I stood on stage in the middle of the Palace’s Grand Auditorium, feet spread shoulder-width apart, hands clasped behind my back, chin held high. I wasn’t a large man—barely taller than Lau CoiHung, who stood a couple of places to my right—but I needed to give an impression of solidity.

This was a show—both for the hundreds of young alchemists in the stands around us, and for the elders who were watching from the shadows. I needed to convince everyone that I deserved my position as our team’s leader.

For most people, this wasn’t even a question. The quality of my pills was borderline legendary, and I had been able to train the Palace’s top young alchemists to concoct items of a similar caliber. I was able to use my ‘blessing’ to uncover new recipes through the study of herbal teas, and I had shared these recipes around, helping all of the Palace’s high-level alchemists gain enlightenments. If I wasn’t fit to be our group’s leader, then who was?

There was just one small issue: I was a low-level Martial King, while Mandakh was already a mid-level Emperor.

The competition against the other two Palaces was only five years away. Several of the elders weren’t convinced that I would even be able to reach Martial Emperor before then, and even if I did, it was unlikely that I would have much time to study Rank 6 alchemy. So, there were rumblings that the position of leader should be handed over to Mandakh, while I assumed the role of our group’s trainer.

I could understand this sentiment, and under normal circumstances, I might have even considered stepping aside voluntarily. I didn’t need the validation that would come from leading our team to victory, and I would have been happy to delegate the task to someone else.

Considering that our group’s leader would be the one to face Jon, however, I couldn’t afford to stand on the sidelines.

So, I stood on the stage of the Palace’s Grand Auditorium, both feet firmly planted on my podium, and waited to hear how the elders would decide our team’s final roster. Though, from the way the auditorium had been arranged, I already had an idea of what they were planning.

Five platforms sat atop the stage, with each platform holding one of the alchemists who had placed in the top five during that internal competition 10 years earlier. Mandakh stood on the far left, and Lau CoiHung stood to his right. I had been placed on the fourth podium, denoting my previous rank.

Once everyone was in position, the voice of a hidden elder boomed throughout the auditorium. “10 years ago, the five youths in front of you proved that they were the best alchemists the Palace had to offer. Much has changed since then, but if you wish to claim one of their positions as your own, then you must prove yourself worthy of it.”

The platform to my left lit up, illuminating the young man who had previously placed fifth.

“Does anyone believe themselves more capable than Pill King Leung?”

Almost immediately, one of the young women I had been training jumped onto the stage. During that first competition, she had only been a Martial Grandmaster, limiting her ability to compete against the older Martial Lords. Since then, however, she had been training diligently and was a shoo-in for a spot on our team.

“Demonstrate your abilities.”

That was it. That was all the guidance she was given.

The young woman took a moment to look around the stage, but other than the five of us who were standing on our podiums, there was nothing—no herbs, no pill furnace.

For a normal person, this would have been a problem. How was someone supposed to demonstrate their skills without the proper tools or resources? For a woman who had spent the last decade immersed in alchemy, however, the idea of going anywhere without herbs and a furnace was unthinkable.

Reaching into the storage bag at her waist, the young woman pulled out a workbench, a custom pill furnace, and a set of twelve herbs. Then, working carefully, she proceeded to concoct a five-patterned Rank 5 Chained Movements Pill.

“Pill King Leung, are you capable of rivaling this pill?”

On the fifth podium, Leung cupped his fists and bowed to the middle of the auditorium. “No, Elder.”

“Very well. Step down.”

After bowing once more—this time, to the young woman who had defeated him—Leung stepped off the stage and took a seat in the audience.

The elder next gave everyone a chance to prove themselves more capable than this newest member of our group, but when no one showed any interest in stepping forward, the light beneath the woman’s podium faded to darkness. Then, my podium burst alight.

“Does anyone believe themselves more capable than Pill King Su?”

No one moved.

After a full minute of silence, the light of my podium faded, and the elder moved on.

The young man on the third podium was challenged by the Lord who had placed sixth in the previous competition. These two were more evenly matched, but this time, the challenger was defeated, allowing the young man to retain his position.

When no new challengers stepped forward, the light of the third podium faded, and Lau CoiHung’s podium lit up. Unsurprisingly, though, no one was willing to step forward to challenge either her or Mandakh, so the rest of our team was left intact.

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The composition of our team had been finalized after the concoction of only three pills.

Why had the elders gone to so much trouble—packing all the Palace’s young alchemists into this auditorium—for such an anemic competition? If they had only wanted to find out who the five best alchemists were, then this competition hadn’t even been necessary. I could have told them which five of us to select weeks ago.

No, like so many things, this competition was a show. Everyone was given an opportunity to challenge for a spot on our team, and they either chose not to compete, or they chose to compete and failed. This ensured that no one had any grounds to complain that this selection had been unfair.

Why not have a real competition, though? Why not have everyone concoct the best pills they could and compare the results?

Because the Palace was full of spies.

If such a competition were to take place, the moment it was over, news would quickly spread to the other two Palaces. 10 years ago, this wasn’t much of a problem. At that point, the final contest was still 15 years away, and anything our opponents learned would be out of date long before it was relevant. With that contest now rapidly approaching, however, allowing the other Palaces to know exactly what our alchemists were capable of would have been a mistake.

This competition had been set up so that no one needed to do anything more than concoct a pill that was slightly more powerful than their opponent’s. Because of this, no one had any way of knowing exactly how skilled our alchemists truly were.

