PATH OF THE STAR HUNTER

672 Chapter 672 The Third Round, All Or Nothing.

To barely token applause from the crowd, the eight disqualified contestants walked off the stage. Thus, Sasha had a chance to see her opponents for the grand final of the alchemy tournament. In addition to Ai Zuling and Sublime Lotus, there were four other alchemists of great prestige and experience, although their attitudes were much less friendly than those of the first two.

Not wanting to leave the audience in suspense, Qiqi proceeded to explain the third round. “Dear participants, for our third round, the rules are very simple, use all your knowledge, wits, and skill to craft the greatest potion, pill, or another recipe you are capable of creating. As the sponsors and organizers of this event, we, the Eternal War Maiden Sect, will provide you with the best medicinal ingredients from across the continent. No matter how rare the medicinal herb or precious material is, our sect will try to provide for you, so that the ingredients won’t be a limitation to your performance this afternoon.”

Qiqi’s words caused a furor not only among the audience but also among the participants. One had to know that some of the highest level medicinal recipes used to require extremely rare materials, some almost impossible to find without the power of an entire sect after you and others directly extinct.

As such, it was common for the lack of ingredients to become an almost unbreakable chain that limited alchemists’ experimentation and research. Now, according to Qiqi, alchemists in the third round would have access to many of these rarities; it would be strange not to be excited.

After waiting a few seconds for the anger to calm down a bit, Qiqi continued. “Contestants will have one hour for planning and ingredient selection, followed by three hours of refining. In the end, each of their works will be judged by a jury of alchemists invited by our sect. Now normally in this kind of tournament, the participants are not allowed to keep the refined item if they didn’t put the materials for crafting, but this time, we are willing to make a huge exception. For the first three places, in addition to a reward according to their performance, those contestants will be able to keep the refined item.”

If Qiqi’s first statement caused a furor, the second almost drove everyone presents crazy. You had to know that this kind of exception did not occur frequently, in fact, many people had never heard of something similar happening in other tournaments before.

One had to know that the ingredients for high-level alchemy were not cabbage and squash that one could go and pluck from one’s backyard. No one in their right mind fully sponsors a tournament if they couldn’t keep at least the fruits of refining; at least not normally.

Sasha was no less excited than the rest, she had been very disappointed that she couldn’t create the best pills and potions this world’s alchemy had to offer. Sasha now had a chance to really unleash her abilities as an alchemist.

“With all of that said, it’s time for our contestants to venture into our warehouse and grab what they need to perform their best. As for our dear spectators, she is confident that you will be hungry after watching the first two rounds of the tournament, I invite you to take advantage of the time and go to one of the fine establishments in our city near this stage.”

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Desmond and the girls were very curious about what Sasha’s plans for the third round would be, but they all had no choice but to wait and see him, so they went out for a walk while the time is given to the contestants to prepare passed.

Along with the rest of the participants, Sasha was taken to an underground floor where rows and rows of shelves had been brought in. She had to have thousands upon thousands of different ingredients gathered and stored on those shelves, enough to make any alchemist drool.

Knowing what the true purpose behind this alchemy competition was, Sasha had to admit that the Eternal War Maiden Sect knew alchemists well. All the sect did was sweeten the deal slightly and there were already several alchemists considering joining or at least allying with the sect.

Although it was different when you knew the trick behind the curtain, Sasha was still very excited, after all, one fact remains unchanged, she could play with all the ingredients here. Like the other alchemists, Sasha spent the better part of half an hour just browsing the shelves, looking at all the available ingredients. After the first half hour of exploration came the planning.

With barely ten minutes left, Sasha finally managed to form a plan in her head, one that was challenging, exciting, intense, and still had a hint of nostalgia in it; just as she liked a good kiss from Desmond. Holding some romantic ideas in her head, Sasha showed off her multitasking skills by choosing all the ingredients she planned to use.

Due to the competitive environment, all the participants paid attention to each other’s choices and actions, so there was no lack of people seeing the ingredients Sasha took.

Seeing the ridiculous amount of high-level ingredients brought by Sasha, the other alchemists shook their heads at her. It was impossible to use so many high-level ingredients in a single pill or potion; every alchemist knows that only one or two plants should be used as central parts of a recipe and the rest should be auxiliary ingredients, the first ones being of a higher level than the rest.

The reason was very simple, it was too difficult to balance, mix and harmonize the energies within a pill if there were too many high-level ingredients inside. However, Sasha didn’t seem to give a damn, she took at least a dozen ingredients above three-star class.

Some alchemists thought that Sasha was just being arrogant, while others believed that she was just being greedy in taking this opportunity to loot and experiment with such rare materials. However, Ai Zuling knew Sasha too well to underestimate her.

As she came out of the room of ingredients with a basket full of herbs and other magical substances, Sasha hesitated for a second, but she ended up shaking her head and talking to herself to encourage herself. “Don’t worry, it’s all or nothing, there’s no use worrying.”

Despite her words of encouragement, Sasha knew she was nervous, afraid that she had taken more than she could handle, but she quickly pushed those thoughts away and focused on the task.

Once all the contestants were back on stage, Qiqi appeared to kick off the competition. You could see some pain in the eyes of the former auction host, Qiqi, as she looked at the amount of wealth that the contestants were about to burn, but she was professional and carried out her role.

In the audience, Desmond and the girls seemed quite excited for Sasha but also somewhat nervous, mainly because they had never seen alchemy of this level before, and what they had seen in the past tests took away from their incorrect notion that alchemy couldn’t be exciting.

“Very good, I believed that there was no reason to keep waiting, otherwise my boss will fire me for letting our audience die of boredom, and that would be too sad, after all, I am too beautiful to be fired.” With a little joke as a preamble, Qiqi kicked off the third and final round of the alchemy tournament.

Without even thinking twice, Sasha began to process the ingredients that she would need for this recipe. The first thing was to carefully extract the pollen from a handful of infernal tulips, flowers with a highly destructive and unstable igneous essence. The second thing was to find a stabilizer whose effects contradicted but also complemented each other, which were tears from Undine, a type of elemental being that was as rare as an honorable thief.

After preparing a paste with the first two ingredients, Sasha moved on to what she was following on her list of steps. In most of it, most of Sasha’s approach was not to use high-end ingredients, but rather that all of these ingredients had something in common, a huge dissonance with the other ingredients; it was as if Sasha had purposely chosen ingredients that shouldn’t be used at all.

Completely focused on what she was doing, Sasha continued to scoop out ingredients and process them in quite specific ways in some cases, spending nearly an hour and a half of her time solely processing materials. Much of the audience, both ignoramuses and alchemy experts, shared a similar thought: Sasha was running out of time.

Sasha, on the other hand, did not think so, she knew that time did not stop running and that soon she would not have the time to refine the pill before the tournament ended, or at least that would be the case if she did not have certain skills that would help her speed up the process by several folds.

Thinking of what she might end up doing, Sasha recalled clearly many of her conversations with Desmond, finding solace in her intimate moments and her words of encouragement; no matter what happened, the only thing for sure was that she would remain the same in the eyes of her family.