The next events made the Empyreans feel as though they had suddenly been immersed in a dream.

On the Steles, there were two available rankings. The regular rankings and the valiant rankings.

The regular rankings represented an alchemist’s combined rankings against both those on the Stele and those off of the Stele. The Valiant Rankings represented an alchemist’s record against the peers they shared the Stele with.

Of course, the umbrella of peers changed depending on where you were ranked. The short of it was that those ranked from 1000 to 101 were separated into groups of 50. Essentially, someone ranked 837th had a Valiant Ranking decided by their matches between those ranked 801st to 850th. Those ranked above 101 would be split into groups of 10.

This Valiant Ranking would follow one throughout their lifetime on the Stele. So, even if you crossed into another group, your record could only continue to be summated and never erased.

As a result of this, in addition to the existence of challenges one could not refuse, one spent a lot of time losing to those near the front of your group until you could finally pull yourself up and finally begin to bully those nearer the bottom of your group to ‘fix’ your record and move on upward.

Due to this practice, having a Valiant Record of around 40% was already considered outstanding. Only those like the top 3 Venerables Dyon had crushed could have a Valiant Record this good. They were geniuses among geniuses, or in the case of Bart, they were those who were seasoned and practiced veterans.

This alone should paint the shocking prowess Dyon was displaying.

Everyone could see it. His soul was at the Peak Empyrean Grade. He was just like them.

Even though the top three of the Venerable Stele had Higher Empyrean Grade souls, all of the Empyreans ranked near the top were just a step higher. The distance to crossing into the Immortal God Realm was simply too large.

They felt that with all of them on the same playing field, they should have had a chance. But it was as though he was a cat playing with a field of mouse. His paw hung in the skies over their necks. No matter how hard they ran, their every hundred steps was akin to a single one of his.

“Tsk, what a silly mistake.” Dyon’s voice rang out. “When you’re concocting an Ice Pupil Lens Pill, holding your flames back is the most amateur mistake you could make? Did you really think that just because it’s an ice elemental pill that it’s scared of flames? Flames is the last thing it would be afraid of.

“And you, a Gravitational Physique Pill’s most important part is its core. It must be as dense as a star yet several times smaller. With you rushing the impurity refinement stage like that, how the hell are you going to get the pill down to critical mass?

“My god, another idiot. A Law Strengthening Pill has its essence in its name. It’s meant to strengthen the Law. Its first target is the dantian which houses Laws. Its second target is the Heavens which controls Laws. Both require the energy of the pill to be capable of entering an ethereal state wherein it can interact with both. The Illusion Heart Petal is obviously the most important ingredient, why did you spend so much of your mental faculties on the Bursting Qi Spirit soul? Who cares if you can harness its energy if it can’t even be applied properly?

“The way you’re refining this pill, it’ll end up with the necessary energy, but all that energy will be rebounding within the cultivator’s body, only a small portion of it will actually make it into the dantian and an even smaller portion will be capable of communicating with the Heavens. Like this, the backlash one experiences will be at least 20% higher than the expected result. Are you trying to kill your customers?”

When Dyon first began to speak, many were hoping that he had been berating himself. After all, his voice suddenly came out of nowhere and he sounded like he was berating himself.

But, who could have possibly expected that he was actually lecturing his competition? The most shocking part was that under his guidance, the Empyreans were actually improving by leaps and bounds. They shamelessly accepted his teachings in the slim hope that he would slip up and allow them to maintain their spot on the rankings.

The whole immortal plane watched on with stunned expressions.

Just… what level of arrogance was this? He was teaching his competitors? And they were actually improving under his tutelage?

However, seeing the smooth motion of materials within Dyon’s thousand golden cauldrons, their thoughts could only be stifled.

Once again, tribulations began to converge one after another. This time, their momentum was far stronger than the ones called down for the Venerable Pills. It was as though the Heavens wanted to rend the ground Dyon stood upon to pieces.

But, he stood there with a smile on his face. As though he had the utmost confidence in his pills blocking everything in his path.

He chatted with his wives like these matters had nothing to do with him at all.

Once again, he took less than a fraction of the allotted time to finish. His process seemed as calm as the breeze and as soothing as the scent of a rose.

At this point, even if the cultivation world insisted on continuing to disregard him, they could only be seen as foolish for doing so. In a flash, there was once again, only a single name left on the Stele.

1. Dyon Sacharro (434) – Peak Empyrean Grade Soul. Record: 1.000. Valiant Record: 1.000