The Path of Immortality: Starts With Creating Water Bear Gu-Chapter 405: The Final Round Rules

After putting away the pill recipe, Long Xiaoyao immediately looked at Long Xuan and transmitted his voice through soul transmission:

"Long Xuan, well done! In this round, you have once again taken the lead by one point, widening the gap between you and the Ancestor Burning Heaven by four points in total."

"The next round is the final match. Even if you lose by three points in the final, the championship will still be yours."

As he spoke, Long Xiaoyao's face once again revealed an excited smile. Stroking his beard, he continued:

"Now, let me explain the rules of the final round to you."

"There are no rules for the final round. You can refine any type of pill you choose, and the higher the value of the pill, the higher your score."

"So in this last round, you must refine your absolute best pill—there is no room for holding back!"

"I know you possess Heavenly Fire, and with it, you can refine Water Spirit Ganoderma to a perfect tenfold purification. Only Heavenly Fire can achieve this! You must not hide this power any longer!"

"As long as you win this round, the Dragon Soaring Empire will grant you immense rewards. You will also receive a dragon tattoo—a mark of the highest honor among the Long Clan. Every genius who receives a dragon tattoo will be recorded in the clan’s history for eternity."

Hearing that he would be tattooed with a dragon again, Long Xuan couldn't help but twitch at the corner of his mouth. However, he still nodded seriously and replied:

"Senior, rest assured, I will give it my all!"

Long Xuan sighed inwardly. There was no need to think too much—given his four-point lead, even if the Ancestor Burning Heaven and Duan Tianwu were unwilling to refine a fourth-grade pill, they would have no choice but to do so.

If they didn’t refine fourth-grade pills, they would lose for sure. They were being forced into it.

Since both of his opponents would be refining fourth-grade pills, Long Xuan had no choice but to use his clone to refine pills beyond his level to compete with them. This meant he would have to put on another grand display of skill.

As for what pill to refine in the finals, he had already made his decision—he would refine the Bone-Regrowing Blood-Merging Pill that he had just created.

Among all the pills he had, the Bone-Regrowing Blood-Merging Pill was the most valuable. Not even the Heaven-Defying Pill could compare to it.

The next thing he needed to do was to quickly gather all the necessary ingredients for the Bone-Regrowing Blood-Merging Pill recipe.

There was no point in thinking about the ingredients for the Heaven-Defying Pill—the competition organizers would never be able to provide them. Those rare spirit herbs that exceeded the tenth grade were impossible for them to have.

Even if the competition organizers could prepare the materials for the Bone-Regrowing Blood-Merging Pill, Long Xuan had no intention of relying on them.

If he handed over the ingredient list to the organizers, wouldn't that be the same as revealing his exclusive pill recipe to them? He absolutely would not allow that.

This was a unique recipe powerful enough to attract Heavenly Tribulation—it had to remain a closely guarded secret.

The materials required for the Bone-Regrowing Blood-Merging Pill were undoubtedly difficult to obtain. However, Long Xuan believed he could gather them in a very short time.

Right now, Phoenix Heaven City was filled with high-level alchemists, and alchemists were the type of people most obsessed with collecting rare herbs.

Currently, multiple Alchemist Trade Fairs were being held every day in Phoenix Heaven City. Under these circumstances, gathering the materials for the Bone-Regrowing Blood-Merging Pill was entirely possible.

With this in mind, Long Xuan no longer wanted to waste time. He immediately prepared to return and start gathering materials.

At this point, the fourth round of the competition was only halfway through. Who knew how long the other contestants would need to rack their brains and come up with something? He had no interest in wasting time waiting for them.

As this thought crossed his mind, Long Xuan stood up, ready to leave.

However, at that very moment, someone rushed in from outside the hall in a panic. As soon as they entered, they shouted in shock:

"Something terrible has happened! Ancestor Burning Heaven has spread the two Demonic Pill recipe all over the streets!"

