Chapter 280: Chapter 272: An Epoch-Making Experience

On site was a top-tier Pill Furnace. Its body was made of Jade, a stone excavated from Celestial Balance Dao Jade. It had been refined with Celestial-star Text Fire for forty-nine days, bathed daily in the chanting of the Great Daoist Sacred Sound.

After its creation, it possessed a powerful resonance with the Great Dao and could easily amplify the Daoist Skill effects of an Array.

If a good Array were inscribed within, this Jade Treasure Pill Furnace could amplify its special effects several times over, allowing one to instantly experience its wonders.

Conversely, if a garbage Array was placed inside, the dissonance it generated would also be amplified severalfold, allowing even those outside to hear the chaotic noise.

Strengths were made stronger, and weaknesses magnified. It was perfectly suited for assessing the Array proficiency of Beastmasters.

A brush-like Pet Beast, the color of a Golden Crow, swiftly drew a complex, multi-layered, interlocking Array inside the Pill Furnace.

The ripple-like lines of the Array took shape on the inner wall of the Pill Furnace, conforming to its curve. They resembled the swirling patterns of ocean waves, with the very bottom of the furnace serving as the vortex’s center.

Elder Huo’s Divine Sense entered the Pill Furnace. Even before the Array was activated, he felt a sense of chaos, as if heaven and earth were inverted and the surrounding air had grown damp with moisture.

A moment later, his Divine Sense felt submerged in water, swept up by the current and seemingly about to be pulled into the vortex at the furnace’s core.

"Hm?" Elder Huo opened his eyes, a look of doubt on his face.

’Something’s not right.’

’The Jade Treasure Pill Furnace’s amplification ability is extremely powerful. It can highlight an Array’s strengths, making the experience feel immersive.’

’The moment I entered, I felt my Divine Sense firmly gripped by that ocean vortex, almost getting dragged into the whirlpool and losing all sense of direction.’

’However, the dissonance coming from the Array is exceptionally obvious.’

’Without a doubt, this is an Array refined by a novice Array Beastmaster. Many parts of the design are unconventional, making the Array itself imperfect.’

’But judging it rationally, this is already a fully functional Tide Array.’

’Among the ninety submissions from Beastmasters who had finished early, only eight of the Arrays were even operable.’

’They were a far cry from the low-threshold operational Array capable of reaching the one thousand degrees the examiners were looking for.’

And as for the Array Gu Ming had created, it had exactly ninety-nine Array Hubs, right at the test’s upper limit.

At that moment, Elder Huo instructed a student below to send out a Water Element Pet Beast and use its Mana to activate the Array.

"Huh? You’re going to activate it?" A nearby teacher, noticing the activity from the Jade Treasure Pill Furnace and the faint aura of surging water, asked.

They were all astonished to see Elder Huo preparing to activate the Array.

An experienced Array Master could tell whether an Array was functional with a single glance.

’An Array like Gu Ming’s is obviously unusable. The entire approach is wrong. It should be rejected outright.’

But since Elder Huo had decided to activate it, the Array could obviously function and must have some merit.

Before long, several strands of Divine Sense slipped into the Jade Treasure Pill Furnace to see what was happening.

The teachers present all had their own judging duties, so they could only spare a sliver of their attention to observe the Array Elder Huo was evaluating.

The Array submissions were graded via a multi-person review system. In theory, an Array’s score could be finalized by five judges. If they couldn’t reach a consensus, the panel would be expanded to ten, twenty, or even more teachers. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

The higher the score, the more judges were involved. Conversely, a low score offered no chance for appeal. Five C-Level ratings were enough to disqualify a contestant from the competition.

A truly outstanding genius would never let their submission fall below an A-Level standard.

The teachers’ Divine Senses stirred, and they watched in surprise as the Tide Array inside the Jade Treasure Pill Furnace, powered by four Two-star Level Water Element Fish Kings, slowly began to glow.

Blue streams of water circulated within the Pill Furnace. Following the Array’s patterns, they climbed higher and higher, creating a vortex like a spinning drum. A gravitational singularity seemed to form in the middle, directing all the water to rotate toward the center.

As they watched the Array, they felt something was missing. Sure, the spinning would generate energy, but it was just consuming the Pet Beasts’ energy.

The consumption was far too intense; it definitely couldn’t be sustained for long.

