Swallowing his anger, the examiner handed a third-level task token to Jiang Chen and said with a cold sneer, "Task Room 68. Go find it yourself."
Jiang Chen's expression remained calm. He took the task token and headed toward Task Examination Room 68. He could clearly see the examiner's hostility — the guy was most likely from the Purple Sun Sect.
But with Master Shuiyue's precedent already set, any examiner who tried to pull stunts during the examination would only be making trouble for themselves.
Third-level tasks weren't unheard of in the alchemy domain, but they only came up once every few days at most.
So when the martial artists in the hall heard that this secular prodigy had applied for a third-level task, they all turned to stare, buzzing with commentary and disbelief.
"This secular kid is way too arrogant? A third-level task? Does he really think the alchemy domain is his backyard playground, where he can do whatever he wants?"
"A third-level task? He's gonna slink back out in shame, just watch."
"Guaranteed. How many geniuses have crashed and burned on third-level tasks? And some secular brat dares to challenge one? Talk about overestimating himself."
"Not necessarily. I heard he cleared a second-level task yesterday. And before that, he beat that Tang Hong from the Treasure Tree Sect in the alchemy fundamentals exam."
"What? That big oaf Tang Hong?" someone asked in shock.
No sooner had the words left his mouth than a roar like a tiger's thundered from outside the hall: "Who the hell's trash-talking me behind my back?"
A powerful figure charged in like a gust of wind. Before the speaker could even react, Tang Hong had grabbed him and hurled him straight out the door.
"Damn it! You think because the tiger doesn't roar, it's a sick cat? Next time you dare mutter about me behind my back, I'll break every bone in your body!"
Tang Hong had arrived late because of his cultivation training. The moment he stepped in, he heard someone badmouthing him — calling him a big oaf, no less.
Nothing enraged Tang Hong more than spineless gossipers.
"You — come here and tell me. What were you guys talking about?" Tang Hong pointed at another martial artist who'd been part of the discussion.
The man's face went pale. Seeing the furious giant on the verge of exploding, he didn't dare hide anything and recounted the whole exchange.
"Challenging a third-level difficulty?" Tang Hong's eyes lit up. He slapped his thigh in admiration. "Now that's my boss Jiang Chen — what guts!"
Tang Hong burst into laughter and stopped bothering with the chatterboxes. Though they were all from the Heavenly Spirit District, their strength ranked in the lower-middle tier. Faced with Tang Hong, who could compete for the top ten, they didn't dare offend him and slunk off to the side.
"I'm applying for a second-level task," Tang Hong declared, seemingly inspired by Jiang Chen's boldness. He slammed his competition badge onto the table.
The examiner from the Purple Sun Sect, already bitter toward Jiang Chen, transferred his resentment straight to Tang Hong — but he didn't dare make things difficult.
He could only silently curse both of them to fail, earning a five-day penalty with no task applications allowed.
"You big idiot, stooping so low as to call a country bumpkin his boss. You've really disgraced the Treasure Tree Sect," the examiner fumed inwardly.
……
Jiang Chen entered the task examination room and began tackling his new challenge.
The third-level task was noticeably harder than the second-level one. But for Jiang Chen, alchemy posed virtually no challenge whatsoever.
This task, sure enough, was far more complex than the second-level version. The examinee was required to sort through over a thousand types of spiritual medicine materials on-site and extract the useful ones that could be combined into ingredients for pill refinement.
Specifically, the examinee had to produce at least ten complete pill formulas.
Generally, refining a single pill required quite a few spiritual medicine ingredients — ten-odd for some, four or five at minimum for others.
There was always one primary ingredient, with varying numbers of auxiliary materials.
Having to combine ten complete formulas from a thousand spiritual herbs? That was no small feat.
The time limit for this task was two hours.
For an ordinary martial artist, dealing with over a thousand herbs was headache enough. Categorizing and sorting them down would take at least an hour. And then combining them into formulas — even harder.
But for Jiang Chen, pills of this level were beginner-grade stuff. There was no difficulty at all.
Jiang Chen quickly sorted all the materials. He picked out the spiritual herbs that could serve as pill-refining ingredients, especially the primary ones, removing them one by one.
Before long, he had set aside thirty or forty herbs suitable as primary ingredients.
Then, various pill formulas using those primary ingredients began surfacing in his mind. He cross-referenced each one, then turned to examine the remaining herbs.