“I think that’s alright,” Aethersage said after hearing Alex’s guess. “I have some of the ingredients already.”

Alex checked his own Soul Space to see what he had and didn’t have. He had most of the ingredients as well, missing only 4. The Rat’s eyes and the Raven’s feather were ones he had not even known were ingredients, and the Winter Heart Bamboo’s wood and water were the other missing ingredients.

‘Master probably has the bamboo one, or I could maybe exchange it with others in here if I’m not allowed to leave,’ Alex thought.

The other two ingredients were problematic of course, but he wouldn’t have been asked to make a pill out of it if they weren’t available, so Alex didn’t feel any more desperate.

Still, he was a little surprised that there were more ingredients out there that even his master did not know about. After all, he had provided him with every single beast-related ingredient and what it did. The Alchemy God simply knew way more.

After what seemed like 10 or so minutes, the Alchemy God flew back toward the middle of the sky and looked down at the participants.

“Now that you have received the pill recipe for your first contest, let us make preparations for the contest to begin again.”

Alex expected to have to move around, asking for the ingredients, but instead, he saw the hundreds of subordinates of the Alchemy God move through their ranks once again, seemingly doing something.

He couldn’t see what they were doing, and neither did he feel right to use his Spiritual sense to do so. He waited until someone was close enough to see what they were doing.

After waiting for a while, Alex saw that they were all handing along a storage bag and some sort of medallion. He paused for a moment, only now remembering one of the rules that were set for this tournament. ‘We can’t use our Soul Space. We’ll have to rely on storage bags,’ Alex thought. He believed this was done to level the field with the various Saints that were within the tournament, even though he didn’t believe there was anything unfair with Immortals using their Soul Space.

The person came by him and asked for his talisman, not the one he had received today, but the one he received 5 days ago. Alex brought out the talisman which included information about his artifacts and his beasts.

The woman who took the talisman placed it into the storage bag and then handed it over to Alex. “Place everything you registered into that bag,” the woman said.

Alex nodded and started bringing out the many swords and cauldrons, placing them all into the bag. He brought out the single shield he was allowed and then Pearl’s spear and other items that he was holding on to for him.

The woman waited for a moment and then took the storage bag, bringing out the talisman from within it. She took out a medallion of her own and began writing down a few things, including the number that was on Alex’s new talisman.

After that was done, she asked him to bring out the White Cat.

Alex brought out Pearl, who stood next to him, looking around at the massive arrangement of participants. He couldn’t help but take a deep breath upon seeing the numbers.

“Here, wear this,” the woman handed two medallions to Alex and Pearl.

They took it, and Alex looked at the medallion, seeing a formation drawn on the back. He tried to understand what the formation did, but the scale of it was so vast that he simply couldn’t understand in just a few seconds. He needed to take at least a few hours to go through all the possible base formations and then see how they were arranged together to figure out the final formation.

He didn’t have such a time right now.

“If you haven’t placed all your registered artifacts into that storage bag already, do it now,” the woman said. “And then, activate this medal.”

“What does this do?” Alex asked her.

“It’s to prevent you from using your Soul Space during this first competition,” the woman said.

“Ah!” It seemed they were going above and beyond to stop the Immortals from using this Soul Space. Alex had nothing else to put into the storage bag, so he activated the medal, and made Pearl do so as well, feeling it do buzz slightly in his chest before settling there. He couldn’t tell what it did but he felt a hint of Spatial fluctuation, albeit tiny.

Nothing else happened and the woman moved on. Alex looked at the medallion both front and back again. The back was what had the formation carved into it, but the front had the Alchemy God’s insignia.

Pearl wore it too and together they looked at their medallion. It was an artifact, but one that was made using formations. Alex could feel the hands of both the Formation Monarch and the Artifact God in this.

He turned to the right, watching Aethersage go through the same ordeal as him. He watched flashes of metal being pulled out from his Soul Space directly into the storage bag.

Even with Alex’s eyes, he could not see the mere flicker of metallic glimmer at all. Aethersage didn’t seem to have any beast companion, so the woman handed over the medallion to him too.

He slowly wore it and looked at the formation at the back.

“If you have nothing else to put into the storage bag, you can activate it,” the woman said.

Aethersage did not say anything, but a frown had already appeared on his face. He looked at the medallion for a good 10 seconds before looking toward the woman.

“Senior,” he said softly, “this is an invasion of privacy.”

The woman frowned. “What are you saying?” she asked.

“This medallion. It records all things that come out of our Soul Space in detail. Talismans get read, formations get copied, and artifacts are recorded. It even records all the other items we may place into our Soul Space. This is a grand invasion of privacy. I will not activate this.”

Aethersage’s words were heard by many who had already worn the medallion and many who had yet to. Immediately, it caused a stir among the participants as privacy was something near and dear to every cultivator.

In a world where the strong could take all that you had with a mere thought, an artifact that directly listens to all that you had was not something anyone would want to voluntarily wear.

Alex quickly looked at the medallion, grimacing as he thought what he was wearing. Now that Aethersage had said it, he could see it. A recording formation, a transmitting formation, and a scanning formation. So many intrusive formations were put into the one medallion that it was simply absurd.

They may be gods who had done this, but even gods couldn’t be allowed to do such a thing. Alex feared that the medallion may have already scanned his Soul Space, but the chances of that were smaller given the size of his Soul Space.

Without any further thought, he poured every single treasure and item he had into Pearl’s storage bracelet that he now had inside the Soul Space so that only it would show.

Even then, Alex felt anxious about what was going to happen next.