Although Bai Xieting wanted to erupt like a volcano, it was only through sheer force of will that he managed to keep himself in check. The pressure of being questioned like this, at a time like this, made his temper itch under his skin, but he forced it down and answered with a slightly cold look in his eyes.

"Of course. The golden era of alchemy has already passed, and many alchemy flames and cauldrons were lost to the river of time. One of them was the best-tier cauldron, capable of perfectly refining pills merged beneath the heavenly pillar — the Three Tripod Flame Cauldron. It bore an inherent flame born of extreme cold and extreme heat. According to legend, it was born from the heavens themselves, capable of refining any obscure recipe on its first try."

"That is enough!"

After hearing this, Wang Chen raised a finger to his lips, signaling Bai Xieting to shut his mouth. He had heard enough. It was time to get to work.

"You little…!"

Bai Xieting practically exploded. Just as he was about to throw a punch, something absurd happened.

Out of nowhere, a lightning-shining cauldron made of pure gold floated beside Wang Chen's figure. The cauldron's surface was smooth to the extreme, its body etched with a sense of ancient refinement that made it seem far more than an ordinary tool. On both sides sat two marbles — one radiating extreme cold, the other blazing with extreme heat. As the two opposing energies collided, they did not cancel one another out. Instead, they gave birth to a flame that was neither hot nor cold, but perfectly balanced at the exact temperature needed for pill forming.

It was a flame that adjusted itself automatically.

Without needing any input from the alchemist, it would shift its temperature to match the pill being refined, quietly sorting and regulating everything from within.

Witnessing this scene, Bai Xieting's eyes nearly burst out of their sockets.

"Three Tripod Cauldron… you've got to be kidding me…"

He rubbed his eyes furiously, again and again, as if forcing reality to change through sheer refusal to believe it. His face went rigid with shock, his mind struggling to keep up with what it was seeing.

How was this possible?

Had this fellow asked him at random…

Or did he already know exactly what I wanted to say, and simply wait until the perfect moment to pull this out?

Just a moment ago, Wang Chen had blatantly asked him about that exact cauldron, and now there it was — floating beside him, glowing faintly under the upper‑realm light, perfectly real and impossible to ignore. The Three Tripod Flame Cauldron. The very one Bai Xieting had just described as lost to history.

For a moment, Bai Xieting's mind short‑circuited. The gears in his head seized, then spun in the wrong direction, then spun again, trying and failing to find a single sane explanation.

What does that mean?

He didn't know what to think — didn't know whether he had just been toyed with, or whether Wang Chen had somehow known all along and chosen that exact moment to reveal it. The thought gnawed at him, sharp and unreasonable and impossible to put down.

Just as he was stuck between outrage and confusion, the courtyard came alive with voices from every direction.

"Three‑Marked Extreme Yin Cauldron! A true immortal‑grade treasure!"

"Golden Crow Blood Essence Cauldron! A true earth immortal‑grade treasure!"

"Oh my heavens, who are these people? How do they have such rare cauldrons in their possession?"

The exclamations rolled across the space like waves, each one slightly louder than the last, pitched somewhere between awe and genuine disbelief. The upper realm had no shortage of hidden treasures, but cauldrons like these were not something one casually carried into a competition. They were heirlooms, legendary relics, things that usually remained locked away behind sect vaults and immortal lineages. To see them suddenly on display here, floating above the heads of mere disciples, was enough to send ripples through even the highest‑ranking onlookers.

Wang Chen turned his head slowly, scanning the field, and his eyes softened with something that was not quite approval, but not entirely surprise either.

Dozens of participants now had cauldrons hovering around them — each one carved from materials that whispered ancient names, each one radiating an aura that sat just a step below the heavens themselves. Golden flames flickered above some, storm‑blue flames above others, and a few even bore cauldrons whose surfaces shifted like living water, responding to the will of their masters. It was clear that he was not the only one who had come prepared for this trial.

Nong Li stood at the edge of the formation, arms folded, his expression unreadable. He had seen the cauldrons appear one by one, and his face hadn't so much as twitched. If he was surprised, he did not show it. If he was pleased, he did not say it. He simply watched, as if the sight of so many legendary tools gathered in one place was exactly what he had expected all along.

Time, indifferent as ever, continued to pass.

Hours grated onward. The remaining twenty slipped away like sand through fingers, the afternoon light shifting across the sky until the shadows from the clouds had moved once — and then twice — and then not at all. The one‑day boundary that had once seemed like a crushing deadline now sat at the doorstep, and the final moment for the first round arrived.

Meanwhile, a few hours earlier, Wang Chen had quietly stolen something that belonged to no one.

He hadn't just glimpsed the pill recipe carved into the heavenly pillar — he had stolen its insights as well, plucking both the visible characters and the invisible intentions from the air like a thief reaching into a dream. The authority rune on his body had done the rest, stitching the knowledge into place without a sound.

"Hmm… Fate Reversal Pill."

The phrase echoed in his mind with a faint, almost playful amusement. The pill's concept was simple enough on the surface — a way for a cultivator to avoid catastrophe at the cost of their life essence. Elegant, brutal, and brutally practical. The kind of thing that only immortals would both love and fear.

Wang Chen's eyes glinted as he reviewed the recipe again in his mind, the heavenly pillar's patterns arranging themselves into something that now felt almost like a native thought.

For cultivators at the immortal realm, lifespan was not the issue — not like it was for mortals. Days, years, centuries, they all blurred into something that could be stretched or compressed without much meaning. What mattered far more than time was providence — the invisible thread that pulled a cultivator into the path of greater truths, higher authorities, and the rare, once‑in‑a‑lifetime opportunities to understand them. Providence was the currency of the heavens, the thing that decided who stepped through the right door and who starved staring at the wrong wall.

But providence was fragile. Avoiding a life‑threatening encounter — pulling back from the brink of death — might save one from immediate annihilation, but it came at a cost. Every time a cultivator escaped the net of fate that was meant to catch them, their providence frayed a little more. And once that thread snapped, the heavens no longer saw them as worth drawing closer to the deeper truths.

No cultivator willingly chose to deplete that fund.

But that was why the Fate Reversal Pill existed.

It gave them a way to cheat the contract — not entirely, never entirely, but enough to twist the terms. Trade life essence for a reprieve. Trade a chunk of what they had built for the right to live a little longer, to walk a little further along the path, to see just one more step ahead of the darkness.

It was a poison. It was a salvation. It was exactly the kind of thing that would make a sect like the Morning Glory Divine Alchemy Sect lean forward with interest — and exactly the kind of thing that would make their participants burn themselves into the trial to prove they could refine it.

Wang Chen looked down at the Three Tripod Flame Cauldron once more, then at the handful of ingredients arranged beside it, and let the corner of his mouth curl upward by the smallest degree.

It was time to start.