Chapter 70: Competing Together
Cheng Ran gazed at the two medicines in front of him intently, and carefully measured the time he spent heating each one on the console.
These two kinds of medicines indeed took a long time to mix, and if he tried to configure them separately, he wouldn’t make the time limit, but their temperature requirements were not high. As long as they were well controlled, they could be heated in alternation.
In the beginning, he only intended to choose the most difficult one to mix. However, there should have been many people who had the same idea as him. Moreover, even if he could mix that medicine, he couldn’t be sure that he could do better than others. After all, it was sometimes difficult to tell the quality of medicine.
Thinking that Shi Qingyang was still watching him not too far away, he finally decided to blaze upon another trail and, in the end, decided to mix two kinds of medicines.
In doing so, Cheng Ran took some risks. He was worried that he would fail at first. But after slowly going through the process, all he wanted to do was finish it well.
He executed the process very smoothly this time. After completing both medicines, he finally breathed a sigh of relief, only to discover that 55 minutes had just passed. At the same time, countless people, both on the competition field and the surrounding audience, had their eyes on him.
Although the contestants couldn’t hear sounds from outside on the competition field in order to keep them from being disturbed, just looking at the audience told him how lively it was outside.
Having never been watched by so many people, Cheng Ran suddenly felt a little flustered and subconsciously looked at the direction of the referee’s seat. He didn’t relax until he saw Shi Qingyang from a distance.
However, he still didn’t know how to deal with the current situation, so he simply lowered his head, took the pharmaceutical materials next to him, and processed a few things smoothly.
Throughout all the time he had spent trapped outside the city, he’d never had the opportunity to prepare medicine, so he really felt nostalgic for these herbs.
“Mr. Cheng, Cheng Ran is indeed a hard-working person. Such a person will reach great achievements in the future!” Seeing that Cheng Ran didn’t waste any time, the dean of Anhang Academy complimented Cheng Xuze again. At this time, all the medicines configured by everyone were also sent to the medicine visual detector.
The medicine visual detector would detect the composition of each medicine and give it a scoree. In this level, several people got high scores. They had mixed their own potions in the previous competition, and the quality is very good.
However, no matter how high others’ scores were, they couldn’t be higher than Cheng Ran’s. Although the two medicines mixed by Cheng Ran were not the best, who else would have mixed two medicines at once?
When the scores of the two medicines were added together, how would that not put pressure on others?
Although the computer was used to detect this time, the result was decided by the referee. These referees were old-fashioned and would not offend Cheng Xuze like the consultant next to the commentator. The first place naturally fell to Cheng Ran.
Cheng Ran stood on the stage and looked at his achievements with some surprise. He had once been called a disabled waste by Cheng Hong, and this was the first time he realized that he could have the opportunity to be recognized by so many people.
The morning competition was over. According to the past situation, the awards could be given directly at this time. But this time, because the competition was a little grand, a finals round was specially added in the afternoon.
In this regard, everyone thought this was normal. After all, the people of Anhang Academy had come to participate, and with so many contestants, it was normal that they couldn’t decide the ranking in one swoop…
Shi Qingyang had long known this, but he didn’t care too much. Cheng Ran’s performance in the morning was good enough, even if he didn’t perform well in the afternoon.
Shi Qingyang’s heart was generous, but an accident happened at this time.
The dean of Anhang Academy made a speech in public, summarized the morning competition, and mentioned the afternoon competition: “In the afternoon, we will have ten people participate in the finals. This finals is different from the morning. We will designate a kind of medicine for everyone to mix. This is a newly improved medicine, which has never been disclosed. More importantly, the mixing of this medicine requires the use of radiation!”
Different from the basic medicines, the medium and high-level substances used radiant energy in the configuration process to avoid problems in the mutual reaction of medicinal herbs, while also taking care to not include excessive radiation. The substances that would use radiant energy were naturally deemed intermediate medicines.
Those who participated in the competition were all teenagers under the age of 20. Although they had also been exposed to these, they had never experienced the complete mixing process at all, let alone a new prescription this time… All those who could enter the finals were nervous.
“Don’t worry, we’ll make the prescription public soon. You can study it before the afternoon match. At the same time, this prescription is also somewhat different. It doesn’t have high requirements for radiant energy. As long as you input stable radiant energy during mixing, it can be mixed even if you can’t send out a radiant energy attack now,” the Dean added. Seeing that the originally nervous people were now relaxed, he immediately smiled, and then went to see Cheng Ran’s expression.
Originally, the game in the afternoon should be similar to that in the morning, but just now, Cheng Hong sent him a message asking him to modify the game.
