Ancient alchemy art?
If Lu Fan heard the Upper Realm envoy on that ancient warship thinking that, he’d probably burst out laughing.
The upgraded Alchemy Notes were indeed a high-level refining method, but mostly they recorded insights and mindset. The actual techniques still had to be hammered out through countless failures.
All because, back in the day, Lu had casually tossed a random pot to Ni Yu. Ever since, she’d gone farther and farther down the black-pot alchemy path with no way back.
She’d always used that pot—failed, exploded, failed again, exploded again—until, through sheer repetition, she’d forged her very own black-pot style.
Ancient art? Hardly. It was 100% Ni Yu original.
Lu scratched his ear and chuckled.
Over the years on Lakeheart Isle, that girl had caused no small amount of chaos. The constant clang-clang-clang of her pot smashing the ground used to drive him up the wall.
Eventually, though, he got used to it. The racket even added a bit of lively noise to the otherwise tranquil island.
Now she’d taken her show on the road to torment everyone else. Lu couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit of schadenfreude.
He took a leisurely sip of plum wine from his bronze cup and kept watching the competition.
…
Smashing phase: done. Tossing phase: done.
Ni Yu moved on to the third and final step—brewing.
The black pot hovered before her. Inside, countless pills clinked against the walls like a rainstorm on a tin roof, crisp and endless.
The plaza finally quieted down. Many red-eyed alchemists forced themselves to calm.
Golden sand continued pouring from the hourglass—time slipping away, irretrievable.
The first round was nearing its end.
Of the thousands of elite alchemists who had qualified through preliminaries across countless high-martial worlds, more than half had already been eliminated.
Every remaining second drew every eye in the arena.
Only a few grains of sand remained. When the hourglass emptied, anyone without a finished pill would fail and have their origin dao essence stripped.
Sensing the deadline looming, the surviving alchemists sped up.
Speed meant mistakes.
Failures multiplied. Sixth-grade pills weren’t easy—even masters who could reliably produce them needed multiple attempts and long hours under normal conditions.
A timed contest like this tested not just skill, but mental fortitude.
And thanks to a certain pot-wielding chubby girl wrecking everyone’s focus earlier, the failure rate had skyrocketed.
Outside the plaza, countless gazes locked onto the remaining contestants—worried looks from the Five Phoenixes, mocking smirks from other worlds, and calm observation from those who had already succeeded.
Most eyes, however, were glued to the baby-faced girl standing with eyes closed, divine sense enveloping her black pot as she coaxed the pills to completion.
The sole alchemist representing the only high-martial world born from the Void Heaven.
No matter how flashy her performance had been, if she failed to finish in time, it was all for nothing.
A final few grains of sand slipped through…
Suddenly.
The chubby girl’s eyes snapped open.
GURGLE!
A thunderous growl rolled from her stomach.
Her eyes flashed with hunger-fueled brilliance. Divine sense rippled outward.
She grabbed the pot with both hands and slammed it down one last time.
BOOM!
“Heyah!”
With a cute little shout, she clapped both palms against the pot.
WHOOSH!
Pills shot out like a reverse rainstorm—hundreds of them erupting from the pot in a dazzling spray, like a celestial maiden scattering flowers.
Gasps exploded both inside and outside the arena.
This wasn’t just surprise. This was pure shock.
That pill yield was insane!
The higher the grade, the lower the yield. For a sixth-grade Flower Gathering Pill, ten pills from one set of materials was already considered excellent.
Yet here was a dense cloud of pills so thick you couldn’t count them at a glance.
This wasn’t alchemy. This was cooking for an army!
The Five Phoenixes crowd erupted into cheers, clutching their hearts in relief.
Talk about cutting it close!
The hourglass had literally one grain left when she finished.
Qi Liujia let out a long breath. On the high platform, the new emperor Tantai He couldn’t help pumping his fist.
From the void beyond, disappointed sighs drifted down from the warships.
A figure flashed.
An Upper Realm attendant appeared beside Ni Yu, hands clasped behind his back, pristine robes untouched by dust.
He pinched a single pill between two fingers.
“Sixth-grade Flower Gathering Pill. Quality… lower-middle at best. Still, it counts as success.”
His words officially declared Ni Yu advanced to the second round.
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He glanced at her, waiting for the expected squeal of joy.
Instead…
His pupils shrank.
Ni Yu had already grabbed a massive handful of pills and was stuffing them into her mouth, chewing frantically like a starving beggar who hadn’t eaten in three days.
The surrounding alchemists stood frozen.
She refined an entire pot… just to eat her fill?
