"The first round will last three days. Now the pills will be distributed, and the tournament will begin," Yue Qichao said.
Ye Mo laughed to himself. Even he had used a few months to find out the contents of the heaven glory pill. Although he hadn't studied it every minute of the day, it would still take anyone more than three days. Even Yue Qichao said he hadn't been able to find the answer after a few decades.
Thinking about this, Ye Mo realized that this first round probably gave marks based on the number of spirit herbs you could recognize.
A few minutes later, Ye Mo got his pill. It was a heaven glory pill.
Almost all pill kings and pill masters started studying their pill, but Ye Mo felt bored. He started watching other pill masters' and pill kings' flames. Ye Mo saw about 50 types of rare flames and felt speechless.
Pretty much all pill kings had a rare flame. More than ten high level spirit pill masters also had rare flames. He even saw another Purple Flower Flame.
There were also flames like the Rock Skin Flame, Black Earth Bone Flame, and Blue Phoenix Flame, which were very common. There were three or four contestants using the Wood Heart Flame too.
Ye Mo even saw two heaven flames. One was the ranked fourth Extreme Geng Flame. Level five Pill King Xu Banchang used that one. The other was the ranked seventh Lan Rock Fire, which level four Pill King Qiu Niansheng of the Green Pill Sect was using.
Ye Mo knew where the Lan Rock Flame came from. It was probably the flame the Han Liang Empire had found.
Ye Mo also noticed another cultivator who used the Sense Sha flame. The Sense Sha Flame was ranked 13th out of the rare flames of the cultivation realm. It was just below the Purple Flower Flame. But what caught Ye Mo's attention was that this cultivator was dissecting his pill with means and a speed much faster than when he had dissected the heaven glory pill.
While Ye Mo was watching someone, someone else was also watching him. Ning Qingxue saw that Ye Mo didn't even take out his flame, and immediately her eyes were full of worry. She even felt sad that Ye Mo was a solo cultivator who couldn't get good flames like those big sect members.
Lu Wuhu looked at Ye Mo who was looking around and laughed, saying to himself, "This kid's interesting. He didn't just use my name to sign up and do nothing right?"
Ye Mo felt that people had started looking at him, and he realized that it was because he was doing nothing. Without hesitation, he took out his soul fire.
"Soul fire?" Lu Wuhu shook his head and didn't watch Ye Mo anymore.
Using soul fire in the pill king tournament was asking to be defeated. Even the worst competing pill king or pill master had a better flame than their soul flame.
Three days' time wasn't long, and those cultivators who had a feud with Ye Mo all watched him. When they saw that Ye Mo had brought out his soul flame, they all rested easy. They didn't consider a level seven spirit pill master a threat, but if Ye Mo unraveled the ancient pill recipe, they would no longer be able to touch Ye Mo. It would even be up to Ye Mo to decide if anything happened to them.
Fang Zhongshi was sitting full of anxiety. If Ning Qingxue didn't lie to him and that Ye Mo who created the spirit weaving pill was her Ye Mo, then he had no chance at all. He might even have to go into solitary cultivation for 100 years due to his promise.
Meanwhile Qiu Xue and Guo Qifan who knew Ye Mo were extremely shocked. They knew that Ye Mo hailed from the North Far State very clearly, so Ye Mo was quite possibly that 'god-like cultivator' as Yue Qichao had called him.
Huang Yushan from the Lightning Forgery Sect was also shocked. He knew that Ye Mo had come from the North Far State too. He wasn't sure if this Luo Xiaomo was Ye Mo, but he had some concerns now. He didn't dare to hide his conjecture and told the hollow spirit state cultivator next to him.
The hollow spirit state cultivator stared at the soul flame in Ye Mo's hand and after a long while, he frowned. "According to what you said, this person might really be the cultivator who created the spirit weaving pill. He used foundation chi fire before, and now he uses his nascent soul flame…"
That hollow spirit state paused for a moment and said, "Wait, if it really is him then not only can we not seek revenge, but we'd best give the remaining Five Color Lotuses to him."
Huang Yushan nodded. If Ye Mo really was that cultivator, he would be praying that Ye Mo didn't come to him for revenge.
Three days passed, and Ye Mo wrote down the recipe for the heaven glory pill on the jade slip. Although he didn't want to give it out like that, he knew that the heaven glory pill was an expensive pill. It would be impossible for it to be used by everyone like Yue Qichao had said. Who would use a level seven Dihua beast core to concoct pills for golden core state cultivators? Even if there would be some people who could, there wouldn't be many.
So Ye Mo didn't mind giving the recipe away that much either.
Ye Mo knew there were 11 spirit herbs involved in concocting the heaven glory pill. There were 5 main ones, which were water weed, mist zhi land, yellow three leaves, the red light fruit and a dihua beast core.
He didn't know what would happen with a dihua beast core that was below level seven. But according to his conjecture, it probably wouldn't be effective unless the ingredients were used differently. Otherwise it would greatly decrease the effectiveness of the pill.
So Ye Mo wrote that at least above level six dihua beast cores were necessary.
There were eight judges, and the 500 or so answers were looked through quickly by them.
Everyone knew that there wasn't even a standard answer. It was almost impossible that anyone would come up with something, but the judges could give marks based on how many herbs had been found.
Most pill masters were very nervous as they handed the pill recipe over, and they would've started discussing amongst each other already if it weren't for the tournament rules.
But Ye Mo sat on his seat without being nervous at all. He had worked on this question for a few months after all.
"Heaven glory pill, 11 spirit herbs?" Wu Tan called out in shock while reading Ye Mo's answer. As a judge, he didn't look favorably to this test. He was a pill king too, a level six pill king at that. He had dissected the Hua Sang pill, heaven glory pill, disaster defense pill, and mist spirit pill.
He and the two city lords of Pill City, as well as two renowned people in the pill concoction industry, had only managed to find 10 herbs. They knew there were 11 herbs, yet no one could find the last one.
"Someone dissected 11 spirit herbs of the heaven glory pill?" Other than Ji Ling and Lu Wuhu, the other six pill kings almost rushed to Wu Tan immediately.
"Main ingredients: water weed, mist zhi lan, yellow three leaf, red light fruit, dihua beast core. Supplementary herbs: Tian Maa, Ning Guang herb- Wait, there's an extra dihua beast core here!" Shen Guanqing read it and exclaimed.
"A dihua beast core, dihua beast core…" Yue Qichao murmured a few times and then suddenly realized it. "How come I didn't think of it? They used spirit beast inner cores!"
"Is our South Peace State going to have a prodigy pill master too? He recreated the heaven glory pill recipe in three days!" Yue Qichao stared at Ye Mo's answer sheet and was very excited.
He couldn't wait to see what this cultivator's name was.
"Another solo cultivator, Luo Xiaomo. Why does this name have a 'mo' too? He's only a level seven spirit pill master." Yue Qichao read the name.
"City Lord, I feel like this pill recipe might really be true. Should we try to concoct it now?" level four Pill King Zhao Shuntian asked.
"No." Yue Qichao immediately shook his head. "Luo Xiaomo recreated this pill. We need to respect his result. Even if we know this pill can be concocted and it's correct, we need to wait for him to concoct it first. This is the respect due to a pill master."
Then, he looked at the remaining pill kings and said, "Let's continue marking the answers. Decide the first 100 and then progress to the second round. As for this answer, my opinion is full marks."
Wu Tan immediately agreed. "I agree, full marks. Regardless if the heaven glory pill can be made witht his recipe, he answered correctly ten of the spirit herbs and wrote down an extra dihua beast core we didn't think of. This is deserving of full marks."
The other four judges nodded too.