Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

The Golden Binding Chain at a glance was good. To take someone out of battle just by binding them meant it had to be incredible. But what sort of person would sell something like that?

There had to be some downsides to the chain, so Alex continued reading through the talisman.

The next section of the talisman went into how the chain was activated. A person had to hold onto one end of the chain and continue pouring Qi into the chain to bind the other person.

"That's certainly bad enough," Alex said out loud. Having to constantly grab onto the chain meant you could only use one hand. Some techniques required one to use both hands, so that was a downside to the holder of the chain.

Continuing, he found more downsides. The chain would only work for a maximum of 10 minutes before failing to work for a day again. The talisman mentioned that it was made this way to stop the chain from deteriorating too quickly. 

'That's… idiotic,' Alex thought with a frown. 10 minutes was a long time for a cultivator, but it was still not long enough if you wanted to keep someone bounded but not dead.

Another downside was that the chain would only work on someone who didn't use Qi that was stronger than the holder's. If the other person's Qi was stronger, they could break and make the chain useless, so long as they managed to use it before the chain did its thing.

Thankfully, it wasn't all downsides to the chain. There was another good thing about the chain that to Alex outweighed many of its flaws.

If Qi was channeled into the chain while it was being used, before it even bound someone, it could pass through anything nonphysical. It took only a moment for Alex to realize what that meant.

The chain could bypass all defenses that weren't physical. All protective shields and barriers. The only way to dodge it would be to run away or use some sort of artifact to stop it.

"Not bad," he said. "How much did it cost?"

"87 thousand Saint Spirit stones," the old woman said with a sigh. "Almost everything we owned."

"Thank you for getting me this," Alex said. "It will be useful."

Alex put the chain into his Soul Space and then looked at the spirit stones. He took 800 thousand spirit stones and handed the rest to the elders to split amongst themselves.

"What other artifacts did I miss?" Alex asked.

As he had thought it would turn out, he missed many. 

A formation artifact that created colors and sounds to disorient enemies.

The gauntlet released a sandstorm that cut through someone's spiritual sense.

Crimson darts that exploded upon impact, but only when they impacted the target chosen by their owners.

A beautiful painting of a river that could be used to summon a river of varying sizes.

A miniature tree that calmed one's mind when cultivating around it.

There were many such items from what Alex heard of the elders. The Elders skipped over the ones that they thought were useless, but still over a month's worth of auction, even the few items they thought were good numbered in dozens. 

After a while, the elders stopped and stood up to leave. "You need to rest, Your Majesty. We'll come back tomorrow."

"Wait," Alex said. "Give me the Mountain Crushing artifact. I have been wanting to use it for a long time. I finally have the money for it."

Yao Ning chuckled and pulled out the artifact. "Then I suppose we'll have to come back more than a day later. Let us know when you're out."

Alex nodded and watched the elders leave. After they were gone, he brought out the Mountain Crushing artifact and put enough Spirit stones to last for two days.

Once done, he filled the inside with tiny pieces of Starforged Tungsten ore before getting in himself. Once he began, the artifact closed itself with a lid, and Alex started spinning within.

He hadn't felt this feeling for a while now. With the lack of funds, he had to stop a long time ago and hadn't been able to improve his body.

Now he did. 

Dull light shined inside from the lid, a light that Alex had missed the first few years he body cultivated inside. The pain forced him to close his eyes all the time back then, but now he was strong enough that the pain didn't stop him from keeping his eyes open.

There was a circular light shining from the lid of the artifact as if embedded in the lid itself. It was like a glowing rune, but there was no such rune that he knew of.

It wasn't a circle in the first place either. It was a hexagon, that only looked circular because he spun inside the artifact. But his eyes were good enough to notice the hexagon even as he spun.

The shape in exact was a thinly drawn hexagon with some script at the center that wasn't runes. They weren't alphabets either. They were… not something he recognized at all, as if the letters to a language that no longer existed.

Or maybe to one that had never existed.

He wondered what that was. And what he wondered more was… where had he seen that before.

The hexagon tugged at his memory from somewhere, but he had seen so many hexagons in his lifetime that it was hard to tell what exactly this was reminding him of.

But it most definitely was, or the feeling wouldn't be this strong.

'Maybe something from my Clone's memory?' Alex wondered even as he spun. After not being able to remember what he was trying to remember, Alex let go of his thoughts and once more let the artifact do to him as it pleased.

He had thought of the drawing many times by now, so there was no point in trying this time again.

He was lost in his own thoughts afterward, no longer paying any mind to the pain that engulfed his body. He simply drifted into making different plans for what he wanted to do in the future.

There was the competition next, then he wanted to go to the final secret realm if he could make it. He couldn't leave without visiting the Ebony kingdom, so there was that too. And people spoke good things about one of the mountain peaks in the Ebony mountain range, so there was that too.

There was still much to do with only 4 years remaining. 

Alex felt surprised when the artifact stopped working. He hadn't realized where time had passed. But when it stopped, he realized that over 2 days had already passed.

He came out of the artifact, his body marred in his own blood. His wounds had already healed at that point, so it was just a matter of removing blood from himself.

He quickly dressed and notified the elders that he was out. When he did, they let him know that the kings and queens wished to meet him soon if possible.

With a simple affirmation, a meeting was set up with the monarchs of all the kingdoms, and Alex made his way to meet them all.