Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Alex left for breakfast at around 7 am after learning about the shapes and structures of the powder for nearly 2 hours. During that time, he realized a few more things.

First thing was that the direction in which the ingredients were moved affected the powders in a way that created some threading-like pattern on the powder particles, threading that was similar to a screw or the inside of a nut bolt.

When moved clockwise, the threading would be protruded like that of a screw, and when moved counterclockwise, it would become sunken like that of a nut. The threading was so small that it nearly cost Alex half of his spiritual sense to focus on that small of a level.

When he just checked the powder particles on their own, the threading was actually practically invisible aside from giving a slight bit of texture to the powder.

Once he was done with those, he started making different pills to understand how the structure and composition helped with the different pills in what way.

Before he knew it, 2 hours had passed away and he had barely learned a thing.

"What's wrong? Are you nervous about something?" Emily asked at the dinner table.

"Oi Alex, you better not be regretting asking Emily out now," Sarah teased from the side.

"What? Oh, sorry. It's nothing. It's just some things inside of the game that got me thinking mindlessly," Alex said.

"You better not be thinking about that conspiracy again. Honestly, I thought you got it out of your system," Hannah said.

"Huh? No— "

"What's this about?" Sarah cut off Alex.

Hannah explained what Alex had done with the helmet a few days ago, without missing a single piece of information.

Alex cringed a little when he heard what he had done out loud. "That's not it," he said.

"That's not what I am thinking about. It's related to alchemy," he explained.

"Oh, then that's good. You shouldn't think like those conspiracy theorists. So, what's there is an alchemy to make you think this hard?" Hannah asked. "Isn't it just putting ingredients in a pot and cooking it until a pill comes out?"

"Uhh… it's way more complex. I wouldn't expect you to understand my problems," Alex said.

"Why not search the internet then? They have everything," Hannah said.

"I've tried. There's nothing. No blog post or video. Not even the forum has a single post about anything above basic level alchemy," Alex said.

"Hmm… if there is no post about anything…then why don't you post one yourself?" Emily asked. "You can ask people what you have problems with."

"I… had never thought of that. You're right, we can do that. Huh… I'll go make a post right now," Alex said and quickly finished his meal.

He went to his room and opened the forum on his laptop. He searched for information about what he wanted once more and couldn't find anything at all.

"Sigh! Alright, let's make a new post," he thought and clicked on the 'create a new post' button.  The website led him to the login page. He needed an account to interact with the posts aside from just reading them.

"Uhh… sure," he thought and created a new account. He filled up everything that was needed and logged in. He opened a new post and started typing.

<Need help with Alchemy>

<Hello. I am an alchemist in EC and I was hoping for someone to help me if they knew anything about the Structure and Composition concept of the pills. Please comment or message me directly if you have any advanced knowledge about these concepts. Thank you.>

"Alright, that should do it," he said and clicked 'Post'. As such, his first-ever post on the internet went online. His post was now visible and so he waited for a little for people to come.

But very soon after he decided not to wait for long. He closed his laptop and logged back into the game.

Once he got back into the game, he frowned when he remembered that he had so many pills and ingredients to sort through and understand in his head.

"Ugh… I will do that later."

He called Pearl back and started training once more. Pearl was getting better at attacking and dodging as well due to the constant fighting. After 2 or 3 hours of constant training, he finally let Pearl take some rest.

Pearl went back into the fog to do who knew what. Alex on the other hand took out his sword and trained again. For now, he was focusing on getting to know the weight of the sword and the balance of it.

Then he would try swinging it so that he could make the most efficient attacks every time. He wanted to weed out any unnecessary motions during his sword fight.

As for the shadow battle, he didn't believe himself to be good enough in the ways of swords to fight anyone he thought was good enough, his primary opponent of choice obviously being Du Yuhan.

"Ahh… " he stretched and stopped practicing at around 2 pm in the afternoon. He took out a 1st Meridian Realm beast's core and ate it.

He defeated the fight with the beast very quickly and was given notifications that he had gotten quite a few Qi. He smiled and opened the status page once more.

"Ah yes. I have enough," he thought and pushed 'Breakthrough'.

Suddenly, all the extra Qi inside of him was used up and he broke through from the 9th realm of Organ Tempering realm to the 1st realm of Meridian Tempering.

The system notifications arrived, congratulating him on breaking through.

<Congratulations on breaking through to 'Meridian Tempering: 1st Realm'>

<Detecting…>

"Huh?" Alex was surprised a little. "What is it trying to detect?" he wondered. The notification didn't sound for a few more seconds, and then…

<Extreme Metal Affinity Detected>

'Extreme Metal affinity?… the blood essence from Pearl's mother?' he wondered. That was what had given him an advantage in Metal energy.

<Promoting…>

<Successfully Promoted>

<Congratulations. You now have a Supreme Metal Spiritual Root>