There were many people standing in front of the alchemy building. It wasn't hard to guess that something was happening today.

  May started counting, but stopped after forty and sighed. Tang Hua was the hope for all these people. Having him as a master could literally change their fortunes.

  As time passed, the number of people increased more and more, and May was now convinced that there were more than a hundred candidates.

  “More people than I expected. The competition will really be fierce.” She suddenly heard a familiar voice. It was Ma Long. Peng Chen's friend, who was also taking part in this test.

  “Do you know what it will be about?” May asked.

  The boy just shook his head.

  “I don't know anything. But I'm sure there will be a few phases. I suspect that this particular stage is designed to filter out the students, leaving only the best ones.”

  May nodded, having similar thoughts.

  Suddenly, silence fell as a man who looked to be about forty years old stood before them all. His hair was trimmed short, and the first wrinkles were visible on his face, but despite this, he was quite good-looking and stylish. He was dressed in expensive robes with a dragon emblem.

  “So this is Senior Tang?” May asked quietly, not daring to raise her voice at the moment.

  Ma Long cleared his throat and added, “I'm seeing him for the first time... But it's definitely him. Look at his right hand.”

  May was standing at a distance, but she had good eyesight, so she was able to see that he had six fingers on his right hand.

  “Six fingers...?” May whispered in surprise.

  “That's right, it's easy to recognize him by that,” he replied in an equally quiet voice.

  It was a little unusual, but to be truthful, if it weren't for the boy's words, she wouldn't even have noticed. His solemn look was far more attention-grabbing.

  “Today's selection will only be possible for those who deeply understand alchemy. If you are not confident, I advise you to give up now, you will save yourself some time.” He began with immediate harsh words. Despite this, no one left. Seeing this, he snorted and said, “In that case, follow me!”

  They entered the Alchemy Department building. Of course, they couldn't all fit in one room, so they were divided into groups. May ended up in a different group from Ma Long.

  She looked around. There were about fifteen people there, and suddenly she noticed a woman with curly, green hair. May recognized her; she was Zu Chen's neighbor. Their eyes suddenly met. She smiled at her and then looked away.

  However, May didn't think about it for long, as they had been given tasks to complete.

  The three papers contained a short introduction, the rules, and finally five tasks to complete in four and a half hours. The ingredients and necessary equipment had already been prepared.

  The first task reminded her a little of her days in the chemistry lab, or more specifically, qualitative inorganic analysis. She had a pale pinkish-orange substance in a vessel. Her task was to discover its ingredients.

  She swallowed hard. She had to be careful in her analysis. After all, if she used up the entire sample without finding out what the substance was, she would not get another one, and that would mean failure.

  First, she poured it into ten separate containers. These were not typical chemistry lab supplies. They were not Erlenmeyer flask, Nessler cylinders, or graduated cylinder. Instead, most of the containers were ceramic, and some were metal.

  Glass was rare and expensive. In addition, it was only manufactured outside the sect, so its price was inflated. Even the glass that did exist was fragile and not as fine as on Earth. May quietly added glass production to her list of priorities.

  “Damn, damn, damn...!” Someone next to May suddenly began to pant heavily.

  Looking over, she saw a boy with tears in his eyes. He had spilled the substance that was to be used for the test on the ground... He began to beg the examiner for another sample, but the examiner refused.

  May returned to her own sample. She didn't care what happened to the rest of her group.

  Despite the similarities to qualitative inorganic analysis, May knew it wasn't the same.

  It could have been a mixture of several substances, perhaps herbs, or even the venom of some animal. The possibilities were endless. She wasn't even sure if it was possible to do.

  Alchemy, however, had established procedures that differed from alchemist to alchemist. A book said one thing, another said something else. May started with something that any chemist on Earth would have killed her for.

  She brought the container close to her nose and sniffed it. She smelled a slight scent of herbs and something pungent. She thought that this might indeed indicate a natural source, but she considered that it could be a decoy. Something that smelled like herbs, but wasn't.

  It wasn't impossible, considering the difficulty of the exam.

  Relying on something as subjective as smell might seem unscientific for an educated Terrestrial woman, but May understood that while she was in this world, she had to play by its rules.

  Then she created a flame using Qi energy, which gave it special properties. It differed from ordinary fire, causing substances to react differently.

  When heated, the liquid turned black. All alchemists agreed on this one; it could mean anything. In fact, every color except black when heated indicated specific characteristics.

  May, however, suspected that this meant the presence of more than one substance. After all, if there was only one substance, it would be too simple. In any case, this sample was already useless. She put it aside.