Cheng Hong was the president of Anhang City’s Radiation Energy Association. This competition was originally under Cheng Hong’s jurisdiction. It was normal for him to modify the competition items, and most likely he modified it for Cheng Ran
The dean of Anhang Academy was smooth-talking and best at pleasing people. When he saw the prescription passed by Cheng Hong to himself, his first reaction was that Cheng Ran was likely to have learned it.
Cheng Ran had won two first places in the morning. The Cheng family must hope that he would win the first place in the afternoon. According to his speculation, on the one hand, it was likely changed to make his win safer, on the other hand, they probably wanted to publicize Cheng Ran and let others know that although Cheng Ran was not yet 18 years old, he already had the skills of an intermediate pharmacist…
If he had a son who met such a good opportunity, he would certainly find a way to pave the way for him! The dean of Anhang Academy had arrived after Cheng Xuze had come. He didn’t see Cheng Hong’s reaction before. Although he had heard some scandals a few days ago, he naturally wouldn’t think that Cheng Hong wanted to target Cheng Ran even though it was certain that Cheng Ran was his family. At this time, he did exactly what Cheng Hong told him.
After finishing, he also looked at Cheng Ran excitedly, but he didn’t expect Cheng Ran, who had a smile on his face, to become expressionless at this time.
Was something wrong? The Dean turned his head to look at Cheng Xuze, and found that Cheng Xuze’s expression was also ugly.
At this time, the prescription of that medicine had been released on the big screen next to it.
This was a kind of radiant energy soother, which could soothe the radiant energy in the body of level-3 and level-4 radiant warriors. There were many similar radiant soothers. This prescription had just been improved recently, and had never been published before.
Cheng Ran looked up and wrote down the whole prescription, but what was the use of writing it down? Shi Qingyang had confirmed for him that the radiant energy in his body was indeed real, but this radiant energy couldn’t be revealed to others. If others knew that he disappeared in the wild for a few days and suddenly gained radiant energy, those people would certainly doubt it.
“Cheng Ran, you…” Apart from Cheng Ran, there was only a fourth grade boy Wang Ya who entered the finals from Spark Academy. Wang Ya used to have a good relationship with Cheng Ran in school, but because of the previous accident, he felt like he didn’t know how strike up a conversation with Cheng Ran anymore.
“I’m fine,” Cheng Ran said, and soon relaxed. In fact, he had no obsession with winning. Even if he couldn’t mix the medicine in the end, he didn’t feel anything. He just felt that it was a pity–he was afraid that he would disappoint Shi Qingyang.
“Ranran!” Shi Qingyang came over at this time. He saw through Cheng Ran at a glance and felt sorry for him. Logically, he should give Cheng Ran a chance to shine in the competition, but if it was known that Cheng Ran suddenly had radiant energy…
They were now in Cheng Hong’s territory, and they would encounter a lot of trouble.
“Qingyang,” Cheng Ran said with a smile.
“Come with me,” Shi Qingyang said. Probably because no one had rambled on with long speeches at the start of the competition, it hadn’t even reached mealtime yet, and he was not in a hurry to eat. He took Cheng Ran to the lounge arranged for Cheng Xuze by Anhang Academy.
Cheng Xuze and Ran Xue were already waiting here.
“Qingyang, I’ll give up the contest in the afternoon.” Cheng Ran thought along the way and spoke.
“You can’t give up!” Cheng Xuze said without thinking.
“But Grandpa, I don’t have radiant energy.” Cheng Ran took Shi Qingyang’s hand and said this while drawing a circle on Shi Qingyang’s palm with his little finger.
Shi Qingyang grabbed his hand and looked at Cheng Xuze curiously. He had already planned to agree to Cheng Ran’s request.
Cheng Xuze was angry, and though he didn’t notice the little moves of the two people, he was still furious: “You can’t just give up. The dean of Anhang Academy had told me that this was Cheng Hong’s arrangement. How can we do what he wants?” In anger, he called his son by name.
Cheng Hong’s arrangement? Shi Qingyang was stunned. When Cheng Hong completely ignored Cheng Ran’s life and death, he had no good feelings for Cheng Hong. It was because of this that he bluntly made Cheng Hong choke on his words before. He didn’t expect Cheng Hong to do such a thing on purpose as soon as he stopped paying attention.
If the contest had just been like this, they would have accepted the defeat, but it turned out to be Cheng Hong’s doing…
“But Grandpa, without radiation energy, even if he went up to compete…” Shi Qingyang frowned. If Cheng Ran didn’t use radiant energy, even if he went up to mix the medicine, he would only make a fool of himself in the end.
“Xiao Ran, look at the contact terminal first,” Ran Xue suddenly said.
Cheng Ran was a little puzzled, but soon opened the contact terminal. He found that there was an email named “Detailed Rules of the Competition”. After clicking it, he found that it stated the rules of the afternoon contest.
