Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Time passed quickly when one did the same thing over and over for a long time.

Alex's days soon turned into a routine. 4 times a week, every other day, he trained with someone that was around Mid-True King realm in cultivation base.

He had come to find out that his Sword Qi was currently only that strong. Over the course of the 17 or so months, he improved it, but it only went 2 realms higher at most.

On the other hand, Alex himself broke through about 5 more times in the many days, reaching a cultivation base of True Lord 8th realm.

When he trained, he always gifted someone a pill he made, no matter what type it was. That made the people fighting with him happy to be a training partner.

Alex's pills were now consistently in the upper 50s when it came to harmony, and in the upper 70s, or lower 80s when the recipe was something he had come up with himself.

Or at least, that was the case whenever he cultivated with a Yin treasure. If there was no Yin treasure, the yang in his body would get so bad that even reaching lower 70s felt like a chore to him for his own recipe.

Alex desperately went around the city to find Yin treasure, but rarely did anyone have it.

In the past 15 months, he had managed to come across only 20 or so Yin treasures that had helped him calm his Yang build-up.

'I need something with so much Yin that it fully stabilizes my yang,' Alex thought. 'These little Yin treasures aren't helping at all.'

Aside from training, Alex spent 3 days a week going to the 3 different guilds in his city and completing his responsibilities there. After all, he was a True Heaven rank professional there.

Every other free time he had, he spent it all on fixing the recipes he had yet to.

Alex had already learned about the different ingredients that he needed for the pill to fix his arm. He even cut off the whiskers of his own seeking mouse to practice.

He did that partly for himself, and partly to check what the 'Undying' part of the mouse truly was.

The experiment was simple. He cut off Whisker's whiskers and waited. When nothing happened, Alex sent him back to his beast space, where he realized Whisker grew back his whiskers in just under a week.

So, Alex had relentlessly practiced on the whiskers as well.

Now, all that was left was the ingredient that was the equivalent of Blood Spirit Ginseng. However, even in the many months that went by, there never was a Blood Spirit ginseng in the market.

Other than him, Pearl had also increased in his cultivation base. He had somehow managed to reach True King 2nd realm, which was sadly not as fast as Alex.

Soon, the two of them would catch up to each other, and Alex would once again have a better cultivation base than him.

Today, Alex was all alone in his room. He was attempting to break through to the 9th True Lord realm as he hadn't done so in the last 3 months.

As such, he had left Pearl in his mother's house.

As Alex cultivated the Five Path Divine Yang technique, a wave of Yang Qi escaped from his naval area and rushed up to his entire body.

Alex quickly circulated the Qi and in just a few more circulations, he broke through to the next realm.

If anyone found out that it only took him less than 2 minutes in between the start and the breakthrough, they would likely cry tears of blood as they remembered the hour of cultivation they had to do over the entire night as they tried to breakthrough.

Once Alex was done, he started cultivating once again to stabilize his foundations over the course of the night.

* * * * * * *

2 months later, Alex let his mother know that he was intending to leave for the Eastern mountains again.

"What? Why would you want to go there? Did someone employ you to make a pill again?" Helen asked.

"No," Alex said. "I'm going there mostly for Pearl."

"Me?" Pearl gave a confused look, which Helen gave him as well.

"Yes," Alex said. "Pearl hasn't been cultivating well, and part of that I assume is because he hasn't been training at all like me."

The real reason Alex assumed was that he had somehow stifled Pearl's cultivation base by not letting him go through the ritual back in the beast realm, but he didn't want to admit that.

He also didn't want to make Pearl go through that as that would likely result in his death.

'I would rather have Pearl slowly cultivate than let him take a risky bet,' Alex thought to himself.

"I see," Helen said. "Well, if you can't help it then I guess you should take him. But you have to be extra careful as you won't have anyone to protect you two."

"Also, take this communication talisman and constantly sent me mess— eh? I don't have any?" Helen checked through her bag and was unable to find any at the moment.

"It's fine, mother. I promise to stay out of trouble," Alex said.

"No, sit," Helen said. "I won't let you go without a communication talisman." She continued searching for them but didn't find any.

In the end, she gave up. "Fine, I'll just make one," she said and brought out two empty talisman papers and a vial of ink.

Alex sat down and watched his mother prepare to draw a talisman.

"Do you know how to create a communication talisman?" she asked him.

"Uh… yes?" he said. "I know the design."

"No, design alone won't help you," she said as she dipped her saint rank brush in the ink and drew the rune for 'Communication'.

She followed it by drawing the rune for 'Far', 'Long', 'Text', 'Memory', 'Durable', and various other little runes throughout the left half of the talisman.

Then, she drew the last rune for 'Resonance'. After that, she started drawing Rune Bridge throughout the many runes to connect them.

Once she was done, she drew a straight line through the middle to separate the left half from the right.

Then she drew the mirror opposite on the right half of the talisman as well, creating symmetry in between.

Then, she started drawing the same design on the other talisman paper as well.

Alex watched in genuine awe at how great his mother was at making talismans. He too was good, but he never gave it as much thought as his mother did.

He slowly reached one of the talismans to take it for himself, when suddenly his mother's hand snaked out to slap his own.

Alex's reflexes kicked in and he managed to dodge her, but he still gave her a weird look.

"What's wrong? Didn't you make this for me to take?" he asked.

"What's wrong? Are you really asking that? Did you never learn how to create a communication talisman?" she asked.

"Uh… as I said, I learned the design, is that not enough?" he asked.

"Did you not read that you need to create a resonance between them?" she asked.

"Resonance? I did," he said. "Didn't you already create it though? Look, there's the rune."

"No, not in rune. Resonance for real," Helen said. "Sigh, those poor staff members must have thought you were lazy when you handed them talismans that never resonated."

"Hmm, now that you say it, I did get a lot of weird looks from time to time," Alex said.

"Alright, look," She said and showed it to him. "Whenever you have two or more talismans that you need to communicate in between each other, or work with each other, you need to make sure the talismans know which ones to work with."

"For that, we need to create a resonance between them. The first part of resonance is creating the rune for it. That is what you most likely do and nothing more," Helen said.

"The next step, however, is the most important."

Helen took the two talismans and held the rune for resonance in between her thumb and her index finger.

"You need to create a link between the two runes," she said. "Then, you need to pour in your Qi into the rune and activate it."

As she said that, Alex saw the rune 'Resonance' light up. Suddenly, he heard a low buzzing sound as the talisman paper started vibrating.

"Then, you slowly and steadily continue putting in Qi," Helen said. "At some point, if your stream of Qi on both sides is the same, the two talismans will start resonating with each other."

"Meaning, that the two of them will start moving at the same frequency. At that point, all you have to do is simply let them be and watch."

Helen put down the talismans and let the two of them vibrate for a bit. Slowly, the two talismans started moving closer and closer.

In the end, like two magnets getting really close, the two talismans jumped and snapped into each other, and stayed stuck.

"And that is how you create resonance," Helen said as she took one of the talismans and peeled off the second one to Alex.

"Now, if I send a message in here," she said as she put her spiritual sense into the talisman.

Alex's talisman vibrated and he got a message.

-You will get my message there.-

"Amazing!" Alex said with wide eyes.

"Isn't it? Now, take that talisman and make sure to keep sending me messages," she said.