Jin Huang stared at the collection of herbs before him. Around him, the other young alchemists were already hard at work.
Pill flames burned beneath furnaces. Mana flowed from one workstation to another, carefully controlled and measured. The air was beginning to fill with the faint medicinal fragrance of refining herbs.
Jin Huang scratched his head. "Maybe I can just watch them."
It seemed reasonable enough. If he had never actually learned anything even remotely close to alchemy, then surely watching others do it would help.
Right?
He turned his attention toward the contestants. Almost immediately, he noticed something.
One by one, the young alchemists reached for the same object. A small blue tome had appeared before each of them at some point.
Jin Huang blinked. "What's that? Is it the tome that Grandpa Sage was talking about?"
The tome was relatively plain, bearing the insignia of Pill Tower upon its cover. Each contestant placed a hand upon theirs before opening it. The moment they did, faint blue light emerged from the pages.
Several contestants closed their eyes after opening the book, seeming to be intensely focused.
Jin Huang watched curiously. "What're they doing?"
The answer came from one of the nearby alchemist spectators who couldn't help but speak loudly.
"Those are the tomes that contain the Spring Nurturing Pill's formula. They're temporary mental records. Once the tournament ends, the formula will disappear from their minds."
Jin Huang's eyes widened as he looked at the tome. "Oh. That's neat."
He returned his attention to the other contestants. Most of them were surprisingly similar in the way they examined the ingredients, separated them into groups and began preparing their furnaces.
Some crushed their herbs into powders while others extracted liquids from roots. Several of them were using precise streams of mana to manipulate the ingredients without physically touching them.
Everything was controlled, measured and deliberate.
Jin Huang watched closely and scratched his chin. "Okay... That certainly looks complicated."
Then his eyes landed on Mo Kuang. When they did, Jin Huang's expression changed drastically. "What the hell is he doing?"
The wild-eyed beast tamer stood before his furnace with an expression of complete concentration as his mana began to wildly surge, then—
BOOM!
The furnace shook and Jin Huang flinched.
Mo Kuang thrust his palm forward, and another burst of mana slammed into the furnace, causing the entire stage to rattle.
BOOM!
"What kind of alchemy is that!?" Several spectators stared in disbelief.
"Is he... attacking his furnace?"
"He appears to be."
"Why?"
"I have absolutely no idea."
Mo Kuang grinned wildly as another blast struck the furnace. "Come on! Give me something good!"
Jin Huang stared, "He's definitely doing it wrong."
A few people nearby were saying and thinking the same thing.
Then Jin Huang saw Ao Yueyan and his attention shifted once again. The Pill Fairy was doing something completely different. She sat calmly before her workstation, not moving so much as a single muscle.
Instead, the ingredients and tools in front of her were moving all on their own. A herb floated gently in the air while a small knife rose from the table, slicing the herb with perfect precision as the pieces drifted into a small bowl.
Another ingredient followed as Ao Yueyan calmly watched, a spectator of her own process.
Suddenly, she spoke and the mana around her shimmered. "Please separate the medicinal essence."
The ingredients obeyed, a faint green glow emerging from the herbs before flowing into a waiting vial.
"Thank you," Ao Yueyan said with a small smile. Turning, she regarded Jin Huang with that same smile, and a confident look in her eyes.
Jin Huang's mouth slowly fell open. "What...?"
Her process continued with her saying, "Please begin the refinement."
With that, the furnace ignited by itself, a powerful pill flame sparking into existence using her active mana as fuel. She politely asked it to lower the temperature and add spiritual water, and so another small vial floated upward as the flame weakened itself just a bit.
From that vial, a precise amount of spiritual water was poured into the furnace. The whole time, Ao Yueyan didn't lift a finger. Everything happened as per her request.
Jin Huang stared at her in utter confusion. "Is this what it is to be a true bigshot? Even inanimate objects bend over backwards to serve you?"
He suddenly found himself feeling as though this wasn't fair or just.
The crowd, however, was captivated by Ao Yueyan method of alchemy.
"The Pill Fairy's control has improved again!"
"That's the Spiritual Command Art!"
"She's controlling multiple objects simultaneously!"
"Her mana is so precise..."
Even several older alchemists watched with admiration.
Jin Huang looked from Ao Yueyan's elegant but minimalistic technique, to Mo Kuang's wildly violent methods. Then his eyes found Song Mei and Lin Fan, who were moving through the steps rather quickly. He finally looked to the masked girl, who also appeared to be doing everything right.
