Apart from the time limits forcibly stipulated by the sect, if you felt your alchemy skills were sufficient, you could go to the Affairs Hall ahead of time for an individual assessment. You could even take consecutive assessments.
However, once you had used up your three chances for a single rank, if you failed, even if you were not expelled from the sect, you would be demoted.
Only after reaching the Grandmaster level did Yellow Qi Valley no longer impose time limits on assessments. At that level, improving one's alchemy by even an inch was already a task of a thousand difficulties and ten thousand hardships.
Only when they wished to advance would they voluntarily undergo assessment. Yet no matter how many times they failed, they would still remain within those four Grandmaster ranks.
Moreover, aside from Rogue Cultivators like Li Yan who joined midway, cultivators capable of reaching the Grandmaster level—
Any disciples personally cultivated by Yellow Qi Valley generally possessed cultivation at least at the Void Refinement Realm. They were already the pillars of the sect; how could the sect possibly abandon such people?
And with the title of Alchemy Grandmaster added on top, they were precious figures every sect scrambled to obtain.
Thus, for Li Yan at present, he had one year to pass the assessment and become a Spirit Pill Adept. Otherwise, he would be expelled from the Inner Valley.
However, Li Yan was not worried about this. He had been acknowledged by Second Martial Uncle; becoming a Spirit Pill Adept was merely the most basic introductory method of alchemy.
Second Martial Uncle's evaluation of Li Yan was that his attainments in alchemy lay somewhere between an Alchemy Practitioner and an Alchemist. If he performed well, he was an Alchemist; if he performed poorly, he was