Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

The artifact trials were easy for the most part. There were some trials he struggled a bit on where he had to answer questions about different artifacts and how they could possibly have been made.

But after consulting with the knowledge he had gained while he was in the artifact school, he managed to come up with the answers that were satisfactory to the soul that governed the trials.

Alex went on for a long while, passing one trial after another until he came upon an impossible one that asked him to make a Whip with a water element attack crafted into it.

Alex was aware of how he could make a whip, and there was plenty of leather and metal in his storage to create one. However, he had no idea how one created Water element attacks in it at all.

He could create one for a sword, but he hadn't learned to make one for a whip. He tried his best for all the time that was given to him and he even tried adding the Qi lines from the sword into the whip, but that didn't work.

In the end, he failed.

Blue light surrounded him as he was teleported outside when the span of time allocated for the trial had passed. It wasn't just him. Nearly 20 other individuals had been teleported out as well.

All of them had failed the same test as Alex. He felt a little better knowing this. Seeing the situation, he could understand that not many passed the trial, if any. If they did, it would be because they know something that was not publically known.

Alex had only trained from what was available in the Royal School of Artifact. Even then, he had only learned the basics. He wasn't aware of everything that was in the school.

A few people glanced at him this time around, talking softly to each other. Alex ignored whatever they were going to say and directly went over to the hotel room to rest. 

Over a week had passed since the last time he had cultivated, so he needed to cultivate once again. The coldness in his dantian was even more pronounced than the time he had come out of the Alchemy trials.

While he cultivated along with his beasts, the elders let him know that his request had been fulfilled. They had gone over two cities to find the ingredients he had asked for.

Alex happily accepted it when he left the other day and made his way back to the Trial of Talisman. As a person of the highest priority, he was quickly sent back in, and he arrived back in the black room where the trials were held.

The white soul of the deer-turned-human floated in the air, addressing some other people who were not them. It was only a minute later that he finally introduced himself once again.

It was the first time Alex had repeated the same trial, so it felt weird knowing what was to come. And what was to come, he passed splendidly.

The questions were all entirely different from the last time, but the essence of what was being tested was the same.

Create a talisman for protection. Create a talisman with these two runes. Find out what this talisman does. Alter this talisman to make it do something else with as few changes as you can.

It wasn't a free pass, but it was an easy path all the way to the trial that asked him to make some ink and make a talisman out of it. Each talisman had a unique purpose and a unique set of energy that made it work.

Most of them were neutral, but a lot of them had attributes like Fire, Water, and all other elements. It even included Space and Time, but only Space talismans were easy to get by.

Each of these required a different combination of ingredients to form an ink. It was the ink that gave the pattern to the runes, which would then use the Qi to do things that were governed by the heavens.

Each unique set of runes required a unique ink of its own to match it perfectly and bring out the best of its ability. Making a unique ink for each talisman was difficult.

Not only was it difficult to make so many different types of ink, it was nearly impossible to know what combination of ingredients created those inks. So, most resorted to using common ink with reduced effectiveness.

Most talented talisman makers knew how to switch up a few ingredients to improve the effectiveness of their ink, but it was not possible to make it absolutely perfect. At least, not without a ton of luck, or a heavenly fortune of some old Talisman maker.

Still, the normal inks that were made were still different for all types of talisman, and Alex knew that. His mother knew a lot more than him, but she had taught him what she knew back in the Luminance empire. 

He hadn't had much time to improve on it, but he had that knowledge. So, he swiftly created a neutral ink that he knew would match the combination of runes he was going to draw next and made a talisman out of it.

He completed the trial, passing where he had failed last time, and waited for the next trial.

He reached dark blue after completing the next trial, blue with the one after that, and sky blue with another one.

For the second to last trial, Alex was made to make a single talisman with 100 different runes, each unique and working in tandem to do something of his choice. He had half a day to complete that, and given the difficulty, he started immediately.

He first chose an ink that would match fire energy talismans. For some reason, he wanted to make a talisman that had something to do with fire. Once he selected the ink, he needed to come up with a pattern.

He took his Frostfire Inkbrush and put the brush at the lowest possible setting before drawing on the empty talisman papers with thin lines.

There were a hundred different runes he had to draw. The ones that were important would have to be large, so the rest he would have to make as tiny as he could.

He had a solid idea of what he wanted with the talisman at this point so he started drawing runes without hesitation.

HOT. VIOLENT. 2 KILOMETERS. BIG. BRIGHT. WHITE.

He added small runes to describe the effect of the talisman. He drew lines to connect the runes that needed to work in tandem while leaving a large enough space at the center.

DELAY. 2 SECONDS. TARGET. STRAIGHT. TELEPORT. ATTACH. DEFEND. BARRIER. TRIGGER.

He wrote what the talisman had to do. He could feel weariness, his mental focus wavering a little. His Intent was being drawn out by the difficulty of the task.

He continued adding the smaller runes that were there just to make the number count while leaving a large enough area at the center where the actual important words would go.

FIRE. QI. HEAT. CONDUCTION. BURNING. MELTING. COMBUSTION. FLAMES. BOILING. REACTION.

He finished adding the important runes and then added the most important one in the center.

EXPLOSION.

Once he joined the runes together, he moved back, looking at the talisman in front of him. It was a talisman that he made based on the first Dao he had ever learned.

A Talisman for Explosion.