Faced with the reality that she had less than one hour left before her time ran out; Qing Yi was fully focused on the task of making the potion. Completely ignoring her surroundings, as all that was left in her eyes was the spiritual herbs along with the cauldron. Not that there was much for her to look at given the fact that she was still inside the maze of mist…
With all of this and the attention of the people outside focused on her, Qing Yi slowly progressed as the potion mixture managed to reach the final stage without any issue!
Reaching this point, Qing Yi was extremely nervous, but she did not let even the slightest bit of this show as she carefully controlled the potion mixture inside the cauldron. Beginning to slowly lower the temperature according to the recipe before adding in the final and most important spiritual herb, the Spirit Grade Spiritual Herb!
Blop~
As the spiritual herb entered the almost finished potion mixture, Qing Yi nervously began to lower the temperature of the potion mixture even further until she completely extinguished the flames beneath the cauldron.
Normally, the potion mixture would be finished at this point and could be added to potion bottles for consumption, but the potion she was currently making was quite unique, as it still had one more step left until it was finished and that was…
Whoosh!
Freezing it!
Given that it was her first time freezing up a potion mixture and the fact that she was a cultivator practising fire qi, Qing Yi was forced to borrow some of the spiritual herbs with ice qi inside of them to aid the process.
Far from something she had wanted to do, as her control over the ice qi when it froze the potion mixture would be abysmal…
At the very least, the cauldron with the potion mixture inside of it could not move and she just needed to freeze the potion mixture. Not really something that required any real control so to speak of.
Whoosh~
"Hah… So exhausting… Hah… I hope it succeeded…"
As the potion mixture became solid, Qing Yi exhaustedly sat down on the ground to recover some of her strength before moving on to inspect the inside of the cauldron.
Using the ice qi to freeze the potion mixture was an extremely exhausting endeavour under the pressure of the mountain and at the same time ice qi was an unfamiliar qi to her, as she was a fire cultivator.
Remaining on the ground for a good minute to catch her breath, Qing Yi managed to restore some of her strength.
"I should finish it up before the time runs out…"
Muttering this to herself, Qing Yi stood back up before moving over towards the cauldron where the potion mixture had already turned into a solid block.
Crack!𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮
Picking up a random metal tool from the small table next to the cauldron, Qing Yi broke some of the solid potion mixture into small chunks before finding a potion bottle that she quickly filled up to the brim with the chunks of frozen potion mixture before placing it on top of the pedestal.
Whoosh!
Seeing the potion bottle slowly disappear along with the pedestal, Qing Yi could not help but let out a sigh of relief inside her mind as she watched a new path appear in front of her.
She had succeeded!
Not only had she succeeded, but she had also managed to make such a unique 'potion'!
If it could even be called a potion in the first place. After all, it was just a potion bottle filled with small chunks of potion mixture that could be eaten like pills…
To be honest, Qing Yi felt that the chunks of frozen potion mixture was quite a unique way to make weirdly shaped pills without the use of a pill furnace and she felt that it would be quite interesting to explore some time in the future… But for now, she had to first finish the alchemy trial and with it the alchemy competition!
Not thinking too much more about the weird frozen potion mixture chunks she had just made, Qing Yi rushed over towards the path that had just opened up. Hoping that she would soon be able to finish the maze of mist and challenges, as she had begun to grow quite exhausted over the past few hours that the alchemy trial had lasted so far.
…
Reaching the end of the path, Qing Yi could not help but let a small smile appear on her lips as she discovered an entrance leading out of the maze inside the mountain at the end of the path.
Whoosh~
Not standing around too long after discovering that the path led back out of the maze inside the mountain, Qing Yi soon found herself back outside at a small ledge with the all too familiar and narrow mountain path leading further up the mountain.
For now, Qing Yi ignored the path leading further up the mountain and instead scanned over the small ledge in search of the small stone slab that recorded her points.
Even if she had no idea how many points the other participants had gotten, Qing Yi was still curious about just how many points she had gained from making it through the maze of mist filled with all sorts of challenges inside the mountain…
"Ah- there it is… 137 points!"
Spotting the small stone slab with her information recorded down on it, Qing Yi could not help showing a slightly surprised look on her face. After all, she had gained 102 points just for the third test alone! That was more than a hundred points for only a single test!
At the first test she had gained 10 points and then on the second test 30 points before finally gaining over a hundred points on the third test…
From this, Qing Yi felt like the number of points she gained from completing each test should be increasing around three times with each test she managed to pass through… With this in mind, she would most likely gain 300 points or more by making it through the fourth test!
Thinking about this, Qing Yi looked over towards the narrow mountain path leading further up the mountain with a bit of hesitation on her face.
She had only barely managed to pass through the third test before the time ran out.
From this alone, Qing Yi could tell that she had already reached her limit and she would likely not have any chance of passing through the fourth test of the alchemy trial.
Even then, giving up at this point in time was really not something she wanted to do and even if she ended up failing in the fourth test, she would not end up losing all her points. At least she would be able to experience the fourth test and maybe even gain something from it.
For example, during the last challenge in the third test, she had learned about the weird chunks of frozen potion mixture.
If she could learn something unique like that during the fourth test, Qing Yi would really regret just giving up at this point without even trying.
Not to mention all of this, she would likely also be given a bunch of free high-level potion recipes whenever she started a new test. This alone was more than enough reason for Qing Yi to try out the fourth test. Even if she knew that she was highly likely to fail…
Her master was also watching her, so there was no way she could just give up without even trying!
Having made up her mind after thinking about it for a short moment, Qing Yi decided to make her way up towards the fourth test.
…
"She passed through the third test!"
"Qing Yi really made it…"
"She managed to enter the top three…? Old Jin, I think I'm dreaming! Quick, pinch me!"
At the same time outside the alchemy trial, the elders of the Flying Sword Sect were all overcome with happiness as they watched Qing Yi just barely pass through the third test and solidify her spot in the top three of the alchemy competition!
This was far beyond what any of them had ever imagined beforehand, as back then, most of them would have been more than happy with her making it to the top twenty…
Sitting a short distance away from the elders, as they happily chatted among themselves like a group of excited sport fans cheering on their favourite player, Xuan Hao could not help but smile a bit as he was infected by the happy atmosphere created by the elders.
"Ouch! Old Jin!? Why did you pinch me!?"
"You were the one who asked me to, you old fool!"
"Playing innocent now? Hmph! Watch how I return the favour!"
"…"
Just as quickly, the happy atmosphere disappeared because some of the elders suddenly began fighting among themselves for reasons Xuan Hao didn't want to think about…