This was the sound of Elder Dan’s voice, and Chen Xiang would never forget this even in his death. Her words made everybody in the 8th Dan Courtyard shudder. The Extreme Dan Courtyard consisted of eight Smaller Courtyards, and above these was the Extreme Dan King Courtyard. Only Elder Dan had the qualifications to enter this courtyard!
“If you can not win, then you will give all the original benefits you would receive from the Extreme Martial Sect over to Yao Haisheng, how about it?” Elder Dan said with a sneer.
Chen Xiang lightly smiled in response. “Alright, If I can get first not only will I get to visit a nice place, but also receive an apprentice.”
“You can never win! I earned first place for the last five consecutive years! You still have a long way to go.” Yao Haisheng coldly smiled, and it was as if he was foreseeing Chen Xiang’s miserable defeat.
The matter of Elder Dan making things difficult for Chen Xiang was known to everyone in the Extreme Martial Sect. But now that Chen Xiang had entered the Inner Sect and received abundant resources, Elder Dan actually tried to cut these supplies off. Nobody expected that Chen Xiang would actually readily agree to such a thing.
“Youths are always like this, they can never admit defeat. Someday they will suffer and pay the price.” Wu Kaiming, after learning of this bet could not help but lament, “I say Elder Dan, this brat clearly intended to please you by openly gifting two Azure Profound Fruits, why would you still act against him?”
“Humph.” Elder Dan coldly snorted and said, “This brat has not suffered any losses by his supposed gift. When I refine the Foundation Building Dan, I need to expend other additional materials for refining. His Azure Profound Fruit was the rarest on the list which I had been looking for quite a long time to obtain. But I failed to find it and could only resign myself to accept this gift! If he really wanted to please me, he would not have requested me to refine two Foundation Building Dans for his pair of little sweethearts!”
When Wu Kaming heard this and he really thought about it once more, and he realized that regarding this matter, Elder Dan had indeed suffered a loss.
“I will definitely make him willingly bow his head towards me. If he admits his mistakes to me and apologizes, I can even take him as my apprentice!” After Elder Dan finished speaking, she flew away.
"I'm afraid that this feisty girl will never get married." Wu Kaiming helplessly smiled.
The Alchemy Competition would start after three days and was held in the 8th Smaller Dan Courtyard. During these three days Chen Xiang secluded himself and went into closed door training. Others thought that he was preparing for the competition, but they were very wrong. He was studying the spirit veins section in the Refining Weapon Scroll.
“Sister Meiyao, Sister Youyou, regarding these types of spirit veins you two should understand better than I! These things are very profound and can produce all sorts of bizarre effects. What do you think would happen if I engrave these spirit veins onto a dan, or during alchemy internally carve the spirit veins?”
Inside the ring Su Meiyao and Bai Youyou were stunned speechless. They had never thought about such a thing. In their opinion, alchemy was just the process of congealing the dan by fusing various types of herbs, nothing more, nothing less.
After Su Meiyao took a cold breath, she said, “I do not know but you should try! But in order to do so, you would need a very strong divine sense in order to quickly carve the spirit veins while congealing the dan. You would need an even more powerful divine sense if you want to carve it inside the dan.”
“Correct, furthermore you would need to carve suitable spirit veins! My teacher once said that there were some spirit runes which had the same effects as dans in ancient times. If such spirit runes were to be engraved onto the dantian, it would allow one to quickly gather a large amount of True Qi. If it was attached onto someone’s arm, that part would gain fearsome strength.” Bai Youyou said.
Chen Xiang was secretly elated by the news. If he was truly successful in creating spirit runes onto dans, it would help him improve the effect of dans by several times in the future without having to use precious spirit herbs! However, he currently had too little understanding of the spirit runes.
Three days past but Chen Xiang was left without anything to show for it. These spirit runes were just too complicated and required a huge amount of mental power to analyze, memorize and grasp the information contained within them which was simply impossible to do in such a short period of time.
This alchemy competition was just a small scale event held once a year. However a large grand competition was held every ten years. At that time, not only would all the alchemists in the Extreme Martial Sect participate, but also alchemists throughout the entire Extreme Martial Province would travel here to participate in this major event.
