You Call This Alchemy? It's Clearly Stir-Frying in the Kitchen!

You Call This Alchemy? This Is Clearly Wok-Tossing in the Back Kitchen! At the registration area for the Ten Thousand Immortal Pavilion qualifiers, heads crowded together, and the air was filled with the complex fragrance of all kinds of spirit herbs mingled together.

Zhao Hao stood in the long line. With his current burly physique and fierce aura, he looked utterly out of place among the alchemists, who were generally slender in build and refined in bearing.

Most of the gazes cast his way were curious and appraising, as if they were looking at a body cultivator who had wandered onto the wrong set.

At last, it was Zhao Hao's turn.

The goateed old man in charge of registration lazily lifted his eyelids, glanced at Zhao Hao, then swept his gaze over the pressure of the Foundation Establishment Realm radiating from him. A trace of surprise flashed through his eyes.

"Name. What pill will you choose to refine?"

"Zhao Hao. Inedia Pill."

Zhao Hao's voice was not loud, yet it was like a stone smashing into a calm pond.

The registration area instantly fell quiet for a moment.

The goateed old man's half-lidded eyes widened a little, and he confirmed once more, "Fellow Daoist, you're sure it's... the Inedia Pill?"

The Inedia Pill was the most basic first-tier pill, usually something novice alchemy apprentices used for practice.

A Foundation Establishment Realm cultivator had come to participate in the Alchemy Grand Assembly, and for the qualifiers he chose to refine this? Was he here to smash the venue, or to make a joke?

"I'm sure." Zhao Hao's expression did not change.

"Heh."

A suppressed snicker came from behind Zhao Hao.

The one who laughed was a young cultivator also at the Foundation Establishment Early Stage. He wore an elegant brocade robe, and an undisguised sense of superiority hung on his face.

He exchanged a glance with another companion behind him, the contempt in their eyes almost spilling out.

The goateed old man's mouth twitched. In the end, he said nothing, finished registering Zhao Hao, and handed him a numbered wooden token and a sealed set of Inedia Pill materials.

"Take the materials and go to an empty furnace station over there."

Zhao Hao accepted the items, turned, and left, completely ignoring the mockery behind him.

The moment he left, the brocade-robed cultivator stepped forward. His voice was neither loud nor soft, just enough for everyone around to hear.

"Steward, I choose the Meridian-Impacting Pill."

Meridian-Impacting Pill! A first-tier high-grade pill!

As soon as these words came out, quite a few alchemists around them cast approving looks over. Now this was what someone participating in the Alchemy Grand Assembly should look like!

The companion behind the brocade-robed cultivator hesitated slightly, but in the end he also gritted his teeth and said, "I'll choose the Meridian-Impacting Pill too."

Zhao Hao found an empty spot not far away and stood there. After those two received their materials, they actually walked straight to the two empty stations on his left, making it obvious that they intended to show off their skills right in front of him.

The brocade-robed cultivator even shot Zhao Hao a provocative glance, as if to say: Watch closely, bumpkin. Let me show you what a real alchemist is.

Zhao Hao rubbed his chin, and inwardly, he immediately laughed.

Since he had to disguise himself as a body cultivator who knew nothing about alchemy, he might as well act the part thoroughly and use the crudest method possible to completely cover up the system's traces.

First, he cleaned the pill furnace in a seemingly proper manner, drew in the earth fire, and preheated the furnace.

Yet in the next instant, under everyone's jaw-dropping stares, Zhao Hao actually dumped the five spirit herbs, including the Green Spirit Grass, Jade Dew Flower, and Earth-Condensing Poria, straight into the pill furnace all at once!

With a boom, flames leapt inside the pill furnace.

"Fuck, is that how you refine an Inedia Pill?" One alchemist's eyes nearly popped out.

And that was not the end of it.

Zhao Hao grabbed the two side handles of the pill furnace with both hands, suddenly exerted force, and forcibly lifted that heavy pill furnace up!

Then, he began to toss it like a wok.

Yes, just like a cook in the mortal world stir-frying food, he began madly tossing and stir-frying the pill furnace!

Clang! Clang! Clang!

The heavy pill furnace seemed weightless in his hands, flying up and down as rhythmic collisions rang out from within.

"Pfft—"

"Hahahaha! What is this guy here for? Don't tell me this bro used to be a cook?"

"My heavens, I've been refining pills for ten years, and this is the first time I've seen someone refine like this! Is this alchemy or cooking?"

