Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

After realizing that there was no way for him to extrapolate just one aspect of a technique without having any knowledge of how techniques functioned in the first place, Alex removed any thoughts of creating the pill-forming technique while he was here.

Alex also thus gave up on trying to create the perfect pill. Until he had the pill forming technique ready, he would have to give up on increasing his pill-making ability.

That wasn't to say he had made no improvements at all. Just being able to make pills with more than 60% harmony was already good enough for the little training he had done.

Also, it was only hard to learn about structure and composition the first few times. Once he got a hang of it, he could improve the pill without even thinking about it.

Alex couldn't wait for that time when he could simply look at an ingredient and tell what he needed to do to get the best variation of the recipe.

For now, however, he had to simply grind at it. A few more months passed with less time focused on cultivation and more focused on simply alchemy.

As such, he didn't advance on his cultivation base and was stuck at the 9th True Disciple realm… until today.

The final of Alex's spirit stones stopped working and now he was left with 20 dull stones with no Qi in it. He sighed.

'Well, there was no point in bringing a barrier formation with me,' he thought. Without spirit stones, the formation would be useless.

Or so Alex thought until he put his Qi into the formation just to check and a ball of fire lit up suddenly.

He then used his Qi again, and a barrier appeared around him with the 2nd formation. They, however, disappeared the moment he let go of his Qi.

Alex looked surprised. 'Did they always work like that?' he thought. That… should not have been possible, or so he thought.

If simple Qi could activate a formation then it would be news in the Crimson Empire. And no, not a single bit of information about formations he had learned in there had ever mentioned formations working on their own.

'That's weird,' he thought but was just happy that he could use them if he ever needed them.

Then, he put everything he owned into his storage ring, which had about 10-meter squares of space by now. It was enough to store his cauldron, pills, ingredients, and entire corpses of at least 2 beasts.

Alex smiled and closed his eyes. With a thought, the Qi in his body started moving, following a familiar path they took every single day.

After a circulation or two, Alex felt a loud drum-like sound in his head like an exaggerated heartbeat.

With that, he broke through to the True Master realm.

'How long has it been since I broke through to the True realm? How long did it take me to go up a single minor realm?' he thought to himself, but it was impossible to tell.

He had first broken through to the True realm in the Beasts' realm which he stayed in for a month or so due to not having any cultivation method to breakthrough.

After that, it had taken him a few weeks before reaching 3rd realm. Then, he reached the 4th realm after coming to this mountain. In fact, he had broken through from the 4th True Disciple realm to the 1st True Master realm all right in this dark cave.

Day and night were the same to Alex who's vision was just a haze of gold and a sense that could see no light or shade.

Still, based on the somewhat reliable perception of time he had in his body, he could tell that he had spent nearly least three-fourths of a year in this place.

Most of the time for the last few months, he had spent on nothing but Alchemy, putting less focus on his martial training.

'This cave has given me safety and a place to stay, but it has also made me have no not fight at all,' he thought.

'It's time I leave this place. I cannot grow if I don't face danger,' he thought and walked out of the cave.

Once he was out, he took out his sword from his ring and walked in a certain direction.

While he was ready to leave this place, there was still one more place he needed to visit.

* * * * *

The sound of two beasts fighting rang through the air, or so it sounded. When looked at, it was clearly a young body fighting the monkey.

The BlueFlame monkey swiped its tail at Alex from far away, sending a spinning wheel of fire flying towards him.

Alex dodged the flying wheel of fire, not daring to fight it directly. He couldn't be sure if the explosive ability of this monkey was something it learned to like him from the many mangoes it might have eaten, or it was just that, an ability it inherited from its bloodline.

Alex hoped it was the latter, but he had to fight assuming it was the former. If he assumed that any fire anywhere would explode at any second, it made him that more alert.

Alex sent a flying water slash, that should do nothing to the monkey, but he hoped it would distract it. It did not.

The monkey came crashing down on Alex, but at the last second, rotated while in midair and punched to its right side.

An invisible Alex showed up with his sword striking the monkey. The Alex that was on the ground vanished into motes of light, revealing that it was a fake.

'Dammit! This monkey has seen all of my techniques already,' Alex thought. Then, the monkey swiped its tail again, the tail releasing a small blue ball of fire that flew towards Alex.

Every single cell in Alex's body screamed at him to dodge. Alex trusted his instincts with all of his heart.

As the small ball of fire unfolded, Alex vanished. The space where he had been shaking with the strength of many bombs. Alex was meant to have appeared behind a tree, but somehow he appeared a little left to it.

He took part of the explosion's hit, but it was far enough that it didn't hurt him. He quickly moved to the side, and let the uprooted tree beside him fall to the ground.

Alex checked at the monkey and saw that it was breathing a little heavily.

'Of course,' Alex thought. 'Such a strong technique should have taken a lot out of it.'

He decided to go force a bit more of it out of the monkey. Alex dashed from behind the fallen tree, surprising the monkey who didn't expect Alex at all.

The previous times it had fought him, he would always leave after taking the explosion to the chest. But now, he had come to fight back.

The monkey panicked a little. Blue flames erupted from its body, like armor made up of pure fire.

Alex struck its body with his sword, but he could barely force it in at all. He sent out Heaven's Impact, but as expected, the fiery body soaked up the mental attack, leaving not much for the monkey to handle.

Alex frowned. If Heaven's impact didn't go through, then his Spiritual sword wouldn't either.

He needed to make an opening to have his spiritual sense enter the monkey's body. That was the only way for him to win.

Alex's cultivation base flared and he put all of it into his movement technique. Alex then burst into speed that the monkey hadn't seen before.

A hit to the back. A slice to the neck. A cut to the tail. A Heaven's impact on the mind.

Alex slipped and slid through the monkey's surroundings, attacking it from various angles, which the monkey couldn't see.

From time to time, he would slow down and let the monkey 'catch his off-guard', in which case it would throw out an explosive fireball, that Alex could dodge with his teleportation skill.

Alex appeared to the side of the tree, or high in the air behind it. Sometimes, he would even appear in front of it.

Sometimes, the range wouldn't work as well as it should. Alex frowned at the teleportation technique that refused to work properly, but he couldn't worry about it now.

The monkey was starting to heave loudly, with nearly all of its Qi disappearing with the explosive balls of fire.

The armor on its body dimmed a lot. Alex jumped back at the monkey and started cutting it again, but no matter how hard he tried, his blades couldn't penetrate at all.

He wasn't breaking through the armor to cut its body. He needed a better sword intent. He needed Sword Qi.

It wouldn't come to him right now.

A Heaven's Impact flew at the tired monkey, and a hole opened in its armor.

Alex's eyes shined. He put his sword back into his ring and an illusory, misty white sword which only he could see appeared on his hand.

He rushed at the monkey, sending 3 more Heaven's impacts at it. The three impacts opened a big enough hole in the monkey's armor, and Alex put his sword through its back.

He then slid it down and cut it through the tail.

The monkey felt nothing happening aside from its vision going in and out for a few moments. Then, it turned around to see Alex standing behind it.

It moved its tail to send out a ball of fire that started unfolding in front of  Alex, but Alex showed no fear towards that.

He simply grabbed the fire with his empty hand and snuffed it out.