1516 Simple Failure

The trial for Talisman was surprisingly difficult. Alex was asked to do more than he had expected a good chunk of the way through the trial, and as such he was sent out.

He arrived in a flash of purple light that edged on being indigo. It was close to blue, but not quite yet. 

Barely anyone gave him any attention when he arrived. No one cared for you when there was the slightest hint of red in your color. 

People noticed Alex, but this time there was no fanfare. They had heard about his achievement in the Alchemy trials already, and the Formation trial's results were not hidden from them either.

They had paid attention when he had entered, but when he came out, no one bothered to care. He can't be good at everything he does, they thought. Some even voiced it out loud. 

"He nearly made us think he was perfect," someone said not far away from Alex. He had tried to keep his words a whisper, but if he spoke it out loud, he had intended for Alex to hear it.

Anyone who wanted to have a private conversation wouldn't speak out loud like this and instead would use their spiritual sense.

"What was that purple? Indigo? That's better than halfway, isn't it? He did amazing in Alchemy and Formation, so the fact that he got this far in Talismans too makes him quite the talent," another person added. Their voice held little jealousy.

Various such conversations were held around Alex, but he ignored them. He looked back at the trial, intending to return immediately, but he couldn't.

There was a reason he had failed and going back right away would still mean failure for him when he got to the same trial again.

The talisman trial asked for more than just making talismans. It asked for scripts and runes that did not need to be placed onto a piece of paper to be activated.

That was quite easy for Alex. Behind Alchemy, this was what he assumed he was the best at. After all, his mother had received a book with detailed knowledge of Talismans and he had learned a lot from it.

That was another reason why being sent out this early didn't stick right with him. However, the trials had asked for more than just runes and scripts and making talismans.

It had asked him to make an ink, any ink, and then make a talisman with it that worked. Alex lacked the ingredients to make inks.

He was never the type of man to learn how to make inks. His focus was on alchemy, so he focused on every aspect of alchemy. But for Talisman, he just focused on the runes and how to draw them perfectly on the paper.

As for the ink that he used to write in the talisman, he would just buy it from someone else who made it. That had been what had made him fail. That was why he had been sent out this early.

'I was doing so well too,' he thought. He looked through his ingredients again. There were quite a lot of it, but the ingredients for making talisman inks didn't overlap with alchemy ingredients all that often. 

Alex knew a few ink recipes, but he was missing the ingredients for every single one. If he returned to the talisman trial once again, he would fail once again at the same trial.

He needed to buy some ingredients before going back in.

The elders soon found him and he told them what he wanted. The elders quickly got to it and returned with rather bad news.

"Everything in the city has been sold and nothing has been restocked yet," Yao Ning told him.

"It gets restocked every few days, but the amount of people here buy it the moment they get restocked," Liang Shufen added. "If we want one, we'll have to go to the next city."

Alex thought for a moment. "Go," he said. "Buy as much as you can. I don't need a lot, but just enough. It will take you some time, so in the meantime, I'll head on over to the Artifact creation."

He arrived inside the trial room half an hour later. He was first on the priority list, but he still had to wait for someone to come out of the trials before he went in.

After he was in, he was once again in a black room, as he had with all the different trials. 

This time, the trial master was a human soul. Or so Alex thought until he saw the female's slit eyes. Nothing else looked beast-like in her physique, but the eyes told him that she was some sort of serpentine beast.

He even wondered if she was a descendant of the Azure Dragon, only so far removed from the bloodline that she barely held any of their physical traits.

She introduced herself as Shiu Longxiu, a name Alex knew he was only going to have to remember for now. She explained to the newcomers what they were going to have to do and how the trials would be held.

The first test was the simplest of all tests for an artifact master. They were supposed to make a simple storage bag. It didn't matter how good the bag was, only that it worked.

Alex started working on it immediately. He had prepared the leather beforehand, so all he needed to do right now was pour some Qi into the leather, make some Qi lines, and then use a formation to drag some of the space into the bag.

Even as he did what he was told, he wondered if it was a good idea to take away space from a room that was already being manipulated by formations. However, since the woman had asked for it, Alex trusted that she knew what she was doing.

And it seemed he was right to trust her.

The moment he was done dragging away the space, he felt the space around him expand just a little more. The formation that worked in the room was constantly working to restore the space in case of any disruption.

As a result, no one had to worry about space collapsing by a bunch of humans taking away a bit of it to make storage bags.

Alex saw his room light up bright red. He understood that he had passed and so he sat down and waited for the others to pass before the next test began.

Just 5 minutes later, his new trial was given.

Separate a metal from its ore.

That was an easy task for Alex. He didn't even have to use any specific blacksmithing techniques and neither did he have to use any forge.

He took out a gold ore and melted the gold right onto his hand, separating it so simply. He had wondered if he should use some materials on it to purify it more, but the light around the room lit up a bright red color, notifying him that he was done.

"That was simple," he thought. He put away the gold and waited for half an hour before the rest of the trials he would have to go through.