Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Alex walked up to the cave and entered. The cave wasn't as deep as he was expecting. Inside was darker than he expected it to be, and without Qi. His eyes couldn't view that well

Still, with what little light there was, he managed to find outlines of a pile of stuff. He couldn't tell exactly what they were, so he walked over there to check.

He slowly put his hands on them. They were round and juicy, just as one would expect them to be.

"So he stored quite a few of them here as well, huh," Alex thought as he picked one of them and took a bite of it. Sweet juices flowed out of the Butterfly Pears and entered his body.

His numbed body got a bit better as the energy from the fruits healed him a bit. He ate a few more as he was extremely hungry after the battle and moved further into the cave to look at the thing he was most curious about.

There were a bunch of stones, laid all around the cave and interesting-looking art was drawn on the ground. "What's that?" Alex went around looking at what the drawing was of.

He moved around the small pieces of stones all over the place. The more he cleared the stones, the more the art became clear. When he finally swiped away the last stone with his feet, he finally saw what it was.

It was no art at all. It was actually a formation drawn on the ground itself. Alex was shocked. He could feel a small force pushing on him, something other than the suppressing force from outside.

"What? How is this formation working? You need at least an energy source for a formation to work," he said. He didn't know a lot about formations, but he knew at least this much.

Even the sect running formation could only work because it took energy from the spirit veins on the sect ground. But there was none of that here.

"How the hell is this formation working without any source of energ— " he realized what he had missed. He immediately lowered himself and picked one of the stones he had moved aside because it was blocking him.

In the darkness, he couldn't see the color, but he could see the shape and size of the stone. They were all small stones, rectangular in shape.  Alex knew exactly what it was. It was in fact what he had been looking for in the first place.

They were all Yang Jades.

"But all the energy is gone. He used them to power the formation and make himself stronger," Alex said, dejectedly. He looked through the rest of it, but he didn't have to do it.

If his body didn't tell him there was any, then there was no way there was any.

"Sigh, guess I was expecting too much," he said. His disappointment was immeasurable right now. He decided to forget about it and walked outside.

The moment he was at the opening of the cave, he saw a bunch of people standing a little outside it. There were signs of dawn approaching in the sky.

"He-hello brother, are— are you our new boss?" a girl asked.

"Boss? No, I'm no such thing," he said.

"But— but then who will bring us the fruit now? You killed our only source of the fruits," the man standing next to her asked.

Alex was surprised. He had helped them by taking out their oppressor, even nearly ruining himself in the process and the first thing they did was tell him their selfish wishes.

'I see… master was right about these guys. They are selfish, jealous, envious, the filth that knows nothing but to think about themselves,' Alex thought.

"What the hell are you saying?" someone screamed from the side. "He helped us by getting rid of that demon and instead of thanking him, you blame him for your own incompetence?"

"Yeah! Brother, thank you for getting rid of the boss. He was the worst thing to come out of our sect in years. Please tell me your name brother, I will leave this place in 3 days, I will tell the Elders to lessen your punishment," someone else said.

"Brother, you must be tired from the fight. Come, I will give you a massage," another man in the back spoke.

The light of dawn shone through the clouds as Alex's views of the surrounding started to change once more.

'Of course. Not everyone is bad. But not everyone is good either. I will need to judge each person on their own. I see this will be a good lesson for me,' he thought.

"Anyone with ability in your body, go call everyone here. There is more than enough food for you here," Alex shouted. Immediately, people started scattering to tell the others about the death of the boss and the free food available in the place.

Soon there were at least 50 people in the group. Alex was truly surprised at how many people were actually being punished. He called a few people to carry the fruits back out and distribute them to the rest of the disciples there.

Once he made sure everyone was fed, he left the group. People wanted to stick with him, but he ran away fast and found an open, quiet place in the grasses.

He sat on the grasses and felt them. Not a single hit of dew. "This place is really strange," he thought. His only purpose in coming here was gone now. There were no more yang jades here.

"Wait, what did he say about the desert? He said that yang jade was just an interim solution before going to find whatever was there," Alex thought as he turned around to look towards the direction of the desert.

He tried to think of what to do, but too many things had happened today and he couldn't focus his mind at all. "Sigh, I will think about it later," he said and logged out of the game.