Those gloating onlookers had obviously been secretly observing Palace Master Dan Chi's reaction as well. Seeing the grim expression on his face, they could tell that even he clearly didn't understand what Jiang Chen was trying to do. That confirmed it — Jiang Chen was acting entirely on his own, not following any prearranged plan from Dan Qian Palace.
Since it wasn't some special method prepared by Dan Qian Palace, it could basically be concluded that Jiang Chen was just messing around.
To put it bluntly, he was cutting corners.
Growing all the Spiritual Medicine seeds and then picking the best ones from the results — it wasn't as if that method didn't work. But it only worked under normal circumstances.
You'd need sufficient spiritual ground, sufficient materials, sufficient soil, and sufficient time.
But this was a competition, and all of those factors were limited.
What Jiang Chen was doing was practically suicide!
Even if he got lucky and managed to grow them, how could he guarantee the quality of the seedlings?
If the quality fell short — if they all turned out to be low-grade or mid-grade — the score wouldn't be particularly impressive. And if those top-tier geniuses performed well in this round, they could easily overtake him in one sweep.
Of course, Jiang Chen himself — the person at the center of it all — had already completely immersed himself in his own method. He couldn't have cared less about the reactions from outside.
It was no wonder the spectators couldn't make sense of it. The technique he was using this time was quite unusual — a transcendent method that the Myriad Phenomena Territory simply did not possess.
Of course, the materials available at the venue were clearly insufficient. Jiang Chen produced additional supplies from his Storage Ring.
He divided his entire competition area into two halves.
On one half, he planted twenty Spiritual Medicine seeds in sequence.
It might have looked haphazard, but Jiang Chen had actually set up a minor Gathering Spirit Formation in this area — a Five Elements circulatory formation.
And these twenty seeds weren't the main point.
The main point lay in the other half. Jiang Chen set up another Gathering Spirit Formation there as well, but this one contained the five Saint Grade Seventh Level Five Elements seeds.
These five seeds were the real focus.
The two Gathering Spirit Formations were linked in a channel of communication.
The formation on the left actually served to transmit spiritual energy to the formation on the right.
In other words, between the two Gathering Spirit Formations, the one on the right was the priority.
The formation on the left existed solely to funnel the spiritual energy generated by those twenty medicinal seeds through the formation's channels over to the five Five Elements seeds on the right.
This method had a specific name in the field of alchemical cultivation — the Gathering Spirit Technique.
Simply put, it used formations and the spiritual energy characteristics of the plants to construct a Five Elements Gathering Spirit Formation.
The underlying principle wasn't actually that complex, but to set up this formation required extremely precise calculations for the space, an intimate understanding of the medicinal plants' characteristics, skilled use of the terrain, and masterful application of materials. Every aspect had to be executed with utmost refinement.
The slightest error would cause the entire endeavor to collapse.
At the end of the day, this was work of extremely high technical difficulty. Aside from Jiang Chen, no one in the entire Myriad Phenomena Territory could likely pull off such a technique.
There might not even be anyone who could fully understand it.
Wei Wuying and Sect Master Zhu were inwardly smirking at this very moment. They had watched Jiang Chen plant all those seeds with their own eyes.
Although Jiang Chen's technique appeared mysterious beyond mysterious, they refused to believe that whatever he was doing would actually produce results.
Once he had finished setting everything up, Jiang Chen did nothing further.
His method of cultivating Spiritual Medicine was different from the others — he couldn't very well sit there staring at the plants the entire time.
After completing his preparations, he simply sat cross-legged and began cultivating in his small space.
Seven days was a long time, and Jiang Chen had no intention of wasting precious hours. All the formations had been constructed, and everything that needed to be done was done.
All that remained was to wait quietly for the results.
Jiang Chen was confident that with the Gathering Spirit Technique, cultivating mere Saint Grade Seventh Level Spiritual Medicine and producing supreme-grade seedlings within seven days would be absolutely no problem.
If he hadn't been aiming for a perfect score, there would have been no need to go through all this trouble.
Even if he had used the same conventional approach as everyone else, he could have easily guaranteed at least high-grade Spiritual Medicine.
Moreover, there would even have been a certain probability of producing supreme-grade seedlings.
But making every single one of them supreme-grade — with the conditions they'd been given — was plainly impossible for anyone using normal methods.
Jiang Chen was certain that even someone as mysterious as Ding Tong, if she didn't employ special techniques, would absolutely be unable to cultivate all five seeds into supreme-grade seedlings.
On this point, Jiang Chen was fully confident.
Furthermore, compared to conventional methods, Jiang Chen's approach was a one-and-done affair. There was no need to hover over the plants the entire time. It was far easier than what everyone else was doing.
In this round, apart from Jiang Chen, Mu Gaoqi was also thriving like a tiger with wings. As someone born with the Superior Innate Wood Spirit Body, his advantage in this stage was incredibly pronounced.
When identifying seeds, he simply extended a casual sweep of his spiritual sense and determined each one with ease.