Chapter 1429 Blacksmithing and Alchemy Competetion (5)

Chapter 1429 Blacksmithing and Alchemy Competetion (5)

"This..."

"Oh no..."

Also witnessing how Xuan Hao slowly explained the mistakes that had been made during the forging process of the dagger, the few who had harbored hope for him to not be skilled when it came to blacksmithing, all simultaneously shared a look of despair. Understanding that there was no chance of them progressing to the next stage of the competition.

"What is this? Did you just randomly toss in a few spiritual herbs into water and turn it into a soup of some sort? Look, there are even unrefined chunks of spiritual herbs floating around inside of it... Disqualified!"

"A transcendent grade spiritual metal grinded and used as coloring for an artifact of this quality? Disqualified... And pray you don't run into any of the other blacksmiths again after leaving the city..."

"This pill... Shouldn't this be a healing pill? But... As a poisonous pill, it gets 37 points."

In the end, it didn't take long before a large number of people were eliminated, while a few who thought they would get disqualified ended up just barely making it through to the next round through a stroke of good luck.

Even then, the time it took for Xuan Hao to go through each of the participants one by one, still ended up taking around half a day. Making some among the audience rather happily listen, while a large majority of the ones who had returned in hopes of things becoming interesting began to groan painfully after listening to Xuan Hao methodically going over each of the creations presented by the participants.

Luckily, this time around, it didn't take that long and Elder Song quickly jumped in following Xuan Hao returning to his seat. Explaining the next part of the competition that would be focused on testing the group of participants alchemy or blacksmithing knowledge. Having them compete among each other on different subjects and eliminating those who fail to keep up with the rest in terms of knowledge.

Of course, this did end up favoring those from the Star Shattering Sect, as the knowledge available to someone from a large sect would inevitably far surpass that of a wandering cultivator.

So, with that in mind, Elder Song made sure that the elders of the Star Shattering Sect wouldn't end up competing with the outsiders and instead had them compete between each other. In turn, making the ones competing feel grateful towards him and the Star Shattering Sect, as they understood that this was them making sure that they didn't try and oppress them with their background to win the competition.

"Another... Boring challenge..."

"Aren't these kinds of competition supposed to be more interesting...?"

All things considered, this still ended up going in a way that both Xuan Hao and Elder Song had not expected, as the sect ended up forking up some rather precious rewards for the second and third place winners of the blacksmithing part of the competition. Rewards that was originally intended to be used on nurturing their own blacksmiths.

Unfortunately, there was not much they could do about this, as the rewards for the competition had long since been announced by the sect itself in an attempt to attract a large number of people to either watch or join the competition.

"Can't waste the sect resources like this! I will definitely have to recruit those two and have them join the sect to avoid losing the precious resources of the sect to outsiders!"

Even then, Elder Song wasn't saddened for long, as he soon focused his attention on recruiting these two talented wandering blacksmiths to join the sect. Seeing it as the best way to recover the resources that had been handed out by the sect and ensure that they stayed within the sect itself.

Seeing this, Xuan Hao decided not to say anything.

Instead, he focused his attention on the different people among the audience who had come to watch the finals. Trying to see if he could get lucky enough to spot the spy that might have been sent out by the Blue Sea Empire.

But... Finding no success and once again finding himself admiring the skillful disguise methods of the Blue Sea Empire. Even though he was able to perfectly hide themselves from someone like himself, Xuan Hao soon focused his attention on a few of the more talented people among the audience members. Noting them down for Elder Song to recruit after he finished getting those two wandering blacksmiths to join the sect.

Not just to enhance the strength of the sect by adding more disciples to the now rather large number of disciples inside the sect, but also to give the proper impression that the Star Shattering Sect had indeed held the competition to recruit disciples.

In a sense, the combined aspect of the competition that tested both blacksmiths and alchemists at the same time was to attract even more people, something befitting of an ancient hidden sect when it came to their recruitment practices.

Hopefully, after everything was said and done, Xuan Hao just sincerely hoped that the Star Shattering Sect would end up being viewed as an ancient hidden sect by the Blue Sea Empire.

After all, this was the main reason why he had participated in the competition in the first place, as Elder Song would have been more than enough to take care of the competition under normal circumstances.

Not to mention, the competition would almost certainly have been more exciting and different if it wasn't for the fact that they had tailored it around how those ancient hidden sects were rumored to hold their competitions when trying to attract talent for a specific profession like alchemy or blacksmithing.

If not for that, Elder Song would have definitely tried his best to make the competition a bit more entertaining for those who had come to watch the competition instead of solely focusing on testing the participants and trying to pull out all of their talents.

Though good for measuring the talents of those participants and even the audience members, it was not the most exciting thing to watch for those not proficient in alchemy or blacksmithing...