"Everyone is going crazy fighting over them! The entire city has plunged into chaos!"

"What?!"

"Damn it!"

…

In an instant, all the judges stood up in unison, their faces filled with shock...

…

Ignoring the chaos outside, Long Xuan returned to the inn and immediately ordered his various clones to go out and collect the ingredients listed in the pill recipe.

Not only did he need the ingredients for the Bone-Regrowing Blood-Merging Pill, but he also wanted to gather those for the Estrus Pill as well.

He aimed to rapidly expand his Gold-Eating Insect swarm. A vast, overwhelming tide of insects as an attack method—he was truly looking forward to it.

Four days later.

Looking at the ingredients laid out on the table, Long Xuan’s face showed excitement. As expected, things had gone exactly as he had anticipated. In this place filled with alchemists, gathering the ingredients for a single pill recipe was not difficult at all.

For the Bone-Regrowing Blood-Merging Pill, he didn’t even need to worry about collecting its primary ingredient—because he already had it.

Since this pill could generate a human body from nothing, the first thing that came to Long Xuan’s mind was Living Wood, which closely resembled human flesh. So, when he created his own recipe, he decided to include Living Wood—and it turned out to be a correct choice.

This heaven-defying pill, capable of creating flesh, indeed required Living Wood as a key ingredient. In fact, it served as the core material, and a substantial quantity was needed.

If Nezha was born from a lotus root, then after taking the Bone-Regrowing Blood-Merging Pill, Old Shui would essentially become an incarnation of Living Wood.

However, this would inevitably create an unavoidable weakness—wood fears fire. A body made from Living Wood would be extremely vulnerable to flames.

In the future, Gu Masters who specialized in fire techniques would undoubtedly be Old Shui’s greatest nemeses. This was an undeniable and fatal flaw. Heaven-defying pills always have limitations—this was simply the natural law of the world.

With a heavy heart, Long Xuan cut off one-third of his Living Wood’s branches. At last, he had all the necessary ingredients for a single batch of the Bone-Regrowing Blood-Merging Pill.

After carefully preparing the ingredients and storing them in a separate storage ring, he then poured out another pile of materials—this time, for the Estrus Pill.

Upon counting, he found only 100 sets of ingredients, causing him to frown deeply.

These were the materials for the full version of the Estrus Pill, which was completely different from the simplified version. Every single ingredient was exceedingly rare. Yet, even in this land overflowing with alchemists, he had only managed to gather enough for 100 batches of the full-version pill.

The difficulty of gathering materials for the Estrus Pill far exceeded his expectations.

And this was in a place where alchemists were everywhere—if he left and traveled elsewhere, gathering even a few sets of ingredients would be incredibly difficult.

Long Xuan sighed. A full batch of Estrus Pills contained 10 pills. The heaven-defying peak-grade spirit insect only laid a single egg per cycle. Even if he didn’t waste a single ingredient, he could only produce 1,000 Estrus Pills, which would allow him to breed 1,000 Gold-Eating Insects.

In his opinion, 1,000 Gold-Eating Insects were far too few.

His ultimate goal was to become an Insect Demon—someone who, with a mere wave of his hand, could unleash an insect swarm of hundreds of thousands, or even millions, capable of devouring all enemies.

A mere 1,000 Gold-Eating Insects wouldn’t be nearly enough to make powerful enemies fear him.

To make matters worse, the materials for the Gold-Eating Insects weren’t all spirit herbs. The hardest to obtain was Grade-4 Black Flood Dragon Venom.

Dragon-type spirit beasts were notoriously difficult to deal with, and in many regions, it was almost impossible to obtain Black Flood Dragon Venom.

Restoring something as advanced as a repair Gu would take a long time to build up to a certain scale.

If he wanted to expand his Gold-Eating Insect swarm to a scale of hundreds of thousands, it was destined to be a long, long process.

At this moment, Long Xuan was extremely anxious. However, he could only suppress his impatience and wait patiently.