Once the Initiates who failed in the exam stage had been cleared from the hall, Researcher Fu smiled at the eleven remaining Alchemy Initiates in the room.
"Now that we've dispensed with the preliminaries, the real contest begins." With a snap of her fingers, a group of young research assistants filed into the room carrying several wooden boxes, porcelain bottles, and other sample containers.
"This round of the exam is simple. Here we have six different items taken from the area around the mountain lake that reacted in some way to the eclipse. Each of them has been placed among several similar items that did not react to the eclipse. For this round of the contest, you will be given one-quarter of an hour for each set of items. In that time, you must identify which of the items was affected by the eclipse. At the end of that time, you will move on to the next set and so on," she explained.
"Much like the last round, you will not be ranked," she added. "If you can identify at least four of the six, you will advance. If you cannot, this is as far as you'll go."
Instantly, Sun Yang raised his hand. "Alchemy Novice Fu," he said, addressing her by her alchemy rank rather than the Amber Lily Academy's title of Researcher. "Are we allowed to use destructive methods of detection to identify the altered ingredient?"
"That's an excellent question, Initiate Sun," the older woman said with a smile and a patient tone of voice like she was a teacher addressing a student. "While it is sometimes necessary to burn a portion of an ingredient or expose it to a reactive element to ensure that your identification is correct, in this case, each item is very precious."
"We have ensured that each item for today's competition can be identified by using the five senses," she explained to the competitive youths. "You are also welcome to use the common equipment in this room to enhance your examination," she added, waving at a table filled with magnifying glasses, sampling vials, and other implements of their profession.
Seeing no other questions, Researcher Fu quickly sent the young alchemists to their first table where eleven matching sets of ingredients had been prepared. Once they were given the notification to start, Yu Jinqi opened the box to find five nearly identical Blood Root Reeds.
Seeing them was no surprise, they had been one of the early objectives for the expedition and something that Alchemist Huang had used as an example during her lecture. One of these reeds had transformed into a Bloody Moon Reed, the other four were normal.
Yu Jinqi didn't hesitate, closing his eyes and bringing each stalk of reed to his nose and taking a long sniff. At the moment, he wasn't trying to identify the specific elements of the altered reed, he was just trying to see if one was noticeably different.
The Yu family wasn't generally considered powerful in the Outer City but over the years they had leveraged their Celestial Bloodhound bloodline to produce a few legendary trackers, some of whom even reached the fourth stage and established a branch of the family in the Inner City.
Until Yu Jinqi came along, Yu Tao had been the black sheep of the family, dedicating his talents to alchemy and demonstrating that a refined nose that could track prey or fugitives across hundreds of li could also differentiate between thousands of herbs and find rare ingredients others would miss.
When Jinqi came along and demonstrated an extreme aversion to the violence that often occupied the martially inclined family, his Uncle Tao took him immediately under his wing.
Now, Yu Jinqi's finely developed sense of smell noticed at his first whiff that the third reed in his box was different from the others. The smell was more complex, carrying a tinge of damp night air and a cool breeze. The time the round had begun until he found his stalk of Bloody Moon Reed was less than thirty breaths.
Quickly, he jotted down his answer but he didn't put away the reed. Rather, since he had it and he had time, he went to the table full of tools and began a more detailed examination of the reed. This one ingredient would likely auction for twenty to fifty spirit crystals later today and he doubted he'd have another opportunity to see one up close again.
Further down the table, after another hundred breaths, Sun Yang made his own selection before closing his eyes as though bored with the proceedings. By the end of the allotted time, all eleven initiates seemed confident in their selections and moved on to the next ingredient.
This process was repeated twice more. Each time, Jinqi found it easier to identify which of the herbs was different than the others before investing his remaining time in studying the properties of the ingredient. Many of his competitors had begun to sweat, frequently sending glances at the bored-seeming Sun Yang who always seemed to finish first.
When they looked at Rou Qingzhi, a similar sense of pressure descended on the remaining initiates. With each passing round, her time to completion seemed to be getting even closer to Sun Yang's! No one, however, gave Yu Jinqi much of a glance. While he didn't look like he was feeling as much pressure as they were, he clearly worked up until the very last moment every time and left his competitors feeling that he'd simply run out of ideas but refused to give up to the end.
Things changed at the fourth ingredient when, instead of another herb, they were presented with the Beast Cores of Silver Moon Foxes. Scent alone wouldn't be enough to tell them which of these had become a Blood Moon Fox and Jinqi had to fall back on other tests as he examined the collection of beast cores not larger than a small marble. After a hundred breaths, he was no closer to an answer than when he'd begun.
"Silver moon foxes are known for their speed," Yu Jinqi muttered to himself, too softly to be heard by others. A Blood Moon Fox should be more… aggressive. The contrast reminded him of his friend Xiong Dahuo and the woman from the Shining Blade Hall, Su Xiang who claimed to be able to overwhelm Zhang Buyan with pure speed.
Once his mind made that connection, turning back to the beast cores he began to ask himself if one reminded him more of his friend or the woman from the Shining Blade Hall. Twenty breaths later, he believed he found the core that contained energy similar to his boisterous and outspoken friend.
For the remainder of the time, he carefully studied the core, comparing it less to the others and more to the items like the Bloody Moon Reed, finding that even in the beast core, several subtle signs of change remained the same.
The final two items proved even more challenging and even Rou Qingzhi gave up on the final item, the scales of a Pure Yang Swordfish. When the results were announced, however, several of the competitors stared at Yu Jinqi in shock. Only five of the eleven had successfully identified four of six items. Rou Qingzhi had managed five, but surprisingly, Sun Yang had made a mistake on the fifth item. Of everyone still in the contest, only Yu Jinqi had correctly identified all six!
"Brother Yu," the handsome younger man said after suppressing his urge to rail against the judgment. Since both Rou Qingzhi and Yu Jinqi had identified the item on which he'd made a mistake, it was hard to claim that the test wasn't fair or that someone had cheated. He could only swallow his loss and try to learn from it. "How did you manage to get all six?"
When Sun Yang asked the question, all of the other initiates leaned forward as well. All this time they'd been staring at Sun Yang and Rou Qingzhi but it turned out that even the most brilliant of them had encountered someone greater. Few of them would have had the courage to ask the question Sun Yang just had but all of them were interested in the answer!
"The clues for the last two were in the first four," Yu Jinqi readily admitted. "The Pure Yang Swordfish Scales have a cleaner smell like the clear night of a full moon that was common on many of the earlier ingredients, but they also have a greater firmness and strength than the other fish scales, similar to the way that the Bloody Moon Reed is stiffer than the Blood Root Reeds," he explained.
"The reeds are still very yielding and very yin in nature, but the firm strength of yang still has a small influence," he added, hoping his explanation was good enough for the young alchemists staring at him with eager eyes. "It was the same with the last item, I only noticed what made it different by comparing it to the ones I'd verified earlier on."
"Well done Initiate Yu," Researcher Fu praised. "This is exactly what this round was designed to test, your ability to learn from each stage and extrapolate to the next. For the five of you who remain, I have good news," she continued with a smile, certain that the young alchemists would be overjoyed by her next announcement.