Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Alex entered another room on the 12th floor.

He walked in to find a simple setup. 3 balls of light hung high in the air with words floating above them.

Alex found himself unable to go any further due to a barrier that surrounded the center area and he could only move around the barrier.

The 10 people that entered with him walked around as they read the simple words.

"Throw these balls at the other people whoever gets hit gets teleported out?" Alex was surprised to read that. He was expecting to grab the ball to leave, but it turned out you had to hit it. "Reflected balls do not count."

Alex looked around, prepared to catch any one of the balls. He waited for a moment and the numbers showed up for a countdown.

3,2,1. The barrier dropped.

Alex immediately teleported next to the balls and grabbed one of them. He tried to grab another one, but it moved away from him.

He didn't try to grab any other as people arrived next to him. He moved to the corner of the room, his spiritual sense looking at everyone.

And everyone else was looking at him as well.

He found one person slightly distracted as they were trying to find someone to throw their ball of light at.

Alex decided to attack that person. He used his teleportation powers on the ball of light and threw it at the person, but to his surprise, the ball didn't hit him at all.

It instead bent itself away from the person, moving in a random direction between two other people who easily dodged it.

"What?" Alex couldn't help but shout out in surprise. That was not a normal moment. Even the person himself looked shocked as if he did not anticipate what was going to happen.

"Shit," Alex thought. "Are those balls not supposed to hit the ones that hold them?"

The room said nothing about that, and now he lost one of the balls.

Someone else got his balls, and people came to a standstill. Everyone looked around worriedly as the ones without balls feared getting hit by one, while the ones with the ball didn't want to throw theirs as doing so would leave them vulnerable to one.

They all looked around for a few good seconds until one of the cultivators, a middle-aged man with a scarred face looked at one of the people with the balls.

"Either use it or give it to me if you're not gonna use it," the man shouted. The three people with the balls looked at each other, none of whom wanted to throw the ball.

The man suddenly dashed forward towards the closest person to him and struck out with an outstretched finger.

The person was surprised, but not caught off guard like the scarred man would hope to be.

The young man with the ball dodged to the side and threw his ball at the scarred man, but the scarred man had been ready for this. He suddenly stopped and moved back to dodge the ball.

He then quickly ran back and grabbed the ball that was on the floor. "Not bad, thank you," the middle-aged man said as he looked at the rest of them.

"Don't worry about me," the man said. "Have fun with the two balls. I will join you guys in a bit."

The man then turned around and smiled at Alex.

Alex looked at him, at first with a confused look, and then he realized. He had been found out once again.

"You were waiting for me to come here," he said as he looked at the man and checked his cultivation base. He slowly took out something from his storage ring while looking at the man in the eye, to hopefully distract him long enough.

"Of course, I was waiting," the man said. "We can't let you get too high without getting an answer."

Alex frowned. The man had a cultivation base of Saint Core 8th realm. That was very strong when compared to most of the people in the Southern Continent, but Alex was certain he could kill him.

Only, he was worried this man would run away before he got to do so.

"Who are you? Are you one of the twins?" he asked. "Or are you the old man that likes explosives?"

"Hehe, you sure do know about that huh," the man said. "Answering you that would be revealing about our organization, so I will keep quiet for now. How about you talk instead? It's been 7 days since we first contacted you. Do you have any answer?"

"Are you going to come to ask me that after every week?" Alex asked.

"Of course, young man," the scarred man said. "Now come on. Tell me quickly so we can be done with this."

Alex frowned as he slowly moved away from the man.

The man was surprised and looked to the side. He quickly moved and stopped in front of the gate that let one get out of the room.

"Oh, but you're not going anywhere before you answer," the man said.

"I don't care about leaving," Alex said as he brought out his sword. "I was just trying to stop you from leaving."

He rushed forward and slashed down as hard as he could.

The man was slightly surprised by his speed, but even at his strongest, Alex could barely put out enough energy to rival a Saint Core 5th realm cultivator. His sword aura and body cultivation barely raised it that high.

That sort of strength was not enough to beat someone whose cultivation base was in the Saint Core 8th realm.

The man easily dodged the slash and kicked the sword to the side. Alex felt the heaviness of the attack even when it landed on his sword, but he wasn't afraid.

He attacked once again, and the man dodged this one as well.

"You're annoying," the man said and punched Alex, hitting him right in the chest. However, by that point, Alex's blood had already covered the inside of his robe, forming an armor that could not be seen at all.

Alex felt the power of the strike, but it was muffled enough that he didn't feel much pain from it. So, he smiled instead as his blood coated his sword.

The man was surprised when he saw that.

"How are you—"

Alex's sword moved again, and the man dodged again. However, Alex had already appeared behind him and thrust his sword through the man's back.

The sword came out of his chest, but the stab was not lethal. It had struck the right side of his chest, so while very painful, a few pills could solve the problem.

However, before the man could reach for his pills, another sword appeared in his hand, one made with blood.

It cut the man's right arm clean off.

Alex felt something off about both of the wounds when he struck the man, but he couldn't immediately put a finger on it.

The man cried out in pain, but he got to his pills. He was reaching for it with his left arm after all.

His right arm, however, was the one that held the ball of light which he could have used to send Alex back to the first floor.

The man realized that Alex was too strong. They had made a mistake. He needed to run. He looked at the gate outside, but that was guarded by Alex.

So, he turned towards the other people who had grouped up away from the fight. "You! Hit me with the ball now!" he shouted.

Even with a sword sticking out of his chest, and a missing arm, the man's cultivation base demanded respect from them that these weaker cultivators could not deny.

One of them slowly lifted their hands to throw the ball at the man, but Alex spoke just then.

"If you think you can run away from me, then you overestimate yourself, assassin," he said.

"QUICKLY!" the man shouted.

Alex slowly lifted his hand as he felt his connection with his sword.

"THROW IT AT ME! QUICKL—"

"Expand!"

Midnight suddenly grew to nearly 10 times its size as it split the man's body vertically. It fell to the floor with a rather loud bang, and Alex went up to it to pick it up.

"Good riddance," he thought as he picked up the sword, but just then he noticed something.

The man's body, even when torn in half and a few other bits, there was no blood on the floor at all. Not a drop of blood had dripped from the corpse.

'That's right,' Alex thought. That was what was wrong with the wounds when he had attacked. The man hadn't dropped a single drop of blood even when stabbed through the chest or when his arm was cut off.

He lowered himself a little to look at the dead body and was horrified when he realized that the person he had just killed, had been a corpse, to begin with.

"How… how can that be?" he couldn't help but ask. But, in the back of his head, he knew how this could be.

A corpse that was walking could only mean one of two things.

Either a Nascent soul was controlling the body, which it wasn't since no nascent soul came out of the body.

Or, it was the second option, one where not an entire soul, but only a part of it controlled the body.

Looking at the dead body, Alex was sure that the assassin that he had just killed… had actually been a clone.