192: Failure

Failure

Alex continued making the Bone Sealing pill as per the recipe. While more than half of the energy had escaped, he didn't worry about it. The pills would have enough energy left for him to pass.1

He continued putting in more and more ingredients as the Elder kept on watching. Finally, with the last ingredient, he was done putting in everything. It was now time for him to form the pill. 

He slowly gathered the powder around to shape it into a sphere. It was beginning to form a clump of powder when suddenly, a different strand of Qi escaped from his body and went into the pills. 

'No!' he thought, horrified. This was the last thing he wanted happening to him. He wasn't worried about the Elder seeing him split a pill into two. The cauldron was at a distance where the Elder couldn't see inside at all, but the problem was…

The powder clump separated into two equally sized clumps that started forming into pills. A vortex started on top of them sucking in as much energy as they could from their surrounding. However, most of it had already escaped and so the pills were left with none. 

After a minute or two, the vortexes stopped forming and the pills were done. 

Alex went into Focus mode. Time slowed down as his senses started to become a lot more acute. A little scared, Alex quickly put his hands into the cauldron, hiding the pills from the Elder. As he brought his hands back towards him, he looked at the pills. 

[Bone Sealing Pill: 19%]

[Bone Sealing Pill: 17%]

'Sh*t,' he started distressing. He quickly shot the 17% pill down his sleeve and showed the 19% pill in his palm. The pill suddenly flew off as soon as he opened his arm, falling into the Elder's hand. 

The Elder started testing the pill's Harmony level in the Pill tester and sighed. He shook his head as he saw the number 19 on the pill tester's glass body. Seeing that number was a little disappointing for him. 

The Elder had heard quite a bit about the Sect Leader's disciple from the other Elders, especially the one in charge of registering pills for the core disciples.  'Was he lying? Or was the disciple cheating at those times?' the Elder wondered. His gaze turned a little harsh now that he knew that the disciple was not very talented at making pills. 

However, nothing could be harsher than the way Alex was berating himself on the inside. 

'You stupid idiot. You could've just used Elemental Guidance at the end and you would've been fine. Just a single percentage increase and you would've passed the exam. Goddammit! Why did the stupid pill splitting Qi had to get come out at this time.'

'I should have just used my cauldron and I could have fixed this. If only I had a lid, the harmony would go up by about 5% for sure.' 

He started thinking about the different things that went wrong or the mistakes he made. However, nothing would now change the fact that he failed to make a 20% pill during the core disciples exam. 

'Sigh. Half an hour went just like that,' he thought. 

The Elder stood up at this point and walked a little closer towards him. He then spoke. 

"Disciple Yu Ming, You have failed to make a pill with 20% harmony under an hour. Do you have anything to say," the Elder asked? 

Alex sighed. He was about to shake his head when he suddenly caught up on something. "Um… Elder, Do I pass the exam as long as I can produce a 20% harmony pill in under an hour?" he asked. 

"Why are you repeating what I just said and asking if that is true? Of course, it is," The Elder replied a little annoyed at Alex. 

Alex however didn't mind it. His eyes were shining from the bit of information he had just received. "Elder, so I can make another pill, and if it turns out to have a harmony higher than 20%, I am fine, right?" he asked. 

"Yes, but I will have to inspect your ingredients again and it's already over half an hour now," the elder said. 

"No worries," Alex said and immediately opened the box to take out his storage bags. He looked into a few of them and took out the ingredients for the pill once more and handed it to the Elder. 

The Elder spent some time checking the ingredients and handed it back to him. Alex looked at the time and only 20 minutes were left. He had to hurry up. 

Alex was worried the Elder would waste more of his time if he brought out his cauldron at this point, so he decided to stay with the bad one for now. 

Without hesitation, he put the first ingredient into the cauldron. The tendon started turning to powder and releasing energy. Alex slowly used Elemental Guidance to keep those energies inside the cauldron as much as possible.

After some time, he put in another piece of ingredient and used Elemental Guidance to keep its energy inside the cauldron too. As more and more ingredients were added into the mix, the harmony between the elements began to set.

Alex made sure everything was fine when he decided to start forming the pill. 

'Oh god please don't release the pill splitting Qi,' he prayed. He then collected the powders in the cauldron to a clump and used Elemental Guidance to move whatever energy was left in the cauldron. 

The little amount of energy passed through the powder, increasing the harmony ever so slightly. He could tell that the powders had absorbed a good amount of energy and that the pill would be high leveled now. 

He was starting to get hopeful about his chances to pass at this point. He looked at the time and realized he only had less than 2 minutes to complete the task. 

He proceeded to complete the task, but just then, the thing he least hoped for happened. The Pill Splitting Qi came out of his body once more.

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