"He's lost it, he's really lost it. A Foundation Establishment Realm cultivator came here to stir-fry spirit herbs. Ten Thousand Immortal City really has every wonder under the sun!"

The entire first floor of Ten Thousand Immortal Pavilion was instantly drowned in roaring laughter.

The two brocade-robed cultivators who had originally been preparing to watch a good show laughed so hard they rocked back and forth, almost forgetting their own pill furnaces.

"Senior Brother, this... was this idiot sent by the monkeys as reinforcements?"

"Don't bother with him. He's probably some body cultivator from a mountain ditch whose brain isn't right. We'll refine ours!" The brocade-robed cultivator forcibly held back his laughter and began focusing on handling his own medicinal materials.

Naturally, this ridiculous scene also drew the attention of many important figures inside the private rooms on the second floor.

Inside a private room hung with pale blue gauze curtains, a woman dressed in a sky-blue palace gown was watching the qualifiers below in utter boredom.

When she saw Zhao Hao's pill-refining technique—something that could practically be called performance art—she could not help giving a soft "Eh?" A strange look appeared in her beautiful eyes.

Time ticked by, second by second.

For a full quarter of an hour, Zhao Hao kept repeating that ridiculous "wok-tossing" motion.

Downstairs, laughter had already broken out everywhere. There were even quite a few alchemists who, because they were distracted watching him, lost control of the heat in their own pill furnaces, sending out waves of scorched stink.

Just when everyone thought he was going to fry up a pot of black charcoal, Zhao Hao's movements suddenly stopped.

He set the pill furnace steadily back over the earthfire, then, under a sea of mocking gazes, lifted the furnace lid in one motion.

There was no billowing black smoke as imagined, nor any sharp, scorched odor.

In its place was a medicinal fragrance so rich it had reached the extreme, even carrying a trace of clean sweetness. Like a storm, it instantly swept through the entire hall!

"This... what smell is this? Can Inedia Pills have this kind of scent?"

Everyone's laughter stopped dead. They stared fixedly at Zhao Hao's pill furnace.

At the bottom of the furnace, six pills lay quietly.

Each one was round and full, jade-green from top to bottom, with even a faint layer of pill-rhyme radiance lingering over its surface!

"Pill rhyme! That's pill rhyme only high-grade pills have!"

In the crowd, no one knew who cried out in shock.

High-grade Inedia Pills!

Six pills in one furnace, every single one high-grade!

This... how was this possible?! With just that stir-frying-like technique?

The two brocade-robed cultivators closest to Zhao Hao had their mouths open wide enough to stuff in an egg, completely dumbfounded.

They had utterly forgotten the state of their own pill furnaces.

"Pfft!"

With a muffled sound, a plume of black smoke sprayed out from the brocade-robed cultivator's pill furnace, and the thick scorched smell instantly overwhelmed that enticing pill fragrance.

His expression changed, and he fumbled in a panic, trying to salvage it, but it was already too late.

When he lifted the furnace lid, six waste pills, charred black as coal, were silently mocking his incompetence.

His companion beside him did not fare much better. With his mind thrown into chaos, he ultimately only barely condensed a single lowest-quality low-grade Meridian-Impacting Pill, while the rest were all waste pills. He had just scraped through the preliminary selection, scaring himself into a cold sweat.

He could not understand it. With his ability as a second-rank alchemist, he had nearly overturned his cart because of the interference.

Yet this "cook" before him, using that technique that was absurd to the extreme, had actually refined an entire furnace of high-grade pills?

The facts were right in front of him; he had no choice but to believe it.

Not just him—at least half the alchemists present had been so shocked by Zhao Hao's almost supernatural operation that they lost control of their minds.

For a time, the sounds of furnaces exploding and the muffled thuds of waste pills rose one after another, and the entire preliminary selection site was in complete chaos.

Zhao Hao, however, acted as if nothing had happened. He put the six high-grade Inedia Pills into a jade bottle and looked toward the goatee steward, who was already standing there in a daze.

The steward swallowed with difficulty, then mechanically nodded, which counted as confirming that he had passed.

Zhao Hao put away the wooden plaque, then, under countless gazes filled with shock, confusion, and horror, turned and walked out of Ten Thousand Immortal Pavilion.

From beginning to end, he did not look at those two clowns again.

On the second floor, inside a private room hung with pale-blue gauze curtains.

The woman in the sky-blue palace dress watched Zhao Hao's tall, sturdy back disappear through the doorway, then set down the teacup in her hand.

On her devastatingly beautiful face, the boredom from before was gone, replaced by a thick trace of interest.

"So it was him!"

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