"Listen well, Junior Long Feng." senior Xuan Hao started to explain the basic step by step to Long Feng, but never tried to force the junior to follow each step he explained as the essence of pill formation is not same to each pill master.

"Junior Long Feng, what I am telling you, only serves as a guidance. Each single pill master have their own special method in each step, and no pill master can concoct another pill master's pill, so each pill master's product is unique, and the better is your pills, the better your rate is."

"First, the Black Bitter Mint is recently harvested from their shrubs, so the leaves condition is very suitable for direct Qi extraction, where you could get enough essence without too much work."

"next is the Green Blood Lizard. The hall provides two lizards to each station, but let me tell you, try using only the blood from the female Green Blood Lizard because the Male one recently mates with another Green Blood Lizard, so its medical concentration within the blood is lesser than normal."

"I understand the urge of producing a good quality First Grade Cultivation Pellet is a very attractive as it provides 3 points in total, but for the first timer, the chances of failure is around 70%, with only 20% the lowest grade pellet is formed. Never forget to mention, the produced pellet is too awful to consume, due to the strong bitterness from the Black Bitter Mint."

"Even for myself, an outer division student, only possess a success rate of 3 pills from 10 tries. It is still depending on some luck as well concentration too." Xuan Hao explains his difficulties and experience from concocting the First Grade Cultivation Pellet, and hope that with his help, this junior will successfully enter the Hall as one of its students.

"Senior Xuan Hao, thank you for sharing so many information before we started. Can I ask senior to help this junior in the part of stabilizing the qi during the forming ?" Long Feng express his gratitude to Xuan Hao for all the details he gave out because Long Feng knows that the success chances is depending on the condition as well the nature of how the ingredient is obtained.

"Well, it is so coincidently that I am the one assigned to gather and distribute the Black Bitter Mint to each station, so I know about the herbs condition, but.." Xuan Hao explained the reason why he knew such information, but before he finished, Long Feng already move towards the side where the all the Black Bitter Mint is stack altogether.

Perhaps in the term of stability of his qi, as well his cultivation is below average among the other participants, but for Long Feng, his seriousness in learning and remembering the composition of each ingredient is leap ahead from others due to his pitiful childhood.

During the time Long Feng's mother is out to work each single day, Long Feng spent his time helping the elderly from the neighborhood to grow their plants. Even the naturally grown Black Bitter Mint, contained a small amount of qi within, so upon daily consumption, the diner will still gain a little benefit from the herbs.

Although this method of preparation is not applied towards the formation of a pill, Long Feng still decided to give it a try.

First, he gathered a portion of about 10 leaves of the Black Bitter Mint and wash them thoroughly, before he had the leaves dried through the qi in his body after converted into a mildly warm fire elemental qi. By warm drying the leaves, it started to get slightly bloated, with the saps within the leaves sticking together in few spots.

Next, instead of extracting the essence from the leaves, Long Feng pull off the hard stems within each leaf, and throw it into the male Green Blood Lizard's cage, and waits for the lizard to start chewing the leaves, further leaving some stems aside.

After determining that the lizard is full from eating the leaves, Long Feng pick the lizard, and release the blood within the lizard into a safe level, and apply some fire elemental qi to help the scar close up before releasing the lizard back to its cage.

The plate of green blood is then poured into the pill furnace, to separate it into 5 portions.

"Junior Long Feng, this method is.." Xuan Hao is bewildered by the step used by Long Feng, but he couldn’t say it is wrong either because he had yet to tried this method to refine and form the pellet in this way.

"Senior Xuan Hao, this method is used by the resident from outskirt to make the taste of the Green Blood Lizard after cooking is better. The lizard, after having it blood released before skinned and cooked, always retain a weird stinking aftertaste within their palette."

"By adding the slighted warmed Black Bitter Mint into their diet before they are slaughtered for consumption, then lizard will not only taste better, the amount of qi increased after eating the meat also slightly higher than normal."

"Senior Xuan Hao, can you please help me to maintain the shape of the pill when I am firing the furnace with my qi ?" Long Feng prepared himself to start converting a large amount of fire element qi to start cooking the essence.

