Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

When Alex was ready to break through to the Saint Soul 9th realm, there were less than 5 months before he had to absolutely leave for the Eastern Continent.

He sat alone in his room, preparing for the final cultivation session he would sit down for that was not just to regain some Qi.

He took out a pill in his hands and looked at it for a while, before placing it back into his storage. He was so close to breakthrough that he didn't need it.

What he needed was a Beast core that would help him push himself to the edge and further. There were still a few cores that he hadn't turned into a blood beast yet, and of those he chose one from a beast that was in the Saint Transformation 1st realm.

This was the first time he had eaten a core of a beast in the Saint Transformation realm and he wasn't sure what to expect.

Alex ate the beast's core and closed his eyes as his mind pulled him into his Spiritual Sea.

Alex's vision sharpened in the bright but cloudy atmosphere of his spiritual sea, with the silver mountain to his right, now smaller than ever before, and the deep ocean of spiritual energy beneath him.

In front of him, a being formed out of Spiritual energy, taking the shape of what looked like a turtle but with no shell. It had a long neck ending on a circular head, 4 flappers for its limbs, and a short tail, while the remaining body was simply that of a turtle without its shell.

It was a smooth-skinned beast with no scales and a gray body.

The beats floated in the air as if they were swimming in the water itself.

Alex didn't remember killing this beast, so it had to be one of the ones that he killed during the time he could not remember much of.

"I… am not me," the beast spoke slowly. "This is not a soul, is it?"

That was the first time a beast had managed to figure that out without even knowing they had died.

"This is not your Soul," Alex answered. Now that he thought about it, he didn't know if the souls of the beasts had even survived. Most likely they had not.

"No, it's not," the beast replied looking around the spiritual sea. "I remember a battle and you were there. Are you dead too? Or is this your Spiritual sea?"

Had the beast's intelligence grown somewhat past the phase of being obsessed with their emotion at the moment of death?

Saint Soul realm beasts did show that improvement too, but not on the level of the beast in front of Alex.

'What is this?' Alex thought. He got a weird feeling about it all. It was as if… as if he was talking to the real beast that was alive.

"This is my Spiritual sea," Alex answered. "And I was the one that killed you."

The beast turned its head around to Alex sharply, causing Alex to prepare for the fight. "You killed me?" the beast asked.

"I did," Alex answered.

The beast frowned for a moment. "I don't have the final memory of what happened. Did I attack you? I must have been stupid to attack someone so strong as you."

"I… wasn't in my right mind, so I'm not sure," Alex answered. "Chances are I just killed you because you were there."

The beast's eyes remained expressionless for a moment as it simply said, "Oh!"

"You don't seem angry?" Alex asked the beast.

Alex had eaten so many beast cores now that he knew what the beast would do if it were a Saint Soul realm beast. Those beasts mostly acted on emotions.

Most beasts that found they had died, and did not know Alex was the one that killed them would usually be sad. Some would even give up on life just like that.

Meanwhile, those who knew Alex had killed them usually got angry and tried to fight Alex.

However, this beast was breaking the conceptual mold that Alex had formed for the beasts. Were Saint Transformation beasts just that more smart past their death?

"Well, I am angry," the beast said. "But you killed me, and have now trapped me within your spiritual realm. I have no place to get angry again. You would simply kill me."

The beast looked at Alex with pleading eyes. "Please don't kill me," it said. "I have died, but let me live like this in your spiritual realm, at least for a while."

Alex was beyond surprised at this point. Never had a beast begged for him to not kill it inside his spiritual sea before.

Alex didn't even know what to do at this point. Killing a beast that not only had died without any fault but also begged not to be killed was hard for him.

"Fine, I'll let you stay," Alex said after careful consideration. He couldn't see what problems the beast could cause him, and he didn't have the heart to kill it just yet.

Instead, Alex decided to finish up his cultivation base and come back to deal with this problem.

However, when he tried to leave, he found himself unable to.

"Hmm?" Alex frowned. He tried to force himself to leave, but something kept him grounded in the Spiritual sea.

Alex thought for a bit and slowly turned around in horror. It was the beast. He couldn't leave because it was alive.

Its presence was what had brought him here, so if he wanted to leave, he would have to get rid of it.

Alex felt bad, but it was something he had to do. "I'm sorry," he told the beast. "It appears that I cannot leave you alive."

"But you just said…" the beast's eyes were filled with sadness.

"I'm sorry," Alex said. A tempestuous yellow fog escaped from all around him, making its way toward the beast.

The beast stood still, watching the fog slowly drift toward it.

"So beautiful," it said softly as the fog consumed its spiritual body and what little intelligence remained of it.

The fog retreated back into Alex just as quickly as it had escaped and disappeared into his body.

Alex felt a significant improvement in his spiritual sea. Not only had it become stronger all of a sudden, it had also become just that much more wider.

Finally, Alex could leave.

He threw all the emotions and thoughts out of his mind and went back outside where the beast core had begun spreading out its Qi throughout his body.

Alex took the Qi and started cultivating with it. Back and forth, the Qi went around his body, improving every little aspect of his body as it needed to.

At the end of it all, with nothing but a simple will from Alex, the Qi in his body suddenly improved, placing himself on a higher cultivation base.

He had finally arrived in the Saint Soul 9th realm.

Just one more breakthrough would place him in the Saint Transformation realm. However, Alex decided to stop there.

Next would come the Inner Demon, and with a war on the horizon, Alex could not take the chance at all.