Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

"Start slow. Use the Flame Mastery Scripture to control the fire and pull it up to the temperature it needs to be," Alex explained as Whisker sat next to him, getting ready to put in the first ingredient.

When the temperature was right, Whisker put in the first ingredient and started moving it around as per the recipe.

The movement wasn't smooth, and the ingredient didn't contact the cauldron the entire time, so it was coming out a little worse than it should have.

Alex waited until the ingredient was about to turn to power and reminded the next instruction. "Lower the temperature and… no, lower even more. Yes, now keep it stable. Stable! It's rising, keep it low. Yes, now put the second ingredient."

Alex explained the little beast that was making pills for the first time and noticed an exorbitant amount of mistakes.

He didn't say anything though, as it was obvious he would make mistakes. Even he had made mistakes, despite knowing the recipes by heart when he had first started making pills.

He reminded what had to be done next and where he was making the obvious mistakes, but other than that, Alex was completely letting him do it all on his own.

After everything was done, the mouse tried to use the Elemental Guidance he had learned to put the energy into the powder, but that barely worked at all.

The structure just wasn't of the shape to collect the newly formed energy. Whisker didn't realize this and still continued to form his pill.

After he was done making the little pink ball, he pulled it out and showed it to Alex.

Alex smiled and took it. He placed the pill on a formation in the center, and instantly a number appeared on top.

7%.

"It's only 7%, little guy. What should we do? Do you know where you made the mistakes?" Alex asked.

The mouse thought for a bit and started communicating mentally. Alex heard everything and nodded.

"Yes, those are the primary mistakes. Let's try it again and see if you can rectify them," he said.

Whisker nodded and went back to making another pill.

Alex didn't say many things this time around, except for when he was making some obvious mistakes that he wasn't paying attention to.

A wide smile appeared on his face when he realized this one would be an obvious improvement.

When the pill came out, and Alex took it, a genuine smile formed on his face.

He placed the pill on the formation and a two-digit number popped up.

15%.

"Not bad, Whisker. You did better than even I did when I first started making pills," Alex said.

The mouse made some screeching noises of happiness.

"Alright, tell me what you did wrong this time around," Alex asked. Once Whisker told him everything he could remember, Alex made him do it all over again.

For the rest of the day, Whisker had to make the same pill over and over, perfecting the pill with each successive attempt.

When Whisker ran out of errors he could understand, Alex reminded him of new ones and told him what was wrong.

By the end of the day, Whisker was consistently making pills over 25%.

That wasn't a lot of harmony for Alex, but for someone who had just started Alchemy, that was an enormous amount.

"Every day I work, you will look at what I do, and try to understand it. On our free days, you will make pills from what you've learned," Alex said.

"I will teach you everything I know, and before long, you will start making immortal grade pills too, I'm sure."

Alex was absolutely certain he would be able to make Whisker create Immortal grade pills in no time, however, reality said otherwise.

No matter how talented Whisker was, or how great his curiosity was, he still needed to learn the normal way.

Until things were ingrained into him as if they were muscle memory, he wouldn't be able to improve at all.

Especially with just making pills once a week.

As such, it was only after 3 more months had passed that Whisker was able to make Heaven Grade pills.

Even after another 2 months passed, Whisker still wasn't able to make Immortal-grade pills as he had to pay too much attention to basically everything.

Despite Alex having made him some pills to improve his mind, Whisker still wasn't able to look at the structure and combination while in the middle of making pills.

So, even after learning the pill-forming technique to some extent, he was still not capable of making any good happen with it.

"Don't worry, you will learn it soon," Alex said and sighed.

Whisker had improved quite a bit for sure, but the improvement was quite slow. If someone had given Alex this same level of training, he would have reached over 80% harmony by now for sure.

'I guess that's what talent is all about,' he thought. The little guy didn't have the talent for alchemy, yet he was still working hard and showing results.

Wherever Alex was, he would reach there for sure. He would be slower, absolutely, but he would get there.

As such, Alex had every motivation to continue teaching him and wait for him to get better at it.

He was only in the upper realms of Meridian Tempering realm anyway. He still had much to go through before entering the True realms.

Plenty of time to improve on making pills.

In the last 5 months, Alex himself had only improved once, entering the True Emperor 7th realm. However, he was close to reaching the next realm and would do so in a month or two.

'It's taking much longer as I break through even though I get so many resources,' Alex thought. He knew things would slow down as he got to the higher realms, but he hadn't expected it to be this slow.

Now even breaking through the realms felt impossible to do in just 4 months.

"I only managed to breakthrough 3 times in the last 14 months I've been here, and Pearl only twice," Alex thought.

14 months. How easily time passed nowadays. 'Maybe it's because I'm just sitting in this one room, stuck with nothing much to do,' Alex thought.

He sighed. He couldn't help but worry about his mother, but there was nothing he could do with just worrying.

"Hmm… 14 months? Not exactly right?" Alex thought. Suddenly a thought came to him.

"I spent 4 months in the village, so I must have spent a little less than 10 months in this sect," he thought.

10 months was important to him.

"The Dao mountain opens very soon, doesn't it?" he thought. Only the students were apparently allowed, but since he had done so much for this sect, shouldn't he be allowed too?

Alex walked out the door and went out of the building. He wanted to know when exactly the mountain was opening.

Since he wasn't allowed to speak to any disciples of his own volition, he made his way up the giant bridge and walked towards the elder's section at the center.

The elder that stood guard looked at him curiously and stopped him.

"What do you need?" she asked.

"Senior, do you happen to know any information about the Dao mountain?" he asked. The woman was a Saint realm, so it was obvious she would know, but he still asked.

"Of course, what do you want to know?" she asked.

"It is opening soon, right? Do you know when exactly?" he asked.

"Um, 5 days maybe," the elder said. "It should be 5 days."

Alex looked at the time and frowned. It was close to the end of the day, so there were really just 5 more days left.

'What can I do in 5 more days?' he wondered.

"Do you wish to join too?" the elder asked. "I heard we only have 1966 Saints this time around that will enter the mountain, so the True realms will have about 34 spots to take up."

Alex was stunned by the number of Saints he had just heard, but what was more interesting to him was the number of spots for True realm cultivators.

"How do I take up the spot?" he asked.

"Well… you will need to be a disciple of one of the sect, or something like that," the elder said.

Alex's heart sank a bit before he asked, "I would like an audience with anyone that can give me that authority."