Yet, up on the Duel Stage, Yan Mingqiu’s performance demonstrated quite plainly to everyone that he truly possessed a heavenly-grade fire spiritual root, along with extraordinary fire-manipulation prowess.
The ten streams of subterranean flame in Yan Mingqiu’s palm were lined up in absolute uniformity; the other nine flames looked precisely like the shadow of the central one, so identical that one had to look closely to distinguish them.
Naturally, Lin Pu noticed this as well. His hand controlling the subterranean flame shook involuntarily, and right after that, his Purple-Gold Cauldron exploded.
For an elite prodigy, blowing up a cauldron right in front of an audience was the epitome of utter humiliation. Lin Pu lowered his head, not daring to look at the spectators below.
Even more so, he didn’t dare look at Zhulan that was a custom-made, heavily funded Purple-Gold Cauldron his master had given him as a welcome gift.
Noticing Lin Pu standing there in a daze, the First Elder felt a surge of exasperated disappointment and called out, “There is still one stick of incense left!”
Hearing this, Lin Pu jolted violently back to reality. Reaching up, he patted down his singed, frizzed-out hair and scrambled to pull a brand-new alchemy cauldron from his storage pouch.
“Good grief, the Purple-Gold Cauldron blew up. What a shame, what a shame.”
“This is an outcome I completely didn’t expect. Can Senior Brother Lin still turn this around? There’s only one stick of incense left!”
Lin Pu endured the longest stick of incense in his entire life.
As the incense burned down to ashes, time was up.
Yan Mingqiu opened the Stellar Cauldron, revealing ten plump, perfectly rounded Return-Origin Pills resting neatly inside.
Across the stage, Lin Pu opened his cauldron with trembling hands. Uh… inside sat a massive, ambiguous lump of matter. It could barely pass as a semi-finished product, let alone actual pills at best, it could only be described as a giant blob of medicinal paste.
Who won and who lost was glaringly obvious, rendering any formal verification of pill grades entirely unnecessary.
Unable to hold back, Chenhan let out a quiet chuckle and began to applaud. “Immortal, it looks like that escape tunnel we dug didn’t end up coming in handy after all.”
The corners of Yun Feng’s mouth twitched upward, the smile no longer suppressible. “That escape tunnel was meant as a backup anyway. With how brilliant my disciple is, when would he ever need something like that?”
Chenhan: “?” Who was it that had wept tears of snot and despair while digging that tunnel? He acted as though his disciple was marching straight to his execution!
Yet Chenhan had always trusted Yan Mingqiu. For reasons unknown, a deep intuition told him that Yan Mingqiu was no ordinary person and that he would undoubtedly win.
The crowd below erupted into a frenzy.
“He pulled it off! He actually pulled it off! Refining ten pills in a single furnace at the early Foundation Establishment stage ten pills in one go! What kind of monstrous genius is this? Starting today, Senior Brother Yan is my idol!”
Achieving ten pills from a single furnace was a feat that typically required at least the Nascent Soul stage or higher.
Hearing this, one of Lin Pu’s sycophants retorted indignantly, “You were all shouting ‘Yan Mingqiu this’ and ‘Yan Mingqiu that’ just a moment ago, and now suddenly he’s ‘Senior Brother Yan’ just because he showed off a little trick? Just watch how this plays out! So what if he won this round? His early Foundation Establishment cultivation facing off against Senior Brother Lin’s peak Foundation Establishment means his full-force strike will barely tickle him!”
On the stage, Yan Mingqiu, whose spiritual energy was nearly depleted, swallowed one of the Return-Origin Pills he had just refined.
The moment the pill hit his system, a wave of revitalizing clarity washed over him, and his spiritual reserves rebounded to seventy percent within moments.
Meanwhile, across the stage, Lin Pu whose spiritual energy was equally exhausted stared at the giant blob of paste with a look of pure agony.
The rules of the Duel Stage prohibited bringing any external medicinal pills into the arena.
Although that giant blob was merely a semi-finished product, it had consumed plenty of high-grade spiritual plants, meaning it still retained a modicum of medicinal efficacy. If he didn’t consume it, his current spiritual energy wouldn’t even be enough to conjure a basic defensive shield.
With a grimace, Lin Pu reached out with both hands, pinched off a small fragment from the massive blob of ‘medicine,’ and reluctantly brought it toward his mouth.
“Yueh…” The nauseating stench instantly triggered a violent gag reflex.
Covering his nose in utter disgust, Yan Mingqiu muttered, “Are you refining pills or processing sewage?”
The blob hadn’t smelled too terrible while it was compressed into a mass, but the moment a piece was broken off, the reek dispersed so aggressively that Yan Mingqiu felt like he was about to pass out from the stench.
As for the creator of the medicinal blob, Lin Pu vomited out the contents of his stomach. Wiping his mouth, he forced himself to endure the stench, pinched off another tiny fragment, closed his eyes, and swallowed it raw.
Though his features twisted in agonizing revulsion, he gritted his teeth and forced it down. Afterward, he hurriedly shoveled the remaining ‘medicine blob’ into a transmission box to clear it from the stage.
