Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Alex could sense it once more. The feeling was budding in him and it would take a few hours for it all to actually happen, but the beast horde was in fact coming.

'Dammit, the timing matches too,' he thought. His previously happy face was now nowhere to be seen.

The city lord and others saw the change too.

"Do you not like this gift now?" the City Lord asked. "I can get something else for you if you want me to."

"NO!" Alex shouted. "I mean, no, this is fine. It's better than fine. It's just…" he didn't know what to do. The beast horde was coming and he needed to let the people know, he needed to let the entire empire know.

"I need to leave," Alex said. "I'm so sorry, but I need to go right now."

"Did we offend you by any chance?" Lady Mo who hadn't spoken a lot in the conversations asked.

"Not at all. It was an honor to come here. It was an honor to talk with senior Lai too," Alex said. "But  I really need to go right now."

"Is everything alright?" Ma Rong asked. She had never seen her disciple this distressed.

"No," Alex said. "Something is wrong."

"It seems I will have to take my leave too then. I will come some time again, City Lord," She said. She then turned to the Royal Alchemist and said, "Senior Lai, please come to the sect once. Let us treat you a bit."

"Sure, sure," the Royal Alchemist said.

"Let's go," Ma Rong said and walked out. Alex hurriedly walked next to her.

Once they reached outside, Alex immediately started to fly without waiting to be outside of the manor.

Ma Rong also flew behind him.

"Master, it's—"

"Is the beast horde coming?" she asked.

"Y-yes," Alex said with surprise. "How did you know?"

"I guessed. It's about the same time as it always comes, and you are the only one who knows it," Ma Rong said. "Still, it's quite weird how only you can know it. Is there something you are hiding from me?"

"Absolutely not," Alex said.

"Alright, go and tell Wen Cheng. I will go prepare the elders to defend," Ma Rong said.

"Okay, master," Alex said and flew to the Tiger sect. He wanted to enter while flying, but a few guards stopped him. They were angry at him for flying in a banned area, but they didn't immediately do anything to him. After all, they recognized who it was.

"Please complain about this to my master later. There is no time right now," Alex said and flew back again.

He brought out his talisman and messaged Wen Cheng.

"Master, the beast horde is coming. We need to prepare and caution the other cities too," Alex said into the talisman.

He kept flying and got near the peak of the Tiger sect's mountain. Where he was around the 50th ranked house, he dropped to the ground and sprinted up.

'I need to caution sister too,' he thought and ran to her house. When he reached her house, he started knocking on it.

"Sister! Open up," he said.

It took a few seconds for him to hear a 'wait' from inside and the door opened up. The one who opened it was Luo Xing.

"Oh, hey little brother. What are you doing here?" she asked.

"I'm looking for you guys. Is sister inside?" he asked.

"Yeah, come on in," she said and brought him in. "Oh right, here," she said and handed him something.

Alex took what she had given him and realized that it was a talisman. "What's this?" he asked.

"That's the formation you wanted to make. I tried my best and came up with that. Try and see if it works," she said.

"Later," Alex said and put it in his storage bag

"Yu Ming, what's going on? It sounded like you were in a hurry," Luo Mei said.

"Sister, another beast horde is coming. You guys need to get ready," Alex said.

"What?" Luo Mei said in surprise. "Oh no, did you tell master?"

"Yeah, I sent him a message, but I'm not sure if he's seen it or not though," Alex said.

"Let's go and make sure he knows it," Luo Mei said.

"No, you go. I've got some place to be," Alex said.

"What's going on?" Luo Xing was a bit confused. She couldn't follow the conversation at all, but she could see that something was wrong.

"The beast horde is coming and I need to report to master," Luo Mei said to her sister. "Let's go."

She took Luo Xing and walked out. Alex walked out as well and ran up towards his master's manor.

Now that Luo Mei knew about it, he could depend on her to release the news to everyone. As for him, he needed to find a way to block the feeling he was getting so that the beasts couldn't target him.

If they did, he would most likely die, along with the entire city. It wasn't just a massive beast horde the likes of which he only saw in the capital, that would come for him.

It was going to actually be a saint realm beast that was targeting him as well.

He still didn't know the reason behind why he was targeted. Maybe it was his body, maybe he had taken something from the forest that the beasts wanted, or maybe it was because of his spiritual roots.

Whatever the case may be, all that he was sure of was that the beasts were after him and he needed to hide.

He reached his master's manor and without stopping, ran to the back of the house. There were the formation rods for the formations that had helped him stay out of the beasts' senses that one time.

He banked his entire hope on it.

Once he reached the place, he started pouring in his Qi to one of the nodes. As required, he was using True Qi since that was the only one that would work the formation.

His 50% True Qi started to quickly deplete as it required a lot from him to run the formation. As a self-tempering realm cultivator, using True Qi wasn't common at all, but he did.

His True Qi quantity and quality would certainly increase by a lot when he reached the True realms, but for now, he had to deal with it.

It took him a total of about 20% of the total True Qi to activate the barrier first. The barrier opened and Alex could see a small barrier pop up at the middle with about 1-meter diameter in size.

However, that was only what he saw from the outside. Inside, the size was totally different. The barrier formation could not only stop people from leaving or entering, but it could also increase the space inside the barrier to make it quite massive.

Alex then started pouring in his True Qi into the 2nd formation. This one took a little more out of him as this was a higher quality of formation. So, when it would run, it would run at a much better efficiency than the barrier.

It also had more strokes in general, so it would require more Qi.

This was the Spirit Disorienting formation. Anyone stuck in there would be stuck for almost a full month. The time would be less if Alex set the formation incorrectly, and more if he set it up correctly.

However, Alex didn't care about that. He only needed the formation to work for today only. Afterward, he would remove the formation until next month again.

The Spirit Disorienting formation could make people's senses unable to tell direction once they were inside the fog. Also, they would randomly be teleported around, not sure where they would end up.

That was the problem anyone who was trapped in the formation would face. However, Alex was not a victim of the formation like he was last time. He was now the owner of it.

He lost another 25% of True Qi, and the Spirit Disorienting formation was set up as well. Without hesitation, he walked in.

"Nice. So it really does work," he thought when he sensed that the disorienting aspect of the formation was no longer working on him.

Not just that, he had much clearer visibility of the surroundings as well. While he couldn't exactly see everything, he could see the barrier on the other side with some haze in between. That was the most he could do in this foggy formation, but that was way more than what any victims could do.

Since he was the one who set the formation, his Qi was running across the formation nodes, constantly being used as a pathway to make the pattern of the formation on the air using Qi alone.

Because of that, the formation regarded him as the master and didn't work on him. That was one of the instructions written on the piece of paper that came along with the formation.

Alex was happy for a little while realizing that he was free in the formation and could walk out of it and the barrier with ease.

However, his happiness soon dwindled away when he realized what he was feeling.

The feeling of the beast horde, was still there. Even though he was inside the formation that was supposed to be hiding him, it was not working at all.

"Oh no! Is it perhaps that one concealment formation that did it? But that can't be," Alex thought. His own immortal grade concealment technique didn't work, so it was unlikely that one that was focused on hiding sound and images was responsible for hiding him.

Alex's fear crept upon him as he realized that his one last trick up his sleeve didn't work at all, and now he was going to be the cause of a tragedy that would result in everyone he knew and cared for dying.