Rise of the Alchemy God

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There were still 30 minutes left, but the judges showed no signs of wanting to sit down just yet.

Instead, all their gazes were fixed on Ethan's position as he continued his refinement in peace.

Just as before, some of the other participants who were still refining couldn't help but glance over at the ongoing murmurs from the audience.

The sight of the judges looking intensely in their direction only added to the pressure they were feeling.

Even a few from the expert category glanced up but quickly returned to finish their last pills, not giving too much importance to what was happening.

None of them had noticed the moment the old alchemist was slapped away by Ethan because everything happened so quickly that there was no time to even register what had occurred.

Only Xiang Hua and the demonic cultivator sensed something amiss and looked up at that moment.

The demonic cultivator was certain he'd heard a loud sound and glimpsed a shadow that had appeared and then disappeared; the same went for Xiang Hua, who couldn't quite grasp what had happened.

Seeing that no one had stepped in to stop it, they assumed that the situation didn't concern them, so both returned to refining their final pills.

They hurried to add the last touches, and just as the final minutes were ticking away, a trembling caught the attention of all the participants.

The tremor came from one of their cauldrons, and as they were the closest, they were the first to notice it.

Everyone looked up and directed their gaze toward the sound, and not far from them was the station of the masked boy.

They didn't understand what was happening, but just as they were preparing themselves for anything that might happen, they saw several figures approach the cauldron, maintaining a respectful distance, as if they didn't want to disturb whatever was going on.

"What's going on?" many thought as they saw the judges approach that station.

Xiang Hua was one of them, and as she watched the scene, she remembered what she had said to the masked boy earlier that morning, and reflecting on it, she understood, to some extent, what it might be.

"So you weren't really serious in the previous matches," she thought as she went back to finishing her pill.

Distracting herself too much would ruin the efforts of the last 40 minutes she had spent.

She knew that whatever was happening, she could see it after a few minutes since the competition was almost at its end.

On the other side, Ethan had a slightly annoyed expression as he thought to himself.

'Tch, the cauldron is too weak to withstand the formation of a pill of this level,' he thought, and the judges understood this as well.

Although they had provided the cauldrons, they had done so thinking that level 3 pills would be rare to see, at most one of low-grade level 3.

So, for safety, they provided cauldrons capable of handling a medium-grade one, to avoid any problematic situations with pill formation.

None of them had expected that one of the participants would reach such a high level and be able to refine a pill of this caliber.

So even they now had their brows furrowed as they thought of how to keep the cauldron intact until the end of the refinement.

After all, they could also see that the vortex had reached a rotational intensity that the cauldron could no longer contain.

Just as they were considering various methods to resolve the current situation, Ethan, who was refining, suddenly made a gesture no one would have expected at this stage of the pill's refinement.

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He threw off the cauldron's lid, and as the contents spilled out, he immediately used his spiritual Qi to capture it and make it float in the air.

With great mastery, he held the whirling mixture and ensured that it was contained within a diameter of half a meter while personally accelerating the spiral that had formed.

Seeing this scene, the judges, who were stunned by what they had just witnessed, immediately understood what he was doing.

"H-he's trying to refine it using only his spiritual Qi," they thought, their eyes widening.

It was already known that the technique of refining pills with spiritual Qi was difficult to master, so much so that even some of them still struggled with it.

So refining a pill already in the cauldron with spiritual Qi was still a feat for most alchemists, but what about refining it in the palm of one's hand without a cauldron using the same technique?

This was something none of them had ever seen before, so witnessing it sent them all into yet another state of shock.

"Who on earth is this monster?" they wondered, realizing they had used this term to refer to him quite frequently.

They were becoming more and more certain that he might be a disguised expert, yet they still questioned how he could have bypassed the device that detected a person's bone age.

At this point, even the grandmaster alchemist had recovered and was observing this demonstration of skill with great interest.

He, too, knew he couldn't replicate something like this.

While he did have a certain level of mastery with spiritual Qi refinement, performing it at this level wasn't feasible even for someone like him.

The more he watched Ethan, the more he thought this was someone with alchemical abilities close to his own level, in other words, a grandmaster alchemist, but he still lacked enough evidence to affirm this.

As time passed, the last few minutes were drawing to a close.

Ethan, who had controlled the spiral all this time, suddenly closed his open hand, on which the vortex was floating, and it immediately began spinning even faster as its visible dimensions started to shrink.

Seeing this, all the judges held their breath, understanding that the refinement process was nearly complete, and this final step would determine the pill's success.

Unlike the judges, Ethan had no expression on his face as he finished refining the pill.

He already knew the process would go well, and although he could have refined this pill in half the time taken, he held back and took his time.

After all, for today's pill, he had used some materials from his two-star herb plantation.

He had classified his herb garden into various levels, from three-star, the lowest, to one-star, the highest, where herbs of immeasurable value grew.

Infact, many of the herbs there were believed by many of the mortal realm to be extinct, and if he ever disclosed this part of his garden, he was certain it would start a large-scale war among all the kingdoms to obtain them.

That said, even if this situation arose, he knew he could handle them with ease.

The reason he had decided to use one of the two-star materials was because he wanted to refine this particular pill.

His intention was to catch the attention of the grandmaster alchemist inside the VIP room, and from what he could see, it seemed he had succeeded.