Chapter 2170 — The Rookie Genius?

Moreover, though Wei Zhao knew Right-Pan Hu was eavesdropping outside the door, he did not care. By now he had more or less torn ties with many of the hidden families. The fact that he was an alchemist could hardly serve as a talisman for him, and in any case he had already fleeced Right-Pan Hu for all he was worth—whether over the contest or that earlier medicine cauldron, Wei Zhao had come out well ahead. Even if Right-Pan Hu learned that Wei Zhao was no alchemist, all he could do was regret it bitterly; there was no way he could do anything to Wei Zhao.

"Oh? So the other mental cultivation methods and oral formulas can be used to condense pill fire?" Chief Bai's hopes were instantly rekindled at Wei Zhao's words. "Condense a pill fire and show me!"

"All right!" Wei Zhao nodded, and obediently condensed a sphere of first-grade fire-attribute pill fire in his palm, presenting it before Chief Bai.

"Yellow-rank first-grade fire-attribute pill fire—very good, very pure!" After examining the pill fire in Wei Zhao's hand closely, Chief Bai praised in astonishment, "Excellent indeed. Such a pure, stable first-grade pill fire could almost match mine at my peak! Try altering the fire's force and temperature and see what happens."

"That I can't do..." Wei Zhao smiled wryly and began to raise the fire's force—but the moment he tried, the pill fire simply went out, without the slightest warning.

"It died out?" Chief Bai frowned. "Have you tried this before?"

"Yes, I've tried again and again. Whether I change the fire's force or its temperature, the slightest alteration—no matter how small—and the pill fire goes out!" Wei Zhao said with a bitter smile.

"Oh? This is the first time I've encountered such a case. Let me think..." Chief Bai stared at Wei Zhao in great amazement, then closed his eyes and pondered Wei Zhao's situation carefully...

Meanwhile, at the door of Chief Bai's office, Right-Pan Hu was grinding his teeth in fury, slapping his thigh and stamping his feet, cursing under his breath: That bastard Wei Zhao—he can't refine pills at all, and he's ruined me! Had I known he couldn't, why would I have raised the stakes of the alchemy contest to refining third-grade pills?

Under the original rules, Right-Pan Hu would have been the winner. But the hidden Right-Pan family had feared Wei Zhao, afraid he would win again, and so had overreached and only made things worse—a thought that left Right-Pan Hu consumed with regret!

And when Right-Pan Hu heard that Wei Zhao could not even control a first-grade pill fire, the look on his face was a sight to behold. Only now did he realize he had fallen into a deep pit and been thoroughly played by Wei Zhao!

Wei Zhao was no alchemist at all—merely an ordinary cultivator who could condense pill fire. Being able to condense pill fire did not make one an alchemist; after all, pill fire was not so easy to control. But Right-Pan Hu had let his first impressions rule him: at Old Master Tang's birthday banquet he had seen Wei Zhao control pill fire, and at the hidden-family summit Wei Zhao had turned up his nose at second-grade pills. All of this had led Right-Pan Hu to assume, as a matter of course, that Wei Zhao was an alchemist!

But who would have thought Wei Zhao was a fraud? He could not refine pills at all—he had been bluffing the whole time!

"I still can't work it out..." After a long while, Chief Bai opened his eyes and shook his head. "If I had to name a problem, I could only say that the cultivation method you practice may conflict with alchemy—or else that your body lacks fire and wood attributes and you have no talent for alchemy. Beyond that, I truly cannot think of any other possibility!"

"So that's how it is..." Wei Zhao smiled bitterly again and again. He had not held out much hope to begin with; after all, he knew his cultivation method was rather unusual, and it was already quite good enough to have a cheat in other respects. If he also expected to refine pills, would he not be an all-round genius?

"My cultivation method should be of the extreme-yang kind, leaning toward fire—after all, my martial techniques are fire-attribute too, and the attributes within my body should likewise suit fire. So perhaps what I lack is the wood attribute?" Wei Zhao mused, then asked.

"That is not it either!" Chief Bai shook his head in denial. "A constitution of pure fire attribute can also become an alchemist. On the contrary, because the body's attribute is singular, the pill fire one condenses is all the purer and easier to control—there is no such thing as your case, where changing the fire's force and temperature puts it out! Cultivators with such a constitution reach great heights in the art of pill fire, yet they still cannot become outstanding alchemists."

"Oh?" Wei Zhao was slightly taken aback. "A single-attribute cultivator can become an alchemist too?"

"Indeed. But such alchemists suffer a fatal flaw: without the wood attribute in their bodies, they cannot sense the state of the pill in the cauldron at any moment, and cannot adjust the pill fire's force and temperature by feel. So alchemists of this kind can only rely on long practice to master a few pill recipes," Chief Bai said. "Even so, their success rate is very low, and the pills they can refine are of poor quality and low grade. Hence many such alchemists treat alchemy as a side pursuit and never delve deeper into it..."

"This..." Hearing Chief Bai's words, Wei Zhao suddenly thought of Han Jingyi! Her mastery of pill-fire control was extremely high, yet her sensing ability was poor—scarcely worth mentioning at all. Could Han Jingyi be one of these?

Only, what Chief Bai called a rather inept alchemist had become, in Han Jingyi's case, a heaven-defying genius! Only a genius girl like Han Jingyi could have devised some sort of scientific alchemy method, using scientific calculation to make up for her deficient sensing ability!

And the converted scientific formulas proved even more precise than sensing! However formidable one's sensing might be, it still erred now and then—unless one were a truly exceptional alchemist with extraordinarily powerful spiritual sense. Otherwise, no one could match Han Jingyi!

Having reasoned this out, Wei Zhao also understood why Han Jingyi was so effortlessly at home in pill-fire control. Yet Han Jingyi had actually made up for her defect—her intelligence was truly astonishing. She looked like a silly little thing, but her wits were not the least bit dull.

Could this be what people meant by the way geniuses are idiots in the affairs of daily life? It was well known that many geniuses behaved in ways utterly unbefitting a genius in other respects, yet possessed astonishingly high intelligence. Wei Zhao wondered whether Han Jingyi belonged to that category.

"So you do not belong to that category. But if your body lacks the fire attribute, and yet you can condense pill fire, that is truly strange," Chief Bai said. "Here, I have a notebook of an alchemist's reflections..."