Chapter 744 Third Day of the Competition　　Alex moved on to the second event of the day and soon realized it was a written exam with 20 questions, 1 point each.


    They would also deduct 1 point for each question wrongly answered so it made it hard for everyone to simply guess.


    Alex read the questions and surprisingly found most of them easy. The examsted about an hour, and Alex finished it in about 20 minutes.


    He went over his answers a couple of times but nothing seemed wrong, so he gave his answers to the staff and had them evaluated.


    Just as he hoped, he got the perfect 20 points.


    ''That went well,'' he thought as he walked towards his mother''s location. However, before he could get far, a staff member suddenly stopped him.


    "How can I help you?" Alex asked him.


    "Dear participants, as you may know, on the third day there is going to be a speed pill-makingpetition. We would like to know what pill you would like to make for that," the staff asked. "You can answer me right now or go to the guild before tomorrow noon and answer there."


    "Oh, uh… I will make the… Purple Crane pill," Alex said.


    "Thank you," the staff then went away, leaving Alex to go back to his mother and the rest.


    "Good job," his mother said as he arrived. "You''re still in the lead."


    "Am I?" Alex turned around and saw the rankings.


    He was in the first ce with 72 points, and both Zhou Ren and Xue Meirong were trailing behind him at 70 points.


    "It seems no one got an answer wrong today," Alex said. He looked through the ranking and as expected, most of them got the full 40 points.


    He waited for a while and watched through the rest of thepetition, but there was no one to do better than him so he had nothing to worry about.


    "Just 2 more days of this and my son will get first ce," Helen said.


    Alex doubted he could keep this up for 2 more days. He was going to have to start making pills from the nextpetition onwards and that was going to be problematic.


    After all, due to his condition, it had been nearly 2 months since hest made a pill or even dared to make one.


    ''I need to go practice,'' he thought. He turned to his mother and asked for his items before leaving thepetition ground.


    He told her that she would only see him on the day of thepetition itself.


    Alex then went to the guild directly and got himself a room to start making pills. He brought the ingredients for the Purple Crane pill and prepared his cauldron.


    Then, one after another, he put in the ingredients and began. The Purple Crane pill only had 6 ingredients, as opposed to most other pills that had at least 10 or higher normally.


    As such, this was the perfect pill to choose for fast pill making. The only problem was that this was a very well-known pill and everyone else would go for it as well.


    So, Alex had to use the advantages he had to be faster than everyone else.


    As he moved the ingredients around, Alex realized that he was having trouble maintaining the fire''s temperature despite his Dao.


    If he let the fire be, its temperature would slowly creep up until it was so hot that his pill was getting ruined. Then, he would have to pull his attention away from the ingredients and fix the temperature before going back to the ingredients.


    Alex trained for the whole night, but he barely saw any improvement. What little adapting he did became useless as the more Alchemy he did, the more he lost Qi, which in turn made him cultivate to gain Qi and that increased his yang once more.


    Frustrated, Alex left the room multiple times to go find some yin treasures. However, each time he went to the staff, the answer was still no.


    Alex trained for the entire next day as well as the night and finally left the guild on the day of thepetition.


    He met his mother outside thepetition ground and gave her his things before going to the waiting hall.


    He found Zhanrou and the rest waiting around, but he was too frustrated to make small talks.


    Surprisingly, he was given group 1, which included no one from the rest of the top 10.


    Then, thepetition began and Alex walked out.


    The cheers he heard from the audience rang full and far wide. He hade to thepetition with a certain prestige and had kept it up throughout the first 2 days, even exceeding the expectations of many.


    Had he done a little worse than the others, he might have been called a dark horse of thepetition. But since he was doing so good, he was now considered one of the better ones in the tournament.


    A lot of the people even expected him to win the whole thing with how it was going.


    That just created a sense of pressure for him that he didn''t need right now.


    He waited for the host to start exining about the speedpetition, but contrary to his expectation, thepetition that was being held currently was a different one.


    "For the first round today, you will all be making a new pill you''ve never seen before," the host said.


    Each one of them was passed along a talisman with a recipe and Alex understood where this was going.


    "You will have exactly one hour to learn the recipe and make the pill," the host said. "You will be ranked from best to worst based on your pill''s harmony."


    "You may begin the moment you get your ingredients," the host said and immediately a group of staff members came up to them with storage bags.


    Alex looked into the storage bag and was beyond surprised to see what he did.


    There was only 1 set of ingredients.


    ''So I have to get it right on the first time for a new pill I''ve never seen before?'' Alex worried when he saw the ingredients.


    This wasn''t a speed thing so he could take his time, but he still only had an hour to prepare the pill.


    Alex sat down and closed his eyes to visualize what he was going to do. He thought of putting the ingredients in the correct time and order, collecting the ingredients, and finally preparing the pill.


    In his mind, nothing could go wrong, but Alex knew there woulde some problem.


    ''How am I going to make the pill in the end? Should I use the technique or just clump it all together. If I do use the technique, how am I supposed to figure out how to make thebination?'' Alex thought.


    Since this wasn''t something he had made before, he couldn''t visualize the powders before getting into the pill. Not to mention there were ingredients in there that he had never interacted with, so he didn''t even know what shapes they would form when put through the recipe.


    ''I can only rely on my luck now,'' Alex thought as he decided to not use the technique in the end.


    He brought out his cauldron and started heating up the cauldron while he prepared himself.


    Then, he started making the pill.


    The moment the first ingredient went in, Alex started increasing the temperature to reach the required amount. Thanks to his Dao of Heat, that happened instantly, but as his focus shifted to the ingredient, the temperature slowly slipped out of control.


    Alex immediately focused back on the temperature and lowed it while also moving the ingredient around.


    Then he changed it once more and put in the second ingredient. The problem with the temperature kept popping up each time he put the ingredients, but he was always conscious of the temperature so he thought he could keep it in check.


    A few problems appeared here and there, but mostly he thought he did a fine job with the ingredients.


    Once it was all powdered, Alex pulled the energy into the powder and then formed a pill out of it without using any technique.


    When the pill finally formed, he brought it out and looked at it, only to get a disappointed look on his face.


    His pill barely reached 44% harmony.