Kong Yuhan held a pill inside a pill tester. The fog slowly rose up from the bottom of the glass and started going upwards.
Everyone in the room watched as the fog reached the number 16. They watched with bated breaths as the fog slowly rose up to the number 17.
"Go up. Go up," they slowly chanted wanting the pill fog to keep on going up.
18.
"Just 2 more. Go. Go." Kong Yuhan was full of sweat watching it.
19.
"Just once more," Kong Yuahn shouted with his voice full of hope. Alas, the fog didn't rise up.
"No!!! I was so close." Kong Yuhan got dejected. This was his third try at making the pill. The second one had ended up being an 18% harmony pill, so he had wished to make this one have 20% harmony. But his wish remained just that, a wish.
"Alright, I will surely make the next one be it." He got back to making the pill once more without anyone's encouragement.
Kong Yuhan had never focused this much in his life before as he did on the 4th pill. He focused from the start to the very end, careful at every turn, and made as few mistakes as possible.
'This turn has quite a few amounts of mistakes. Maybe he will succeed now.' Alex was constantly checking the inside with his spiritual sense. As long he didn't try to strain his senses, his spiritual sense would last for a while.
After Kong Yuhan finished making the pill and took it out to put it in the pill tester.
Once more the crowd watched as the fog started to rise up. The fog quickly rose up to 16% before slowing down.
17%. 18%. 19%.
The pill tester started to shake a little as Kong Yuhan's had started trembling with nervousness.
20%.
"YES!" Kong Yuhan shouted.
"Congratulations, Brother Kong. You are now eligible to become a Core disciple." Everyone started congratulating him one after another.
"Hehe," Kong Yuhan embarrassed a little over the bombardment of congratulations. His large physical build with an embarrassed face was something you didn't see every day.
Kong Yuhan took a massive sigh of relief and put the pill into a pill bottle.
"How long has it been since we came here?" Kong Yuhan asked the group.
"I think it's been about an hour and a half. Definitely more than an hour for sure." Wei Xun spoke from the back. Everyone else nodded.
"Oh. That means the room already took my contribution points. Might as well finish the final pill." Kong Yuhan started preparing for the next batch of ingredients.
The others also waited for him to make the last pill. Kong Yuhan wiped away his sweat and started once more. He had already ascended so he had no worries for this particular.
He was already tired from making 4 different pills, especially the last one. Plus, he had no need to do everything perfectly, so he was a bit too relaxed while making the pill.
He ended up making more mistakes than usual. Alex caught all of those mistakes.
'He is not getting the timing right. He keeps dropping the ingredients a bit too late, so the energies aren't getting properly harmonized.'
If only the ingredients were burnt and charred instead of turning to powder, the energy could have escaped from the cauldron. But, since they were all powder, the unstable energies were getting taken in by the powder making the powder itself massively unstable.
"Oh no," Kong Yuhan lost control of the situation.
'It's going to blow up!' Alex immediately shot out forwards and used Qi manipulation to throw away the entire cauldron to the corner of the room.
BOOM
A massive explosion rang out from the corner, throwing heaps and heaps of energies towards their direction. Almost instinctively, Alex brought forth his hands and used Elemental Guidance to steer away as much energy from the explosion as possible.
Everyone in the room had a disheveled look as the ringing from the explosion still rung in their ears.
"What the hell are you doing?" Jia Fen immediately cried out.
Alex turned around to see Jia Fen charging at him with the intention to harm. Alex didn't understand why he would do that but immediately used his Qi manipulation to stop him.
Due to their massive gap in cultivation, he was only able to stop his for a few seconds before Jia Fen got free from his clutches and came for him once more.
"Wait brother Jia, It was my fault." Kong Yuhan got out of his stupor and stopped the fight.
"What?" It wasn't just Jia Fen who was confused by the statement. Wei Xun also came forward looking for an answer.
"I was too relaxed and ended up making the ingredients unstable. If brother Yu didn't throw it away in time, I would have been seriously injured right now."
"So, he didn't do it on purpose?" Jia Fen was still quite skeptical about it.
"No. In fact, I had already lost control of the ingredients. It was brother Yu's quick thinking that saved us." Kong Yuhan looked towards the wall. The wall itself had no problems, but the cauldron was now in pieces.
"Aww… I will have to pay quite a few points for this." Kong Yuhan turned around to look at the other 4, focusing especially on Zhou Mi, and said, "Thankfully, none of you were hurt."
"I'm sorry for assuming you did it on purpose, Brother Yu." Jia Fen apologized when he got the chance.
"It's okay." Alex understood why he was mad. He would probably get mad himself if he saw what had just happened.
They all left the Alchemy hall and said their goodbyes. Kong Yuhan kept thanking him for saving him. Alex split from the group and went back to his residence.
He looked at the time and saw it was 5 pm. 'I should be able to squeeze out 4 or 5 pills before it's time for dinner.'