Alchemy required endurance. The Tide Array Gu Ming had developed seemed too strained. It would need more Low-star Pet Beasts just to keep going.

"Elder Huo, aren’t you going to add more Pet Beasts? The four Fish Kings clearly can’t hold on much longer," a nearby teacher couldn’t help but ask.

Ruan Huaiyi, standing behind Elder Huo, also looked over with a nervous expression. He hoped Gu Ming’s Array could lower the barrier to entry, but he didn’t want it to fail. Adding a few more Pet Beasts was no big deal.

After all, these weren’t specialized Pill Pets. Besides, no one had expected this Water Element Array to actually function inside a Pill Furnace, let alone raise the Jade Treasure Pill Furnace’s temperature by several thousand degrees.

One must remember that the Jade Treasure Pill Furnace was a top-tier furnace with a built-in amplification effect.

Its performance in a conventional Pill Furnace would be just a fraction of this, maybe ten to twenty percent.

In other words, the Tide Array was already capable of raising the temperature by several hundred degrees, which was very close to the competition’s requirement of one thousand degrees.

"Don’t be hasty. I haven’t even connected my Divine Sense to the Array yet," Elder Huo said calmly. To the astonishment of the onlookers, he then connected his Divine Sense to the reserved node within the Tide Array.

His consciousness trembled slightly, then rapidly extended, giving him the sensation of diving deep, merging with the water, and taking control of the entire sea.

The feeling of control was immediate, with almost no delay, though it came with a bit of dizziness.

After he adapted to the dizziness caused by the rolling and spinning waves, a strange sense of clarity washed over him.

He had experienced this refreshing sensation with High-star Arrays, but he never expected to feel something similar from a Low-star Array. It was enough to make him hum in delight.

’This is incredible! The feeling of controlling the sea... it’s so wonderful.’

Elder Huo’s Divine Sense roamed within the Jade Treasure Pill Furnace. With a single mental command, the swirling seawater shifted, creating monstrous, crashing waves.

In an instant, dozens of terrifyingly high crests and deep troughs formed within the furnace.

The Mana injected by the four Two-star Fish Kings was used with incredible efficiency to smash waves against each other. The resulting energy differential was absorbed by the flickering, ripple-like array lines at the base and conducted to the furnace body, causing its temperature to rise rapidly.

The Jade Treasure Pill Furnace’s innate amplification ability then took over, rapidly boosting the temperature from five thousand degrees, instantly surging past ten thousand degrees, and showing it could climb even higher.

"Hah!"

The temperature spike, as sudden as a tidal wave, made Elder Huo’s face flush, his emotions ebbing and flowing like the very sea he controlled.

With another mental command, he used the Array’s seawater to absorb the heat from the Pill Furnace, bringing the temperature down from over ten thousand degrees. As a result, the seawater itself grew hot, having absorbed all that heat.

However, this was ordinary seawater, not a special Spiritual Object; it couldn’t handle such terrifying amounts of energy.

Soon, the inside of the Jade Treasure Pill Furnace was shrouded in steam, and visibility was reduced to a complete white-out.

The furnace’s temperature became uncontrollable, rising nonstop and threatening to cause the furnace to explode.

A Water Element Array used inside a Pill Furnace inherently had its limits.

Temperatures of over ten thousand degrees were beyond its limit. It could raise the temperature, but it couldn’t bring it back down. This could be considered one of its flaws.

But a flash of insight struck Elder Huo. ’If top-grade Spiritual Water were used, Gu Ming’s Low-star Tide Array would be completely flawless!’

’The furnace temperature could be raised or lowered at will. It would be unbelievably versatile—even more so than a Fire Element Array!’

’Thinking about it from another angle, this is an Array that Two-star Water Element Pet Beasts can use. It doesn’t require specialized Pill Pets to maintain, and it’s extremely friendly to the process of refining Elixirs that use Water Element Main Medicine. With all these advantages, what more could you ask for?’

Elder Huo of the chief judging panel snapped his eyes open. His once-cloudy eyes were now incomparably bright.

He slapped the table and declared, "This young man deserves an S Level rating!"

The moment he spoke, the entire venue fell silent.

When Ruan Huaiyi heard this, he was so excited his whole body trembled.

’We’re striking it rich, we’re striking it rich!’ he chanted inwardly.