  She decided to test her theory with herbs. First, she had to create the Feistiness Fluid. She mixed sulfur with Blackmoon Water and yew ash, slowly heating the substance and stirring in gradually, drop by drop, the venom of the Red Butterfly Lizard.

  Feistiness Fluid had been successfully prepared, as she could tell from the characteristic purple sediment at the bottom. It was used as an aid in identifying plant ingredients. It was because it enhanced the fragrance!

  She added a drop to the sample. Red smoke began to evaporate from it. She sniffed it. May smelled a scent she remembered from Scars lesson in the cave. It was a mixture of lavender, yellow tallgrass, cow nettle, and lilac with gooseberry.

  May was lucky that the elf who taught her paid so much attention to herbs and plants. Otherwise, even if she smelled them, she would not have been able to identify them. After all, they were mixed together and difficult to distinguish.

  Creating Feistiness Fluid was only half the point. The recognition itself was the hard part.

  She already knew four ingredients, but subconsciously she felt that there were many more. Recognizing a few herbs would not be a problem.

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  May also eventually smelled sulfur, which indicated that there was something else there besides herbs.

  Then she created another substance. She mixed oil from the roots of the Elder Blood Oak with a mixture of crushed wyvern teeth and Opelia flowers. After adding it, the next sample turned blue.

  So there is some metal in there? Contamination, or another ingredient…

  After further testing, she determined that there was some other metal, silver, and... mercury.

  The very thought that she had been handling this substance so liberally made her shudder. After a moment, however, she calmed down. Cultivators did not generally die of cancer. Most died in combat or battle. Death in bed was rare.

  Nevertheless, the thought of sniffing mercury made her shudder, even though she knew it would not be harmful to her.

  However, that wasn't the end of it. She managed to determine that there was also probably some low-quality Red Turtle Blood, as well as a mixture of some mushrooms. Unfortunately, May wasn't sure what kind. However, she decided it was Panaeolus. Sadly, she couldn't waste any more time on this task.

  “Okay... I still have four more tasks...” she said, looking at the time. She sighed when she saw how much time she had wasted on just one task. She had to hurry.

  The next task was more technical. This time, she knew the composition of the substance in the ceramic container. It was the blood of a female lizard called the Huean River Salamander. Her task was simple.

  I have to remove the poison from the blood... I read about it in a fourth-year book, I'm lucky.

  The Huean River Salamander lived in the icy Huan River, and its blood was rich in Qi and had the properties of providing protection against the cold and could be used to treat hypothermia. That said, it was poisonous, so in order to use it as a medicine, the poison had to be removed.

  However, this diminishes its benefits. Therefore, the poison must be removed while minimizing the loss of effectiveness.

  Even though the task only stated to remove the poison, May had no doubt that what mattered was how effective the purified blood would be. After all, what was the point of removing the poison if it meant losing its healing properties?

  May smiled to herself. “I've never done this before,” she said quietly to herself. “But I feel like I can do it.”

  What mattered in this task was Qi control, something May was extremely confident in.

  She prepared the appropriate reagents and slowly poured them in, while using [Qi Control] to separate the poison from the rest of the blood and, from time to time, [Qi Manipulation] to transform the poison into ordinary water. She did this gradually.

  Finally, she finished. She didn't know how effective or high-quality it was. It could be tested, but she didn't have time for that. Either way, she had already used up the entire sample, so even if it didn't turn out perfectly, she couldn't change it anymore.

  She had to move on to the third task.

  It involved determining the quality of the pill. May wasn't convinced. However, she decided to give it her best shot.

  She had never done this before, so it was a little difficult for her.

  She tried to see if she could check it with the system, but in order to check the item description, she had to own it, or at least believe she was its owner. These items were returnable and were part of the exam.

  If she wanted to check the description through the system, she would have to pay. However... It would be futile. The examiner in the room watched everyone closely and from time to time wrote down his observations.

  If May did nothing but still achieved a perfect result, it would be suspicious. Even if it doesn't turn out perfectly, it was still better to try it yourself.

  She proceeded according to what she remembered from the book. So far, this had taken her the most time of all the tasks. She determined that the pill had a Good Quality rating of 77%. She wasn't sure about this, but she had to move on to the next tasks.

  She still had two tasks left. Seeing that less than two hours remained, she sighed and decided she couldn’t afford to give up now.

  “Just a little more…” she whispered to herself, wiping the sweat from her forehead.

  The last two tasks weren’t any easier. A faint fear crept in, the fear that she might not finish in time.

