" The next test is extremely special as it tests you on your ability to not only recognize herbs, but also your ability to retrieve them and also your ability to sense them" Elder Zhang explained to Richie.
As an alchemist, being able to find, recognize and retrieve herbs is of extreme importance, without herbs, how would one concoct anything?
" The last time this test was used in a mass recruitment was when the Empress, participated, this is because there is a very real risk of death in the test. The only reason we are using this test today is because the wang clan requested is to test their projedy." Elder Zhang told Richie
The current Empress of the Xinjiang Empire was a projedy like no other, born with the divine black hole constitution which allowed her to cultivate at a monstrous speed with almost no bottlenecks.
The fact that the alchemist guild is using this test today means that the young Wang clan projedy has talent on par or even slightly below the Empress.
" For the test, you will have a week to find 100 herbs at the first realm, 5 herbs at the second realm and one herb at the 3rd realm" Elder zhang said
Whilst the test may seem easy at first glance, it was the complete opposite, finding a realm 1 herb was easy, but to find 100, that was a different story, realm 2 herbs were very rare to find, so finding 5 would be near impossible, But a realm 3 herb, they were basically impossible to find, well near impossible to find outside of the central city.
Now, this may seem like a test based entirely on luck, it was not, All herbs give off a smell rich in qi, alchemists should be able to smell these scents and locate the herb which gave off this smell.
This may sound weird but the better you are at smelling things, the better chance you would have to pass this test. Richie had never practiced smelling herbs before so as of now, he was baffled on how he was going to pass the test.
" Aren't realm 3 herbs supposed to be like, really rare?" Richie asked,
" well, yes usually, but the whirlwind Valley has tens of thousands of these herbs" Elder Zhang told Richie.
" W- Whirlwind Valley? " Richie asked elder Zhang for confirmation
" Yes, why have you been there before?" Elder Zhang asked
"you are merely at the second sub stage of the first realm, so I don't think you will be able to pass this test anytime soon" elder Zhang reminded Richie.
Richie's cultivation was currently the lowest out of all of the participants, so in elder Zhang's view, Richie was going to fail without exception.
But elder Zhang was right about that, with his cultivation, it would be a miracle if he wasn't killed by a spirit beast as soon as he entered the valley. Then Richie realised something.
Wait why is it called a Valley when It is more like a forest, I'll have to ask the system when it gets back from whatever it's doing Richie thought to himself.
Richie had also sustained some trauma from being nearly killed twice in the Valley so he nearly had a heart attack after hearing that he would have to go back there again.
" okay, that's all I'm going to tell you, and I wish you luck"
Well, if my cultivation is not high enough, then I will just have to improve it! I also have the yin-yang cultivation technique to use, with that, I doubt i will have any bottlenecks.
After elder Zhang flew away to continue supervision of the test, Richie sat down and began cultivating according to his cultivation technique.
In summary, cultivation worked by absorbing qi into your meridians, pulling ot through your meridian pathways and into your core.
once your core is filled with qi, you would have reached a bottleneck, by absorbing more qi, you could attempt to stuff your core so much that is expands outwards to accommodate more qi.
Upon successfully 'breaking through' your core would increase by a small set margin based on how good your cultivation technique was, and then all the qi in your core would compress to accommodate even more room, and with more qi and higher quality qi, everything about your body would improve, including how lethal your skills and battle techniques are.
Richie's cultivation technique worked by assigning the element of yin on half of his qi and the element of yang on the other half, he would then make them mix to cause a violent reaction, because yin and yang are direct opposite elements, upon coming in contact with each other, they would expand and explode.
What the technique attempts to do would be to control the reaction so that at all times in Richie's core whilst he was cultivating, this reaction would be ever present at the edges of his core. the core improved in size due to the expansion reaction and the qi in the inside would be compressed due to the explosion reaction compressing the remaining qi inwards.
After around about 10 minutes of cultivation, Richie broke through to the third sub stage of the first realm! This speed was monstrous, to think that Richie used to need almost a year to advance a sub stage before, yet now it only took him 10 minutes, he didnt even feel a bottleneck!
Though now for Richie, his cultivation was now limited by his will power, the amount of pain the yin-yang reaction caused was horrible. Richie was sweating heavily after cultivating for only 10 minutes. Though it kind of felt good, improving so quickly, the pain also felt quite good.
" Wait, no the pain doesn't feel good, i- I'm not a masochist, Right?"