“I did not expect you to openly ask for the Alchemists to bring out books that would help you in the end,” the Artifact God said when the Alchemy God flew back toward them. “Did you truly expect them to hand it over if they had it?”

“I hoped they would,” the Alchemy God said.

“And what would you have done if they had revealed it to you?” the Formation Monarch asked.

“I do not know,” the Alchemy God said. “My first choice would be to simply ask them to exchange our treasures for a while, and see what we can learn from the two. If not, I would try to take them as my disciple. If that didn’t work, I would bribe them with everything I can afford.”

“Oh? You’re saying you won’t use force,” Artifact God asked.

“I would,” the Alchemy God answered. “But only as a last resort. I do not wish to harm the progress of an Alchemist for my own greediness. That would be the last of my wishes here.”

The Artifact God simply smiled, saying nothing else. The Alchemy God gave a tiny bow and moved toward the old woman in a white robe. “Anything?” he asked.

“I’m afraid not, your Majesty,” the old woman said. “I cannot even see the fate lines anymore. The future is very fluctuating here. Until I get up close to each and everyone, I will not be able to tell you anything.”

The Alchemy God frowned a little. “The Alchemy God wasn’t known for being knowledgeable about fate, so I do not believe it is his treasure that is doing this. Something else must be causing it.”

“Must be,” the old woman said. “Do you wish for me to go check on them?”

“No,” the Alchemy God said. “Let the participant participate without having the worry about anything. We need them to perform their Alchemy actions at the best rate they can.”

The old woman nodded. “I must say, even after all of these years, I am still surprised by your love for Alchemy,” she said. “Although, I should perhaps expect that since you are the type of guy to spend over 100 thousand years doing nothing but learning Alchemy without a mentor.”

“I do have a mentor, though,” the Alchemy God quickly replied. “It is the First Alchemy God.”

“He doesn’t count,” the old woman said.

“He does for me. I use his treasures to learn, so he is my mentor,” the Alchemy God said.

“If you were eligible, that book of his he left behind in the Sky God’s Palace would’ve worked for you,” the old woman said.

That hit a sore spot inside of him that he hadn’t known was still there.

“I tried,” he said solemnly. “It simply wouldn’t accept me. The Sky God knew why it wasn’t accepting me and yet… she wouldn’t tell me.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t divine the answer for you, Your Majesty,” the old woman said. “At least you got to see it. If not for you, we would have never realized that there was a puzzle left behind in that plain book other than his Inheritance.”

“What good is it though?” the man asked. “We never found the key to the puzzle. After hundreds of thousands of years, I’ve still been unable to find the code.”

The old woman gave an awkward smile. “My apologies for being so useless, Your Majesty. If it was the Divination God, he would have seen the past so easily and known what the code was. I couldn’t help you.”

“Divination God, huh?” the Alchemy God thought. He remembered the prophecy left behind by that man within this realm. Most people had forgotten already, and the ones that did remember did not care.

The Savior stirs the heavens, giving birth to one who does not exist. The day is his, but pain is all that showers from the sky. A decision will be made, for the one who sees the stars is haunted by that which they cannot see. It was a prophecy left behind nearly 140 thousand years ago during a random visit from the Divination God, speaking about a figure he only referred to as ‘the Savior.’

This wasn’t the only land where he left the prophecy. It was said that in most places he visited, he would leave behind a similar prophecy.

None had yet come true, so the legitimacy of it was questioned a lot. But… given who the prophecy came from, everyone who remembered it, remembered it deeply. They had to. After all, every single one of the Divination God’s prophecies came true without mistake.

The Alchemy God shook his head and looked toward the old woman. “Don’t beat yourself over it. I messed up enough time myself, like with the treasure recently. We just need to do better next time.”

“You are right, your Majesty.”

The Alchemy God moved away from the old woman and watched down below to see that everyone had been getting one talisman after another.

“We created nearly 100 thousand different talismans just to be safe, and I didn’t think we would be cutting so close with it,” he said softly. The only one who heard his words was Mo Duguan, one of the 10 Stars of Alchemy.

“There are a total of 92,822 participants in the tournament. We will need to lower that number by a lot or else it won’t be feasible to run a competition like it with no loss at all.

“Don’t worry. That’s what the first tournament is for anyway,” he said. “We should be able to cull the majority of the alchemists with this contest.” * * * * * * Alex looked through the recipe for the Great Tranquility Pill and tried to see what the result would be. There were some ingredients there that he had never used before, so he couldn’t come up with anything.

The Gale Immortal Rat’s eyes and Emerald Raven’s tail feathers were not common ingredients to be used in pills. In fact, Alex couldn’t remember a single pill where either of them was used.

Still, using the remaining ingredients, he garnered a guess that it had something to do with clearing one’s mind of foreign thoughts.

It could have something to do with calming one while cultivating, or could be something to be used before trying to fight one’s Inner Demon.

He would have to make the pill and only then would he know.

There was something else in the talisman, other than the pill recipe. It was the number, 15403. Was that perhaps the number of pill recipes there were? That would be so many.

Alex doubted that was true. It would be idiotic to not repeat recipes after the first 100. Still, the number was there and he was certain it was quite important. He just didn’t know what it was.

“Do you think they will give us any ingredients to make the pill?” Alex asked the man next to him.

Aethersage was busy looking at his own recipe when he heard Alex. He looked at Alex, confused. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Are you saying they will have us use our own ingredients?”

“Most likely,” Alex said. “If I were holding a tournament with tens of thousands of participants, I would do the same.”