  The fourth task was different; it seemed designed to test creativity, or at least that’s what May thought. Its description read as follows:

  “The Western Lesser Vitality Potions are known for their positive effect on cultivation speed, yet they are said to cause certain side effects, such as light sensitivity, sleep disturbances, and erectile dysfunction. Before you lies the set of ingredients required to brew this potion. Find a way to eliminate its side effects.”

  The very wording was not only absurd but downright preposterous.

  Everyone participating in this test was just learning alchemy, and this task required at a minimum the rank of Master Alchemist. Not to mention that they had to do it in such a short time?

  May understood well that such discoveries required years of work and research. Right away, May knew that this was an impossible task.

  The question was, why would Senior Hua Tang do such a thing? May was convinced that he did not expect anyone to solve this problem, which most likely kept alchemists awake at night.

  After all, it was like asking math majors to solve the Riemann hypothesis in two hours. Senior Tang wanted to see how they would approach the problem and whether they would even try, not to see if they would actually succeed, because he knew it was obviously not possible.

  She looked around; everyone was focused on themselves. However, she could see that many people were close to tears. Others were clearly tired and irritated. Only the green-haired woman was smiling happily, humming to herself.

  She looked at the ingredients. She knew almost nothing about this potion, and certainly nothing about any idea for getting rid of the side effects.

  She decided to recall her knowledge of the ingredients.

  Water Bamboo Peony is the base, Crushed Olea Fly Wings... Irritating hmmm, Astragalus... It's a normal ingredient, nothing interesting. Silver Rattlesnake Venom Wine… That's the main ingredient and probably the cause of these effects.

  It reminded her a little of Huean River Salamander blood. There, too, one thing had to be mitigated. Here, however, there was no specific procedure.

  She sighed, irritated by her lack of knowledge.

  Crushed Olea Fly Wings seem to deprive Silver Rattlesnake venom of most of its poisonous properties in this mixture, but not completely... Increasing the amount of Crushed Olea Fly Wings too much is also not an option, as it has an irritating effect. It would only replace some side effects with others...

  May finally came up with an idea. Instead of trying to remove the toxic properties, maybe she should protect the vulnerable parts instead? Light sensitivity, sleep disturbances, and erectile dysfunction. The first two indicated neurological problems, and the second indicated hormonal problems.

  If I added some kind of neuroprotective substance there…

  Unfortunately, most of the available ingredients came from traditional Chinese medicine. There was no citicoline or piracetam there.

  However, many natural substances have compounds that could help... May thought. She went to look around. Besides, I should be able to isolate certain things thanks to [Qi Control].

  Curcumin... Maybe, but it's not very bioavailable; even if I amplify its effects, it won't do much good anyway.

  She had to look further.

  May picked up a tea leaf and smiled. People on Earth didn't think much about this compound. Every day on their way to work, people drank coffee, and tea was drunk in every corner of the world, and students in Europe, Asia, and other continents drank energy drinks.

  So it was easy to forget that the caffeine in tea was a potent chemical compound. It stimulates the central nervous system and increases metabolism. Even in something as simple as paracetamol, caffeine was used to increase its effectiveness.

  Did that mean it made sense? She had no idea. After all, she was doing it blindly. She had no evidence that isolated caffeine would improve the side effects of the mixture.

  However, with no better idea, she returned to her workstation. She didn't need leaves, she needed caffeine. She had no idea how to do it, but with her [Qi control], it shouldn't be that difficult.

  She dried and crushed the tea leaves into a powder, then poured hot water over them and used a strainer to filter out the solid leftovers.

  Scar had taught her in the cave how to extract pure compounds from plants. It required extraordinary control, but that was what she was a master at. She doubted that anyone else could do it. It was ancient elven knowledge that she had learned over months while locked in the cave.

  It took some time, but she finally obtained pure caffeine. She wrote down her steps and what she had done on a piece of paper. Then she sighed, hoping that it would be enough to improve the quality of the potion at least a little.

  However, she had to move on to the last task.

  The written assignment! Most people started with this, but May decided to leave it until last. She didn't want to stress about it, wondering if she was wasting time that she could have spent on the practical part.

  Now she had nothing to stress about. She had used up all the ingredients, so even if she wanted to improve something, she couldn't.

  May opened the sheet and began to write.

  The questions were not easy and covered many areas. Even the simplest questions gave her a headache, but it was the last task and she gave it her all.

  “Time's up!” The voice of the person supervising them rang out.

  May put down her brush. She had written everything she knew. She was completely sure of only 10% of the questions. She was fairly sure of 20%. She was somewhat sure of 30%. The rest were a mystery to her. She had no idea if she had done well or poorly.

  However, she knew that after all this, she deserved a long sleep.