The Extreme Alchemist of the Mighty Cauldron

Chapter 1625: Chapter 1722: Playing Dumb?

As the five-colored radiance emerged, one could see Long Zhixin’s eyes seemingly transforming into two whirlpools, with the shadows of various medicinal herbs ceaselessly circulating within them.

It appeared that these eyes had already perceived the herbs before her with utter clarity, missing not a single detail.

Moments later, Long Zhixin withdrew her gaze, paying no more attention to the herbs required for refining the Heavenly Human Pill, for her eyes had already foreseen what needed to be done next, leaving only the task for Long Zhixin’s hands to complete.

Huang Hanqing, witnessing this scene, couldn’t help but marvel silently. With his experience, it was clear to him that Long Zhixin had employed a unique Pupil Skill that assisted in Pill Refining.

Pill Refiners’ Pupil Skills are quite rare, among which the Micro Gold Pupil is perhaps the most widely known.

The Micro Gold Pupil allows the observation of the herbs’ tempering process within the Pill Furnace during Pill Refining, facilitating timely adjustments by the Pill Refiner and significantly increasing the success rate of Pill Refining.

However, despite its practical advantages, the Micro Gold Pupil also has significant drawbacks. For instance, it places an enormous strain on the Pill Refiner’s physical strength and is only able to observe the refinement of lower-tier Pills. When refining fourth-grade Pills or those of higher tiers, the Micro Gold Pupil loses its effectiveness because the herbs often undergo various changes and reactions during the tempering process.

And the Micro Gold Pupil can only see the more superficial aspects.

Thus, it is almost unheard of for Pill Refiners above the rank of Four Cauldrons to use the Micro Gold Pupil Pupil Skill in their Pill Refining.

“Using this Pupil Skill to discern all the herbs and clearly see the proportions between them saves quite a bit of time. This Long Family girl really does have some skills,” thought Huang Hanqing to himself, nodding inwardly.

Elsewhere, Xu Yanbing took a different approach; he didn’t start by kindling the Soul Commanding Pill Fire to heat the Pill Furnace, but instead dived straight into sorting the herbs.

Given the hundreds of herbs, even an experienced Pill Refiner would need to meticulously sort and discern every herb before commencing Pill Refining. Otherwise, any mistake in the herbs could make Pill production impossible.

Clearly, Xu Yanbing did not possess a Pupil Skill as powerful as Long Zhixin’s, which could accomplish this task in a few breaths, so he had to do it himself.

But he hadn’t started by releasing the Soul Commanding Pill Fire to preheat the Pill Furnace, which was somewhat illogical. If you are sorting the herbs, why not simultaneously release the Soul Commanding Pill Fire to preheat the Pill Furnace? This would be making reasonable use of time.

Yet Xu Yanbing did not do this, and instead busied himself with sorting the herbs, showing no intention of preheating the Pill Furnace with the Soul Commanding Pill Fire beforehand.

Many silently sneered, thinking that Xu Yanbing was not only overconfident but also a show-off lacking the most basic Pill Refining experience.

How could such a person represent the Pill Alliance in a contest? Even though he possesses Innate Soulfire, it doesn’t necessarily mean his Pill Refining ability is sufficient to contend with Long Zhixin.

However, more people chose to watch and wait, not rushing to judge Xu Yanbing and wanting to see if he would display any astonishing skills later on. After all, Pill Refining had just begun, and it’s imprudent to completely dismiss someone over a single matter.

But subsequently, Xu Yanbing, through his own actions, successfully fueled further doubts among many.

Because Xu Yanbing was sorting the herbs at an excruciatingly slow pace, examining each herb one by one, and even after half an hour had passed, he had only looked at about thirty herbs.

At this rate, to sort through all one hundred-plus herbs would likely take close to four hours.

The Heavenly Human Pill competition had only allocated a total of 24 hours for the two of them, and Xu Yanbing was set to waste four hours on this basic step of sorting the herbs, which was frankly exasperating.

Even a Five Cauldrons Pill Refiner with modest experience wouldn’t be this slow in herb sorting. After all, anyone who could become a Five Cauldrons Pill Refiner would have a profound familiarity with various herbs, making their sorting process quick and agile.

Although he can’t scan with his eyes twice and be done with it like Long Zhixin, at least he wouldn’t be as dawdling as Xu Yanbing.

Huang Hanqing was getting impatient again, really wanting to go over and give Xu Yanbing a kick in the butt. What was he doing, dragging his feet at a time like this?

Long Zhixin cast a cold glance at Xu Yanbing, ignoring this guy’s somewhat strange behavior, as the temperature of the ancient black cauldron in front of him was already rising.

With a push of his foot, Long Zhixin sent three different medicinal herbs flying up from the ground, not needing to touch them with his hands, these herbs flew one after the other into the Pill Furnace.

Compared to the Ancient Skill Around Finger Gently that Su Xiaotong demonstrated in the previous round, Long Zhixin was a bit more brisk and decisive, but he was still not as fast as the Around Finger Gently.

After all, Around Finger Gently could put ten different kinds of herbs in at once, while Long Zhixin did not use this skill, so he could only put in three different herbs at a time, any more than that would be difficult to control.

Even so, Long Zhixin was still far ahead in terms of progress compared to the bizarre Xu Yanbing.

This guy was tirelessly and enthusiastically scrutinizing various medicinal herbs, completely unaware that he was falling behind.

This was driving many of the Pill Refiners in the Pill Alliance crazy, each one of them itching to rush forward to kick Xu Yanbing away and start Pill Refining themselves.

But Xu Yanbing was in no rush, not only was he not in a hurry, he even stopped to watch Long Zhixin with interest, nodding while he watched.

“Truly impressive,” Xu Yanbing praised, seemingly envious of Long Zhixin’s clean and dashing Pill Refining technique.

Huang Hanqing blew his beard and glared, unable to hold back from cursing, “You little rascal, do you have the leisure to watch others?”

Xu Yanbing nodded again and again, then, with reluctance, took a couple more glances before he continued to sort the herbs.

Huang Hanqing held his forehead; this kid was hopeless.

“If he’s not in a hurry during the herb sorting phase, then that means he should be planning to catch up in terms of fire control,” Fang Lin mumbled to himself while sitting atop Tang Tower, watching Xu Yanbing’s actions.

The East Pole Heaven King pretended not to hear and remained in a jovial mood, while Dragon Haotian beside him was frowning continuously, feeling that although Xu Yanbing appeared somewhat silly, there was a sense of undiscovered depth to him.

Yet, deep down, he harbored a glimmer of hope that Xu Yanbing would indeed turn out to be nothing but a pretty pillow—a pushover—and in that case, Long Zhixin’s victory would be pretty much guaranteed.

Four hours passed just like that.

At Long Zhixin’s station, it was bustling with excitement as he had progressed to the step of smelting the herbs.

And at Xu Yanbing’s station, he had merely finished sorting through all the herbs.

“Finally, time to start,” Xu Yanbing said to himself, walking up to the half-ruined Pill Furnace before him, looking at this almost discarded Pill Furnace that he’d not used many times, and grinned.

“Old pal, you better hold on, don’t fall apart too quickly.”

ps: Second update here, continuing to write. It’s much colder in my hometown than in Chongqing…

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