Holy crap, I overacted, a summons from a Golden Core ancestor!

Under countless gazes mixed with sympathy, mockery, and taking joy in his misfortune, Zhao Hao calmly took out a... pill furnace from his storage pouch.

If that thing could still be called a pill furnace.

The furnace body was pitted with several dents, covered all over in black scorch marks, and it was a whole size smaller than the standard pill furnaces uniformly distributed by Ten Thousand Immortal Pavilion. Most absurd of all, the spiritual energy fluctuations it gave off were so weak they could almost be ignored.

First-tier low-grade!

The entire Ten Thousand Immortal Pavilion instantly sank into an eerie, deathly silence.

The next second, a tide of discussion exploded with a roar!

"Holy shit! What the hell did he just pull out? That's a pill furnace?"

"A first-tier low-grade pill furnace? Am I seeing things? Back when I first learned alchemy, even the apprentice furnace I used was better than that furnace!"

"He's gone mad, this brute has completely gone mad! Using that kind of trash pill furnace to refine a second-tier pill? Is he afraid this round of alchemy won't explode?"

Which alchemist present did not regard their own pill furnace as a precious treasure? Even if it was not a second-tier spiritual artifact, at the very least it had to be a first-tier top-grade one, and it would be engraved all over with various formation patterns to assist in fire control and spirit gathering.

The boost a high-tier pill furnace gave to the pill formation rate was real and tangible.

But Zhao Hao was just great. After even the officially provided first-tier mid-grade pill furnace had exploded, he turned around and pulled out an even more broken one.

This move directly pierced through everyone's imagination.

Even the Golden Core patriarch in the private room on the second floor could not help narrowing his eyes slightly, and an undertone of anger appeared on his face, as if killing intent had risen toward this cultivator who treated the dignified Alchemy Grand Assembly like a playground.

The few alchemists seated around Zhao Hao reacted the most directly. Without another word, they picked up their own pill furnaces and, together with their furnaces, forcibly moved three or four zhang to the side. They would rather squeeze together with other cultivators than get anywhere near Zhao Hao, this mobile "powder keg."

Their disgusted looks made it seem as though Zhao Hao had gotten something unclean on him.

On the other side, Li Ming, whose expression had remained gloomy all along, also cast over an intrigued gaze at this moment. His eyes lingered on Zhao Hao's broken furnace for a moment, carrying a hint of probing and incomprehension.

Zhao Hao seemed to hear none of it.

His expression was unprecedentedly grave, and it was not an act.

The previous two furnaces had been acting. This furnace absolutely could not fail!

It was still the familiar opening.

With a "crash," all the spirit herbs were roughly dumped into the furnace.

"Boom!"

The earth fire was urged on, and Zhao Hao once again swung his cattail-fan-sized hand, sending a furious flurry of slaps at that broken furnace that looked like it might fall apart at any moment.

"Clang! Clang! Cla—!"

The crisp sound of metal striking metal was especially grating in the silent hall.

The surrounding alchemists were all startled out of their wits, terrified that with one slap, he would directly flatten that broken furnace.

Time trickled by, bit by bit.

Half a cup of tea later, just when everyone thought the "special skill" of adding spirit stones was about to be performed again, a familiar burnt smell once more drifted faintly out from the gaps in the pill furnace.

Fairy Xuan Su, who had been keeping an eye on this side all along, also had an instant of pause in her motion of collecting the pills.

She had already finished refining. Inside her furnace, six round and full Soul Condensing Pills gave off a cold, dim glow. But her mind had been drawn in by this cultivator beside her who refused to play by common sense.

With her attainment in alchemy, she could naturally judge that once this burnt smell appeared, it meant the spirituality of the medicinal liquid inside the furnace had already begun to drain away. Even immortals would find it hard to save.

This furnace was ruined again.

Li Ming on the other side also completely withdrew his gaze, no longer paying attention to this grandstanding brute.

"Ah, the burnt smell of the pill has already come out. This furnace has failed as well." In the stands, an experienced old alchemist shook his head and commented with an air of judgment.

"Hahaha!" The brocade-robed cultivator who had egged people on at Ten Thousand Immortal Gambling House was now laughing so hard his tears were about to come out. Pointing at Zhao Hao's figure, he said loudly to the people beside him, "See that? I told you he couldn't do it! Now those twenty thousand spirit stones have completely been thrown into the water! This is killing me!"

