Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

"Oh, you lost your arm?" The Royal Alchemist asked with a bit of surprise as he seemed to have finally noticed it.

"When did you lose it?" he asked.

"Um, about nearly 3 weeks ago now," Alex said.

"Ah, I'm sorry then," the Royal Alchemist said. "I could help you reattach it if it was a few hours or at most a day. But, over 2 weeks, I cannot help you with that."

"Is that so?" Alex asked. "Then, can you help me in downgrading a Saint Rank recipe to a True rank?"

The royal alchemist's eyes changed. "You have a saint rank recipe?" he asked.

"Yes," Alex said.

"Can I see it?" he asked.

Alex shook his head. "I only remember the recipe. I don't carry it around," he said.

"Alright then, write it down for me," he said.

Alex hesitated for a bit before remembering what the person in front of him had done for him by teaching him today. So, he decided to repay it back through the recipe.

He wrote it all down on a Talisman and handed it to the Royal Alchemist.

The Royal Alchemist read the talisman as his face appeared to be full of shock. "These are ingredients that I have only read about in this book. I have never seen them before myself," he said.

"Do you know how I can possibly downgrade these ingredients to a True rank alternative so that I can make a pill for myself?" he asked.

"Downgrade? That's… hard," he said. "Wait a second." The royal alchemist opened his book and flipped it for a good while before reaching a page.

"Ah, here it is! Note this down," he said.

Alex wasn't sure what he was about to say, but he waited for the ingredient list.

"Thorny Bugloss for Winevein Poppy, Silverstring Diascia for Trileaved Periwinkle Leaf, and… Auburn Rue's seeds instead of Dried Torenia flower," the Royal Alchemist read it out loud.

"These are the only conversion I have at the moment. Unfortunately, I have more Common and True rank conversion instead of the higher ones," the Royal Alchemist said.

Alex thought for a bit. The Saint Body Regeneration pill had about 12 ingredients to it. Of them, the Royal Alchemist had just given him 3 of the ingredients that would be used for the True rank version of the pill.

'That doesn't help me a lot at all,' Alex thought.

"Um, Senior Lai, can you teach me the concept behind upgrading or downgrading an ingredient? Even if it is just for the Common and True rank ingredients?" he asked.

"I suppose I can do that," the Royal Alchemist said.

"First of all, you have to understand that even though 2 ingredients might have the same energy, its actually different in subtle ways. You can never swap the metal energy of one ingredient for metal energy of another ingredient."

"So, the first thing you do is find out what this aspect of the ingredient is that makes it different."

"Usually you figure this out by looking at what the ingredient does, rather than the energy itself. If you want to upgrade or downgrade an ingredient that helps in closing up wounds, then the ingredient you want will likely do that same thing but just better or worse."

"So you start there," the Royal alchemist said.

He went on to explain as much as he could about the concept and Alex soaked it in like a dry sponge left out in the rain.

For nearly 20 minutes, the royal alchemist spoke on this topic, finally ending it with, "in the end, it's just trial and error. Once you have the ingredients, you just have to try and make a pill that works."

"I see," Alex said. "So, I will have to keep trying it for a long while, huh?"

"Unfortunately, yes," the Royal Alchemist said.

"Thank you for your teaching, Senior Lai," Alex bowed towards him a little.

"It's alright. My visit hasn't been all a waste of time either," the Royal Alchemist said as he waved the talisman in his hands.

He stood up to leave, and as he did, he said, "From what I understand, Little Ma had a lot of expectations on you. I hope you smash through every single one of them and reach heights neither she nor I have ever imagined."

Then, he left.

Alex remained in the room for a while longer contemplating on the information he had just received.

There was no secret technique, there was no book. He would have to do everything on his own from the ground up.

Now, Alex felt himself to have 2 choices.

First, he could try his best and convert all the Saint rank ingredients to their True rank equivalent, and then make a pill to heal himself.

Or, the perhaps easier option, rush through the True realm to reach the Saint realm and directly make the saint rank pill.

Finding Saint rank ingredients was perhaps going to be a bit too difficult of a task for him, but in either case, sitting on his ass wasn't going to help him.

No one was going to come to help him. If he wanted help, he would either need to go out on his own and find it or be strong enough so that he no longer needed the help.

Alex didn't do anything for the next 3 days aside from staying in his room and cultivating. While he did that, he contemplated on the things regarding the things he had learned.

Composition, Structure, Symmetry, and finally, Conversion. Suddenly learning more about these things had opened up a lot of ways for him to improve on his pills.

He couldn't wait to put all of this knowledge into making pills. However, now was not the time. Right now, he needed to focus on rescuing Pearl.

The Beasts' realm was not such an easy place to infiltrate that he could go in and out without having to worry for his life.

As far as he knew, this could possibly be the final days of his life. Still, Alex didn't let that stop him.

He wouldn't be able to live with himself if he let Pearl go through the ritual knowing that all the previous candidates had died. Either way, he was very close to death.

And for some reason, that did not scare him at all.

'Is that because I'm a clone? Because there is already the realm me living back in home?' he wondered.

Alex took out a pill and ate it. He let the energy of the pill dissipate in his stomach and instead of doing what it needed to do, he made the pill's energy convert into Qi in his body.

Next, it was time to breakthrough.

Using the Heaven grade technique of the Five Yang Divine Path, Alex started moving the Qi in his body in a certain path through his meridian.

The Qi originated from his naval area and would move through his entire body before coming back to his naval area.

He did that two or three more times when he heard an 'oomph' sound coming from deep within him.

He had broken through. While it wasn't as fast as pressing the breakthrough button, it was still very fast as it only took a bit less than a minute to breakthrough.

As far as he had come to learn, breaking through usually taken from a few minutes up to a few hours for most people, and that was in the self-tempering realm.

Alex felt a small increase in his Qi density, meaning his strength had likely increased as well.

He cultivated for half an hour to stabilize his cultivation base for the moment and stopped so he could train something else.

There were 2 things he could do aside from cultivating. The first was using his spiritual energy to form a weapon.

Alex did that for an hour or so. By now, he was extremely proficient in making the weapon itself. However, the weapon still had no physical properties, so it couldn't be held or influenced by Qi.

He suspected that it had something to do with Spiritual energy as well, but he couldn't figure it out at the moment.

'Is the information in the stele really not complete?' he thought.

Alex then stopped and went on to his next training. He wasn't sure if this was training or not, but he liked to call it one.

He closed his eyes and soon found himself floating on top of the Spiritual sea, looking at a bunch of floating threads of silver light around the Mountain.

After a week or so of having this, Alex had come to learn just a bit more about the silver mountain.

Every day, a certain amount of such silver threads would come off of the mountain. If he wanted to accelerate the process, he just had to keep on touching the mountain, but then he would start losing Spiritual energy to it.

Alex spent the next 5 minutes, going around, gathering the floating threads of silver light.

There were hundreds of them, but it didn't look like it affected the mountain in any way at all. It really would take him forever to completely dismantle the mountain into threads.

But then, what would he do with the threads? He hoped he would have an answer by then.

After he finished with that, Alex left his spiritual sea and started cultivating again. He cultivated the Yin technique for the entire night to keep his Yang in check.

He had to do that. After all, tomorrow was the day he infiltrated the beasts' realm.