"Isn't it a little bit too easy? So you only have to be the fastest?" Hana asked.
"Hmm, I'm not sure too. Maybe because it was just the first round. They wanted the contestants to get accustomed to being watched by a million people first." Leyvi stated his opinion.
When he participated in the beast tamer tournament previously, having so many eyes on him was indeed nerve-wracking. He could only imagine how hard it was for them especially when alchemy requires extreme focus, totally different from their usual silent atmosphere. They would probably become more prone to errors during this competition.
It wasn't just Hana who had this question. The majority of the audience had the same thought.
"The first place for this round will get 100 points, second place 90 points, third place 80 points, fourth and fifth place 70 points, sixth to tenth 60 points, eleventh to fiftieth 50 points, fifty-first to a hundredth 30 points and the rest to a thousandth 10 points."
"Without further ado, let's begin the first round. 3 hours start from now!" As soon as Elder Godari started the round, a projection of the timer appeared at the top of the Grand Stadium and the barrier blocking spiritual sense was removed, allowing the contestants to identify the ingredients.
Among the contestants, Anda used her spiritual sense to scan through the entire ingredients first. From her observation, although there were over a hundred thousand ingredients here, over half of them were duplicates positioned in different ways to make it seem like it was a different ingredient.
Furthermore, through her Alchemic Vision, while it didn't show her the names of the alchemy ingredients, it showed her their composition and data.
She found out that half of the ones that were not duplicates were fake and made to look like real ingredients. They all have the same compositions, likely made from the same material.
Anda immediately knew the true nature of this round. Only less than a quarter of the alchemy ingredients will give them real points. The rest were there to confuse and waste the contestant's time.
10 hours was an extremely short amount of time to identify over a hundred thousand ingredients after all. They were supposed to be keen enough to identify the fakes and the duplicates and skip them to save time.
At first, she was just going to have a good enough placement in the competition because she didn't want to draw too much attention.
But the Mystic Realm rewards changed everything. This was an opportunity that they definitely couldn't miss. There was nobody else who deserved to enter the Mystic Realm besides her husband. Only he could maximize the gains to the fullest.
So, she would be going all out in this competition.
After eliminating the useless parts from the equation, Anda started recording the answer of the legitimate ingredients into the jade slip.
Elder Godari watched the competition in amusement. In the audience seat, some people were holding their heads in pain for some reason.
"Ah, I forgot to tell you that if someone from the audience tried to cheat and tried to tell contestants anything using a sound transmission, we have a formation here that would reflect that back and amplify it enough to give you severe headaches." He said nonchalantly.
As the organizer, how could they not have any countermeasures to this? They had done this so many times he was confident that nobody could successfully cheat. It wasn't easy for the Formation experts to come up with this anti-cheat system after all.
The audience who tried to cheat not only got a severe headache but they also got publicly shamed and could only hide their face in embarrassment.
He continued to watch the contestants again and sighed.
"Hmm...Half of them just rushed and started answering without thinking much. This would bite them back later. As for the other half... they are quite good. There's no doubt that they realized the duplicates.... but I wonder how many of them would be able to notice the fakes." He murmured.
Elder Godari looked up at the timer and said, "It has been 2 hours. It was about time to make this more enjoyable to the audience."
He controlled the formation again and a huge screen appeared below the timer. It was the current ranking of the contestants with the number of correct identifications! It only showed up to rank 100 because realistically, nobody cares about the ranks beyond that.
1. Norin Homun 3590
2. Ori Oregano 3117
3. Anda Leyan 3086
4. Natalie Clover 2997
5. Amelina 2974
6. Victor Goldstone 2888
7. Asmondol 2831
8. Lars Vomil 2808
9. Minami Clover 2787
10. Mia Fafifa 2777
When the audience saw the current ranking, they were not surprised that the Seven Alchemy Giants dominated the top ten. However, there were two names they weren't familiar with in the top ten.
Anda Leyan and Asmondol.
Who are these two? Are they the dark horse of this alchemy competition?
Although many people had never seen Amelina from the Pill Ascension Sect, Lars Vomil from Pill Palace, and Mia Fafifa from the Longevity Academy before, they had heard of their names. Still, Anda and Asmondol were truly new names for them.
Anda saw the rank and sighed inwardly. Sure enough, even with the help of Alchemy Vision she couldn't identify the ingredients fast enough.
Even though she didn't underestimate other people, seeing it herself still shook her heart. This was the overwhelming difference between those born with and without a talent.
Without the Alchemy Vision, she would be nothing compared to these people. However, her determination soared through the sky again, swearing inwardly that she would do her best for her husband, the man who let her have the chance to compete with these prodigies.
Fuck! Why am I not first? Ori Oregano cursed inwardly. This bitch from the Homun Family is quite good at this. And who the hell is this Anda? She is close behind me! Hmph, it must be because I'm not that good with my spiritual sense yet.
As the youngest alchemist prodigy of the Medicine Valley in centuries, he refused to believe someone did better than him. He blamed it on his cultivation. He was only 16 after all.
He broke through to the Foundation Building realm a year ago so his spiritual sense must have not been as good as other people here yet. That was the only reasonable explanation.
Mia Fafifa saw her rank and frowned. She had been distracted for a while and it caused her rank to be lower than expected. She was worried about Lin Wei who disappeared a few days ago. They both had come to represent the Longevity Academy along with a few others but now he wasn't even here.
Even the teachers who accompanied them failed to contact him. Now half were looking for Lin Wei and the other half were watching the competition. Mia Fafifa put all the concerns at the back of her head and focused again.
Norin Homun saw the rank and quickly resumed identifying the ingredients as if it was a matter of fact. She was confident to take first place in the first round because this was her area of expertise. When she got the first place overall later, her father couldn't complain about Dorin anymore.
Victor GoldStone was quite displeased by the rank. He was already 30 years old and probably the oldest contestant here. Seeing many younger alchemists higher ranked than him made him annoyed. Seeing Anda Leyan doing better than him irks him even more. As Selene's brother, he knew of her relationship with Leyvi so he knew that Anda was his wife.
Dammit, why only the tall guy got themselves great women? I'm definitely making myself tall one day!
At the same time,
The atmosphere of the Leyan Family area was lively.
"Look! Big Madam is ranked third right now. It's not that far from the second place. Amazing!" Nala shouted in excitement. Her boobs were bouncing around equally excited. She was new to the Leyan Family so she was ignorant of the full extent of Anda's alchemy expertise.
"Hahaha! Of course she is amazing! She is my wife after all." Leyvi bragged. "That Ori kid is pretty good too. No wonder he was a bit arrogant."
Selene was stunned too. She didn't expect that Anda would be better than her brother. She knew how much of a genius her brother was.
I knew it! Both of them were abnormal. Magnus recalled when he visited Leyvi's place last time. Both Leyvi and his main wife weren't fazed by his intimidating presence at all.
Furthermore, his guts told him that they would soar in the future. That was why he let Selene do as she wished.
"Hahaha! Vitali, you see that? My daughter is first!" Tordin Homun jeered at his rival. The Homun and Clover families had adjacent seats, so they were destined to bicker again.
"Heh, there's still 8 hours left. What are you excited about? My family had two people in the top ten!" Vitali Clover retorted.
"Hmm... I didn't expect to see a couple of new names in the top ten. Interesting." Elder Godari murmured.