However, just when everyone had already decided the outcome was set, Zhao Hao moved.

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He turned a deaf ear to the surrounding mockery and judgment, suddenly yanked open the furnace lid, and took out the last handful of spirit stones from his storage pouch. There were only a little over fifty pieces, and without even looking, he threw them all in!

"I refuse to believe in this damned evil!"

A furious roar rang out, accompanied by the strange syllables he kept muttering under his breath.

The people around him were so frightened that they all took a step back in unison, subconsciously raising their protective spirit shields.

However, this time, the heaven-shaking explosion they had imagined did not arrive.

From an angle no one could see, Zhao Hao's divine sense had long since spread like mercury pouring across the ground, completely enveloping the entire interior of the pill furnace.

In his vision, a pale-golden light screen flashed and vanished.

[Main Item: Soul Condensing Pill (Waste Pill) enhanced to (Low-grade)]

[Consumed Materials: Low-grade Spirit Stone x50, Waste Pill x5]

[Enhancement Success Rate: 100%]

Enhance!

A faint, almost imperceptible flash of golden light flickered across the panel no one else could see, then vanished.

Zhao Hao put on a mysterious, mumbling act, suddenly slapped the pill furnace, and shouted, "Open!"

The furnace lid sprang open at the sound.

The next moment, countless strands of divine sense, like sharks scenting blood, surged madly into the tiny pill furnace.

At the bottom of the furnace, a single pill lay quietly.

Its entire body was gray-black, and its shape was even somewhat irregular, like a slightly flattened ellipsoid. Its surface was pitted and uneven too.

Yet it was precisely such an ugly pill that gave off a faint, almost nonexistent medicinal fragrance, cool and refreshing, that clearly acted upon the soul.

A low-grade Soul Condensing Pill!

Zhao Hao's eyes, which had originally been tightly shut, cautiously cracked open a slit. When he saw that pill, wild joy instantly erupted across his face, and his whole person looked like a gambler who had hit the jackpot.

"Hahaha! It worked! I knew it! I, Zhao Hao, am the one fate has chosen!"

His laughter, exaggerated to the extreme, shattered the dead silence over the entire hall.

Immediately afterward, an uproar like mountains roaring and seas surging completely detonated the Ten Thousand Immortal Pavilion!

"Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit! He really fucking refined it?!"

"Absurd! This furnace actually didn't explode! With a busted first-tier low-grade furnace, he could refine a second-tier Soul Condensing Pill?"

"Fuck, did he just win sixty thousand Spirit Stones?"

The brocade-robed cultivator who had been gloating earlier suddenly had his expression freeze on his face, then revealed a look as if he had swallowed a fly alive.

"This... this fucking thing could even form a pill? What dogshit luck from several lifetimes did he step in!"

In the private room on the second floor, the teacup before that Golden Core ancestor silently trembled, rippling with a ring of waves.

Zhao Hao paid none of them any mind. He carefully picked up that ugly pill, and after the steward confirmed it with a magic artifact and announced that he had passed, he listened to the rules for the next round of the competition, then rushed out of the Ten Thousand Immortal Pavilion without looking back, heading straight for the Ten Thousand Immortal Gambling House across the street.

When his burly figure appeared once more at the entrance of the Ten Thousand Immortal Gambling House, what greeted him were pairs of complicated eyes mixed with envy, jealousy, and disbelief.

"Senior! Your... your sixty thousand Low-grade Spirit Stones!"

This time, the steward's expression was complicated as he respectfully offered up, with both hands, a storage pouch stuffed to bursting.

Zhao Hao snatched it over, swept it with his divine sense, and after confirming there was no mistake, stuffed it into his robes and turned to leave.

Just then, an overbearing, tyrannical divine-sense transmission that brooked no refusal stabbed fiercely into his sea of consciousness like a red-hot steel needle!

"You brat, you're rather good at putting on an act. Come to the City Lord's Mansion!"

Zhao Hao's body went violently stiff. The wild joy brought by the sixty thousand Spirit Stones he had just obtained instantly turned into ice shards that chilled him to the bone!