After my meeting with Jon and Lord Yong, I had little more than a week to prepare for the Hall’s end-of-year competition, and while I was confident in my ability, I didn’t want to take any more risks than necessary. So, I immediately went back to my workshop, pulled out a Qi Gathering Formation, and began cultivating.

Over the past year, I had been advancing slowly and methodically, opening one acupoint every two days. I wasn’t willing to hold myself back any longer. To face down Jon, I needed to be at my best. I could abolish my cultivation base and return to studying the effects of the Writ of Pill Fire once the competition was over.

After only one day, I was able to open all the acupoints in my left leg, bringing me up to Martial Disciple 7. Then, after another day, I was able to open up all of the acupoints in my right leg, taking me up to Martial Disciple 9. Finally, to reach Peak Disciple, I needed to open all of the dozens of acupoints located within my torso. Due to the sheer number of acupoints involved, this took me another two full days to accomplish, but when I was done, I was at the absolute limit of what was allowed for the first tier of the upcoming competition.

So, I shifted my focus to my affinities.

I had already purchased peak four-star affinities for both formations and talisman artistry. While I had enough points to push them further, I wanted to hold off. I still didn’t have a solid understanding of exactly how these affinities were supposed to help me, and raising them any further would have a significant impact on my credit reserves.

Herbalism, however, was different. While I didn’t know how having this affinity was supposed to affect my actual herbalism skills, I did know that it allowed me to sense sympathetic bonds between herbs. It also gave me a better understanding of how to replace herbs when a member of a set was missing. That was enough.

“System, give me a permanent low three-star herbalism affinity.”

Purchase confirmed. Cost 101.6 trillion credits.

As for my alchemy affinity… If at all possible, I wanted to avoid having the System increase it directly. Alchemy was my test bed for understanding how to raise my affinities without the System’s assistance. I wanted to see what would happen when my latent talent was used up. I wanted to see if it was even possible to ‘use up’ a latent talent. So, instead of buying a direct enhancement to my affinity, I bought the next best thing.

“System, give me a large selection of Rank 2, 3, and 4 herbs from the Central Continent.”

Drawing upon the information in Emperor Li’s alchemy books, I asked for 10 sets of ingredients for each of a dozen different types of pills in a range of difficulties.

Purchase confirmed. Cost 12 billion credits. 133,094,256,433,260 credits remaining.

While practicing with Nine Rivers herbs would allow me to swiftly improve my alchemy affinity, spending some time with Central Continent herbs would ensure that I could actually make full use of said affinity in the upcoming competition. And, since I had bought these herbs from the System, none of my competitors would have any way of guessing what I was up to.

Purchases complete, I spent my remaining few days concocting as many pills as possible, doing my best to quickly understand how high-Rank alchemy on the Central Continent differed from what I was used to. This might not have been entirely necessary, but I had a sneaking suspicion that the ‘Disciple’ competition would be far more challenging than I had been told. The cultivation bases of my opponents might be limited to Martial Disciple, but this didn’t mean they hadn’t found some way to push their alchemy abilities to Master, Grandmaster, or beyond.

I needed to be prepared.

In Golden Eagle City, the festival that welcomed the start of each new year lasted an entire week, and all of the city’s various factions took part in the celebration. So, naturally, this week saw dozens of competitions across the entire city. There was everything from martial arts tournaments to poetry contests.

To do well in these competitions, a person needed to be talented, but they didn’t necessarily need to be the best in their given craft. Most of these competitions weren’t about the craft. They were about the spectacle.

In real fights, fire cultivators needed to be conservative. They might send out the occasional flame spear or flame whip, but if they weren’t careful, this would quickly drain their qi reserves. Usually, it was better to first use physical enhancements and movement skills to close in on one’s opponent and attack from close range with something like a flaming fist.

During the end-of-year competitions, however, fire cultivators were incentivized to do things such as encircle their opponents in 10-meter-tall walls of flames and attack using 5-meter-wide fireballs. Such techniques were incredibly wasteful and served almost no practical purpose, but they were fun to watch.

Given this context, while the city’s populace understood the value of pills and had ample respect for the alchemists who made them, they had little to no interest in attending an alchemy competition. To the uninitiated, watching dozens of people stand motionless in front of pill furnaces held little allure. Because of this, the Hall of the Herb Lord’s end-of-year competition was held in a small stadium in a remote corner of the city.

The competition wasn’t scheduled to start until noon, but worried that someone might attempt to delay me, I left the Hall early and arrived at the stadium an hour before the start of the first round.

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In truth, this was entirely unnecessary. Not only had no one tried to stop me, but as this first day of the competition was dedicated to the battle between Grandmasters, my attendance was entirely voluntary.

Still, viewing this competition was an important part of my preparations, so I didn’t want to be late.

When the sun was high overhead, it was time for the competition between the Grandmasters to begin.

The venue was a stone stage that was surrounded by wooden bleachers. While the stage was large enough to hold dozens of workbenches, at the moment, it only held nine. And, while there was enough seating for a thousand spectators, only a handful had come to watch.

In front of the workbenches, there was a raised platform where three Pill Lords, including Lord Yong, sat on tall wooden chairs and served as overseers. In front of them, there were rows of tables containing a vast array of rare and valuable herbs. While this competition was supposed to be between Grandmasters, as I had expected, the tables contained everything from Rank 1 herbs to Rank 4 herbs.