Moments later, the medicinal effects kicked in, recovering about twenty percent of Lin Pu’s spiritual energy. Waving a hand, he cast a cleansing spell to blast away the vomit on the ground.
The air inside the protective barrier finally freshened up considerably.
Yan Mingqiu also placed his remaining nine pills into a transmission box and sent them out for safekeeping.
Up on the high platform, the three elders stared at the two sealed white jade boxes before them, falling into a deep, silent contemplation.
The Third Elder reasoned, “The outcome is blindingly obvious; there’s really no need to test the grade of these pills, right?” He certainly didn’t care to taste any hypothetical sewage pills.
The other two elders clearly shared the sentiment, and a silent consensus was reached instantly.
The First Elder announced, “Round one goes to Yan Mingqiu. Yan Mingqiu is entitled to deliver one strike to Lin Pu, while Lin Pu may only defend and cannot retaliate.”
Knowing the inevitable outcome, Lin Pu felt a profound sense of grievance.
Walking to the center of the platform, Yan Mingqiu beckoned with a crook of his finger. “Get over here. Or are you too scared?”
“Who’s scared? You think a peak Foundation Establishment cultivator like me would fear someone at early Foundation Establishment?” Pushing his chin up with a final shred of desperate stubbornness, Lin Pu shuffled toward the center of the ring.
Arriving at the middle, he channeled his remaining spiritual energy to manifest a defensive shield. However, having recovered only twenty percent of his energy, the shield flickered erratically, looking dangerously unstable.
Lightly pressing his toes against the floor, Yan Mingqiu sprang into the air, executing a flawless three-hundred-and-sixty-degree mid-air spin before delivering a fierce, sweeping roundhouse kick straight toward Lin Pu.
Crack! Lin Pu’s flickering defensive shield shattered instantly. His body doubled over like a cooked prawn as he crashed straight into the golden barrier, rebounding off it to slam heavily onto the stone floor.
Bang! With a thunderous impact, Lin Pu smashed a gaping crater into the Duel Stage, plunging straight out of sight into the pit below, where he promptly… vanished.
Staring down in astonishment at the sheer destructive power of his own kick, Yan Mingqiu walked over to inspect the scene.
Standing at the edge of the crater and peering down into the pitch-black void, he blinked. “Huh… there’s an underground tunnel beneath the Duel Stage!”
Plunging into immediate despair, Yun Feng felt the world go dark before his eyes and turned to slip away, only to be grabbed firmly by the arm by Chenhan. “Immortal, you can’t abandon us now when you’re needed most.”
Yun Feng: “……”
Fortunately, Yun Feng had anticipated contingencies while digging the tunnel; to avoid any suspicion, he had cleverly positioned the tunnel entrance right inside Zhulan’s Biluo Peak.
Compared to Yucang Peak, Biluo Peak sat much closer to the Duel Stage, making it a masterclass in hitting two birds with one stone.
Throughout that month, Yun Feng and Chenhan had swallowed concealment pills, sneaking over to the back mountains of Biluo Peak every single day to quietly hack away at the dirt.
Thus, when Zhulan and the three elders frantically traced the underground passage to its source and emerged from the exit only to realize they had popped out directly inside Biluo Peak the three elders turned to stare at one another in stunned silence.
The First Elder glared at the sect leader. “Sect Leader, what on earth is the meaning of this? Lin Pu’s cultivation was vastly superior to Yan Mingqiu’s; were you really that terrified he might get beaten to death?”
“No, I…” Before Zhulan could even begin his defense, the Second Elder cut him off.
“That much is true, though. Lin Pu was practically beaten to death.”
The First Elder shot him a scathing look. “Even if an accident had occurred, how could we elders possibly sit idly by? As you saw, the moment we noticed Lin Pu was in danger, we opened the barrier to save him, didn’t we?”
With a face as dark as a thundercloud, Zhulan insisted, “I did not dig this cavernous hole! It has nothing to do with me!”
“Such a long, massive tunnel must have taken at least a month to dig. Are you trying to tell us that someone sneaked under your very nose, tunneled through the earth for a month, and bored straight underneath the Duel Stage right beneath Biluo Peak without you noticing a single thing?”
At this point, Zhulan realized he was in a position where washing himself clean in the Yellow River wouldn’t clear his name.
Right on cue, Yun Feng led Chenhan and Yan Mingqiu out from the depths of the tunnel.
With an expression of exaggerated shock, Yun Feng exclaimed, “Goodness gracious! Who would have thought that while the Sect Leader looks so dignified and pristine on the outside, he’s harboring such shady hobbies behind the scenes? Still, as a fellow master, I completely understand. Deep love demands profound planning! The heartwarming depth of affection between master and disciple here is genuinely moving.”
Turning around, he nudged Yan Mingqiu. “What do you think, disciple?”
Giving a slow, rhythmic round of applause, Yan Mingqiu chimed in, “Moving. Incredibly moving. Though I do have one quick question: are we continuing this duel or what?”