Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Sometime after returning back to his courtyard, Alex came to the realization that he no longer needed to keep doing what he had been doing. He no longer needed to keep making pills once a week and sell them just to get another set of ingredients for another pill to sell and get just a little bit more on top of that.

With the amount he was likely going to be paid throughout the next few years, he could maybe gather enough funds to make some good investments, which he could then turn into some sort of fortune to leave this world and go to the Sky God's Palace.

"That's most certainly going to take a lot more than a fortune I could gather in my current state," Alex thought. "I'll definitely need help from Lady Luck."

He had to get off his butt and do something for luck to show him some favor.

'I wonder if some secret realm will open around this part of the continent soon,' Alex wondered. 'I wonder what sort of secret realms they even have.'

Alex knew far too little about this world and the information that he wanted to read was not available in the sect. 'I should ask Elder Lan about it. Maybe he can help me.'

Alex took care of his garden for some time. He had let Whisker handle it the first couple of weeks, but the Immortal poison plants were too much for Whisker to handle, and he had died.

After that, Alex handled it all on his own. Whisker, and Pearl, were now in the Demon Realm inside of his Soul Space, helping him take care of the realm. Whisker especially was getting very good at growing plants as per Alex's instructions.

He was Alex's personal gardener now.

After Alex was done with the garden, he planned on making a pill from the ingredients he had bought that day. However, before he could go to his alchemy room, Tai Guidao arrived.

"Brother Dawnblade, are you here?"

Alex walked out to meet him.

"Brother Tai, what are you doing here so late?" Alex asked. The sun had gone down hours ago.

"I thought about what you said to me earlier today, so I decided that I did need some pills in case I accidentally poisoned myself too much," the man said. He pulled out something from his robe; a storage bag.

"I decided to splurge my savings a bit and bought two sets of ingredients for a pill to save me from poisons," Tai Guidao said. "I learned that it was far cheaper to purchase ingredients than it was to buy the actual pill, so I came to you."

"Could you make me a pill, like you said you would?"

Alex took the storage bag and looked inside. He saw two sets of various ingredients, which he quickly realized was a recipe for a general antidote pill. It was called a Three-Crane pill, named after the fact that 3 of its ingredients came from the stem, petal, and seeds of a Crane-shaped lotus.

It was an antidote pill that could save one from most low-ranking, non-specialized poison. Tai Guidao could eat this and he would be safe from 99% of the poisons that would get one in the top 4000 ranking in the sect.

It was a good pill for him.

Alex also noticed some spirit stones inside the storage bag, 25 in total.

"What are the spirit stones for?" Alex asked.

"Oh, for payment," Tai Guidao said. "I know you said you would do it for free, but… I just don't feel comfortable making you make these pills for me for free. Especially considering that it would take me 2 years of stipend just to buy one of those pills at a lower grade."

"I checked the prices earlier, and there was an 82% pill in the sect's pill shop that would've cost me 1200 Contribution points or 80 spirit stones. I knew high-grade pills were expensive, but that was just…" Tai Guidao simply shook his head.

Alex took out the spirit stones and tossed them back at Tai Guidao.

"I said I'd do it for free, brother Tai, and I'm a man of my word. You do not need to feel indebted for something I like doing anyway," Alex said. "Besides, you have helped me learn so much about the world throughout these past few years. This should be my repayment for all that you've done for me."

Tai Guidao smiled, seemingly conflicted.

"Please come inside, I'll make your pills right away," Alex said and walked back inside.

Tai Guidao followed Alex, taken to a room where he was made to wait while Alex went to his Alchemy room to make the pills.

Alex had made the pill before, so he had managed to perfect the recipe for this pill already. As such, there wasn't much he needed to do before making the pill itself.

Alex took out Memory and started.

Fire, Ingredients, Recipe; all things worked in tandem to produce two pills at once that were more than just good.

At 82% each, the pills were some of the best that Alex had made in recent years that he was willing to let other people see. The rest of that energy was given to Memory to absorb and improve.

Alex went back to Tai Guidao, who was surprised to see him.

"What happened? Did something go wrong?" he asked.

"Huh? No, everything is fine. Here are your pills." Alex handed over the pill bottle.

Tai Guidao looked inside and was way too shocked to see his pills in there. "But… but you were only gone for less than 10 minutes."

"Ah, never mind about that. I have a technique that allows me to speed things up inside the cauldron. That's all," Alex said.

"That's… amazing," Tai Guidao said. "So the pills are truly done?"

"Yes."

"And you really won't take anything? You can have my spirit stones if you want."

Alex sighed. "I already said no, and I won't change my stance. Go home and cultivate brother Tai. Make good use of these pills."

Tai Guidao smiled. "Thank you, brother Dawnblade."

Tai Guidao left, leaving Alex all by himself. Now that he was alone, Alex was finally free to make that one pill and have Memory absorb all of its energy.

Alex wasn't entirely sure what was going on, so he wanted to check as well. It could only be something good, so Alex wasn't very worried.

As Alex was about to head toward his Alchemy room, he was forced to stop. Someone was at the door again.

"Disciple Dawnblade! Come out at once."

'An Elder?' Alex thought and walked out of the house. Outside of his house were not just a single elder, but 3 of them.

'What are they here for?' Alex wondered.

"Greetings, Elders."

"Are you disciple Dawnblade?" the elder at the center, a man with long brown hair, spoke.

"I am indeed Dawnblade. How may I be of use to elders?" he asked.

"Disciple Dawnblade, you must come with us at once for the punishment of your crimes."

"Crime?" Alex looked up in disbelief. "What crime?"

The Elder showed no emotion as he said, "For the murder of your fellow disciple."

"WHAT?!"