Rise of the Alchemy God

Chapter 182: End of the Semifinals (1)

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While Bai Yu was getting to work, the group of participants in the first category finally concluded their matches.

With today's competitions, the finalists of the tournament would be decided, while the positions from the Top 5 upwards were practically already determined.

The Sun City group no longer had any involvement with the first category.

With Ethan's fan managing to secure a spot in the Top 15, they were now focused on the second category, whose matches were about to begin.

A half-hour break was announced to give everyone time to eat, go to the bathroom, and prepare.

It was also time for the participants of the second category to get ready.

After 30 minutes, the competition resumed, and the announcer, still full of energy, continued introducing the semifinalists.

From Ethan, Xiang Hua, and the girl from the White Tiger Kingdom to the three practically demonic cultivators who, somehow, had managed to make it this far in the tournament,

two members from the Qilin Kingdom,

and one from a tribe living north of the Phoenix Kingdom.

Although the last one was from the same kingdom as Hu Xingyan, he was from a different city, so the two didn't seem to interact.

The same could be said for the boy from the tribe in the Phoenix Kingdom.

Even though they belonged to the same kingdom, they practically hadn't interacted, or at least Ethan hadn't.

And since he spent most of his time away from others, he didn't know if they had interacted with him, but he didn't particularly care.

Once all ten participants were called, one of the judges proceeded to randomly draw names to form the five pairs that would compete today.

The judge with the long gray beard approached a floating urn and placed his hand inside it.

The crowd fell silent, eagerly waiting to see who would compete first.

The order in which the pairs were drawn would also determine the sequence of the matches, so everyone was curious to see who would go first.

All of them had delivered high-level performances throughout the tournament, and no one doubted their current standing in the competition.

Although Ethan had drawn the most attention, the others were not far behind.

For example, Xiang Hua had earned the nickname "Ice-Hearted Phoenix" due to the ruthless way she defeated her opponents.

Hu Xingyan had reaffirmed her title of "Snowstorm" because of how she swept away her competitors one after another.

Ethan had ended up with several nicknames, from "Nuyu" to "Dark Horse" to "Millennium Genius" and more.

There were flattering nicknames as well as more derisive ones.

On this matter, the audience never tired of creating names, it was one of their privileges, after all.

Ethan ignored all the titles given to him by the public throughout the competition.

He knew that protesting wouldn't do any good, so he just insisted on keeping "Nuyu" as his main name and pretended the other nicknames didn't exist.

The judge finally moved his arm and drew the first name.

He took the folded slip and opened it, reading the name:

"Deng Lin from the Phoenix Kingdom," he said as a young man with short hair and slightly tanned skin stepped forward. Experience new stories on m v|l e'-NovelBin.net

The judge then proceeded to draw the second name.

"And he will face Hu Xingyan from the White Tiger Kingdom." Hearing that the first duel would be between the genius of the White Tiger Kingdom and the boy from a tribe in the Phoenix Kingdom,

the crowd erupted in cheers, each side rooting for their favorite, although most were supporting Hu Xingyan.

The elderly judge didn't linger too long. As soon as the crowd calmed down a bit, he continued drawing names, and one by one, the other four pairs were formed.

Coincidentally, Ethan ended up against one of the three demonic cultivators he had interrogated the day before, more specifically, the girl.

Seeing this, Ethan couldn't help but smile behind his mask as he wondered if he might learn some new refining technique by examining them.

He had already noticed that they tended to infuse a bit of demonic Qi into their pills, and from what he could see, this Qi was hidden so cleverly that it was almost impossible for cultivators below the fourth stage to detect it.

Until yesterday, Ethan had wondered what their purpose was for participating in the competition since the core of the formation could be set up by just one of them.

More importantly, with their third-stage cultivation levels, they were more than capable of sneaking into the underground without attracting much attention, yet here they were, competing in the tournament.

When Ethan conducted a soul search on them, he discovered that the reason they had decided to participate directly instead of staying in the background was due to the pills they would produce during the competition.

During the competition, almost all of the pills produced would be sold later through the Alchemist Association, and if a pill was of significant value, it could be auctioned, like what was happening with his pill.

It was likely that theirs would be sold along with the others as well.

Their goal, it seemed, was to mix their pills with the others, so that once purchased and distributed, these pills would plant a seed inside the person that would be ready to be triggered when necessary.

Ethan knew that such methods existed for achieving various outcomes, but he was still shocked to learn what would happen to a person once those seeds were triggered.

They would become demons.

He didn't understand how such a small amount of demonic Qi could turn someone into a half-demon, and indeed, he would have expected that these people would at most go insane, but apparently, the reality was far different.

These seeds were known as "demonic seeds", containing such a concentrated amount of demonic Qi that they could instantly transform someone from an ordinary being into a quasi-demon.

In other words, they had decided to spread these pills and infect people to have numerous similar beings in the capital, ready to act when needed.

Ethan thought there must be more to their plan, but it turned out that each of them only had a part of the information and none knew the complete plan.

Just like the man captured by Bai Yu had his specific task, so did they, and they only knew what was strictly related to their role, nothing more.

Ethan realized that at this point, he could only rely on Bai Yu to disable the formation's core and locate whoever would activate it.