Alchemical skill quantified, the voices said. Mid-grade master rank achieved.
Cha Ming nodded. This was the rank he’d expected, though inwardly, he’d hoped his rank had grown under the Monkey King’s tutelage. Unfortunately, flame control wasn’t everything when it came to alchemy. His knowledge was sorely lacking.
Cha Ming’s surroundings blurred, and he found himself back inside the runic circle. He rested for a quarter hour before reaching out for the next rune, formations. The next thing he knew, he was in the ruins of a temple. His eyes narrowed when he realized he was surrounded by layer upon layer of runic traps.
“Break out of the room to proceed to the next level,” the voices said. “Performance is timed. You have fifteen Ling Nan standard minutes to complete this stage.”
Cha Ming smiled at the mention. He hadn’t heard people say minutes often in this world, but now that he was in Haijing, people used minutes and even seconds everywhere he went. The large clock tower had apparently standardized time measurement for the entire plane. Despite this, most of the non-scientific, non-Haijing population still preferred to use breaths, incense times, and hours. Even double hours in some places.
He cast out his transcendent soul force and analyzed the various formations in the room in a split second. They were mid-grade formations, and he figured the room had pegged his general skill as a mid-grade master professional due to his previous results in the alchemy trial. He grinned, and without using his brush, sigils, or even qi, he prodded the formations at hundreds of key points with his soul. The formation collapsed instantly. His surroundings shifted again, and he found himself on an icy plain.
“That’s a fairly steep increase in difficulty,” Cha Ming noted, sensing the various middle-core-formation traps laid around him.
“We previously misjudged your skill based on past performance,” the voices said. “The new starting point is equivalent to your cultivation level and will reduce or increase as required. Performance will be assessed from here on out.”
Cha Ming nodded. By taking this test, he was planning on revealing a hidden fortuitous encounter from Jade Moon Planet. This was also what would allow him to transcend his cultivation in this trial.
He shrugged and got to work. It was no longer possible to complete the trial using only his soul force, so he summoned his sigils and summoned runes and runic fragments. Three hundred and sixty gray sigils floated around, hovering for a few seconds before finally setting themselves down on the innermost formation. Runes glowed, and runic lines short-circuited as the first trap was deactivated. Eleven more traps were disabled in short order, each one touching on different aspects of formation arts appropriate at this level. Then, more traps appeared.
This continued for four hours before finally, he destroyed the last formation. His surroundings changed again, revealing Clock Tower Square in the middle of Haijing City. It was surrounded by high-grade formations. He sighed and began channeling his qi. High-grade combat formations, while simpler and faster than normal formations, not only required a powerful soul but a denser qi. He couldn’t summon the appropriate formations with his core qi alone, but thanks to his transcendent soul, he didn’t have to.
He used his transcendent force to compress and refine his qi as it traveled through his body until finally, its volume shrank by half. The purity of this compressed qi was twice as high as the original. He poured it into the sigils and guided 720 of them into the appropriate combat formation. Then, something clicked, and the trap shattered from his interference. He moved on to the next one.
High-grade formations aside, the test was much more difficult than the one before. It wasn’t a challenge on an intellectual level, of course, but refining and controlling dense qi put much strain on his qi pathways. Moreover, he wasn’t just feeding qi into the pearls, but his heart and soul, managing the impossible through sheer will alone. He paced himself as he solved the puzzles one at a time, making careful use of the entire half day he was allotted for the trial.
Before long, he arrived at the final puzzle. This one could not be solved using combat formations, so Cha Ming was forced to use formation flags for the first time. He summoned the Clear Sky Brush in its large form and painted white lines where required and black lines to destroy certain key links. The process was arduous and time consuming, and every brush stroke was excruciating and raw. It would have been expensive too if not for the illusory supply of ink for his brush.
By the time he completed the high-grade counter to the complex puzzle, a half day had passed. Finally, the last formation collapsed. The room shifted, and the voices spoke.
“We have sensed that you require time to rest,” the voices said. “Please be advised that based on your performance, this formation will require a top-up of ten top-grade spirit stones. In addition, as this test will take twenty-four time-contracted hours, you are advised to rest before starting.”
Cha Ming nodded. He threw ten top-grade spirit stones up, which vanished into thin air. “I’ll be resting for three hours before starting,” he said. He’d never really practiced concentrating qi before, and the process was both physically and mentally exhausting. He sat cross-legged and adjusted his condition, and once three hours had passed, he stood again. He was now in a plain blue stone room that reminded him of the Bridge of Stars or Fuxi’s Library. He wondered if it was a certain building style that made them