And—those were sixth-grade pills! One contained energy that could rupture an ordinary cultivator. She was shoving in handfuls like candy!
Wasn’t she afraid of exploding?
The attendant frowned in distaste, then vanished with a flicker, moving on to strip essence from the failures.
He no longer paid any attention to the pill-munching girl. She’d finished—that was all that mattered.
The Five Phoenixes alchemist had advanced to the second round.
Nobody had seen that coming.
A little girl with a cooking pot had actually forced her way through.
Although the rules limited contestants to Unity Realm and below, plenty of actual Unity Realm alchemists had still failed in the first round.
“Just luck.”
“Didn’t you hear the Upper Realm lord? Her pills were barely passable. She scraped by.”
“Hmph. Utterly disgraceful. She’s a stain on all alchemists. She’ll be crushed in the second round.”
Cold snorts and furious glares came from eliminated contestants.
Ni Yu waddled back to Qi Liujia’s side.
Li Sansui gave her a gentle smile.
Alu scratched his head and grinned honestly. “Awesome!”
Ni Yu crunched thoughtfully. “Not bad. Could use more sugar.”
Everyone went speechless.
“Rest well,” Qi Liujia said gravely. “The second round will be much harder. If I’m not mistaken, it’ll be head-to-head duels. The winner strips the loser’s staked origin dao essence.”
He stared at the now-empty plaza, expression still tense.
“That’s why the second round is crucial for Ni Yu. Win once, and even if she loses later, the gains and losses can offset each other.”
Ni Yu nodded solemnly, plopped down cross-legged, pulled out an entire sack of pills, and started munching.
Qi Liujia glanced at her, a helpless fondness in his eyes.
She had trained under the Young Master himself, yet compared to the monstrous geniuses of those ancient high-level worlds… making it past the first round was already a miracle.
He just hoped the second round wouldn’t be too brutal.
His gaze shifted to Li Sansui nearby.
The girl was wound tight as a bowstring, pressure radiating off her.
She knew that in the formation competition, she might face her former senior brothers.
She understood exactly why her master had fallen so low. Only by defeating those traitors could she restore his honor.
“Relax,” Qi Liujia’s gentle voice drifted over.
Li Sansui startled.
“Master…”
“Just show them your strength. Don’t obsess over winning or losing.”
He smiled.
“With your ability, the first round will be easy.”
DONG!
As if on cue, a deep bell tolled from the formation plaza.
The sound echoed across the entire Five Phoenixes.
Five Phoenixes cultivators perked up. From the warships and spirit boats in the void, figures shot forth with confident laughter.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
There were even more formation masters than alchemists.
“Master, I’m going.”
Li Sansui stood, robes fluttering, expression resolute.
Formation masters descended onto their plaza.
On the other side, the artifact-refining competition began as well. Alu headed toward his stage.
…
The formation contest was simpler than alchemy. The first round didn’t even require constructing arrays—just breaking them.
The attendants deployed illusion arrays prepared by Upper Realm formation masters. Anyone who broke free before time ran out advanced.
Simple rules, but no one felt relaxed. Who knew how terrifying those Upper Realm arrays might be?
Qi Liujia exhaled in relief. This was exactly what he’d predicted. Li Sansui would breeze through.
Buzz…
The grand array activated.
In an instant, every formation master on the plaza was bound by chains of array patterns. Break the chains to escape the illusion—that was breaking the array.
Silence blanketed the plaza.
This time, the spectators from other worlds held their mockery.
Li Sansui and Alu looked perfectly normal, after all.
Unlike a certain pot-carrying chubby girl.
Qi Liujia stared intently at the formation plaza, still nervous despite his confidence.
He paid no attention to Alu’s refining contest—Gongshu Yu was watching that one.
Just as he craned his neck, waiting…
A figure appeared silently behind him.
Qi Liujia’s old body stiffened.
A face leaned in close.
Qi Liujia slowly turned his weathered, wrinkled face.
A spotless, gentle, jade-like countenance smiled back.
“Master, long time no see. You’re looking spirited.”
The voice was warm, like fingers rolling a heated jade bead.
A tall, handsome youth. Beside Qi Liujia’s hunched, aged frame, the contrast was stark.
Farther off, Ni Yu’s pill-munching slowed slightly.
She sensed killing intent.
BOOM!
Qi Liujia’s primordial spirit surged, blasting the youth backward.
The youth floated down lightly, loose robes fluttering, landing on the blood-colored ground.
“Fourth,” Qi Liujia said icily.
Of his ten disciples, if there was one he hated most—it was this fourth.
The inheritor of the “Zhe” character array word!
He looked refined and gentle, but inside he was a venomous viper.
