Before anyone realized it, the atmosphere at the scene had begun to shift.
When Jiang Chen first arrived to stir up trouble, everyone felt this uninvited guest had interrupted their lecture, and they were none too pleased with him.
Yet as Jiang Chen's performance unfolded, it gradually turned their perception of him around. The aura he projected, the poise he displayed—all of it far surpassed King Hong.
This indirectly won over the spectators who had come just to watch the show.
What's more, Jiang Chen's words carried tremendous persuasive force, invisibly shaping a certain train of thought among the crowd: that King Hong might actually be an outside agent sent to stir up chaos in the Radiant King City. Even those who had originally held a favorable opinion of King Hong now couldn't help but feel a flicker of doubt.
Now, watching how King Hong crumbled under Jiang Chen's pressure, his earlier imposing image slowly collapsed altogether.
They say it's not that you don't know quality goods—it's that comparing two goods exposes the difference.
The moment they were compared, King Hong suddenly looked utterly wretched.
Here he was, dilly-dallying, unable to answer a single question for ages, which only further eroded the spectators' goodwill toward him.
King Hong felt deeply humiliated. The question before him seemed simple enough, but he had absolutely no idea what the answer was.
Could he just guess?
Amid the chorus of urgent shouts, King Hong gritted his teeth and shot a glare at Jiang Chen: "The main ingredient of the Blue-Striped Bright Moon Pill is blue in color!"
Jiang Chen couldn't help but laugh: "Just because the word 'blue' is in the name?"
"Tell me whether the answer is blue or not." King Hong had no desire to debate; he pressed the question in a low voice.
Jiang Chen shook his head and replied with an easy smile: "Guessing will never get you the right answer. I can tell you plainly—the main ingredient of the Blue-Striped Bright Moon Pill is pink. Its primary ingredient is the Bright Moon Beauty. The 'blue strip' is simply a type of alchemical pattern. It doesn't refer to color at all."
Hearing this, King Hong nearly collapsed on the spot. So the two characters "blue strip" had been a decoy all along? They had absolutely nothing to do with color?
Cheers erupted from all around—it was clear everyone felt they had learned something new.
King Hong didn't suspect the other party was talking nonsense. He glared at Jiang Chen huffily and declared in a loud voice: "Don't get cocky! The second question will be far more difficult. There's no way you can answer it. This round, I will absolutely tie the score."
Jiang Chen chuckled: "Even if your question happens to stump me, you'd still have to pass my test first. Otherwise, you'll keep trailing me by one round."
In any case, Jiang Chen had already won the first exchange.
Now for the second answer-and-question round. Jiang Chen guessed King Hong would pull out his most closely guarded secrets. But in the domain of alchemy, there was truly no one Jiang Chen feared.
"Hmph! Don't get smug—I'm going to claw this one back!" King Hong's tone was ironclad, as though he were bolstering his own spirits.
"Go ahead and ask." Jiang Chen couldn't be bothered with empty talk. He simply spoke with calm indifference.
"The second question—listen carefully. Legend speaks of a Nine-Striped Heaven-Questioning Pill, a pill mentioned in ancient lore. Do you know how many dao patterns are hidden within the Nine-Striped Heaven-Questioning Pill?"
The Nine-Striped Heaven-Questioning Pill?
Hearing those five words, Jiang Chen was mildly surprised. After all, the Nine-Striped Heaven-Questioning Pill was a Myriad Heavens–grade pill. That someone on the Divine Abyss Continent had actually heard of it?
Back at the Dan Qian Palace, Elder Yun Nie had once poured countless painstaking efforts into refining the Six-Striped Dark Dragon Pill—a pill that raised the chances of a breakthrough for warriors at the Saint Realm.
At the time, Elder Yun Nie had hit a bottleneck, which Jiang Chen had helped resolve.
The inspiration for the Six-Striped Dark Dragon Pill had actually come from the Nine-Striped Heaven-Questioning Pill. It was just that the Six-Striped version was far simpler—a low-end derivative of the Nine-Striped Heaven-Questioning Pill, containing perhaps one-tenth the technical sophistication, or even a few dozen times less.
Yet even so, the Six-Striped Dark Dragon Pill was still enormously attractive to Saint Realm warriors.
As for the Nine-Striped Heaven-Questioning Pill, Jiang Chen felt that even in the ancient era of the Divine Abyss Continent, a pill of this caliber would have been nearly impossible to find.
He never expected King Hong to use the Nine-Striped Heaven-Questioning Pill as his test. Jiang Chen knew all about it—he was, in fact, intimately familiar with it.
He simply hadn't imagined that anyone on the Divine Abyss Continent knew of this pill.
Jiang Chen smiled faintly: "The Nine-Striped Heaven-Questioning Pill is a legendary pill. The Six-Striped Dark Dragon Pill currently circulating in the market is actually a simplified, low-end version derived from it. You use the Nine-Striped Heaven-Questioning Pill to test me—how do I know whether you yourself even know the answer? Perhaps you only came across some jumbled information in an unofficial record?"
King Hong, far from being upset at Jiang Chen's stalling, actually felt energized.
In his mind, the other party's evasiveness and word-spinning could only mean one thing: he couldn't answer. Otherwise, he wouldn't waste so many breaths.
"Hmph! I read it in an ancient text. The text was thoroughly authoritative—nothing unreliable would ever be included in it. How could I not know the answer?"