So far, at least. There was still one last thing that needed to be decided.

“10 years ago,” boomed the elder, “Pill Emperor Mandakh proved himself the most capable of our Palace’s young alchemists. Therefore, the elders have decided that he will lead our team against the other two Palaces. Does anyone object to this decision?”

Several heads turned in my direction as I stepped off my podium, cupped my fists, and bowed to the center of the auditorium. “I wish to challenge for the position of our team’s leader.”

“Demonstrate your abilities.”

After nodding to the elder in the corner of the room, I reached into my storage bag and pulled out a workbench, several herbs, and an ugly, battered pill furnace.

There was a round of murmurs at this—both at my choice of herbs and at my choice of furnace—but I ignored them.

Could I concoct a more valuable pill than Mandakh? Yes. I had never seen Mandakh create anything better than a six-patterned Rank 5 pill. He could concoct Rank 6 pills, but his soul wasn’t strong enough to contain the energy of empowered Rank 6 herbs, so he struggled to imbue them with even a single pattern. I, meanwhile, had concocted a nine-patterned Rank 5 pill when I was still a mere Lord. Now that I was a King, making such pills was child’s play.

Did the Palace’s elders know all this? Yes. Yes, they did.

So, why had they decided to make Mandakh our leader? Wasn’t this just slapping themselves in the face?

The problem was that, in the final contest between the three Palaces, alchemists would only be allowed to concoct Rank 6 pills. It wouldn’t matter how nice of a Rank 5 pill I was able to make. If I couldn’t concoct a Rank 6 pill, then I wouldn’t even be allowed to compete.

Typically, to control the energy of Rank 6 herbs, alchemists either needed an Emperor-level will-lock or a peak three-star affinity in each of the types of energy their herbs contained. Without this, the moment the herbs’ medicinal energy was liberated from the surrounding toxins, it would dissipate into thin air.

I had only recently advanced to Martial King, so with only five years to go, whether or not I would be able to advance to Martial Emperor in time for the final contest was still an open question. Also, I had already told Chan—and thus, all the Palace’s elders—that I didn’t have the affinities necessary to concoct a Rank 6 pill without an Emperor’s will-lock.

This was why the elders had felt it was both safe and necessary to name Mandakh our group’s leader. He could concoct better Rank 6 pills than anyone in our group.

This was what the elders believed, at least.

After taking a minute to compose myself, I picked up my nine Rank 6 herbs and tossed them all into my furnace at once.

While Ancestor Wong had been a top-notch refiner, he clearly wasn’t too skilled with formations, because this new furnace of mine lacked even the most basic of fire qi formations. In a way, this was good, because it meant that I would eventually be able to inscribe it with my own Rank 9 formations. This was bad, however, because it meant that I would need to purify these Rank 6 herbs using nothing but my Martial King 1 cultivation base.

If necessary, I could have easily cleansed these herbs using one of the many fire seeds that were locked away in my inner world, but there was no need. During my recent seclusion, I had learned that imbuing a pill furnace with large chunks of one’s soul had some rather interesting side effects. This content belongs to N0velFire.ɴet

After stabilizing the nine herbs, I injected a thread of pill qi into the uneven metal plate that served as the top of the furnace.

With a normal furnace, this qi would have either been sucked into the inner chamber or dissipated into the aether. With this furnace, however, the qi was ripped from my control. Then, entirely independent of my will, it swirled around to form the shape of a basic Rank 5 Qi Gathering Formation, complete with a filter for pill qi.

This pseudo-formation wasn’t anywhere near as stable as a normal, carved formation, but it did what I needed it to do. It pulled in pill qi from the surrounding environment and funneled it into my furnace.

Taking hold of this energy, I directed it toward the herbs, melted their physical shells, and burned away their toxins.

This should have caused the medicinal energies of my herbs to dissipate. I had chosen a pill that only required herbs from the basic five elements, but I still only had high three-star affinities with these elements. This was close, but it shouldn’t have been enough to keep Rank 6 medicinal energy under control. I should have needed peak three-star affinities.

However, as I focused on keeping the medicinal energies from dissipating, a power that resonated with my soul welled up within the walls of my furnace, locking the herbs in place.

On its own, the fragment of my soul that now resided in the furnace wasn’t powerful enough to completely control the energy of Rank 6 herbs either. However, with the combination of both my affinities and my furnace, I was able to manipulate them freely.

Once all the herbs were perfectly cleansed, I worked together with my furnace to pull the energies together and meld them into the proper structure. Then, after imbuing this structure with a total of four patterns, I condensed it into a pill.

Could I have gone further? Possibly, but once the medicinal energies were empowered with the strength of four patterns, I was struggling to keep everything locked down. Going any further would have risked an explosion.

And, in any case, four was more than enough.

After placing the pill into a jade bottle and setting it down on my workbench, I gave a martial salute and bowed to a remote corner of the auditorium.

For several long moments, the room was entirely silent. Then, the elder’s voice boomed out once more. This time, however, it was somewhat strained. “Pill Emperor… Mandakh… are you… capable of rivaling this pill?”

Mandakh stepped forward and bowed–first to the center of the auditorium, then to me. “No, Elder. I am not.”

“Very well… The leader of our alchemy team will be Pill Emperor Su Fang. Does anyone object to this decision?”

The room, once more, returned to silence.

“Then, good luck, Emperor Su. May you do our Palace proud.”