Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Alex and his mother returned back from the capital a week later in disguises so no one would recognize them.

Even after Alex was back in the Flowing Brush sect, not many realized he was there. As such, Alex got the chance to miss the many people that came after him because of his newfound popularity.

While this also meant Alex didn't get a chance to find free gifts from people, his mind was way too concerned about something else to care about.

After returning back, Alex immediately went to his work in finding the final remaining ingredient of the pill that would help restore his arm.

He used the 15 thousand True Spirit stones he had acquired from the competition to buy many different true rank ingredients, all of which were Wood Element ingredients.

Once Alex got that, he started going into a secluded Alchemy session where he would refine every single ingredient and compare it to the impression he had received from the Blood Spirit Ginseng.

That began Alex's 2-month-long seclusion where he went through thousands of ingredients, sometimes multiple times through to find the ingredient.

Every day, he would go through about 50 different ingredients while also pacing himself properly so as to not overwhelm himself.

Alex recorded about a hundred different ingredients in this time that felt similar to the impression he got from the Saint rank ingredient, but none of it felt exactly the same.

Alex knew that finding the same one was impossible, but he still wanted to and so he spent all days finding the one that was it.

After the hundred different ingredients were chosen, only then did Alex leave his room to take a few days of break.

When he got out, there was stubble on his face that he would otherwise have gotten rid of had he had the time. He quickly got rid of the beard and went to his mother.

"You're finally out," his mother said. "Did you do it?"

Pearl cultivated next to his mother, while his mother was making some talismans.

Alex shook his head. "I'm just done with the first phase. I've narrowed the thousands of ingredients to just a hundred. I will have to go through again to reduce the number," he said.

"Take your time," Helen said. "There's no hurry. Are you really alright though? You're burning up."

Helen placed her palm on her son's forehead and winced a little t the heat.

"Oh, sorry," Alex said and took in the yang Qi to cool his body again. The yang never bothered him normally so he hadn't realized, but it was clear now that his yang Qi had returned.

"I thought you had it cured," Helen said.

"Not cured, just temporarily suppressed is more like it," Alex said. "Sigh, I might have to use the yin fruit again. I really didn't want to do it until it was time to make the pill."

The two of them chatted for a while and Helen let him know that the people had found out about their relationship. A few of the important families and sects in the empire had even guessed that he was living here and had sent their gifts to him.

"Anything important in there?" Alex asked.

"Uh, let's see. There are a bunch of ingredients, and I mean a bunch of them. It's like they realized you were an alchemist and thought you would need nothing else."

"Aside from that there are a few True ranked weapons and armors, but it's not really of high grade. There are some other weird artifacts too, but none seem really amazing."

"Do you need cauldrons? A few of them sent some too," Helen said.

"Sure," Alex said. "I'll take the swords, cauldrons, and ingredients. You can keep the rest."

"Okay," Helen said. "Oh right, there have been a few people that came to meet me directly and are requesting for you to teach Alchemy in public. Can you do that?"

"I don't know. I'm not really the public speaking type," Alex said. "Not to mention I won't be able to do anything until I make the pill and then visit the Icy place."

"How about this? Tell them I will give a week-long alchemy lesson within the next year," Alex said.

"Great, I will let the people know when they come the next time," Helen said.

Alex stayed around for a while longer and talked to his mother. He fought with Pearl for a few hours afterward to get back into shape and only then returned back to his room to cultivate.

Once he cultivated and was back to his finest shape, he started going through the hundred different ingredients once again.

This time around, Alex went through the ingredients in a different manner. Since he was done with the impression part of the ingredient, he needed to go through and see what the ingredients did.

So, he went through the ingredients and read up on all of them to understand what most of them did.

Unfortunately for him, that didn't help much in narrowing it down. So, he decided to send it all to hell and start making the pill.

One by one, using the 100 different ingredients, Alex started making pills that would work for him.

Of course, he didn't just test the pills with no caution. He prepared a True Nullifying pill for every single one of the pills.

Most of the pills he made surprisingly came to work as healing pills. He cut himself before every test and about 60 of the 100 pills were healing pills.

Of course, they became healing pills of different varieties and different strengths where one was obviously better than others.

10 of the remaining pills deformed his body and were obviously bad pills.

For the remaining 30, they were useless pills. All they did was when Alex ate them, they would stay in his body and create violent energy that would start to wreck his body from the inside.

If not for the True Nullifying pill, Alex wondered how many times he would have died from the pills.

Alex finished the experiments in a month and at the end of it, his arm still wasn't back at all.

'What am I doing wrong?' he wondered. This was it after all. He had narrowed down everything to a list of ingredients and somehow none of them worked.

'What do I do?' he worried. He had destroyed the Blood Spirit Ginseng. Had he not done that, he would have had an ingredient to immediately make a pill when he entered the Saint rank.

"No, I can't be wrong. I can't afford to be wrong," Alex thought and went on to make the strongest healing pills amongst the many he had just made.

It was one that used a Fragrant Ginger vine as the replacement ingredient for Blood Spirit Ginseng.

Alex made the pill once more and ate it. He could feel the healing energy squirming in his body but it never great out the bone and muscles.

'I am definitely missing something,' Alex thought. 'But what?'

After long contemplation, Alex decided to use the final piece of the Blood Spirit Ginseng to once again check what he had been doing wrong.