Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

When Alex entered the 18th floor, he was a little surprised to see cracks in space at the end of the room and was worried that he would have to turn back.

However, it turned out that the main portion of the room that made the challenges possible hadn't been damaged, so the climb was still on for him.

He looked around, wondering what he was supposed to do here when a voice spoke and told the all to walk over to one of the spots marked around the edges of the room.

There were exactly 20 different spots market, but 4 were not accessible at all due to how the spatial cracks had formed in the room. Fortunately, the spirit had realized that and had only allowed 16 people to enter.

Alex walked up to the spot and suddenly, something changed about the room. Something so imperceptible that he couldn't tell from just a glance at all.

His spiritual sense was being suppressed by something, allowing him no more than 3 meters of vision around him, so he couldn't tell that way either. But, he still had one more trick up his sleeves.

He used his Demon Eyes and suddenly everything became crystal clear. In front of him was a massive maze that spanned the entire room. The colorful maze was made up of Qi, so he could see it.

However, simply seeing it didn't help him. He couldn't find a solution from where he stood.

"In front of you is an invisible maze that you will have to get to the center of. You may use any tricks you can that do not touch the walls of this invisible maze. If you touch the walls or another competitor, you lose. The first 5 to get to the center of this wall will win," the voice said.

"You may begin!"

Alex ran in head first while others used their limited spiritual sense to search for the walls. The invisible walls were not invisible to him at all, so he ran through the maze faster than anyone else.

He wanted to teleport, but the spatial crack was making it hard to use any dao for some reason. He could teleport close with his own Qi, but not to the center of the room, that was for sure.

He got lost a few times and had to backtrack a bunch, but in the end, he managed to get to the center before anyone else.

"Nice!" he thought to himself as he was taken away from this room to the next.

On the 19th floor, Alex arrived to see only a handful of people waiting around. It seemed Alex's turn would come rather fast this time around.

He decided to sit down and wait for his turn when he sensed something.

'Killing intent,' Alex realized as he quickly turned towards a corner of the room where a person was looking at him with a massive grin on his face.

The man was wearing a different hat, a different set of clothes, and was even hiding his face as much as possible, but Alex would recognize his father's face anywhere.

He had found the damn imposter.

The man lifted his head, revealing his face fully as he threw off his hat to the side. He made a gesture for Alex to follow and walked over to another room.

Alex frowned, not knowing what to do. That was an assassin for sure, but was following him a good idea?

Just then, one of the doors opened, and Alex was allowed to enter, but… his heart simply didn't want to go there.

He wanted to kill this man that was impersonating him.

So, without caring if this was a good or a bad idea, Alex walked over to the room the man had gone to and entered through the gate.

On the other side of the gate were a single person and a room full of spatial cracks that stayed there like spider webs.

The man still had his father's face and he turned around to look at him.

"Son, I have missed you," the man said, but he could not hide his killing intent at all.

"Cut the crap," Alex said. "How did you know what my father looks like? Where did you get that information?"

"Oh, do you really think I'm going to tell you?" the man asked.

"If you won't tell me that, then you can die," Alex said. He reached for his sword in his ring, but he noticed something.

Another killing intent.

He spread his spiritual sense just in time to see a young man behind him that was slashing his sword at him.

Alex dodged, but he was slightly cut in his arm. Without hesitation, he quickly drew the blood he just lost and turned it into a dagger before throwing it at the man.

The two of them tried to stop the attack but were blown away when the attack hit them. The young man moved barely in time to take the entire attack, instead of letting the one with his father's face get hit.

He died instantly, but once again, he didn't bleed.

Somewhere else, an elderly man coughed up blood again. "Goddamn, his blood is strong. We have to be careful of his blood," he said.

"You died again?" the girl next to him asked.

"Yeah, I tried to save Kun Chongren," he said.

"Is he safe?" she asked.

"For now," the old man said. "I will relay the information to everyone."

The girl nodded. "Let's just hope he can get the job done."

Back in the shattered room on the 19th floor, Alex finally brought out midnight as he looked at his father's imposter.

The man was down, and Alex used this moment to attack him.

However, before he could do anything else, the man opened his robes and a thousand different insects flew out from in him, filling the room entirely.

They were insects of various varieties. Some were hornets, some were bees, and some were even flying beetles.

Alex stepped back, slightly confused. He had never fought insects before, so he wasn't aware of what he was supposed to be doing here.

He slashed, sending out a golden sword attack toward the insects.

Suddenly, the beetles amongst the insects got together to form a sort of defensive array that protected the other insects from the attack.

"What?" Alex couldn't help but shout in surprise when he realized that his attack had actually been blocked, by a bunch of insects at that. That had never happened to him before.

"Hehe, people always discriminate against these poor little fellows just because they are weak," the man said. "But they too can show you that they are strong. They too hold power in numbers that you can't comprehend."

Alex frowned. He had already covered his body with his blood and now he was coating his sword as well.

The man didn't hesitate to attack at that moment. Even as the beetles were separating, the hornets flew towards him. Alex threw out various attacks, but the hornets managed to dodge them all and came to sting him.

Suddenly, Alex lifted his left hand and threw out fire from it like a flamethrower. A fire that burned with such high heat that most of the hornets were either burned or flew away.

The man pulled back his insects when he saw that fire.

The burning hornets still flew close to him, but they were too weak now to attack.

Just then, Alex heard something that made him stop. Some of the insects were beating their wings at a specific frequency that was causing his head to ache.

He was finding it hard to concentrate on the attack and using this opportunity, many of the hornets had come to attack him.

The hornets stuck him in many places that weren't covered by his armor. While his skin was strong, the hornets were stronger and managed to easily penetrate it.

Alex wasn't worried about any poison, but it turned out that the hornets were actually draining his Qi from the various places they were stabbing him in.

Alex moved around, attacking without looking, but the buzzing sound was still too mind-numbing to fight against. His body continuously cleansed the headache that was being caused by the sound, but somehow the sound was still reapplying the headache.

Alex felt the hornet draining more and more Qi, and at some point, mosquitoes had come to drain away his blood. If he let it go on any further, there would be some major danger.

Alex stabbed his sword onto the floor and use his fire again. This time, instead of targeting any of the insects, he targeted himself.

His body burned so hotly that his skin started getting charred. Alex cried out in pain, but his body was also being healed in the process.

The insects on him either died or flew away, and even the man controlling them frowned. "How goddamn hot is that fire? Normal fire shouldn't be doing this," he said.

Alex finally took his sword and stood up again. The buzzing was annoying for sure, and he couldn't tell where it was coming from.

So, he roared loudly.

Shockwaves moved out from in front of him and attacked everything in the area in front of him. The attack itself was very weak compared to what else he could use, but this was the best one that could attack an entire area, especially right now when he couldn't use any dao.

However, that was enough to send the insects out of the symphony.

Alex finally lost his headache entirely and glared at the man. It was time for his counter attack.