossed 10%. Han Sha watched as the fog rose until it passed 20% as well.
When it went past 25%, she looked shocked. Finally, it stopped at 30%.
She put down the pill tester and cupped her fist and bowed towards him a little. "Congratulations on becoming a True Earth Alchemist," she said.
"Thank you," Alex said as he stood up from the spot.
Han Sha looked a little surprised. "Are you not going to make the other 2 pills?" she asked.
"No need, I got what I wanted," Alex said and walked away.
He took back his storage bags and ring and walked out of the room with Han Sha.
"Thank you for your time, sister Han," Alex said with a little bow.
Han Sha nodded a little and looked to the side. One of the participants seems to have been done already.
"Please wait around, we will start the ceremony after all the tests are complete," she said.
Alex nodded and waited. Of the remaining girl and old man, the girl seemed to have failed as she walked out dejectedly, while the old man looked happy as though he had passed.
Once they were all there, a small ceremony took place to mark their entrance or ascension in rank in the Alchemist Guild.
Alex was given a Bronze badge that said 'True' at the front. He sent his spiritual sense into the badge and as expected, it worked exactly like a nameplate did, marking his name, age, current mission, and…
"Contribution point?" Alex looked surprised. He didn't know he would have to contribute to the guild, but on second thought, it made sense.
Han Sha gave a brief explanation of what they could and could not do.
One thing that caught his ears that made him intrigued was that most clients would give about 2 or 3 sets of ingredients per pill they wanted to get made.
If you could make the pill in one set at the harmony they demanded, you could keep the rest of the ingredients.
'That's quite nifty,' he thought.
Once the explanation was over, they all left. Alex decided to immediately get to work with making the pills for the various missions.
He went out to the reception hall, his new bronze badge on his chest. People who saw him now looked at him with an eye of respect all because of the badge.
Alex walked towards the board on the right of the hall with the various moving letters on it.
He attached his badged onto an engraving on the wooden wall, and suddenly he was aware of all the different missions he could take on.
The board only showed missions he was eligible to make, so he could choose any he wanted to.
When he chose a mission, his connection with the mission board suddenly vanished.