This time, the rules were somewhat different, that was, in order to view their hands-on ability, the competition would only give them a simple console and unprocessed medicinal materials, and at the same time, for the sake of fairness, they were allowed to bring an assistant.
“Assistant?” Cheng Ran asked curiously.
“Yes, Xiao Ran, master will be your assistant, and let you do everything else. When you need to input radiant energy to stir, let master come,” Ran Xue immediately said.
After hearing the content of the contest in the afternoon, she was anxious for fear that Cheng Ran would lose face. Even if Cheng Ran’s loss of face had nothing to do with her, she didn’t want Cheng Ran to be sad about it.
“Master, what’s the difference between this and having you mix it yourself?” Cheng Ran said, in fact, this medicine mainly depended on the mixing method. The proportion of mixing with radiant energy was relatively small, but this was the key. If he really did this, it was no different from cheating.
“Grandpa, Aunt Ran, can I be an assistant?” Shi Qingyang suddenly asked.
“You? You’re a rad-energy warrior, and you don’t know anything about medicine…” Ran Xue was obviously puzzled.
“I’d only be responsible for mixing,” Shi Qingyang said. He was really not medicine-making material, but it was absolutely no problem to control his radiation to stir.
Now, in terms of radiation energy control and the stability of radiation energy, few people could match him.
Hearing this, Cheng Xuze immediately patted his thigh: “It’s a good idea. If it’s handled well, it can still be a good story. By the way, if I recall right, bringing a rad-warrior as an assistant has never happened before? Then you would be the first! If it’s done…” If this method was feasible, maybe his grandson could configure intermediate medicine in the future?
Ran Xue also had some thoughts brewing. Shi Qingyang was really the most suitable assistant. At least the very least, not offensive. “Let’s test it first?”
The prescription of this radiation energy soother had been made public, and everyone now had access to it. The medicinal materials needed for the configuration were sent over before long. Then, Ran Xue slowly explained it.
The mixing method of the radiant soothing agent was very complex, even more complex than that of many more advanced substances. If it was an ordinary person, let alone using radiant energy mixing, they’d likely get the other steps wrong. Now, they had to challenge two people to work together to mix a medicine…
The afternoon competition didn’t start until two o’clock, giving everyone enough time to rest. The dean of Anhang Academy felt something wrong when he saw the expressions of Cheng Xuze and the others in the morning. At noon, he turned to the news and saw Cheng Hong’s report in the morning. Then he thought that Cheng Hong probably didn’t actually want to pave the way for Cheng Ran.
Besides, what did he see in those news? According to Cheng Ran’s classmates, Cheng Ran had no radiation energy? Although few people mentioned this on the Internet, he had already affirmed the truth from Cheng Xuze and Ran Xue’s previous reaction.
Letting a person who didn’t even have radiation energy mix a medicine that neededradiation energy… He really had a brain problem, wanting to use this to forge a good relationship with Cheng Xuze.
The dean of Anhang Academy was very upset and went to see Cheng Hong again, but Cheng Hong completely ignored him at this time.
The contest decision, of course, could not be changed at will. The Dean made an opening speech using the plainest words of his life, and then directly announced the start of the contest.
As soon as he finished speaking, the people who participated in the competition began to enter one after another.
Ran Xue came up with the idea of bringing an assistant, and it had to be said that this was indeed a good idea. Shi Qingyang took a look and found that the assistants of the people who entered the competition were actually the people who had been previously eliminated from their academies. The teacher of Spark Academy also found Cheng Ran, hoping that he could bring an eliminated female student of Spark Academy into the field, but Cheng Ran finally refused.
Cheng Ran came into the arena with a rad-energy warrior who didn’t know how to mix medicine at all.
On the console, many kinds of medicinal materials were placed neatly, all of which were used in configuration. Perhaps in consideration of possible failure, these medicinal materials were divided into three parts, that was, everyone had three opportunities.
Of course, if someone mixed it three times and still hadn’t created a semi-finished product, then they were probably out of time – the time of this competition was two hours.
Cheng Ran was still the focus during the contest, and the commentator was still dutifully explaining the situation on the stage. She first introduced the situation of each player, and then introduced the situation of each assistant until finally it was Shi Qingyang’s turn.
Shi Qingyang was a radiant warrior. Even if he knew the medicine, he only knew it on paper. Seeing his information, the commentator obviously didn’t know how to explain him. When the camera fell on him, everyone saw a shocking scene.
When other people’s assistants were busy helping to deal with the medicinal materials, Shi Qingyang was just watching Cheng Ran, who even wore radiation-proof gloves, busy himself all around.
Had there ever been an assistant like this? What was the use of such an assistant?
BL Translations 