“Speak. I’ll let you choose how we compete. You can choose what you’re best at.” Long Chen tossed the beast hide to him. “Of course, you can also choose the same one that I chose. That will be your only chance to draw with me.”

Long Chen’s confidence was finally starting to shake some of the divine families’ disciples. Was he really so assured? Or had he simply accepted his fate?

“As you’re the guest, I will leave the right to choose to you. You can choose any pill other than the Life and Death Reincarnation Pill. I will beat you at your strongest pill to show you how outclassed you are,” sneered Ye Qian, tossing the beast hide back to Long Chen.

Ye Qian had his own pride and confidence. Other than the Life and Death Reincarnation Pill, he was confident on everything else on the list.

“Fine. I didn’t want to pick because I don’t want people to say that I bullied you. But since you don’t want to pick either, we can have others pick.” Long Chen tossed the beast hide to the overseeing Elder. The Elder caught it, confused.

Long Chen suddenly threw out three small fruits. They landed amongst the distance crowd, smattering three people with blood-colored juice.

The three of them jumped and began wiping, only to find that their faces were already dyed red.

“This is the Blue Flower Blood Fruit! Long Chen, you…!”

This was a medicinal ingredient. The flower was pure blue, but the fruit it bore was as vividly red as fresh blood. Without a few months’ time, there was no way for the color to fade once it touched someone’s skin. It wasn’t poisonous, but it enraged them.

“Just now, you three were the ones shouting the loudest from the Divine Pill Division. Now I’ll give you a chance to get back at me. Each of you, pick a number between one and ten,” said Long Chen.

“Why should we?! Long Chen, you are provoking the Divine Pill Division!”

“Shut up. Pick a number,” ordered Ye Qian.

“Five.”

“Nine.”

“Three.”

The three of them extremely unwillingly picked a number. They hated Long Chen to the core now. Their only desire was for Ye Qian to trounce Long Chen.

“Five, nine, three. That’s what you three picked, and I wouldn’t possibly collude with you. Everyone can see their hatred for me. There’s no chance of me cheating, so this number wasn’t something anyone could have picked beforehand. Examiner, I’ll trouble you to read out the name of the five hundred ninety-third pill, either from the front or the back, up to you,” said Long Chen.

Everyone realized that Long Chen had done this to make sure that no one would have any advantage over the other when it came to the pill chosen.

The pills on the list were not listed according to their difficulty to refine. Instead, they were listed based on when they were discovered. As a result, the difficulty was random.

“The five hundred ninety-third pill is…” The examiner started to read, but his expression changed slightly. “The Hundred Dao Merger Spirit Pill.”

The name of this pill left most of the disciples confused, but the disciples of the Divine Pill Division sucked in cold gasps of air. That was an extremely difficult pill, requiring not just a powerful flame but also an enormous amount of Spiritual Strength. Other than the normal requirements for refining pills, it also required the ability to inject Heavenly Dao energy into the pill.

In truth, it could not be considered an ordinary pill. It was a pill that possessed an innate spirituality. The Heavenly Dao energy that nourished it during the refinement would result in it having its own spirituality, a spirituality that was qualitatively different from the spirituality bestowed upon a pill as a result of pill lightning.

“Long Chen, you’ll definitely lose. This Hundred Dao Merger Spirit Pill is not only one that I can refine, but it is also one of the pills that I excel most at refining. Let’s just see how you embarrass yourself.” Ye Qian laughed heartily.

“Senior apprentice-brother Ye Qian really is amazing. Not only can he refine the Hundred Dao Merger Spirit Pill, but he excels at it as well? How will this bumpkin compete with him?”

“How can such a person even be compared to senior apprentice-brother Ye Qian? That would be an insult to senior apprentice-brother Ye Qian.”

“Hehe, I want to see how Long Chen crawls on the ground and barks. Haha, thinking of how arrogant he was, I can’t wait.”

The Divine Pill Division’s disciples seemed to already be able to see the conclusion and were all growing excited.

Wan Qing shook her head. “Are all the disciples of the divine families so stupid? How are they going to survive the embarrassment if big brother Long Chen wins? Is it so satisfying to be slapped by your own words?”

“Cough, fairy Wan Qing, let me just correct your phrasing. It’s not all the disciples of the divine families, it’s the disciples of the Divine Pill Division,” said Shen Chengfeng awkwardly.

“Oh, sorry, I misspoke,” said Wan Qing. She truly had misspoken by lumping in Shen Chengfeng and the eighth legion with them.

Shen Chengfeng smiled. “It’s fine. The current Divine Pill Division is like this. Although they look to be flourishing, they’re too arrogant. We don’t like them, but they are alchemists that the divine families need, so we have to let them be arrogant. If you walk by them, they might be in a mood and curse you for being rude, as if not bowing to an alchemist is a huge offense. I’ve wanted to slap them myself in the past, but I don’t have Long Chen’s guts.”

The disciples of the Divine Pill Division were so arrogant that the other disciples avoided them. It wasn’t that they were afraid of them, but that they were worried they wouldn’t be able to hold themselves back from beating them.

Many of the regular disciples of the divine families were quite satisfied to see Long Chen slap their faces. While they didn’t believe that he could win, they wouldn’t mind seeing him slap their faces again.

A couple of disciples appeared carrying precious medicinal ingredients. They were then arranged on the platforms. There were over seven hundred ingredients, and three sets, indicating that both of them had three chances.

“Considering that you are refining the extremely difficult Hundred Dao Merger Spirit Pill, which takes a great deal of time to refine, and adding on the pressure of so many people being present, you would normally be given three days. However, there are too many Empyreans present which will naturally affect the surrounding Heavenly Dao energy. As a result, we have extended the timeline to five days. Are the two of you prepared? If you are, then we can start at any time.” The examiner took out a large hourglass. As long as the two of them nodded, the time would start counting down.

“Let’s start. The sooner we start, the sooner it’s over. After I take that orb, I still have more things to do,” said Long Chen.

Ye Qian sneered and didn’t reply. He simply nodded to the examiner.

“Then let the competition begin.”

The hourglass’s runes activated. Dark red sand began to fall from the top.

Ye Qian took a deep breath. He instantly seemed to become a different person. His arrogance, his wildness, his tyrannical air, they all vanished, replaced with a calm serenity. It almost felt like he had been acting before.

“Hehe, once senior apprentice-brother Ye Qian starts refining pills, he enters a perfect state of forgetting everything other than the refinement. I’ll probably never be able to reach such a perfect realm,” said one of the Divine Pill Division’s disciples worshipfully. Even though he could also be classified as a genius of alchemy, he was not in the same realm as Ye Qian.

Ye Qian’s master, the division head, looked at the Pill Doyen. “Qian-er is capable of calming all his emotions once he starts refining pills. It’s very difficult for a young disciple to reach this level. Even many senior alchemists cannot do this.”

Ye Qian was his pride. He treated him better than a son, and he didn’t spare any effort in raising him. To be able to have such a disciple, he felt that any regrets that he had could be entrusted to him. He was proud to have raised such a disciple.

“He looks calm on the surface, but that does not represent that there are no fluctuations in his heart. Even if the surface of the water is calm, what if some outer power were to interfere?” The Pill doyen didn’t praise Ye Qian.

The division head didn’t know what to feel about that. Having the Pill Doyen not look favorably upon Ye Qian made him feel terrible. But the Pill Doyen’s position in the Divine Pill Division was supreme.

“Are you unconvinced? Just watch,” said the Pill Doyen with a faint smile.

The division head gloomily continued to watch. He suddenly smiled coldly.