Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Most people in the hall sat in still silence, fearing the next few minutes. Having the fate of their future handed off to the audience didn’t sit right with them.

Sure, those audiences would include empathetic people who might want to give the participants some grace and allow most of them to pass. But there would be more of them who wanted entertainment alone. They would want the competition to be cutthroat and thus fail a chunk of the participants right here.

Alex looked at the list before him, which now showed the Real Time instead of Final Time. Looking through it, the middle ground was around 55 minutes. While many had managed to perform greatly, the majority had failed to live up to that standard and had dragged the overall average down by a lot.

If this were pure statistics, 55 minutes would be the average here. But since actual people were involved and not math, the outcome would be completely different. It was possible that the actual value was a lot less.

Not to mention, there was another issue entirely that many of the participants had begun noticing — and Alex had too.

Because they were showing Real Time to the audience, the audience would choose based on it. Their idea of the best, the average, and the worst would all be related to Real Time. However, the actual time that mattered was Final Time.

Final Time was higher for every single person who hadn’t been first all the way through. Even if the audience were to choose a generous cut-off point, it would still be too low for many of the participants.

At a minimum, there was a 0-second penalty for someone who was first all the way through. But at maximum, the additional time was over 10 minutes. Even if someone had performed astonishingly, if their opponents were better in their batch, they were screwed.

“No wonder they didn’t let us go out,” Alex said slowly. “They don’t want the audience to realize that the true time that counts is different from what they see.”

Killersky nodded. “They’re going to make the audience take what they think is fair and then put it on us. Honestly, I must say that’s quite smart,” she said.

“So… our chances at victory are in the hands of people who want nothing more than entertainment,” Jai Heiyun said with a sigh. “Is it pessimistic to think that I’ve most likely already lost?”

No one said anything. Anything could come true here.

The only saving grace was the fact that the Alchemy God had mentioned there were four more competitions after this — even though it would be the disciples taking part in one of those.

The Alchemy God arrived in a flash of light that took everyone by surprise. He slowly landed on the ground, where the people around him backed away to make space.

He looked around and smiled, and held up a talisman. “I have the answer right here,” he said, listening to the entire hall grow still in a split second. There wasn’t even the rustling of clothes anymore. One could hear a housefly’s wings beat in this silence.

The Alchemy God looked up at the massive panels that listed everyone’s Real Time and smiled. “Let’s have this changed,” he said, and the panels switched to the ones where they showed Final Time.

Almost everyone’s timing was so much worse on this list that many people reflexively cringed.

“So, the audience has decided on their answers, and after deciding on what a good choice was, we decided that we will take the average of all the suggestions, regardless of how extreme they were. And some of them were quite extreme — both good and bad.”

The man talked, letting the suspense linger in the room, watching everyone fret over the decision.

“And this is the time they have decided upon.”

He took a short pause and then revealed the answer.

“44 minutes and 25 seconds.”

Those who realized they had passed felt relieved. Those who failed felt their hopes shatter around them. The decision had been made, and it was over.

Jai Heiyun and Riveroak had thankfully passed. It was only a minute’s gap, but that was quite substantial. Still, they couldn’t help but feel as though they were lucky and needed to do better.

Alex congratulated the two on passing. The rest did as well.

Alex then looked at the panel, checking where the 44-minute mark was on the Final Time list. His eyes moved from his name at the start, passing through other names and numbers until he found it.

Then, his eyes moved through the remaining names on the list. And there were many more names on the list remaining.

So many more.

“5,000,” the words escaped his lips.

“What?” the group asked, turning to look at him. They were celebrating, so they hadn’t checked it immediately like he had.

Alex pointed to the panel. “Only 5,000 of us passed,” he said.

The group collectively looked at the panel and realized that the 44-minute and 25-second mark was right at 5,238. Meaning over 32,500 participants had just been disqualified in a snap.

As people began to realize that, the gasps were deafening.

“Had it been the Real Time chart, there would have been 7,000 people,” Aethersage said. “There were 7,000 people who had less than that time. But with this…”

He didn’t know how to feel about the situation.

On one hand, he was happy to have fewer contestants. On the other hand, he felt bad for the many people who were certain they would have passed.

They had believed this to be like last time, where just a bit more than half the contestants had been disqualified, but the reality was so much worse this time.

The number of disqualified was simply mind-boggling.

And still, there were more people left to be disqualified even before the next competition started.

There were only so many spots left open in the first competition, after all.