Meng Jia reacted a little as he was started to fall asleep. From Xiao Xuefeng, he had learned that both these kids had already competed with each other by refining a Frozen Heart Pill. And here they were again. This could be interesting, his only student against Guest Elder Xiao's only disciple. To be honest, he had no confidence in his student's victory but he had been surprised before.

The crowd got overexcited. Both alchemists had announced the same pill at the same moment.

"Well, it makes sense. It's the most difficult pill under Human rank."

"Yes, I hear that you must use all the Five Golden Elixir Principles to be able to refine it."

"Well, they won't really use the Cauldron Maintenance as they both have the standard cauldron and furnace. But apart from that, yes. I tried to refine it once and it turned out 64%, very mediocre. Yet, I had used everything I got."

"Do you think Chen Guo can even make it?"

"Well, he's only a 1-star Earth alchemist, but he was able to make Pure and True Essence pills, so he should be barely able to have a success. On the other hand, Mei Hua is the direct disciple of Xiao Xuefeng, I think she could refine a Pure pill if she were to give it her all."

"But Chen Guo only made Low-Level Qi Gathering Pills. He may just have trained exclusively on these, hence his good results."

Technically, they weren't too far off with this remark. But Cao Yun had also trained with the Cold Blood Clotting Pill, and he had already refined the Frozen Heart Pill. But at that time, he had used Xiao Xuefeng's refinement as a model.

-

Zhuge Si was also a bit surprised but this was within his expectations. This pill was indeed the hardest to refine.

"Fine, it's a little unexpected but it seems that both of our contestants will be competing on the Frozen Heart Pill. At least, as the difficulty is the same, no one could claim a disadvantage."

The fact that a 5-star Earth alchemist competed with a 1-star one was already a huge disadvantage, but Zhuge Si omitted this detail.

"My Dragon's Fire Faction will now bring the ingredients. We won't even have to wait as we had already prepared enough for at least two Frozen Heart Pills."

Zhuge Si went to give some orders to the faction members in charge of the ingredients. After several minutes, he came back in front of the crowd while Cao Yun and Mei Hua were staring at each other with complicated gazes.

"Each contestant can now look at the ingredients and determine whether or not everything is there."

While he was speaking, two faction members brought the ingredients toward both contestants. Mei Hua quickly looked at them, but since it had been prepared by our own faction, she wasn't too vigilant and found no flaw whatsoever. On the other side, Cao Yun took a lot of time to look at every single ingredient.

"What is he doing? How long do we have to wait?"

"Shut up! His opponents have prepared the ingredients, of course he needs to be careful. If you had a duel with someone and they gave you their sword, wouldn't you be suspicious of it?"

"Well, he just had to buy the ingredients himself then!" The disciple who got reprimanded tried to save some face.

"Don't you know that the Dragon's Fire Faction made sure that he could not buy anything within the market? And he's a first-year so he can't even go outside to get the ingredients himself. Think before you speak, and learn to be patient." The reprimanded disciple decided that he should be quiet when his senior was with him and waited with a bit more patience.

Under the umbrella, the sleeping Meng Jia still had exceptional ears. When he heard this conversation, a sudden realization struck him. He had asked his student to train on some recipes, but he never actually asked whether he had the ingredients or not. This whole ordeal was maybe his fault. What if Cao Yun was fighting against such odds just because he couldn't buy the ingredients?

Meng Jia wasn't exactly right. However, he began to feel somewhat guilty. Cao Yun was his first and sole student, and yet he had not taken good care of him. After this competition, he would have to rectify this.

-

Finally Cao Yun spoke. "I'm satisfied with these ingredients."

"Good!" Zhuge Si went back to the crowd. "Friends, sorry for the delay. Our contestants took a lot of time to look at the ingredients. But now the competition can..."

"Wait!" Mei Hua interrupted her senior. "Brother Chen. What about exchanging our ingredients? You must feel uneasy competing with someone else's ingredients after all. I can swear that mine are of great quality."