Everyone seemed to know what they were doing. Everyone except him.
He straightened up slowly and sighed, "This isn't gonna work."
For once, Jin Huang seemed genuinely troubled. He had watched them very carefully, but all he'd learned was that alchemy involved doing things he had no idea how to do.
"Fine," he sighed again, his eyes falling upon the blue tome.
Jin Huang opened the tome. Nothing happened at first, but then a soft blue glow spread across the pages, causing his vision to blur. Immediately afterward, the world disappeared from view and Jin Huang blinked to find his vision clear once more. Only, now, he was somewhere else, standing on his feet.
There was no stage, no audience, no Pill Tower and no sound. Only an endless golden place surrounding by thick white mist that rolled endlessly across the distant horizon, obscuring whatever might have existed beyond it.
Jin Huang slowly looked around, his voice echoing strangely, "Where am I? Did the others all see this?"
He looked down. Beneath his feet was a vast platinum floor, also stretching endlessly in every direction. It was polished so perfectly that his reflection could almost be seen upon its surface, but there was something engraved into it just below where he was standing.
A single word:
MANA.
Jin Huang stared at it. "Huh?"
Just then, above him, floating words magically appeared in the golden air, the hue of blue mana on them.
This was the formula for the Spring Nurturing Pill.
Lines of information appeared one after another, suspended in space like fragments of some ancient scripture.
Jin Huang tilted his head. "So that's the pill recipe?"
He reached toward one of the floating words, but his finger simply passed through it. The moment he touched it, however, information flooded into his mind.
Jin Huang froze, his eyes widened, the golden plane seemingly stretching endlessly around him.
The white mist shifted, the word 'MANA,' beneath his feet began to glow a similar blue color, and somewhere within that strange golden plane...
An indescribable kind of power awakened, rushing toward him from every direction. Jin Huang, still lost in his thoughts, was assailed by this power. It crashed into him, head first, then flowed down to each of his limbs before passing from the soles of his feet into the word 'MANA' beneath.
The platinum floor shook violently, then Jin Huang gasped.
The next instant, he was back on stage, looking around at the junior alchemists. He took a breath, blinking as his vision cleared once more.
"What the..."
He suddenly frowned, his mind possessing knowledge it didn't before. With furrowed brows, Jin Huang brought his hands up to his face and stared at them as he closed and opened them repeatedly. "I get it now..."
In Jin Huang's bright eyes was a brief flash of gold, while on his hands suddenly appeared a trace of blue aura- the aura of mana.
He stretched his hand out and various items on the table started levitating. The Dragonroot moved, the vials rose, the Azureleaf and Jade Dew Flower- everything reacted.
"Impossible!" Yuan Zhi practically leapt from his seat.
Herb Sage looked on in subdued shock, unable to believe what he was seeing.
Xiao Chen and Meng Lan exchanged glances, but were too stunned to even have a telepathic conversation. They kept looking, not daring to believe their eyes but desperately wanting to.
Zhao Kun stroked his beard and laughed slowly, "Ho, ho, ho! So this is what you were referring to earlier, Obsidian? You've made a large splash indeed. This is truly one for the history books."
Ximen Ming's eyes glistened, and he leaned forward ever so slightly as he stared at Jin Huang's eyes.
Likewise, Xia Yuyue and her husband, Wang Yijian, the Sect Master and Vice Sect Master of Eternal Forge Hall, were particularly focused on Jin Huang's hands. Wang Zhen, their son, looked over at them with a complex expression.
"Mother, Father, doesn't that look like-"
Xia Yuyue instantly silenced her son with a finger and a somewhat harsh shush. Wang Yijian frowned and, without looking at his son, said, "Say nothing, Zhen'er."
Other spectators were similarly taken aback and in disbelief.
"Doesn't that Jin Huang kid have no cultivation whatsoever? How the heck can he use mana?"
"Not just that, but look at what he's doing with it. He's making the ingredients and tools move!"
"And without commanding them!"
Hearing the crowd's cacophony, Jin Huang grinned as his other hand moved as well. The glow of mana encased the furnace before him, opening it up.
Laughingly, Jin Huang said to himself, "So this is alchemy? This is how to concoct a Spring Nurturing Pill? I can't believe it was this easy!"