Chapter 263: The First Question
As soon as Jezeere introduced himself, the crowd went into a flurry of hushed noises and whispers. Ning was surprised for a second as to why they were so excited about a single person but soon thought that it must have been because Jezeere was a well-known Alchemist.
‘I did spend a month in the tavern room, holed up inside. It’s understandable that I wouldn’t know who that is. Should I have tried to find out?’ Ning thought. But it took away from the mystery aspect of his adventure, so he didn’t think that was necessary.
The crowd seemed to be still very excited to Ning which made him wonder.
‘Do these people want to take his class when they pass? Is he that good of a teacher? Maybe I should go to their class too when I become a student here,’ he thought.
“Silence!” Jezeere ordered and the whole room went quiet. He waited for everyone to get orderly and suddenly threw a stack of paper in the air.
The papers all fell onto the desk of every examinee one by one. One of the papers also fell on top of Ning’s desk. Just as he was about to check it, a massive divine sense passed through them with one order in it.
DON’T LOOK
Ning stopped himself from bringing out his own divine sense and just waited there for Jezeere to continue.
“On that paper are 3 questions. As long as you accurately answer only two of them, you will pass,” Jezeere said.
‘What? Only 3?’ Ning was surprised. ‘How come an exam has only 3 questions?’
The other examinees seemed to have the same thought as they spoke in hushed voices amongst themselves. While some were surprised, the ones that had taken the exam before weren’t surprised at all.
Jezeere looked at them with disapproving looks seeing them all talk so much.
“And…” he continued, “don’t forget to write your registration number on the top of the paper. Do not use divine sense to cheat and finally, you only have 10 minutes to answer all 3 of the question.”
Jezeere took out an hourglass and placed it on the ground. “Your time starts now,” he said and immediately flipped the hourglass.
Rustles of paper moving rang out from the entire room. Ning turned his own as well and saw 3 empty talismans stuck behind each of the 3 questions.
He quickly marked the paper with his registration number and looked at the first question.
-If someone comes up to you asking for your help in distinguishing the Darkmoon Grass from Blacksilver Grass without using their odor. What would you do?-
‘Oh, Darkmoon Grass and Blacksilver grass huh? Those two are pretty much the same grass from a visual standpoint since they both are dark-silver in color. It’s hard to differentiate them without their odor,’ he thought.
He went through his mind that spent the last month learning everything about Alchemy that he could. He then thought of the first answer that came to his mind.
‘You can dip a Darkmoon grass in a Porcupine fruit’s juice and then tear it horizontally. It will tear up straight until the halfway seam and then tear towards the stem from there on.’
‘On the other hand, the Blacksilver Grass would instead tear until the halfway seam and then tear towards the tip,’ he thought and got ready to answer it.
Just then, however, he stopped. ‘Wait for a second, the question asked me to help someone else differentiate it. Meaning, it is very likely they wouldn’t have a Porcupine fruit on them,’ Ning thought.
He thought of another answer.
‘If we burn a Darkmoon grass under the moonlight, the smoke coming off of it would fly in the direction the moonlight is striking towards. On the other hand, Blacksilver grass would just move in the direction of the wind.’
‘Wait, no. It needs moonlight. That’s not the answer either,’ Ning thought.
He thought of another answer. ‘If we freeze the blades of the two blades of grass almost instantaneously, the Blacksilver grass would attain a flexible property, while the Darkmoon grass would simply snap in half.’
‘Wait, that requires flash freezing on the other person’s part. If they don’t have any ice skills, especially one that doesn’t flash freezes it, then it’s useless,’ he thought.
He moved on to another answer, and then another. Since his mind was filled with many answers, sorting through the ones that only required the two blades of grass and nothing else was quite hard.
He had nearly spent 5 minutes just thinking about these answers and by now he had about 7 different ones, but none applied to the question.
Then, on the 8th answer, he finally found something.
‘If one pours their Qi into the Blacksilver grass until it’s full and drops it in a not so windy place, the weight added onto the blade due to the Qi would always make it fall on its underside.’
‘While the Darkmoon grass would just act like a normal blade of grass and randomly fall on either side,’ he thought. Finally, an answer that applied to everyone.
In a world of cultivation, who didn’t have Qi? So, he decided to go with this answer and wrote it on the talisman.
He wrote, ‘I would ask the person to fill the blade of grass with their Qi, and …’, and explained everything. After he was done with it, however, he felt bad about having all the different answers but not using them.
So, he decided to put them in as well.
‘Alternatively,’ he wrote, ‘if you have a Porcupine fruit…’
‘If you have an ice skill that can flash freeze the blades…’
‘If you are in an open place with moonlight…’
‘If you have two blocks of silver that have stolen the moonlight’s essence…’
‘If you have a Olfactory Hallucination pill…’
.
.
.
He wrote all the answers he could think of and finally put down the talisman. He then looked at the hourglass and frowned. There were only 3 minutes left at most.
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