Without waiting for Xuan Hao's reply, Long Feng started the cooking process, which would take roughly a total of 30 minutes in total to be fully formed into a completed pellet.

In between of the cooking process, some minor disruption happens in between, especially in the process where they both combine their qi essence to form the layer of skin for the pellet. For Xuan Hao, this method of preparation is exactly different from what he had learned from his senior during his last year intake.

Although this method is not much differ from his previous method, where initially the essence from both Green Blood Lizard and Black Bitter Mint will be mixed with each other, but through Long Feng's method, the hassle of wasting time on Essence Mixing is taken away, hence giving them both more time to steadily form the five portion of pellets.

Although it is divided into portions, the end results don't always come out in one pellet per portion. Sometimes, depending on the volume or the concentration of the essence mixture, one could estimate around 1 to 3 pellets formed from each portion.

Of course, the volume of essence mixture in the form of Green Blood from the lizard is unknown to Xuan Hao, as this is the first time he goes with this method.

As the time pass, almost each minute, one by one student failed in their exam. Some had exhausted all their available ingredients, and some failed to pass through the stage of either in mixing, cooking, or forming.

Some successfully walk past the difficulties of forming the pill, but after inspection, the pill retains not more than 5% of Pure essence qi within. Although this still means the participant will be getting a point, the pellet he refined is literally rubbish that only poor cultivator will spend few ingredient to exchange.

The pill creating art is divided into a total of 10 grade, starting from the first.

Each grade represents a total of 10% of pure essence is preserved within the pill, so a second-grade cultivation pellet contain maximum 20% of pure essence qi, 30% for the third grade, and on forth.

The type of medicinal ingredient used also affect the grade, which is why all the ingredient is assigned a grade to indicates the amount of essence qi they carry within and also the limit this ingredient can reach.

In an example, a first-grade cultivation pellet contains a total of 1000 unit of pure essence within, while the Black Bitter Mint and Green Blood Lizard's blood contain a total of 300 unit each. So in a result of a perfect refining, one could expect only a 5%-6% First Grade Cultivation Pellet to be produced, where it would be categorized as the middle-rank quality pill.

But this only on the positive side of a pill refining. To aim for the higher rank pill, some pill master will resorts to the usage of more than 2 different ingredients, which in same time increasing its impurity, that will bring side effects to people who consume it during cultivating.

This is also the reason why each pill made by the pill hall, contained the makers' sign, and a stamp of ingredient used to be printed on the bottle to indicate the risk within.

As the essence forming process still ongoing for Long Feng and Xuan Hao, two participants had already completed their challenge.

"Number 290, Mang Qi, four Lower rank pill and one middle-rank pill is produced, six points."

"Number 443, Gou Yu, three lower rank pill and two middle-rank pills is produced, seven points."

"I remember last year, one disciple manage to form a total of four middle-rank pills and one upper-rank pill, and leave with a total of 11 points." Xuan Hao's attention diverted a while, to look at which two participants manage to complete the task within 30 minutes.

"Senior Xuan Hao, what is your score during your exam ?" Long Feng asked the question without hesitation and gave Xuan Hao a shock.

"Heh... I'm nowhere good, I only manage to form a total of 4 lower rank pills, but wasted 3 portions of ingredients, so I got 1 points at the end." senior Xuan Hao honestly replies.

"Senior, that is nothing to be embarrassed about. We are all aiming to be a pill master, only through failure we can learn on how to successfully refine the next pill." Long Feng replied back.

For Xuan Hao, getting picked into helping in this exam is no coincidence. Some weaker student often participates in many events while being a member of the pill hall just to build further rapport with many sides, so their skills and knowledge could be honed.

Through this new student exam, Xuan-Hao is aiming to get a new junior that excels and have good results, so he could be gaining some small benefits in between when the junior excel in the pill hall. This is also why Xuan Hao explained the condition of the herb, and give as much information as possible so Long Feng could try and pass this exam.

Second, is due to the pay for those who participate in helping out on this exam. By the end of the day, the disciple that helps in the exam could get a total of 10 low-rank First Grade Cultivation Pellet, which could help in many matters such as purchasing ingredient, cultivate and to send home to their parents.

