In previous years, Nine Ruins Mountain's alchemy assessment had drawn few spectators beyond the Pill Dao cultivators taking part.
When cultivators refined pills, restrictive spell formations guarded their Alchemy Furnaces, concealing the process from full view. Although onlookers could make out some of the participants' movements through the haze, they could not probe with divine sense.
For most cultivators, the assessment was far too tedious. It could easily last months or even years, making it hardly worth staying in the hall to watch.
During the alchemy assessment, Qihuang Hall also organized numerous exchange gatherings.
The vast quantities of pills offered at those gatherings were the real reason more than a hundred thousand cultivators assembled at Nine Ruins Mountain.
This assessment, however, was markedly different. It also involved a staggering wager. Most cultivators had never even seen goods worth ten billion top-grade Yin Stones.
Whether they belonged to a Lineage or sect, or were solitary Rogue Cultivators, amassing goods worth ten billion top-grade Yin Stones was extraordinarily difficult. Even a Profound Tier cultivator with several million top-grade Yin Stones on hand would already be considered fabulously wealthy.
The sheer quantity of cultivation resources needed to build a fortune worth ten billion top-grade Yin Stones would make even a Profound Tier cultivator's mind thunder at the thought.
Yet now, someone was actually staking goods worth ten billion top-grade Yin Stones against dozens of Nine Ruins Mountain's foremost Pill Dao Masters in a contest of alchemy. Nothing like this had ever happened in Nine Ruins Mountain's Cultivation World.
Compared with this contest, the alchemy wagers previously held in Nine Ruins Mountain's Cultivation World were like ants standing beside an elephant, utterly insignificant. Who would willingly miss such a grand occasion?
Naturally, the hall could not accommodate tens of thousands of cultivators.
The crowd