Chen Jinshu queued for a short while before receiving a numbered token for a pill furnace — Furnace No. 3 in Section Ding.
Next, she recorded her personal details on a jade slip.
"Activate your token to locate your assigned furnace," the senior disciple in charge of registration reminded her.
"Thank you, senior brother," she replied softly, then activated her token. It immediately pointed her toward a direction.
With curiosity, she stepped into the hall. The ground beneath her remained solid and firm — activating the spatial mode hadn't rendered it illusionary or unstable.
As she entered the hall, she felt a strange restriction seal her storage pouch and spirit beast pouch. They could not be opened and simply hung at her waist.
She looked around briefly and saw an elder floating in meditation above each furnace area. Retracting her gaze, she followed the token's guidance to Furnace No. 3 in Section Ding.
The elder overseeing her furnace was someone she had never seen before — white-bearded, with a kind and serene appearance. After activating the array around the furnace, Chen Jinshu sat cross-legged before it, circulating her energy as she awaited the competition's start.
The Alchemy Competition was conducted simultaneously for all participants, and results would be released within half an hour after the end. She waited for two quarter-hours before finally hearing the voice of the Medicine King Hall's peak master.
"All disciples, activate your furnace arrays. The competition begins now."
Chen Jinshu looked toward the peak master soaring at the center of the hall, her heart stirring with excitement.
"I wonder if the difficulty of this competition has been reduced this year…"
Just as this doubt surfaced, she suddenly felt a powerful divine sense lock onto her position.
"Such strict supervision!"
Whoosh whoosh!
The peak lord distributed mystery boxes of spiritual herbs toward each furnace. A small golden box swiftly pierced through the array at Chen Jinshu's furnace and landed in front of her.
"The competition will last two hours. Overtime equals failure!"
Hearing this, Chen Jinshu immediately sharpened her focus. She quickly opened the box — a cascade of various spiritual herbs spilled out, nearly filling the entire area enclosed by her furnace's array.
"This is triple the number of herbs from the last lower-grade alchemist exam!"
Her expression grew serious at the overwhelming number of ingredients.
"Over five hundred herbs… this is practically on par with the rumored high-grade alchemist exam."
Taking a deep breath, she calmed herself and began organizing the herbs.
At the same time, other competitors around her were also sorting their herbs. This step was relatively simple and usually didn't eliminate many participants. However, once it came to actual pill refining, many would fail due to nerves and cause their furnaces to explode.
Although the blind box provided a vast number of herbs, each contestant was only allowed a limited number of attempts — as far as she knew, three was the maximum.
Failing three times meant immediate disqualification.
After about two quarter-hours, Chen Jinshu had sorted the herbs into lower-, middle-, and upper-grade Tier 1 types. Her task now was to choose from the middle-grade Tier 1 herbs to refine a middle-grade pill, aiming to achieve the highest possible quality.
She eventually identified herbs for three types of pills:
"Lingshen Pill, Five-Color Pill, Shaoyin Pill."
Among these, the Lingshen Pill was the most difficult to refine.
The complexity of the pill would also factor into the final scoring. If she wanted to play it safe, the Five-Color Pill — which healed and restored vitality — was the easiest, but it wouldn't stand out among other middle-grade pills.
After much deliberation, she settled on the most challenging option: the Lingshen Pill.
She had refined it several times before. Her most recent attempt yielded a high-grade version, though most of her results had been average. While a bit nervous, she was confident in her ability.
She set aside the necessary herbs and began heating the furnace.
One obvious flaw of unrefined furnaces was the difficulty of precisely controlling temperature — it required far more concentration and effort.
"Hmm? What's going on?"
After igniting the furnace, she noticed the flame — which had just begun to flourish — was dimming, as if it might extinguish at any moment. She immediately increased her fire input to stimulate the spirit charcoal's burn.
While Chen Jinshu struggled with the furnace fire in Section Ding, in Section Jia, a male cultivator suddenly spat a mouthful of blood onto his furnace. Though the disturbance was minor, the supervising elder immediately sensed something amiss and extended spiritual energy to investigate.
A faint, ominous black aura lingered around the man's forehead.
"Backlash of luck?"
"What on earth did this boy do to cause his luck to backfire? How strange."
The elder, alarmed, quickly reported the matter to the peak master at the center.
"Peak Master! One of my students has shown signs of backlash — seemingly a backlash of luck."
The peak master arrived at Section Jia and spotted the pale-faced young man still forcing himself to refine pills.
"Indeed… this is a backlash of luck. This disciple has definitely committed some unspeakable sin."
His gaze darkened. After so long without finding the poisoner, now — on the day of the competition — a clue had finally appeared. Heaven's justice did not delay.
"Give me his information."
With a gesture, a jade slip containing the contestant registry appeared in his hand.
"So it was Peng Qi!"
...
Back in Section Ding, Chen Jinshu had finally gotten the furnace fire stabilized.
"I wonder whether this was a deliberate challenge added to the competition — starting with the basics of furnace heating — or if someone tampered with the furnaces to cause mistakes amid the chaos."
For some reason, her instincts leaned toward the second theory. After all, the Alchemy Competition had never included traps in the furnaces before.
Shaking off her distracting thoughts, she carefully inspected the furnace inside and out. Finding no abnormalities, she finally proceeded to the next step of refinement. Once the furnace temperature was properly stabilized, she quickly began feeding in the spiritual herbs and executed the hand seals to begin alchemy.
Meanwhile, other contestants in all sections began facing problems at the furnace-heating stage — some couldn't raise the temperature, others burned their herbs due to poor control.
The watching elders all frowned.
They had heard rumors that this year's disciples were not particularly outstanding — but even failing at the basic heating stage? Their hopes for selecting promising students this year dimmed considerably.