The Academy's Alchemy Medicine Institute.
A hundred small pill furnaces stood in neat rows across the spacious grounds. On either side were Hundred-Drawer Cabinets several yards tall, filled with all manner of medicinal herbs. The students' examination task was to use the materials provided to refine a pill within the time limit, with their results judged on appearance, uses, ingenuity, and so on. As Dean, Zhang Zihu naturally sat at the very front of the judges' table, flanked by eminent physicians from the Imperial Physician Directorate and the Imperial Medical Academy. Even as they whispered among themselves, they were somewhat nervous.
After all, unlike the Forged Blade Competition next door, pill refinement generally did not involve exploding furnaces filling the place with smoke. Even the worst students could roll medicinal herbs into pills, but heaven alone knew what effects they would have, and they could hardly feed them to wooden dummies.
Faced with pills of uncertain efficacy, the judges had to lead by example and test them themselves to deliver an accurate assessment. Someone like Zisu was all right; at worst, they would suffer social death. But if they encountered some prodigy who rolled bat droppings, hare droppings, and other animal excrement together, then declared, "Unless you eat it, you can't judge my pill useless," they would truly be suffering eight lifetimes' worth of bloody bad luck.
Although Lin Zisu had arrived last, she was one of the Academy's top students, and refining pills came as easily to her as drinking water. She soon rolled out a small pill, placed it on a tray, and brought it before the three judges.
"Old Man Zhang, I'm done. Have a look?"
Zhang Zihu both loved and hated this prized pupil of his. He straightened a little in his seat and picked up