Third Young Master Ji's intuition was indeed extraordinary. The moment
And the facts proved him right.
By the time Third Young Master Ji and the other geniuses returned one after another, Jiang Chen was already seated beside the Peacock Emperor.
At this very moment, countless gazes of envy, jealousy, and resentment orbited around Jiang Chen like satellites. None of them could accept what had just happened.
"A Pill King?"
"How does an alchemy prodigy end up with this fortune? Is his martial talent supposed to surpass ours — scions of the great clans?"
"Who even is this Pill King Zhen? I've never heard of him before!"
It was clear that nobody could wrap their heads around it.
Never mind the young masters of the great clans — even the clan heads themselves were unwilling to accept the outcome. Every one of them had pinned their hopes on their own family's juniors rising to the occasion.
Yet in the end, the fortune had gone to a young man of unknown origins whose identity was almost laughable.
He was a Pill King — and a guest Pill King at that, hailing from some ninth-rank family down in the hinterlands.
Strictly speaking, a mere guest Pill King from a ninth-rank family shouldn't even have been qualified to attend the event.
And yet this man, who by all rights shouldn't have been there at all, was the one who came out on top. For every great clan, the humiliation was monumental.
With the exception of the Panlong Clan Head, all the other clan heads who served beneath the Peacock Emperor had instantly taken a dislike to this Pill King Zhen who had appeared out of nowhere.
Clearly, none of the clan heads could take this result lying down.
The Panlong Clan Head, however, was a different story. After years of suffering, he had developed a far more open-minded perspective than the other clan heads.
He had three young juniors under the Panlong great clan, each one a prodigy beyond compare. But being a prodigy was one thing — whether any of them truly had what it took to inherit the Peacock Emperor's mantle was another matter entirely. The Panlong Clan Head felt they fell just a hair short.
It wasn't that they were unworthy. The problem was that none of them stood out decisively from their peers. None had demonstrated that overwhelming superiority — that crushing advantage — that would set them unmistakably apart from everyone else.
If you forced them into the spotlight and they got lucky, perhaps they could soar.
But if fortune turned against them, they could end up dying even more惨 than
For the Panlong Clan Head, Jiang Chen rising to this position was actually not bad news at all. Rather than feeling displeased, he was quietly thrilled.
He had been courteous to Jiang Chen before, but that was because he needed something from him.
While he did need Jiang Chen's help, he had still harbored doubts about whether Jiang Chen truly had the means to obtain the Pine Crane Pill.
Jiang Chen had spoken of that extraordinary individual in vivid detail, painting him as a reclusive master of the highest caliber. But without ever having laid eyes on that figure in person, the Panlong Clan Head had never been able to entirely shake his worries.
Now, however, seeing Jiang Chen so effortlessly seize the Peacock Emperor's fortune, his last shred of doubt evaporated completely.
A young lord from a backwater vassal state in the Myriad Manifestations Domain — for him to have reached this height, he must have received some heaven-defying opportunity in his childhood. There was no other explanation.
A place like the Myriad Manifestations Domain — barren resources, low-level cultivation — it was the last place on earth you'd expect to produce a genius like Jiang Chen.
So the only logical explanation was guidance from that reclusive master.
This time, the Panlong Clan Head truly believed. He believed it with every fiber of his being.
"Your Majesty, we are all very curious as to how exactly this Pill King Zhen obtained your fortune. Might Your Majesty grant us the mercy of satisfying our curiosity?" The Lingzhi Clan Head was the first to speak up.
"To have surpassed the geniuses of every great clan — this Pill King Zhen is truly surprising. An alchemy prodigy with such formidable martial talent — it is indeed curious."
"Your Majesty, what is this Pill King Zhen's background?"
Though the clan heads hadn't said it outright, their hostility toward Jiang Chen was plain enough.
A nobody who had appeared out of thin air, with no background to speak of — it was only natural that winning everyone's acceptance overnight would prove difficult.
The Peacock Emperor merely smiled. "Heroes need not be asked where they come from. But since you're all curious about how he did it, that's simple enough."
With that, the Peacock Emperor gave a nod to the Cloud Illuminated Emperor.
The Cloud Illuminated Emperor opened his palm, and a memory crystal materialized in his hand.
This was the type of spirit stone capable of recording images. Although the formation hadn't captured every detail, certain key areas had been recorded.
At the very least, at every critical juncture where Jiang Chen crossed each trial, the memory crystal held quite a few recordings. Of course, the crystal was far from omnipotent, and the images were somewhat blurred.
Still, it was plain for everyone to see that he had passed all three trials — and done so with absurd ease.
In contrast, the scions of the other great clans, while each had made it through reasonably well, had all struggled visibly during the process. Every one of them had looked somewhat bedraggled.
Not a single one of them had managed to breeze through the way Pill King Zhen did.