The moment these tables were revealed, everyone in the stands took out a notebook and furiously scribbled down what they saw. Then, a few minutes later, they started leaving. Before the competition had even begun, nearly half the spectators were already gone.

One of the Pill Lords, a green-skinned woman in dark red robes, stood and introduced the rules of this competition. The Grandmasters had three attempts to make the most valuable pill they could, and they were only allowed to use the herbs on the tables at the front of the stage.

Then, the Pill Lord waved a hand to signal the start of the competition.

Instantly, all nine Grandmasters rushed forward. Everyone wanted to be the first to pick out their preferred ingredients. No one wanted to be left with the dregs.

This caused several tense minutes of chaotic shoving as everyone worked to secure the best herbs, but no actual fights broke out, and no punches were thrown.

As soon as the first Grandmaster grabbed the last herb he needed, he turned around and rushed back to his workbench. Once there, he reached into his storage bag and pulled out an ornate pill furnace to replace the more basic model that the workbench had come equipped with. Then, he accessed his qi and began heating it.

Not long after this, all of the other Grandmasters returned to their workbenches and followed suit. No one, it seemed, was willing to use the basic pill furnace that the Hall had provided.

Using energy vision, I watched carefully as each of the Grandmasters prepared their pills.

Overall, the level of alchemy on display was rather underwhelming, which only made sense. The best of the best were sent to the Palace of the Herb Sovereign when they were still Disciples. Then, the second-tier alchemists were sent while they were Masters. The only people who remained in the Hall as Grandmasters were those who had already failed in this competition four times as a Disciple and ten times as a Master.

However, while the level of alchemy on display was rather low, I did still learn a few things.

First, none of these Grandmasters were using spirit fires. They were all using a combination of qi and natural fire that was enhanced by the formations on their pill furnaces. On Nine Rivers, this would have been unheard of. Starting as a Master Alchemist, everyone used spirit fires.

During my experiments in the days leading up to this competition, I had used plenty of Central Continent herbs to make high-Rank pills. Spirit fires worked just fine here. So, wasn’t anyone using them? The only answer that made sense was that they didn’t have any spirit fires, but this seemed absurd. High-quality spirit fires might be a little expensive, but basic fires were well within the price range of Grandmaster Alchemists. I would need to look into this.

Second, while all the Grandmasters were able to pick out herbs that would work well together, none of them seemed to have any understanding of sympathetic bonds. This told me that not a single one of them had worked on their herbalism affinity. As these nine fellows were the dregs of the Hall of the Herb Lord, this wasn’t necessarily indicative of what I should expect from anyone else, but it was a pretty glaring oversight. Either the Pill Lords teaching them didn’t know what they were doing, or all the alchemists who possessed a latent talent for herbalism had already been snapped up by the Palace of the Herb Sovereign.

Lastly, I got an idea of what to expect from the Hall’s Grandmasters. Two of them were able to concoct a one-patterned Rank 3 pill on their first attempt, and two others were able to concoct one on their second attempt. These four then spent their remaining attempts trying to concoct two-patterned pills, but they were met with nothing but failure. The other five all had to settle for concocting simple High-Purity pills.

When the competition was over, the green-skinned Pill Lord who had started the competition announced the results.

“Congratulations go to Grandmaster Alchemist Arban for winning this competition yet again. This will be his fifth and final chance to join the Palace of the Herb Sovereign, and we wish him well in the attempt.”

A dark-skinned man cupped his fists and bowed to the Pill Lord, but I could sense a feeling of resignation in that gesture. He had won this competition, but he looked like he had already given up on fighting for more.

The next day, the Hall held the competition between Master Alchemists. This time, the stage held nearly two dozen workbenches, five Pill Lords sat upon the raised platform, and over a hundred spectators filled the stands.

Most of these were random mortals, but I noticed more than a few familiar faces that I had seen lurking about the Hall of the Herb Lord. This showed that while little importance had been placed on the competition between Grandmasters, the ranks of the Masters still held a few talents worth observing.

Like with the Grandmaster competition, I gained several key pieces of information from watching the competition between the Masters.

Spirit fires were still rare, but this time, a couple of people did make use of them. However, where I would have typically used a spirit fire to complement the element of my qi, these Masters all used fires with elements that matched their qi. This would typically only be done if one lacked an affinity for other elements.

Also, the herbs on offer for this competition were the same ones that had been available to the Grandmasters. At least, they were the same types of herbs. During the Grandmaster competition, I had taken note of a few sets of herbs with unusually strong sympathetic bonds, and these herbs were no longer on offer. They had been replaced with different sets that had similarly powerful connections.

This time, one of the competitors noticed these connections and was able to use them to concoct a rather solid one-patterned Rank 2 pill. Unfortunately, however, he was defeated by a woman who used her blessing to concoct an exceptionally potent High-Purty Rank 3 pill. While her pill didn’t have any patterns, its higher Rank and extremely high efficacy—well over 170%—made it far more valuable than the man’s one-patterned Rank 2 pill.

Seeing this, a grin spread across my face. Competitors were indeed allowed to concoct pills above their cultivation base, and even though no one had used them yet, herbs all the way up to Rank 4 were on offer. With these two advantages, I had this competition well in hand.