"Junior Sister?!" Zhuge Si was outraged. With Meng Ji overviewing the competition, he had not dared to mess with the ingredients. However, he had made sure that Cao Yun's were of far lesser quality and far harder to prepare.

"Senior Zhuge, I think that this gesture of good-will can prove to everyone here the fairness of our faction. Unless there's a problem with Chen Guo's ingredients, why couldn't we exchange?"

"You..." Zhuge Si had known right away he had made a mistake when he saw Mei Hua's face, but it was too late by that point. "You're perfectly right, Junior Sister." He went back to the crowd while the faction members who had brought the ingredients exchanged them.

"Our Mei Hua is very fair. To appease the mind of her opponent, she asked to exchange their ingredients. Now we can officially start our competition! The two contestants can begin!"

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Cao Yun was moved by Mei Hua's gesture. It was obvious that his ingredients were very bad compared to hers. There were even some blood residues particularly difficult to remove on the Embalming Lotus Leaves. And they probably stayed under the sun a little bit too long. They were still usable but their quality would drop significantly. Sadly, even though his was the referee, Meng Jia couldn't have said anything as the ingredients were still good to use. If Cao Yun had asked him, he could have produced the perfect ingredients in a few minutes. But Cao Yun thought that he was already bothering him by keeping the pills he made during training, so he did not even think about asking.

-

The first of the Five Golden Elixir Principles was Cauldron Maintenance. Since they both had the exact same cauldron and furnace and that they appeared perfectly new, there was nothing to do on that front.

The second one was Ingredients Preservation, the art of preserving as much of the medicinal essence from the ingredients as possible during their preparation. They both looked like cook, mincing, crushing, kneading, washing and so on.

It took at least half an hour as they were both very careful. Mei Hua had the hardest time. The ingredients were even in a worse state that she had imagined. If Cao Yun had worked with these, he would have taken at least one hour or maybe two, and the result would have been lower no matter how careful or talented he was.

Apart from the alchemists and a few craftsmen, the disciples got visibly bored by this long and tedious process. They all knew it was a vital step so they did not complain but their minds went elsewhere many times.

"Look! Chen Guo is igniting his flame!"

"He finished first?! Has he rushed?!"

"No, he was very thorough. It's just that his ingredients were of better quality and easier to prepare."

"So the Dragon's Fire Faction really tried to be unfair."

"Of course, they did. I don't know the real stakes but no matter what they are, the Dragon's Fire Faction would never want to lose in alchemy."

"The real stakes?! But they said it was about pills, no?"

"You're too naive! Zhuge Si also said this was about a 'little' agreement between their factions. Do you think it's as simple as that?"

The young disciple finally seemed to understand something. "Is it about Chen Guo not being able to sell his pills anymore?"

When they heard this, the inner disciples from earlier began to panic, but the little plump man calmed them down. "Remember, if he loses, the three True Essence pills will go to the Dragon's Fire Faction, so we'll be able to buy them."

"But Chen Guo promised to sell to us, will the Dragon's Fire Faction honor this promise?"

"... that..." They could indeed sell it to anyone, not necessarily them.

"Look, Mei Hua is igniting her flame!"

"Finally!"

For mere cultivators, watching a refinement process was more fun than just the preparation. Even though they couldn't see what was going on in the cauldrons, they could see the flame change and almost dance as the alchemists worked on it. This was always a beautiful show, and the tension in each alchemist's face was also very exciting.

-

Mei Hua had overheard all the conversations and she was starting to really doubt the stakes of this competition. She also remembered what Cao Yun had told her earlier. Her faction had hurt one of his fellow faction members. She had no idea what was really going on between her faction and her friend, but it disturbed her. Her mind was even more chaotic than the time her little sister got hurt. Because this time, it was the very refinement process she was working on that was the problem in her mind. So how could she properly focus on it?

