201 Competition 4 (2/2)

Luckily the sound of a bell stopped her from really lashing out against him. But he knew that she wouldn't forget the words he had murmured in his astonishment that easily.

The sound of the bell rang through the whole area and with the third ring, the participation tokens lit up. On the fourth ring, the sight before Ivan's eyes completely changed.

He now stood in a room, which was just as his master had described. On the screen in front of him, a row of words appeared. ”Welcome to the Pill Refining Competition.”

The row then vanished, only to be replaced with a counter, counting down from sixty. Ivan knew that it was counting down until the start of the competition. Although it wasn't truly necessary for everyone to start at the same time, for the sake of the observers it was done like this.

At another avenue, many large screens lit up at the same time Ivan and the others appeared in the virtual rooms. These large screens displayed the inside of some of the rooms. They were currently focused on the highest placed contestants of the last competition.

”Welcome, everyone to the Pill Refining Competition.”, a female voice, that was cold and clear as water sounded out.

The avenue which was filled with cultivators quieted down at the sound of her voice. Although the owner of the voice hadn't appeared, she had managed to pull all attention to herself. Or to be exact to the screens hovering in the air.

”Let the competition begin.”, the voice sounded out again as soon as the countdown in the rooms had run down. This was also everything she said. The competition didn't have anyone commenting. Instead, everyone had to use either their own knowledge to understand what was happening or find together in a study group.

Throughout the avenue, there were many smaller groups, which surrounded smaller screens, where one person was commenting on what was happening on the screen, while the others were attentively listening. It was a rare opportunity to see higher skilled and ranking pill refiner in action.

In his small room, Ivan was confronted by the first question. It was a fundamental question.

”The purity of a pill is defined by which factors?”

Although it was a fundamental question, this didn't mean that it was easy to answer. The most basic and easiest answer was, that the number of impurities in the pill defined the purity. But this answer wasn't complete. Because even with a number of impurities, a pill could be called perfectly pure. This was because an impurity didn't necessarily reduce the medical effect of the pill.

So was the purity of the medical effect the best factor for determining the purity of a pill? Not at all. To craft a pill of a certain rank, it might even be necessary for the medical effect to be impure. This was because a medical effect that was too pure could lead to too much energy contained in the pill.

It could thus be said that although the basics of this question were simple, to truly answer it wasn't easy at all.

This was also the reason for the question of asking for multiple factors. That was because just one wasn't enough. Instead a combination of factors had to be used. Not only the two mentioned before but also some others, such as pill structure and pill aura.

The following questions were the same. They were questions on fundamentals. Some of them simple while others were exceedingly complex.

During this part, the first participants had answered five questions wrongly. They were then thrown out of their respective rooms. They had failed in the competition. They would later be ranked according to the number of correct answers and the time used. But all of them would be at the lowest end of the ranking.

And if they came from a sect focused on pill refining they would definitely be punished. To already lose during the fundamental section was seen as a shame for those coming from these types of sects.

In fact, most of those who had already lost where cultivators which didn't have an orthodox understanding of pill refining. They were wandering cultivators who hadn't come into contact with real pill refiners and were mostly self-thought.

Of course, there was also the occasional disciple of a sect, who had gotten an answer wrong. Mostly this happened because they had been too nervous to think straight. They had let their mind defeat them.