Finally, after the cooking and forming are over, Long Feng opened the lid covering the pill furnace, and withdraw a total of 7 pills that came out in brilliant black and green color. Through a simple look, one could assume that these 7 pills are all sitting in the range of middle rank.

"This... How beautiful. Even for those like me couldn’t form such beautiful and fragrant pills." Xuan Hao speaks while holding the seven pills.

"Elder, please come over to inspect this batch of pellets made by this disciple and the participants." Xuan Hao quickly calls the elder over for inspection.

"Hahaha... Older brother Tang Wen, that counter is where the kid with Sky elemental at, am I right ?" one elder smirks and speaks to elder Tang Wen.

"That is him, what surprise do you think he could bring ?" Elder Tang Wen replies, but show no interest in continue this conversation.

The five elder reach the station, only to be surprised with the 7 pills that look similar, yet different from what they have seen before for so long.

"This 7 pills, is beautifully refined. If it is not because of the limited quality of the ingredient, I dare say that this pill could even reach upper rank easily." said an elder, known as Tang Yao, this elder is also the younger brother of Elder Tang Wen.

"The pill's purity is very clean as well, this is only able If one purposely choose the richest leaves from the Black Bitter Mint to be extracted. A very good job indeed." the elder that speak with Elder Tang Wen, elder Tu Bo, speaks with much praise.

"The fragrant... Its bitterness from the mint is gone, although its taste slightly dry, but at least it is not that bothering to take when cultivating. This is a very good improvement as well." the next elder name Zhi Ruo gave her praise.

"I can see that there is no wastage at all, this child seems to be successful in his first try, what a talent, what a talent." the fourth elder, named Quan Rui, gave her piece of praise to Long Feng as well.

"Explain to this few elder what you did in this forty minutes of time." elder Tang Wen ask a question instead of giving Long Feng a praise.

"Dear elders, after listening to Senior brother Xuan Hao's initial examination on the ingredients and the two lizards, added with this junior's knowledge, Long Feng decided to approach through a different method."

"Junior use the fire elemental qi to warm up a number of mint leaves, so the botched spot within this leaves indicates the juiciest spot when it is warm enough."

"From senior brother Xuan Hao's word, the Male Green Blood Lizard recently mate with another lizard, so this indicates its body should be facing the lack of qi within its body. Using this chance, junior feed the botched spot of the mint leaves to the lizard to eat, so it would quickly replenish the energy it recently used during mating."

"next, junior extract a healthy amount of its blood and starts cooking the blood that results from mint essence and the lizard's blood essence. Because I've seen the elderly cook the lizard while brushing the blood around its skinless body, this junior dare to say that the blood of the lizard should taste better, so junior use this method to cook and form the pill instead."

"When cooking the mixture, junior have senior brother Xuan Hao to use his earth elemental Qi to maintain the form while junior use slow fire elemental qi to cook the mixture slowly until they form out to be good enough to be ranked as middle-rank cultivation pellets." Long Feng explained all his consideration, never forget to include Xuan Hao within few times to ensure he has his part of contribution as well.

"Hahaha, now you all understand why I say this kid is extraordinary." elder Tang Wen laugh happily, because of Long Feng's deep consideration in every detail.

"Child, the Sky elemental strength is to help you obtain all type of ingredient within your strength into high purity level. But instead, you choose to follow the traditional way of speaking with your ingredients, and process it without needing the help from your sky elemental, this worth a praise."

"I guess all the elders would have the same opinion as I do as well. Xuan Hao, announce the results, two points for each pellet he successfully refined, and additional points from each elder for an excellent performance." elder Tang Wen finish a word and walk toward the door before he exits the square.

(Correction from mistake identified by Magpie, thanks!)

"Number 444, Long Feng, seven middle-rank pills is produced, added with elders distinction points, 19 points!"

The crowd within the square getting unrest with the amazing amount of points, and very quickly, Long Feng has escorted away from the square, into a residential area specialized for all the disciple of pill hall.