Xiahou Tian couldn't help having a bad feeling when he saw Lin Fan just casually standing there and watching him, but he still shouted, "What are you doing? Are you giving up before you even do anything?"
Lin Fan just smiled and said, "You just focus on your refining, I'll show you something amazing once you're done."
Xiahou Tian felt a bad feeling fill him, but he still said, "I bet that you're only trying to act calm because you know you can't win. Just give up now while you still can."
Lin Fan shook his head and said, "Refine your pill, it would be a real shame if you also blow up your last set of ingredients."
In this tournament, each contestant was given two sets of ingredients in each round and once they blew both sets up, they would be out unless the other side also blew up their ingredients. In that case, the results would be based on the points given by the judge panel based on technique.
Xiahou Tian forced himself to calm down and not let Lin Fan's taunts get to him. He completely cleared his mind and focused on his refinement. This process forced him to focus like he had never focused before, pushing his level of alchemy even higher.
However, even like that, he was still destined to lose.
Xiahou Tian finished refining his pill and he had even reached 70% purity which was a new benchmark for him.
He took out the pill with a proud look on his face as he took out his pill and turned to look at Lin Fan, but he found that Lin Fan still hadn't started refining yet and just looked at him casually.
When Lin Fan saw that Xiahou Tian was finally done, he went over to his ingredients and picked them up one by one, holding them in his hands.
His actions confused Xiahou Tian who hadn't seen his refinement technique before and still considered him a fraud, but it excited the people who had seen him in the qualifiers.
Fan Lin had a very unique method of refining. Instead of using a cauldron to gather his flames to refine pills and then gather their essence together to form a pill, he used his flames as a cauldron to refine and gather at the same time.
Xiahou Tian's eyes opened wide when he saw the flames appear in Lin Fan's hand and surround the ingredients that he was holding. The flame enveloped the ingredients before taking the shape of a cauldron.
The flames released an even coating of heat that slowly refined the ingredients that were contained inside, allowing for the most balanced refining of ingredients that Xiahou Tian had ever seen.
While those flames might seem like normal flames to the untrained eye, for an alchemist like Xiahou Tian, he could tell that these flames were different. The flames that Fan Lin was using were flames that exuded a powerful yang energy. Just a single glance was enough to tell Xiahou Tian that this was one of the legendary thirty three Alchemy Flames.
This flame was the flame that was ranked twentieth on that ranking, it was the True Yang Flames.
These were flames made of true yang energy that relied on the energy of the sun, allowing it to reach levels of heat that normal flames could never reach.
The only reason this flame wasn't ranked higher was because it was a rather common flame compared to the rest, since all it required to refine this flame was large amounts of pure yang energy. But this didn't mean that this flame was easy to obtain. It would still take arduous amounts of training just to control this flame, not to mention the large amounts of pure yang energy it would take to feed it.
Lin Fan just casually refined his ingredients inside the flame cauldron before they all turned into liquid essence.
Since Lin Fan's cauldron was made of pure flames, everyone could see his refining process.
The liquid medicinal essence swirled around inside the flame cauldron, removing purities as it continued to swirl. The swirling only reached a total of seven revolutions before it stopped.
The alchemy skill that Lin Fan was using was called the Nine Revolution Pill Refining Technique. As the name implied, while Lin Fan was refining his pill, he used the revolutions to help him remove impurities and refine the pill even further. As of now, Lin Fan had only reached seven revolutions, but even then he was able to refine 100% purity pills.
Of course, his True Yang Flames also played a large part of that since yang energy was a pure form of energy, which reduced the amount of impurities added when refining ingredients. This True Yang Flame came from the Nine True Sun Body Art, which created nine suns inside his dantian. Lin Fan found that he could easily draw out yang energy from the sun that he currently had which had allowed him to refine this True Yang Flame.
But even after refining this True Yang Flame, it was still a seedling and needed to be fed even more yang energy before becoming a true Alchemy Flame.
Once Lin Fan finished his revolutions, he gathered all the medicinal essence in the center to form a pill which he continued to condense until it went from liquid form to solid form.
When the pill was finished, Lin Fan released the flames and allowed the pill to drop down into his hand. But compared to when Xiahou Tian finished his pill, there wasn't a strong medicinal scent that was released into the crowd.
Xiahou Tian had a bad feeling after seeing Lin Fan's technique, but he still convinced himself that Lin Fan was just showing off tricks and there was no way he would lose. He couldn't even smell the scent of the pill from here, he knew that it must be an inferior pill.
But that hope of his was quickly crushed by the judge that came forward.
The judge looked over Xiahou Tian's pill since it was finished first and he had to admit that he was impressed by Xiahou Tian's talent.
A 70% purity High Mortal Grade Pill, this was talent that if nurtured would allow him to refine even Earth Grade Pills soon which required one to be at the level of a Grandmaster Alchemist at least. It seemed like with enough time, this Xiahou Tian really might become a Grandmaster Alchemist like everyone had thought.
It was just a pity that he had met this giant wall known as Fan Lin.
The judge moved over to inspect Lin Fan's pill and he gave a sigh once he looked over it.
This judge was one of the judges that had looked over Lin Fan's pills during the qualifier rounds and during his earlier rounds. After inspecting Lin Fan's pills in those rounds, Lin Fan had left a deep impression on him, so he asked to be placed as the judge for this round as well.
It seemed like his intuition was correct, this Fan Lin really was something special. There was no way to describe his talent other than calling him a monster!
The judge turned back to Xiahou Tian and said, "You do indeed have quite the talent, you were able to refine a High Mortal Grade Pill with a 70% purity."
Xiahou Tian's eyes lit up when he heard this. He had never actually succeeded in refining a High Mortal Grade Pill before, this was the first time he had done so. But the bigger shock wasn't the fact that he had refined the pill, it was the fact that the pill had 70% purity!
Before this, he had never cracked the 60% purity mark, but now he had added a whole 10% purity to his pill.
His eyes were filled with joy until the following words of the judge completely crushed him.
The judge continued after a pause, "However, you have lost this round since your opponent has refined the better pill. This is a pill with 100% purity, I don't think you need me to explain what this means."
Xiahou Tian looked at Lin Fan in disbelief. He had already heard that Lin Fan had crushed his opponents with 100% purity pills, but he had never believed them until this moment.
He still couldn't believe it because what Lin Fan did seemed like he was just playing around rather than refining.
Xiahou Tian couldn't take this and said, "I want to change judges."
In this tournament, in order to make things fair, all contestants had a right to change judges if they ever doubted the call of the judge, but they only had one chance to do so. Up to this point, this rule had never been used before, but now it had been invoked.
The judge had a dark look on his face, but he still called over the other judges who went to look over the two pills.
After a while, the panel of judges gave the same result which Xiahou Tian still couldn't accept, but there was nothing else he could do now.
The only thing he wanted to do was get out of here as soon as possible, but when he tried to leave, there was a voice that called out to stop him.
"This brother, I wonder where you are going?" Lin Fan said in a casual voice.
Xiahou Tian turned with a dark look and said, "I lose this round, so I'm leaving. Am I not allowed to leave?"
Lin Fan just revealed a faint smile, "You're free to leave, but I think you're forgetting something."
Xiahou Tian had a confused look, "What am I forgetting?"
Lin Fan's smile became wider, "I remember that we had a bet for this round. Could it be that you're planning on skimping this bet?"