Chapter 329: Day One of Imperial Competition [3]
"Hah! Look at that woman from the Tang Clan estate! Is she sleeping?!" a spectating cultivator in the grandstands scoffed.
"Everyone else is already burning through their third herb!"
"Heh, you guys know nothing. She is Tang Yilan, the Matriarch of the Tang clan"
"Just look at her hands!"
Yilan opened her eyes.
A cool, commanding glint flashed within her dark blue gaze.
Without opening the box by hand, she flicked her slender wrist.
The wooden lid hovered upward, and twenty distinct spirit herbs lifted into the air simultaneously, suspended in a perfect, rotating orbital circle above her unaligned furnace.
Fwoosh!
With a light wave of her palm, a bright, pure azure flame erupted beneath her hearth.
Yilan didn’t feed the herbs into the furnace one by one like the others, instead, she split her Spiritual Flame into twenty individual, hair-thin needles of fire!
The fiery needles pierced through the floating herbs in unison.
In a matter of seconds, impurities burned away into fine gray dust, leaving behind twenty pristine, glowing droplets of liquid spirit essence that drifted smoothly into the crystal vials at her side.
Ding!
Yilan pressed the first batch of vials into her platform’s Pill-Testing Quartz Stone.
The white quartz flashed with a brilliant, blinding light, displaying a hovering array numeral that caused the grandstands to go dead silent:
Extraction Purity: 97.8%
"Ninety-seven point eight percent?!" an imperial evaluator gasped, nearly dropping his record scroll.
"And she extracted twenty opposing Tier-3 herbs in a single breath?!"
Down on the arena floor, neighboring competitors looked over at Yilan’s station, their jaws dropping in utter, helpless disbelief.
The sheer gap in flame control, spiritual sense, and raw composure was like comparing an ancient grandmaster to toddlers blindly playing with kindling.
Up in the grandstands, the roaring crowd erupted into a tumultuous wave of exclamations and wild cheering.
"Hahaha! As expected of Matriarch Tang!" a local merchant from Thousand Waves City shouted, slapping his knee in pure delight.
"Did those out-of-town country bumpkins really think our city’s top figures were just for show?!"
"That’s right!" an elderly citizen beside him sneered, crossing his arms with smug pride.
"Just a moment ago, those ignorant fools from the neighboring small cities were running their mouths! Where is that arrogance now?!"
Hearing the local populace’s mocking laughter, the visiting cultivators and spectators from the outlying cities under Thousand Waves City’s jurisdiction blushed furiously with embarrassment.
The very same people who had been arrogantly mocking Yilan just moments ago kept dead silent, burying their heads low between their shoulders, terrified to catch anyone’s eye after being so thoroughly face-slapped by her godlike demonstration.
Up in the private pavilion, Shen Yu let out a low, satisfied chuckle.
His hand casually rested on the soft, silk-draped slope of Meng Yan’s thigh beneath her dress, making her give a subtle, breathless start as a soft blush bloomed on her cheeks.
"She’s putting on quite a show, isn’t she?" Shen Yu smirked, his golden eyes shining with deep, possessive pride.
Down below, Yilan, as if sensing his intense gaze from high above, subtly tilted her head toward the elite viewing pavilion.
Catching his eyes, a radiant, fleeting smile touched her lips, a sight that left half the surrounding spectators breathless, before she turned back to her furnace, calmly preparing to clear the remaining eighty herbs in record time.
With the first twenty herbs perfectly extracted in mere moments, Yilan did not even pause to let the arena recover its breath.
Her slender, jade-like hands danced gracefully in the air, weaving a profound set of hand seals.
The invisible domain of her Spiritual Sense flared once more, far stronger this time.
Whoosh!
The wooden chest at her station shuddered violently.
Then, in a spectacle that caused the remaining breath to be collectively sucked from the lungs of a hundred thousand spectators, the remaining eighty spirit herbs flew out of the box simultaneously!
They hovered above her unaligned furnace in four distinct, rotating rings.
The ambient clashing energies of ice, fire, lightning, and poison violently tried to tear each other apart, but Yilan’s Spiritual Sense locked them into absolute stasis.
"Madness! Absolute madness!" an elderly Golden Core alchemist in the stands shrieked, clutching his chest as if he were about to cough up blood.
"To control twenty was a miracle... but eighty opposing herbs at once?! If her mind slips for even a fraction of a second, the resulting explosion will level at least 50 meters of area around her!"
"Is she trying to commit suicide?!" another evaluator cried out, stepping back instinctively as cold sweat drenched his robes.
High in the private pavilion, Shen Yu’s smirk only deepened. He knew better.
The technique she was executing, the Supreme Flame Threading Art, was an ancient, peak earth-grade alchemy technique he had acquired during a fortuitous encounter in his past life.
It was the absolute most treasured alchemy secret in his possession, a technique so profound that most grandmasters spent centuries just trying to comprehend its basic principles.
Before leaving for Crimson Iron City, he had directly imparted it to Yilan.
In just a single month, she had not only grasped its complex fundamentals but had fully mastered the first stage of the technique, an extraordinary feat, considering the art comprised four profound stages in total.
Her terrifying speed of comprehension was largely thanks to the bloodline she had awakened, the rare and venerable Verdant Sun Crow Bloodline.
The ancient lineage granted her near-godlike comprehension and intuition over anything related to the Dao of Alchemy, making complex flame manipulation as natural to her as breathing.
Down below, Yilan’s azure Spiritual Flame flared with blinding intensity, illuminating the entire stage.
With a delicate, mesmerizing flick of her wrists, the singular flame instantly fractured into eighty hair-thin, blindingly bright fiery needles.
Swish! Swish! Swish!
The eighty needles struck simultaneously, piercing the core of every single floating herb.
The violent elemental energies didn’t even have a chance to react before their impurities were incinerated into fine, falling ash.
The sky rained gray dust around her platform, while eighty pristine, radiant droplets of essence liquid descended gently into her waiting crystal vials like a shower of falling stars.
The entire process took less than the time it takes to brew a cup of tea.
Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!
Yilan gracefully swept her sleeves, slotting the entire batch of vials into the Pill-Testing Quartz Stone array.
The massive white quartz trembled violently under the influx of pure spiritual energy before projecting a golden array numeral that illuminated the entire amphitheater.
Final Average Purity: 98.9%
Time Elapsed: One-Tenth of an Incense Stick
-x-
A/N:
Weekly PS: 3 / 80
Monthly GT: 5 / 30
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