The youth’s hair scattered softly. He smiled warmly at Qi Liujia.
“Master still has that temper.”
“Just you?” Qi Liujia narrowed his eyes.
“Yes. All the other senior and junior brothers were taken in by Upper Realm experts. Only I was left behind…”
His tone carried unwilling bitterness.
“Why… why did you give me the ‘Zhe’ word back then instead of a better one?”
“Now I have to participate in this boring little contest just to earn the Upper Realm’s recognition!”
Resentment flashed in his gentle eyes.
Qi Liujia laughed coldly.
“The Nine Character Array Words have no strong or weak—only you were too talentless.”
The youth’s snarl vanished, replaced by calm indifference.
He glanced at the formation plaza.
“I heard you took in a little junior sister? Perfect. Her presence makes this dull contest interesting.”
His soft laughter slithered into Qi Liujia’s ears like a demon’s whisper.
“I’ll take good care of little junior sister during the matches. Let her experience despair… peacefully.”
He grinned, fangs glinting like a serpent.
Then his figure flickered and vanished.
Ni Yu trotted over, still stuffing pills in her mouth.
“Who was that weirdo?”
Qi Liujia closed his eyes. When he opened them again, calm had returned.
“Si Tu Gui. My fourth disciple. Now serves a Sixth-grade sacred ground in the Blood Evil Heaven.”
“Si Tu Gui? What an ugly name…”
Ni Yu muttered, then lost interest.
Worry surfaced in Qi Liujia’s eyes.
On the plaza, Li Sansui was still trapped in the illusion chains, struggling to break free.
Yet Si Tu Gui had already escaped the array and even come to chat.
The gap in strength… was enormous.
…
Lake of Origin, Heart Island.
Lu Fan lost interest after watching Ni Yu’s round.
Hmm?
He sensed many figures sneaking past the blood-colored battlefield into the Five Phoenixes continent.
He smiled faintly.
Sipping his wine, he flicked the armrest of his wheelchair.
Buzz…
Silver light exploded outward, streaking across the land in countless blades.
Pfft! Pfft!
Blood flowers bloomed silently across the Five Phoenixes.
The infiltrators—powerful cultivators—died without a sound, sliced apart before they could react. The blades carried a strange, irresistible force.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Bodies rained into the vast sea, into deep mountains, into snowfields…
Their primordial spirits tried to flee, only to be frozen mid-escape by the silver light, turned into statues just like those on the primordial spirit platforms in the ocean.
Their flesh dissolved into pure energy, absorbed by the Five Phoenixes’ heavens and earth.
Outside an ancient tomb.
A figure wreathed in hazy smoke appeared—one of the Upper Realm envoy’s attendants.
“An ancient tomb from the primordial era…”
He murmured.
Suddenly, he shifted.
BOOM!
A silver blade tore through the air, slicing space itself.
But the attendant was no weakling—he barely dodged.
The blade plunged into the sea, sending up a heaven-shaking wave.
He glanced calmly at the silver light.
“Somewhat powerful… The holy lord of this newborn world?”
“Such arrogance.”
His robes began to flutter, ready to retaliate.
Then—
The tomb doors opened.
BOOM!
A massive skeletal hand reached out.
Terrifying pressure crushed down, locking the attendant in place.
The sky above was left only with drifting crimson mist—the attendant’s body had been smashed into paste.
His primordial spirit shot toward the heavens, racing for the blood-colored battlefield.
Yet from within the tomb drifted faint, ghostly guqin music.
The primordial spirit exploded into a violent storm, scattering into nothingness.
The tomb doors closed slowly with a long creak.
On Lakeheart Isle, Lu Fan waved lazily.
The silver blades flew back and vanished into his wheelchair.
None of the infiltrators had been particularly strong—even that attendant was only at the first stage of Primordial Spirit Unity.
They’d been cautious, afraid to alert him.
The only pity was that the attendant’s primordial spirit had been shattered by the guqin sound. What a waste.
If it had been preserved as a statue, the Five Phoenixes could have gained another Unity Realm expert.
…
On the ancient warship.
The moment their comrade died inside the Five Phoenixes, every attendant trembled, eyes flashing with murderous fury.
From the cabin came an intrigued chuckle.
Below, the first rounds of both the formation and artifact-refining contests concluded.
Li Sansui and Alu both advanced.
An attendant received a sound transmission. He walked respectfully to the cabin door, hands folded over his abdomen, bowing slightly.
A lazy, amused voice drifted out.
“Hmm… give the Five Phoenixes contestants some special arrangements.”
“This attendant didn’t die for nothing.”
