Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Alex looked through the talisman but nowhere did he find any relevant information. Most of the people who collected his information were unnamed, and those that were were useless to him as he was searching for his father.

Most of these people wanted to know where he was, where his next pills would be made, and many other sorts of information that he was surprised they even asked.

Some even tried to look up if he had any family members, usually a wife so they could search for some way to get their daughters married to him.

Alex shook his head in frustration but continued reading through it all. After all, that was what he paid for anyway.

"Sigh, there's nothing here," he said as he finally finished looking through it all. He turned towards Scarlet who was cultivating not far away and decided to cultivate himself.

He brought out a pill of his own and ate it. For the next two days, he cultivated without giving any other thought to what was happening in his surrounding.

Given how secure this place was, he wouldn't even have to worry about someone else disturbing him at all.

Scarlet was resting while he finished cultivating. He slowly stood up and looked around.

"You done?" Scarlet asked.

"Yes," Alex nodded. "You seem to have been done for a while now."

"Of course," she said. "I couldn't continue since your pill left me with sore meridians. It will take a day or two to heal and then I can continue again."

"Yeah, it does that," Alex said. "But it's very fast, isn't it?"

"Yes, I was quite surprised at how fast it was," Scarlet said with a surprised look on her face. "Thank you for the pills again."

"It's fine," Alex said. "Anyway, what is your plan now? Just sit here and cultivate until you're strong enough?"

"Yes, that's the plan," Scarlet said. "It will take many years, but with your pills, it will be slightly faster."

"I wouldn't doubt it," Alex said. "Since you won't be going anywhere then I will be leaving. There is apparently a place where I can fight people, so I'm going to use that as training."

"Fighting? I can fight you<" Scarlet said.

Alex chuckled and shook his head. "Maybe later. You're too weak right now."

Scarlet was a bit offended. "I may be weak, but I'm still a Heavenly beast at the end of the day. My cultivation base is way better than those in the same realm as me. Come, fight me and you will see that one's cultivation base isn't everything in this world," she said proudly.

Alex couldn't help but smile. "Oh, is that so?" he asked. "Fine then, come attack me."

"Okay, get ready," Scarlet said and immediately took off flying. She came down swooping through the air and flapped her wings. Instantly, winds picked up all around Alex that tried to cut him up.

He stood where he was and protected himself with his Qi. His body could handle that bit of damage, but he didn't want to ruin his clothes at the moment.

Scarlet saw this and cried out loud. A Phoenix screech reached Alex, making his head hurt slightly. But with a bit of focus, he could use his own spiritual energy to stop her voice from hurting him.

Scarlet was once again surprised to see her action useless. She flapped her wing and disappeared from in front of Alex, moving very quickly with her movement technique to appear behind Alex, but by that time, Alex himself had already turned around and looked at her with a smile on his face.

Scarlet was shocked and backed off. "What? How did you see me? You shouldn't be this fast," she said.

"I have my ways," Alex said. "Is that all you can do?"

Scarlet was ticked off. She flew once more and started sending down a barrage of Qi attacks, all of which Alex fended off rather easily.

He was quite surprised to find that Scarlet was strong enough to improve her strength by nearly 3 realms, reaching close to Saint Condensation 9th realm, but that wasn't able to hurt Alex at all.

Even if he was a normal cultivator with a 1st realm Saint Foundation cultivator, it wouldn't have hurt him at all.

He couldn't help but give her a mocking smile. "See? You're weak. You can't hurt me at all," he said.

"You!" Scarlet got even angrier this time. While in mid-air, she suddenly burst into fire, surprising Alex as he got on guard.

"Let's see how you can deal with this," she said as she started shooting down the fire that was burning all around her.

Alex saw the fire and freaked out. "Hey! That's Phoenix fire. Don't use that so easily," he shouted as he got out of the way of the attack.

"Haha! I knew you would lose to it," She shouted at him. "I win!"

Alex frowned. Suddenly, the air around him moved as all fire in his vicinity started growing smaller and smaller until nothing remained. Even the fire that burned around Scarlet herself grew smaller and smaller.

"What? Intent?" she was surprised. She fought back with her own intent to keep her fire going, and surprisingly she beat Alex, keeping her fire alight.

"Don't use Phoenix fire," Alex scolded her from where he was. "You can do so much dama—" He stopped.

Scarlet chuckled. "What damage?" she asked.

Alex looked around in shock as the fire he had extinguished had left almost no damage at all. A patch of grass and some branches of a few trees had burned off, but nothing else was destroyed.

"Wait, what?" he looked around with a confused look. "But how?"

"A Phoenix has full control of Phoenix fire," Scarlet said. "They can choose whether it heals or burns. I intended for it to deal small damage just now. Even if we had fought for another 3 hours, the most we would've lost would have been a few trees."

"Really?" Alex couldn't believe it. "But then, what about the wasteland? That fire is so dangerous and also heals so much. Are you saying the phoenix whose fire it was intended for it to be that way?"

"No," Scarlet said. "One can intend it to act that way, but that is unattended Phoenix fire. Unattended ones have no restraint and are very dangerous since no one else but a Phoenix can extinguish them. And… for some reason you."

"I have learned True Fire dao," Alex said to explain.

"WHAT? You have such a rare dao?" Scarlet said. "No wonder you are so proficient at getting rid of my flames. Had my mind not been stronger, you would have definitely gotten rid of my own fire too."

"Well, your mind is quite strong too," Alex said. "Now that we're talking about it, I wanted to ask something. Do you know why I can't create Phoenix flames? I can emulate them perfectly, but I can't emulate the healing factor or the ever-burning factor."

Scarlet looked at the fire that Alex had created on his hand and was surprised to see just how similar it was to a Phoenix flame. "But of course," she said. "To summon Phoenix flames, you need the bloodline aura of a Phoenix. If similar to the White Tiger, you had a Vermilion bird's bloodline in you too, then you might be able to create them. Might."

"Oh, that makes me want phoenix blood even more," Alex said.

Scarlet listened to his words and sighed. "Well, anyway you are too strong for me. You were correct," she said.

Alex couldn't help but laugh when she admitted to being weaker. "Alright, have fun cultivating here, I will leave now."

"Um… bring me more pills you come next time okay?" she asked.

"Sure," Alex said. "But what's in it for me?"

"You want money?" Scarlet asked. "I don't have any on me."

"It can be anything," Alex said.

Scarlet fell into thought for a bit. "Okay, I can't pay you just yet, but once I can return home, I swear I will pay you for it all," she said. "Not just the pill, but for bringing me all the way here too."

Alex smiled. "Alright, I will be waiting for it then. Goodbye for now."

Scarlet nodded and watched as Alex opened a spatial door to go outside. Once he was gone, she sighed and went back to cultivating.

Alex appeared outside the secret realm in the middle of the day and quickly flew over the forest to see where the highway was.

Once he found it, he followed it and flew towards Spiritsong city. It took him no more than an hour to reach the city that was high in the mountains.

Alex landed and looked at the city in front of him. While most of the city was on the slope of the mountain, slowly moving up, the major buildings and powers were on the flattened top that was nearly a kilometer wide all around.

Alex could see many massive buildings and an entirely separate area that only had residential buildings.

"That must be the Ren family's mansion," Alex thought. He searched around and quickly found the Battle Hall where he could register to fight.

However, before he went in, there was a slight problem. "Won't they come to bother me to make pills if they know who I am?" he thought.

If he wanted to fight without any worries and without having the others bother him every other moment, he needed to hide his identity here.

"I guess I'm Yu Ming again then."