Chapter 320: Came In Person?

The grand bronze bells of the Abyssal Lotus Pavilion boomed with an ominous, echoing toll, signaling the official commencement of Stage 2: The Identification of Herbs and Uses. The translucent silver light barriers of the anti-cheating defensive arrays violently hummed to life once more, encasing each of the qualified candidates within their individual testing stations.

Upon each floating marble table sat a massive, sealed wooden tray containing exactly one hundred rare, high-tier spiritual plants and volatile elemental herbs. The stems and leaves were tightly wrapped in thick layers of jade-attribute concealment mist, designed specifically to block standard physical senses. To pass this phase, the examinees had to manually inject a precise thread of their internal energy to pierce the mist, decode the plant’s cellular framework, and calculate its exact molecular core weight and medicinal combinations under a brutal, rapid time limit.

“The time limit is exactly sixty minutes!” the head proctor’s voice boomed across the silent plaza. “Begin!”

Almost instantly, the sounds of nervous breathing and frantic shuffling filled the testing arena. Gerald Vance’s face was already tight with intense concentration as he carefully pressed his thumb against the first jade tray, his hands faintly trembling as he tried to separate the spiritual fibers of an ancient Earth-Core Root. Lady Scarlet sat right at the absolute front row, her fiery eyes narrow and focused as she manually summoned a tiny, controlled spark of her Vermilion Beast Fire to lightly singe the concealment mist of her first specimen, trying to force a rapid identification.

Tony Clark stood perfectly still at the absolute edge of the front line, his hands casually tucked into the deep pockets of his dark hunting cloak. He let out a soft, lazy yawn, his dark eyes looking over the row of covered plants with complete, unbothered calm. He didn’t even bother to lift his spirit brush to begin writing on his ledger paper just yet.

Meanwhile, deep inside the absolute highest sanctuary of the pavilion’s towering pagoda, a sudden, explosive commotion had completely shattered the quiet morning routine. Lady Vivienne Vane had just returned to her luxurious private study, her elegant, breathtakingly beautiful face a mask of cold indifference, when the chief grand elder of the pavilion practically burst through the heavy mahogany doors. His face was entirely pale with an intense, frantic excitement, his hands trembling violently as he held up a massive, thick roll of parchment paper that radiated a deep, lingering wave of shadow-and-wind attribute laws.

“Lady Vivienne! You must look at this immediately!” the grand elder shrieked, his voice cracking with pure, unadulterated awe. “The outer branch disciple… Tony Clark! We just finished grading his extra sheets from the Stage 1 written trial. He did not write down verbose, useless trash to display his physical stamina as we assumed! He has decoded every single archaic runic question with a terrifying, flawless 100% precision that completely shatters the five-hundred-year historical records of our institution! But… but that is not all! Look at his final answer regarding the true definition of Alchemy!”

Lady Vivienne Vane’s violet eyes narrowed slightly, a trace of cold irritation flashing across her beautiful face at the old man’s lack of protocol. She casually reached out her slender hand, snatching the cold parchment from his trembling fingers. Her gaze lazily fell onto the final column of the text, expecting to see a standard, arrogant paragraph written by a boastful teenager.

The exact millisecond her eyes locked onto the magnificent, rhythmic lines of Tony’s final poem, her entire physical frame completely froze in absolute, jaw-dropping shock.

The porcelain tea vial she was holding tightly in her left hand slipped from her fingers, crashing onto the marble floor and shattering into a thousand tiny glittering fragments, yet she didn’t even flinch at the sound. Her breath completely caught in her throat, her brilliant alchemical mind entering a state of total, chaotic awe as she read the words over and over again. The poem was a masterpiece of absolute cosmic logic, detailing how alchemy was not a pathetic tool to serve a mortal empire, but a supreme, lethal weapon of creation used by a true villain to trample over the celestial laws of heaven and force the stars to bend to his specific will.

The predatory, unyielding resonance written deep inside the ink lines was so profoundly advanced, so filled with a hidden, ancient understanding of the universe, that Lady Vivienne’s own internal alchemical sea violently hummed in response, her heart pounding furiously against her ribs as she read the poem multiple times, her previous cold condescension completely turning to ash.

“This… this is absolutely not the intellect of a common country-bumpkin archer,” Lady Vivienne whispered softly, her silky voice trembling with a sudden, intense surge of fanatical curiosity and absolute panic. “He completely mocks the standard mastery of my grand elders. He talks about trampling over heaven as if the celestial laws are nothing more than dust beneath his boots. Who in the world is this boy?!”

She did not waste another microsecond sitting inside her high tower. With a sudden wave of her long, majestic red silk sleeves, she violently pushed open the arched balcony doors and dissolved her physical figure into a blinding flash of crimson fire particles, hurrying in person down the hidden spiritual stairs to check Tony Clark on the second exam floor before the match could reach its conclusion.

Down on the grand arena plaza, twenty minutes of the brutal time limit had already passed by like a flash of lightning. The young noble masters were sweating profusely, their faces contorted with absolute agony as the high-tier elemental plants inside their trays began to release volatile, conflicting energy vapors designed to throw off their calculations.

“Haha! Look at that idiot Tony Clark!” Gerald Vance jeered in a low, frantic whisper from three stations away, his eyes bloodshot with intense jealousy as he noticed Tony’s stationary figure. “He hasn’t even uncovered his first three specimen jars! His written score was nothing more than a baseline fluke, and now his country-bumpkin brain is completely paralyzed by the physical mist! He will be disqualified by the clock!”

But right at that exact second, a majestic, world-suppressing wave of blazing heat pressure suddenly descended from the clouds, causing the thousands of spectators in the high viewing galleries to instantly drop onto their knees in absolute, biological terror. The crimson fire particles materialized near the absolute front of the referee’s altar, and Lady Vivienne Vane slowly stepped out into the open air, her breathtakingly beautiful face drawing a massive gasp of awe from the crowd as she walked down the marble aisle to personally monitor the testing lines.

Tony Clark slowly raised his head under his dark cloak, a slow, ruthlessly brilliant grin curling the corners of his lips as his Truth Eye easily locked onto her magnificent, trembling energy signature. He knew his poetic bait had perfectly caught his target, and the independent backer he needed for the World Alchemy Summit was officially stepping onto his grand chessboard.

Tony casually pulled his right hand out of his pocket, tightly gripping his standard spirit brush as he finally decided to unleash his absolute, system-boosted mastery before her eyes. He didn’t use a thread of basic energy to slowly pierce the jade mist; he simply waved his brush over his testing table with an absolute, fluid momentum that completely defied the standard laws of time.

Through the fully awake and operational system interface in his mind, 100% synchronization of the Primordial Alchemy Art allowed him to perceive the hidden molecular core weight and exact medicinal defects of all one hundred rare plants simultaneously without even lifting the lids. His brush danced across his ledger paper like a literal ghostly shadow, filling the lines with a terrifying, rapid speed that caused the grading numbers on the floating crystal screens to violently rise like a roaring tidal wave.

Lady Vivienne Vane stopped right beside his individual light barrier, her violet eyes widening to the size of saucers as she watched his unhurried, lazy fingers execute a physical precision that completely mocked her own master-grade instructors, realizing with an absolute, dizzying wave of awe that the young man standing before her was about to permanently turn her entire selection trial into his personal, unforgettable graveyard.