Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Alex tried to reconnect, but only a single piece of information came back to him.

-Please complete the current mission-

"Ah right, it's one mission at a time," Alex thought. He walked to an alchemy room that was free for anyone with a badge to use and sat down.

In less than a minute, a girl walked in with a storage bag. "Do you need an air, sir alchemist?" the girl asked.

"It's fine, you can leave," Alex said. The girl bowed and left. Alex closed the door and looked at the storage bag.

Inside the storage bag were 4 different types of items.

Ingredients, Recipe, Pill Tester, and Pill bottle.

Alex didn't necessarily have to use it all from this bag, but the guild gave it to him for convenience's sake.

Alex took out the recipe first of all and read the recipe. As soon as he glanced at it, the information was firmly lodged into his mind.

Then, he looked through the ingredients and made sure they were all good.

Finally, he looked into his badge again.

[

Name: Yu Ming

Age: 19

Rank: True Earth Alchemist

Contribution: 0

Current Mission: Prepare a Soul Lifting pill of 25% or higher.

]

25% or higher. Alex had 3 chances to get that level of pill given that there were 3 sets of ingredients in the storage bag.

Most people would likely try to make some pill that was higher in harmony, but Alex didn't care for that.

The only reason you would make a very high harmony pill when not required was to make a name for yourself amongst the civilians.

The clients could always request a specific alchemist to make a pill. For those times, you wanted yourself to have a reputation.

Alex wasn't going to be staying here for much longer. Gaining a reputation thus was the least of his worries.

He brought out his Golden Jade cauldron and started making the Soul Lifting pill.

In 1 hour, he ended up making all of the 3 pills with 3 different harmonies of 32%, 36%, and 37%.

For a pill whose recipe he had only seen just now, he had made the quite good quality of pills. If he continued with it, he would likely reach 40% very soon, but he didn't have the ingredients for that.

Alex took the 36% and 37% pills for himself and put the 32% pill in the pill bottle.

He went to the staff that worked like the reception, but only for the alchemists, and handed them the bag and his badge.

Once they confirmed that the mission was complete, they rewarded him for the mission.

36 True spirit stones. The reward was originally meant to be 40 spirit stones, but the guild took 10% of it.

Considering how much ease it was to find the job, Alex had no complaints whatsoever.

He kept the spirit stones into this bag and went to the board outside to take another mission.

It was barely in the early afternoon when he finished 3 missions, and amassed an extra 5 pills for himself.

After resting for a bit, he went for his 4th mission of the day. By the end of the day, he had easily made over 200 True Spirit stones amidst the various prices on each of the pills he made.

Even the staff members were very shocked to see him make so many pills in a single day.

Alex got away from the questioning by lying to them that he didn't need to make more than a single pill. That was still above average for most cases, but it wasn't as outrageous as making 20 True rank pills in 8 hours.

From a minor investigation, he had come to find out that most alchemists around his level usually did about 2 or 3 missions a day, which would have them make 6 to 9 pills a day most of the time.

After that, they wouldn't be able to make a single pill. Not only would they be mentally exhausted, but their Qi would also dry out as well. Especially if they were in the early True realms.

Alex wondered if his Qi reserve was larger than the average cultivator. He knew it was dense, but he had never thought if it was a greater amount as well.

'That must be it,' he thought.

Once he went back home, Alex continued cultivating. This time, he called out Pearl and had him cultivate alongside him.

Cuts appeared all over his body, but he didn't feel any pain. It was hard to feel any pain as the gap between the two of them was not only a major realm but also an entire 2 realms within it.

Alex wanted Pearl to immediately break through to the True realm, but he didn't have any monster cores on him to feed Pearl.

He would have to go to the forest for that, but he didn't want to. He felt it would be better for Pearl to break through with his cultivation rather than outside help for this important step.

So, Alex forced Pearl to cultivate day and night with an occasional spar to energize his body and help recycle his Qi.

On the 6th day, while Alex was focused on removing the Yang from his body that had accumulated over the past couple of days, he felt something stir aside from him.

So, he stopped and turned around to check Pearl. When he did, he saw that Pearl was starting to break through.

Immediately, Alex pulled in all the Yang that he was emanating, no matter how little he was.

Then, he stepped to the side and waited for Pearl to be done.

After an hour more, he felt something change in Pearl and suddenly, a bright golden light exploded from him.

The light turned into golden motes that hung in the air as it slowly drifted downwards like it were confetti celebrating Pearl's advancement to the True Realm.

"Haha, Pearl you did it. You—" suddenly he stopped. Alex's eyes went wide as a silhouette of a beast appeared behind Pearl.

It was about 2 meters tall and 3 meters long. It looked somewhat like Pearl, but not entirely. The face of the beast didn't look cat-like which Pearl had.

Also, the main difference was the fact that the beast's white body had black stripes all over it.

'The White Tiger!' Alex looked at the heavenly beast's silhouette with absolute shock.

The silhouette moved a little as it drooped down to touch Pearl with his nose, and suddenly, it turned into a bright light that converged back onto Pearl.

Then… Pearl changed. His body glowed white and his size started to increase. He got bigger and bigger until he stopped.

If his original size was a little smaller than a house cat, his new size came to be about twice what a normal house cat would be.

If this continued, Alex suspected by Saint rank, Pearl's body would reach the size of his mother. After that, his body would reach the size of Lady Ren.

Finally, Pearl opened his eyes. Bright golden pupils stared directly at Alex as Pearl opened his mouth to speak.

"Breakthrough successful?" he asked in almost perfect pronunciation.

"Yes, yes, you did it," Alex said as he walked up to him and hugged him. Alex swiped his hands on Pearl's back, feeling his new, strong body.

"Wow, you are so big now," he said, still a little unsure if he liked the change or not.

"Brother not like change?" Pearl asked.

"Oh no, it's—"

"Pearl change," Pearl said and immediately his body shone with white light as his body shrunk down to the size of what he originally was, perhaps even a finger or two smaller.

"What? You can change? How?" Alex asked with nothing but surprise in his voice. He had read so many books about beasts, spent 2 months with nothing but beasts, and somehow there was no information about beasts being able to change size.

"Pearl just knows how," Pearl said. The information that he could do came from the memories he inherited from his parents.

"Can you change back?" Alex asked.

Pearl nodded and changed back to become a bigger cat that had lost its childlike features.

"And again?"

Pearl changed back to his childlike self.

Alex smiled. "Great, thankfully you haven't lost your cuteness," he said as he rubbed Pearl's little head.

"Alright, get bigger. Let's see how you can fight with a bigger body."

The room was small, and would most likely take damage if the two of them seriously fought, so Alex put on a barrier formation before fighting.

The barrier wasn't strong enough to stop the two of them, but it would be fine as long as it blocked a single attack.

Alex fought Pearl multiple times throughout the day. He even skipped going to the guild for the day and just fought Pearl all day long.

He had Pearl fight as small Pearl, or as big Pearl, or have him change in and out to confuse the opponent.

Alex didn't want to see how strong Pearl had gotten or teach him how to fight. All he wanted to do was have him get used to his new body.

Once night came, he finally stopped and cultivated overnight. The next morning, they trained for a little while before Alex left to the guild once more.

He wanted to make as much money as he could. At first, he was incredibly happy that he could make so much money in such little time.

But when he realized that he needed to make pills of his own to sell, and would have to thus buy ingredients like everyone else, he got dejected.

No matter how much he earned, it was never enough.