Many people were uninterested in watching the process of an alchemy competition because it was relatively tedious. Unless it was a grand competition, in that case the scene was not only spectacular but also lively, furthermore occasionally there were some funny scenes that occurred.
“Elder brother Chen, you can do it! We will be waiting for you here 10 days later!” This time around Yun Xiaodao was concerned about Chen Xiang because of the giant bet. Although he said he would definitely win the competition, if he lost, he would be losing big time.
Elder Dan arrived and coldly stated, “Chen Xiang, your alchemy process will be supervised by me! I heard that you had won 1000 True Qi Dan and this is to prevent you from cheating, which is probably the only way you can win!”
Chen Xiang helplessly sighed, “Elder Dan, there are only 700 of those True Qi Dans remaining. I gave 100 to Yun Xiaodao and sold 200 to Zhu Rong and Zhang De. Here, I’ll give you the remaining 700 True Qi Dan for custody so you cannot accuse me of cheating.”
Chen Xiang readily passed over the seven boxes which made Elder Dan surprised. When others found out that Chen Xiang had 700 True Qi Dan on him, they could not help but stare at him with envy. Yet despite this, they did not dare to even think of fighting Chen Xiang. Even though there was a great disparity in their strength, if the Extreme Martial Sect were to find out about their actions their peaceful days would come to an end.
Elder Dan opened the jade boxes and confirmed there was 700 True Qi dans inside them. Afterwards, she placed them inside her own storage bracelet, only at the Elder level would one have such a sophisticated and beautiful storage equipment.
Elder Dan also wanted to take a look at how Chen Xiang planned to refine the True Qi Dan in the end. She also did not believe that Chen Xiang would be able to refine them at his young age.
The competition started as each person got their own personal room which was in turn guarded by a disciple. Moreover, their entire alchemy process were being transmitted to the Elder Courtyard which was being intensely supervised by a few old men so that no one could win by cheating.
Chen Xiang learned that the fastest someone had refined a set of True Qi Dan was half an hour. However, if he used the Brilliant Flame Dragon Furnace, he would be able to refine two sets of True Qi Dan herbs in half an hour. In order to make it less shocking, he intended to tone it down and refine one set of herbs per hour, plus like this he was able to be more relaxed.
Elder Dan opened Chen Xiang’s Brilliant Flame Dragon Furnace and apart from being very beautiful and forged by good material, she did not find anything strange about it. The only person who should know about its uses was the Brilliant Furnace's chosen master, otherwise Meng Bo would have never casually taken out this alchemy furnace and use it as gambling stakes.
“Elder Dan, how long does it generally take you to refine one set of True Qi Dan herbs? Also, how many dans can you produce in one set?” Chen Xiang asked.
“The fastest I can refine would be two sets of herbs in one and half hour. The highest amount of dans in the furnace would be six dans, but then the time of refining would be extended.” Elder Dan truthfully answered. She was also relatively proud of these results. At her level, alchemists were not always refining high level dans, sometimes the Sect lacked low level dans and they needed to act as well.
When refining high level dans, they would go into seclusion. Elder Dan had not gone into seclusion for many years because she had been collecting herbs.
The herbs used in this competition was paid for by the Extreme Martial Sect, but if they failed to refine anything they needed to repay the Sect with crystal stones. That was why everyone was being even more careful than usual when refining. They did not dare to refine too quickly because they fear its repercussions, but Chen Xiang had the heaven defying Brilliant Flame Dragon Furnace. If he intended to go fast, he would go fast. If he wanted to approach the limit of his refinement speed, he would be able to refine three sets of True Qi Dan herbs in half an hour!
Elder Dan saw Chen Xiang skillfully dealing with the herbs without even taking a glance at them, while at the same time processing multiple sets at once. The amount for each set was uniform and not the least bit off or different. His speed was so quick that it made people suck their tongues. Only people who had vast amounts of experience in refining would be able to do such a thing, even inside the Extreme Martial Sect only a few old men could do this.
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