The third principle, Flame Control, was the last one that was visible to mere cultivators. To perceive the last two, they just needed to wait for the result as they could not see what was going on in the cauldrons.

Both alchemists were handling their flame expertly. Mei Hua was a matter of course. On the other hand, Cao Yun's mastery surprised even Zhuge Si, it was no wonder he had been able to produce such top quality pills.

Cao Yun was using his personal technique 'Shen Visualization'. He had refined this pill before so he already had some intuitions about it. By circulating his Yi and Zhi harmonized by his Shen, the cauldron appeared in his sea of consciousness. It was transparent and he could see all the ingredients by using his smell and his hearing. Compared to what he had imagined, there were some discrepancies but nothing too unexpected.

However he realized that even by 'seeing' the inside of the cauldron, this pill was still very hard to refine. The Yang of his fire was clashing with many ingredients and he had to control it with utmost care. While he was already using his mind cultivation to use his technique, he also had to use it to focus on the flame and deduce the right way to alter it at almost every instant.

Meng Jia seemed as though he was sleeping. But in truth, he was fully immersed in this battle. Just by using his smell and his hearing, he was able to know what was happening. He had not the same technique as Cao Yun, but he could vaguely picture what was occurring in his mind.

All of a sudden, he opened both his eyes before closing them. No one had noticed. In this moment, he had received a telepathic message.

"Your student is even better than I initially thought. Too bad alchemy is not his main objective or I would have stolen him from you."

This was the voice of Xiao Xuefeng. As Meng Jia could not talk telepathically, he could not answer but he had to admit that this student had surprised him more than once. At first, he accepted to teach him because he owed Xiao Xuefeng. Gradually, he got to really enjoy this little student and his fast progress. What a pity that he still didn't consider alchemy his main occupation...

Xiao Xuefeng had been warned of this duel earlier today when Mei Hua asked her to cancel her training. Since the beginning of the year, she had trained every single day with her. Right now, she only needed to advance to Mortal Warrior to be able to make a Pure 1-star Human pill. She was at the pinnacle of 5-star Earth alchemy. Sadly Xiao Xuefeng could see the doubt in her mind. Usually she enjoyed alchemy but this refinement seemed to be painful for her.

As a guest elder, Xiao Xuefeng was really busy, so she had no idea about what had transpired in the Wubei Merit Market, but she could vaguely guess the stakes of the duel from the conversations she overheard. For at least an hour she had been floating above the clouds, invisible to the eyes of the disciples down below.

With her spiritual senses, she also felt the wound of Zhao Fei who was wearing the same uniform as Cao Yun. It didn't take long for her to understand. Cao Yun seemed to be pretty smart, he had no reason to accept an alchemy competition with the biggest alchemy faction while he was still learning. Most likely, he had been coerced into doing it.

Even though Cao Yun was not her disciple, she found him very interesting and wanted to see him progress. Always protecting him would not be the right course of action, but if some disciples were to break the rules in order to get to him, she should still intervene.

With her spiritual senses, Xiao Xuefeng could literally see what was going on in the cauldrons. The more Cao Yun refined, the more astounded she became. He seemed to adapt to what was actually happening in the cauldron. It was as though he was also using a low level of spiritual senses. First he had shocked her by being able to lie in her presence and today he looked like he had some kind of spiritual senses. Xiao Xuefeng was really wondering what kind of mind cultivation he was using.

-

The refinement process was finally over. Both contestants finished at almost the same time. Despite his small lead during the preparation of the ingredients, Cao Yun had taken a bit longer during the refinement process.

As soon as the lids of the cauldron opened, both pills flew into Meng Jia's hands. He examined them for a long time and so did Xiao Xuefeng.

The crowd was hanging on his lips, dying to know the result of the duel. Even Zhuge Si was a little worried. Being a 1-star Human alchemist he could see that both pills were of good quality, but they were too far to judge them properly.